Progress City, U.S.A. » Commentary

Cracking The Code, And A Year In Review

Michael — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:12:05 +0000

There’s been a lot of thought lately directed towards the problems facing the Disney theme parks, and how – if possible – they can be resolved. One rather shocking discovery I’ve made, and which I plan on addressing more in the future, is that a tide seems to have turned against Disney on the fan message boards and social media. Fan boards have typically been on the sunny side in the past, happy to accept whatever Disney hands down, but this seems to have changed. Sometimes it seems that folks like myself, who have tended to view the company with a critical eye and were often branded cranks in the past, have become among the least despondent members of fandom.

This has taken me by surprise, and I’ve been at a loss to really explain it. As I’ve said, it’s an odd time to be a critic, with the company willing to spend once more but making dubious choices in the theming of these multi-million dollar expansions. Even more baffling is Walt Disney World, my personal area of greatest interest, which seems to rise and fall on a daily basis; depending on which subject you’re addressing – attractions, entertainment, foods, transportation – you can waver between optimistic and despondent on an hourly basis.

Big new Fantasyland plans? Yay! Decaying Tomorrowland? Boo! Tasty new burgers at Pecos Bill? Yay! Shortened hours and generic chicken nuggets at Columbia Harbour House? Boo! Classy new Town Square Theater? Yay! The hideous Stitch stage blaring Cotton Eye Joe in Tomorrowland? Boo!

It’s hard to keep track. And it’s hard to really chart the progress of the resort when you have snazzy new rockwork going up in Fantasyland but monorails falling apart outside the gates. What is most baffling is that many of us feel that the absolute nadir of the Magic Kingdom is behind us, and the park has seen an overall rise in quality and maintenance over the last few years. While it is far, far from its historical peak, of course, it’s at least better – better than when Under New Management festered in Adventureland, or the Exposition Hall remained empty, or the 20,000 Leagues lagoon sat stagnant and filled with floating garbage. The Magic Kingdom is better off, and the other parks are certainly no worse off than they were five years ago, so why are so many people worried? And why does the future quality of the resort feel like such a dicey proposition?

At last we have a cogent reasoning for exactly why this happens courtesy of Foxx at Passport to Dreams Old and New, who provides a compelling dissection of just how broken the system is at Walt Disney World in the prologue to her annual “report card” for the Magic Kingdom. The reason Walt Disney World’s efforts seem so scattered and fragmented is – surprise! – the resort’s executive and departmental structure is scattered and fragmented. The system is broken, and it will take a wholesale rethinking of the way things are done in Disney’s largest and most prosperous resort to return it to its former level of service and quality.

It is important for fans to realize just how Walt Disney World is structured so they know who is responsible when things go pear-shaped. In many ways it doesn’t matter who is calling the shots at the top; no matter the agenda of Iger, Staggs, or Rasulo, Walt Disney World will continue to botch the important details because of systemic failures.

Basically, Walt Disney World is set up like a feudal kingdom. Every vice president has their own fiefdom, and heaven forfend they all collaborate to create a better, high-quality experience for the guest. Instead they in-fight, stymie each other, seek to secure and consolidate their own power, and generally try to make themselves look better at the expense of everyone else. The company treasury is parceled out amongst these departments, with some better funded than others, which is why Entertainment can blow tens of millions of dollars on a hideous stage in Tomorrowland that is used for less than six months while other departments can’t perform basic maintenance for critical on-stage show elements. It’s why those goofy games that no one ever plays in the Space Mountain queue cost more than the actual show improvements to the ride itself during its 2009 rehab.

It’s because there’s no one in control. There’s no one with the power or the authorial vision to whip these squabbling principalities into line and make them all function as one for the betterment of the entire resort. There’s no one with the brass to spend money on non-revenue elements like the monorail, which don’t bring in cash but make the resort worth visiting. And there’s no one to stick out their neck and make a decision on where the entire ship of state needs to go next. Instead it’s hit-and-miss advances and declines, with victories eked out where some enterprising soul can trick the system into working and stagnation elsewhere as the inertia of mediocrity grinds everything to a halt. The system is rigged to prevent things from happening. It’s rigged to keep those folks who work hard for little pay and no recognition from making real and lasting change; the folks at the top have no idea what’s happening on the ground, and there are a million levels of bureaucracy set up to stifle innovation and improvement.

I compared Walt Disney World to a feudal kingdom, and we have a name for the era during which Europe was ruled by a similar setup – the dark ages. With all the infighting amongst the petty lords, not a whole lot got done at the time, and this might give you a clue as to why management in Orlando can’t figure out a replacement for Pleasure Island, or why simple positive changes can’t be made in the parks on a regular basis.

It does seem slightly insane to proclaim a broken system when I’m the first to argue that the Magic Kingdom has improved in recent years, but as I said while some things have progressed others have regressed, and it’s important for people to know why we’re subjected to hula-hooping on Main Street and Cotton Eye Joe in Tomorrowland. Why the same company who is spending millions on a new Tomorrowland allows a rotting transportation system and a Future World at Epcot that looks like… well, it looks bad.

There are a million different chefs in the kitchen, and some of them are great chefs, some of them are lousy hacks, and some of them are just there to stir the pot until they get a better gig. What Walt Disney World needs is a clear vision, and it would help if the corporate folks in California took a little interest in sorting out these structural problems before they leave the resort to its own devices.

But read Foxx’s post – it makes a lot more sense than this heap of metaphors. I’ve told Foxx we need more of this type of analysis; while Disneyland has had Al Lutz monitoring its every internal move for the last fifteen years, Walt Disney World has no such watchdog with a working knowledge of its own internal dynamics and goings-on. This has been much to our collective detriment, as the Florida resort’s politics and operations differ so greatly from the setup in Anaheim, and unless you’ve seen the system at work it’s hard to understand how it really works. Academically, I knew all the things that Foxx mentions in her article, but I don’t have the working knowledge to be able to find all the connections and to “see the Matrix” – to be able to trace the thread of how some arcane departmental setup leads to specific instances of shabby show.

Knowing how the system works is critical if we’re going to fix it, or even if we simply want to assess who to blame or praise when things go wrong or right. Foxx’s piece is a great place to start. The great news is that talented and enterprising people still exist at Walt Disney World who “get it”, and who share the values that made the resort great. The trick is how to set up a system that empowers them, and that is the message we must get across at both the fan and corporate levels.

The Carsland Conundrum

Michael — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:08:12 +0000

For Disney fans of a critical bent, it used to be easy knowing where to channel one’s rage. Disneyland falling apart from neglect and mismanagement? Blame Paul Pressler and his gang of idiots. Key elements of Animal Kingdom’s master plan left out on opening day? Blame Eisner, or the “pencil pushers”. California Adventure? Blame everyone VP level or above. Once Disney began its long slide into mediocrity, beginning noticeably around 1994 and cratering out about ten years ago, the villain was remarkably consistent and easy to identify – cheapness. Penny pinching. Cutting corners. Basically, the refusal by management to commit the resources necessary to creating new things in the tradition that made Disney great.

A lot has changed since then. Management is different at the top, and in many places at the bottom as well. Eisner’s replacement, Bob Iger, seems much more willing to spend on projects that he finds worthwhile and he mended a number of bridges to the creative community that had been burned. John Lasseter of Pixar was brought in as a creative consultant to Imagineering, which many – including myself – thought simply had to be a good idea. Most importantly, money is being invested in the parks; a billion dollars has been poured into an effort to make California Adventure habitable, a long-needed overhaul of Florida’s Fantasyland is underway, and other projects wait in the wings – projects like the Avatar-themed area of Animal Kingdom that surprised everyone when it was announced earlier this year.

So, all is well… right?

A certain element of fandom will not brook any criticism of the Disney organization, no matter how badly show standards fall. Even during the darkest days, when the company was trying to foist things like Walt Disney Studios in Paris off as a “theme park”, there were those who bristled at the fact that anyone would point out that the Disney parks output suddenly seemed to range from mediocre to embarrassing. Those who felt that Disney should do better than California Adventure, or that EPCOT deserved a Space pavilion more space-worthy than Mission: Space, repeated a litany of simple pleas to Disney management: Please start spending money like you used to. Please give us some lavishly-themed attractions like you used to. Please start budgeting attractions for more detail, theme and atmosphere. Stop being so damnably cheap and loosen those pursestrings!

And, so it would seem, that started to happen. As the aforementioned projects began to roll out, it was clear we were entering a new era. The new areas announced for California Adventure were indeed lavishly themed and decorated, and certainly not done on the cheap. The Fantasyland renovation was actually re-jiggered after its original announcement to make it more elaborate, and while we know next to nothing about “Avatar City”, we know that James Cameron does nothing small.

Big projects. Seemingly adequate spending. Lots of detail, lots of theme, lots of atmosphere.

So why are so many – including myself – still left feeling completely unenthused about these developments? How to frame the argument that, even though what you thought was wrong with the company’s offerings has been resolved, you still feel these projects are desperately unexciting and creatively bankrupt?

Honestly, I found it hard to talk about at first because one starts to simply feel like an ingrate. We wanted spending – and they’re spending. Carsland at California Adventure is going to be big, elaborate, and expensive. Construction photographs shows massive, lusciously detailed rockwork and meticulously crafted environments. The designers at Imagineering are definitely “bringing it.” But that doesn’t shake the fact that it is an entire massive section of the park devoted to Cars. That’s like giving someone a solid gold set of bagpipes. I mean, wow, it obviously signifies a great effort on your part, but what the hell am I supposed to do with it?

It’s a hard needle to thread, critically. Basically the argument one is trying to make is that Disney is doing the wrong thing (building Carsland) for the right reasons (wanting to spend money to make California Adventure less of a joke). It’s kind of the reverse of Eisner’s early years, where he was doing the right thing (investing in parks) for the wrong reason (to become the grandest mogul of all, have the grandest hat at the hat parade, and crush all who lay in his path). You find yourself saying “Yes, nice hustle there. I can tell you’ve worked really hard on this and it looks great. But it’s an affront to what the company should be doing and I really kind of hate it.”

Let’s look at these projects one by one. First, there’s the Fantasyland remodel in the Magic Kingdom, which I really have no beef with. It’s looked consistently better ever since it was first announced, and even if it didn’t have anything I would ever ride, it’s at least making that section of the park nice to look at for the first time in almost twenty years. That’s a net improvement in and of itself.

Of course the real problem with Fantasyland comes when you compare it to its Disneyland counterpart; having spent a lot of time in the Anaheim park recently it’s hard not to be jealous of the sheer number of offerings in its Fantasyland. In a fraction of the space we have in Florida, Disneyland manages to cram in a slate of attractions that the Magic Kingdom will not approach even after this ‘expansion’. Wonderful dark rides based on Pinocchio, Mr. Toad and Alice in Wonderland, the charming castle walkthrough, and the exquisite Storybookland canal boats are all noticeably absent in Florida. A shame, as the Magic Kingdom’s larger scope and potential for grand vistas would allow them to breathe.

What’s more, it’s hard to imagine that after the money and effort is spent sprucing up the area that management will take a second pass to add in some of the missing attractions, or even new attractions built along similar lines, like the long-planned Fantasia Gardens boat ride. There are so many other areas of the park – notably Tomorrowland – that are currently below spec, that it would be exceedingly unlikely to get a “phase two” to up the Fantasyland attraction roster. Remember – these new attractions are only replacing capacity that the park lost during the 1990s closures. If you think of Mermaid as a replacement for 20,000 Leagues, and the Snow White coaster as a replacement for the Snow White dark ride, we’re pretty much breaking even on that front.

But that’s not really condemning the Fantasyland remodel for what’s there, but rather for what’s lacking. A failure of ambition at the top, perhaps, but what will be built looks great; at least we’re not left with some monstrosity that will never be removed, and it does leave the door open for expansion in the future.

California Adventure is not so lucky; alongside the truly lovely aspects of its renewal, such as Buena Vista Street and the Paradise Gardens area, it’s getting Carsland – a steel and concrete monstrosity that, due to its scope, expense, and “pet project” status for grand poobah John Lasseter, will never be removed.

Ah, but you say – Carsland looks great. It’s so detailed and elaborate and expensive. And maybe, you even say, I love Cars. But here’s a really critical question: What in heaven’s name does Carsland have to do at all with California? The park is, if I recall, California Adventure. So…?

Yes, California has a car culture. Yes, people in California drive cars. And yes, a lot of them work at Pixar and obsess over their vintage autos which were paid for by the billions of dollars worth of merchandising revenue raked in by their Cars franchise (and, of course, the money they save not having to pay for cereal). But Cars did not take place in California. Radiator Springs, the town recreated in the unimaginatively named “Carsland”, was not located in California.

Why does this matter? Well, because the park is called “California Adventure” for one reason. It’s also debatable whether, in a theme park allegedly dedicated to the real people and wonders of a real state, it’s wise to use the single largest space left for expansion for an entire land based on a single film franchise, about a load of cartoon cars that live in New Mexico or something. Did they run out of California stuff to talk about? I hope so, because with all the real estate Carsland eats up you’d better hope you have it covered already in Hollywood Backlot, the Grizzly forest, and the weirdly east-coast-seeming amusement pier. Also, there’s a Little Mermaid ride in San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. So, you know, California.

Carsland indicates a general creative laziness that seems to be washing through the company’s efforts. We’re well aware of CEO Bob Iger’s obsession with the idea of “franchise”, and this seems to have become a crutch for the company’s imagination; instead of creating new realms filled with new experiences, we just get retreads from movies. This is doubly troubling since instead of putting guests into environments where they can create their own adventures, as in the original Disneyland, they’re instead relegated to re-living the stories of others – just re-enacting the things they just watched on Disney Blu-ray ™. This kind of mindset would never have brought us Jungle Cruise, or Pirates of the Caribbean, or the Haunted Mansion or Tiki Room or… you get the idea. Even if it’s a multi-million dollar experience, it’s still re-heated leftovers.

It’s also worth noting that Pixar has become past master and patient zero for the irritating and limiting “franchise as land” concept. The first land I can think of that was dedicated to a single property was California Adventure’s “a bug’s land”, and since then we’ve been saddled with Carsland and two separate Toy Story Playlands – one in Paris and one in Hong Kong. Both are awful. (As an aside, I can track the specific moment I completely lost faith in Pixar impresario John Lasseter. It was in the featurette, included on the Toy Story 3 DVD, wherein he breathlessly hypes the excitement and wonder soon to appear in the then-under-development Toy Story Playland. How wonderful it would be, he promised! No, dude. It’s really, really terrible.)

Building an entire land based on a single property limits you. It limits you creatively and logistically and sets you up for a situation, decades later, when your parks start to look awkwardly and embarrassingly stale. Did you ever go to one of those second-tier amusement parks when you were a kid, and they had the Flintstones, or the Smurfs, or Snoopy walking around many, many years after their prime? And it felt kind of sad? Cars may prove to be timeless, even though I kind of doubt it, but Disney is ensuring that a huge section of their California park will be locked to that specific movie for years to come. Better hope those direct-to-video sequels hit.

Which brings us to Avatar City. When, out of nowhere, Disney announced in September 2011 that it had partnered with filmmaker James Cameron to bring an Avatar-based land to Animal Kingdom in Florida, it came as a surprise to pretty much everyone. Including, as a matter of fact, Disney’s own Imagineers, who were taken as off-guard as anyone.

A deal hammered out at the highest echelons, assumedly in response to the wild success of Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Disney’s alliance with Cameron is intended to snag a “major” intellectual property to compete with the boy wizard and get some warm bodies into Animal Kingdom. Disney estimates they’ve lost as much as an entire guest day to Universal thanks to the success of Potter, and apparently they think reeling in the highest-grossing film of all time will help stem the tide.

My response is this – who do you know that is an Avatar fan? Not people who enjoyed the film, or thought it was cool, or really liked it; who do you know who is a fan? For what it’s worth, how many of you remember a single character’s name from the film? I saw it two or three times with different groups of friends and I remember “Marine dude”, “Angry old Marine dude”, and “Sigourney Weaver.”

For what it’s worth, I actually enjoyed Avatar on the IMAX screen. Sure it had a wildly generic script, paper-thin characters, and a strange lack of humor, but as spectacle it was incredibly effective. Cameron does spectacle better than anyone else, although he seems to have retreated into his technology much like George Lucas and forgotten what made his early successes great. Films like Aliens and Terminator weren’t profound, but they were fun; Aliens was chock-full of stock, stereotyped characters, but they were fun and memorable. And you remember their names: Ripley, Hicks, Newt, Bishop, Vasquez, Apone, Hudson, and…. Paul Reiser. I’m pretty sure Paul Reiser played himself in that one.

But this isn’t a movie review and to tell you the truth I don’t think Avatar’s shortcomings as a film matter in this context. People were quick to bring up the film’s narrative and character flaws when the project was announced, but those aren’t elements that really matter in the realm of theme parks. One major problem that has plagued new-era Disney attractions is a dependence on character and narrative at the expense of letting the guests have their own experience. It’s what I was speaking about with Carsland; that film had a (derivative) narrative and (annoying) characters but they were distinct and memorable, and basing a land on that relegates you to merely living those adventures over and over again. Avatar’s great strength was in worldbuilding; I’m not sure I’d be interested in watching it on a standard definition television, but on the IMAX screen it was immersive and functioned in many ways as a themed environment. The film didn’t gross nearly three billion dollars because people were eating up the snappy dialogue, and there was no breakout Han Solo character – they were going because they wanted to spend time on Pandora. And that’s what an Avatar land could provide – a chance to experience the film’s elaborate environments and lavish production design without having to wonder why Crusty Military Guy’s mecha suit has an oversized gag prop knife.

So, the Avatar project would create an intriguing environment, with an assumedly top-dollar budget, in a park that desperately needs something. And with its themes of nature and fantastic creatures, it’s at least more theme-appropriate for its park than Carsland is. So why the ambivalence? I still have yet to satisfactorily summarize the reaction I had upon this news; it’s less a verbal reaction than a very specific and indescribable face. Perhaps the closest lingual equivalent would be, “Whuh?” It’s just bewildering to me. Why this? Even though I know the underlying executive logic, I keep asking – why this?

Somewhat to my surprise, my reaction seemed to be well above the median for positivity among online Disney fans. I was just baffled and unenthused, others are downright hostile. For some reason – I have no idea why – I seem to occasionally have a reputation for being critical of Disney’s decision making. But reading the online communities after the Avatar announcement, I felt positively Pollyannish.

First there were the people that just hated Avatar, or hate Cameron. There were those who thought it an inappropriate film to be represented in a Disney park. There were those who thought it an inappropriate film to be represented in Animal Kingdom. Almost everyone seemed to like the two better-known Animal Kingdom expansion ideas – Beastly Kingdom and Mysterious Island – and many seemed none too pleased about these concepts being usurped by a licensed property from another corporation entirely.

This is perhaps a key point of contention in many peoples’ opposition to this concept – why does Disney feel they have to reach outside the company to find a suitable concept for their parks? We know Iger’s habit of buying outside intellectual property, whether it be Pixar or Marvel, but while that’s not entirely a bad thing it also shows a fundamental lack of trust from management that their own company can produce something new and worthwhile. Which, if so, what does it say about management that they cannot run the company in a way that successfully produces new and popular product?

This lack of confidence can be seen throughout the modern Disney organization, from an animation studio that can’t commit to a production schedule to theme parks that have to buy other companies’ ideas to draw visitors. The entire reason so many fans have rebelled against the franchise mania – Cars here, Toy Story there – is it illustrates an underlying insecurity at Disney that they won’t be able to get people in the gate without a movie property they can slap up there to assure people. This condemns Imagineering to a spiraling circle of mediocrity, and ensures that they are not allowed to produce something that wows or surprises us like Pirates, or Mansion, or Western River Expedition.

Perhaps this is why the EPCOT Center of 1982 is so beloved? Because it took risks, and was unafraid to be its own thing? Disney attempted to create new stories, and in doing so invented Dreamfinder and Figment – two of the most beloved theme park characters ever. Sure a lot of the tools and technologies used in EPCOT were tried-and-true, but there was a concerted effort to bring people something new.

For what it’s worth, that was also the case for a great deal of Animal Kingdom. The park’s flaws are well-documented and manifold, and the elements derived from theme parks and zoos are clear, but it did try to mix things up, and present people an experience unique in Disney’s oeuvre. And maybe that’s why Avatar seems to clash so greatly. The major themed areas of Animal Kingdom are their own unique thing, not dependent on any franchise or brand, and it feels the possibilities there are endless. If you add in an Avatar area, complete with trademark and copyright markers everywhere, it clashes with the whole. It feels out of place. And it makes that specific part of the park uniquely limited in its range of possibilities.

Of course, what actually will wind up happening is as much your guess as it is mine. No one inside the company even knew about this until September, so it isn’t as if a slew of ideas have been percolating around for ages. Many seem to doubt that there’s actually been any art or specific proposals yet; it seems as if we’re pretty much at the “Hey, let’s do something Avatar” phase. It’s hard to imagine what form this expansion could even take – Animal Kingdom already has a giant tree; does Disney plan on building a huge military contractors’ base in the middle of their peaceful “nahtazu”? Will you go from a scenic African safari to firing a chaingun at blue dragons in a splintering forest?

Again – if it happens, it’ll probably be fancy. It’ll probably be expensive. And it’ll probably look great. But like so many of the things that corporate management and the feckless Imagineering bureaucracy have cooked up in recent years, is it the right thing to do?

These aren’t mistakes that can be swept away as easily as an off-the-shelf spinner ride. And no matter how much lipstick you slather on a pig – even if it’s a billion-dollar pig – it’s still a pig. Which would still make more sense in California Adventure than Carsland.

Am I an ingrate? Maybe. But maybe Disney will learn that the Beatles were right after all – money can’t buy you love.

Literally The Strangest Thing I’ve Ever Seen At Walt Disney World

Michael — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 02:19:46 +0000

I considered many titles for this article.

The typically punny things, naturally – things like “Why We Deride” and things like that. But I think it’s important to underline the fact that this is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen at Walt Disney World. That might be quite the buildup, as I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but this one left me standing in the street, mouth agape, and laughing maniacally. It’s just so strange.

It’s well documented that I have a bone to pick with the Studios Formerly Known As Disney-MGM. Not only is it generally bursting to the seams with fail…

"What was that you were saying about visual contradictions, Mr. Hench?"

…But among all the Florida parks it has fallen furthest from its potential for greatness (Yes, yes, I know current Future World might qualify for that dubious honor, but at least it used to be brilliant and EPCOT still has Showcase). I’ve always been enthralled by the classic era of Hollywood filmmaking, as well as the iconic look of that period’s architecture and design. Studios should be a slam dunk, with such rich material to draw on; it also gives designers leeway to explore themes and periods that are absorbing but wouldn’t fit in a Kingdom-class park. The western frontier and tropical jungle were dangerous places that Disneyland distilled and made safe and accessible; to modern audiences the mean streets of Los Angeles and New York City might seem equally threatening but they’re just as full of rich iconography and deeply-ingrained lore to exploit in a theme park environment. Studio whiffs on that potential and lacks a clear vision or purpose.

But that’s all beside the point. While my subject here might possibly be used to illustrate the unfocused and sub-par aspects of the Studios, it’s just so incredibly bizarre and random that it transcends lack of theming (or veneer-thin theming) and poor spatial layout. It’s so absurdist it almost becomes art in and of itself; there’s simply no reason why this existed. The fact that it did exist means that somewhere there’s a story that I desperately want to know.

A warning – these pictures are about a year old. This probably isn’t there anymore. It’s taken me this long to come to terms with the fact that I did not hallucinate this.

So, say you’re meandering around Studios. You’re wandering around enjoying the lavish theming and scenic vistas:

Sad trombone.

You turn onto the New York Street. Hey, theming. This looks promising.

"So where's the line for the Spider-Man ride?"

You turn to the right. “Hey, that looks interesting,” you say. Is this an attraction, a store? A DVC kiosk? No, these are all false fronts. Nothing to do. But… what’s in the window of this jewelry store?

"Maybe I'll buy my best gal a ring and... wait a minute..."

There, in the window of this jewelry store, is A TREE MADE OUT OF ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER.

NO SERIOUSLY.

That’s right, a tree made of rolls of Angel Soft toilet paper. In a sylvan glen, as depicted by a giant flat picture of a forest. Fake colored leaves lined the ground around the tree. Please note my favorite detail: the single sheets of toilet paper, suspended by fishing line, that depict the “leaves” falling from the magical toilet paper tree. TOILET PAPER LEAVES HANGING FROM FISHING LINE, PEOPLE. Hanging rather limply, too, I must add. Presentation, people!

I won’t even point out the irony of 1971 Disney creating a magical Orange Tree and 2010 Disney creating a magical toilet paper tree. OK, maybe I will point that out. Is there a Little Toilet Bird? Merchandising potential, people.

Seriously. I know I’m overdoing this. But it’s a tree made of rolls of toilet paper. In the window of the jewelry store. On New York Street. And it has little flying single-ply leaves! Could they not spare more than a square?

A closer look:

I love autumn, when the toilet paper squares fall...

This is a thing that happened. I will seriously never get tired of thinking about this. Look how elaborate it is! I think why I’m so amazed by this is that someone didn’t put some product in a window – they went to all the trouble to rig this up. And to what end?? I picture a couple of cast members toiling all night, delicately hanging the little plys of toilet paper, making sure everything is just right… And all so there can be a toilet paper tree in the window of the jewelry store.

Does a bear... oh, never mind.

Look at the little rolled up squares on the forest floor!! Arranged in little rays emanating from the tree!! Why does this exist?

So there it is. The strangest thing I’ve ever seen at Walt Disney World. I’ve seen some weird things at WDW; Food Rocks, Liza Minelli, C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. But a tree made of rolls of toilet paper? That’s amazing.

"The world you have entered was created by the Walt Disney Company & is dedicated to Hollywood - not a place on a map, but a state of mind that exists wherever people dream & wonder & imagine, a place where illusion & reality are fused by technological magic. We welcome you to a Hollywood that never was - and always will be." - Disney-MGM Studios Dedication Plaque

D23 Exposition (Rave Edition)

Michael — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:54:38 +0000

And now, the rest of the story…

As I’ve stated I have no particular insight into the hidden workings of D23, so whatever internal dynamics I imply are mere speculation on my part. That being said, it’s pretty clear that Disneyland has “favored child” status in the organization.

This is no surprise. As has been made clear, Disneyland was or is the “home” park for many of the higher-ups at D23 and the Archives, and it’s perfectly natural to have allegiance to the park you grew up with. I would be the same were I running the show. But this bias has a number of effects, some obvious and some subtle. The obvious come in the form of site selection for events, the lineups of the events themselves, and the selection of stories for the website and twenty-three magazine.

The more nuanced results of a general unfamiliarity with Walt Disney World comes in the content of those presentations – someone who wasn’t there to experience the resort’s history might pick different things to highlight when portraying that history, and if they haven’t obsessed over the details of the historical record like “native” fans they might miss out completely on important or interesting things to discuss. This is especially harmful when it comes to D23 or the Archives, which have access to items and information that fan websites can only dream of; if they don’t know the value of the treasure they have, then they cannot properly utilize it.

Word of mouth in the Disney community this spring was that the more Walt Disney World inclined of the D23 organization had to scrap to secure an event to celebrate the Florida resort’s 40th anniversary this year. No doubt fighting for resources with the much larger and more prominent D23 Expo that would be held only three short months later, Destination D Florida had an aspect of “the little train that could” to it. Perhaps that’s why this particular event had something of a home-brew feel compared to the slick sheen of the California events; thankfully, though, it managed to surpass them in quality of content.

First, I’ll get the caveats out of the way. May’s Destination D Florida was only a two-day event, and that was a shame. It wound up packing a ton of stuff into two short days, and although “sitting in a room” doesn’t sound very taxing, it wound up being a little exhausting. Information overload and lots of sitting – if the event had time to breathe, we would have been able to stretch our legs a bit! (Yes, I’m an old man)

Two days is too short, anyway, to celebrate 40 years of the Florida resort – especially when Walt Disney World had received short shrift in the D23 calendar during the two years prior. WDW fans had waited for a while to feel the love, and while Destination D managed to pack a lot into its short running time, there were many amusing corners of resort history that remained unprobed.

One final issue ties in with something that I mentioned earlier – a lot of the folks at D23 are Disneyland-focused. This led to the occasional incident of misrepresented fact, incorrect fact, or incomplete fact. There were a few things presented as “we don’t know what this is”, when probably quite a few people in the audience could have told them if they asked. Again, I don’t blame anyone for their field of interest – I wouldn’t expect to do a detailed presentation on Disneyland, for instance – but it can be an issue.

Now with that out of the way I can say that most of the content presented at Destination D was great. It had that “by fans for fans” feeling that was pretty much completely absent from the 2011 Expo. The experiential difference is noticeable. As I said I have no problem with recognizing that the Expo is for all branches of the company, but there’s a real difference in being marketed to by PR staff from Disney Interactive or DVC and seeing a presentation put together by a real fan. Disney fans aren’t stupid, and it’s a reasonable assumption that D23 members would be the most informed, aware, and well-read subsection of fandom. It’s more than likely that people so interested in Disney that they’re willing to shell out for the privilege know when they’re being sold a bill of goods and when they’re listening to someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Thankfully, at Destination D there were lots of folks who knew what they were talking about. The highlights have been chronicled (and in a much more timely fashion) elsewhere on the web, but they included a presentation on Walt’s EPCOT, information on abandoned attraction concepts including a spectacular re-creation of the fabled Western River Expedition, and the standup comedy debut of Imagineers Jason Grandt, Jason Surrell and Alex Wright. These were people based in Florida who love Walt Disney World, and the presentations were not only informed by experience but also by personal interest.

Speaking of people who know what they’re talking about, Tim O’Day deserves special mention for his hosting duties as well as some really deft moderation of two panels of Disney “legends” that helped in the creation and operation of the resort. Tim’s really good at this stuff and I was really disappointed not to see him at the Expo this year. He also hosted the presentation of some vintage film, video and television clips from Walt Disney World’s past, which were truly astounding. I can’t even begin to describe this presentation to you; I am absolutely desperate for D23 to make these videos available somehow. I would buy a DVD the second they were offered for sale; at the very least, they could share them on their website.

I think that most attendees would agree that the highlight of the event was the closing session of the last evening, which was one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen. Emceed by O’Day, the presentation centered on a performance by legendary songwriter Richard Sherman. I’d seen Sherman once before, at the 2009 Expo, and his concerts are sheer brilliance. He’s personable and funny, and appears to have a terrifying ability to recall from memory the seemingly billion songs he and his brother have written over the years.

If that was not enough, the event was plussed by several performance ensembles from the resort’s past. Seeing a marching band and the Kids of the Kingdom gallivanting through the Contemporary ballroom was unexpected and amazing. The pinnacle, however, came when Sherman closed by performing One Little Spark – the late, lamented theme from the defunct and beloved classic Journey into Imagination. Ron Schneider, the original in-park Dreamfinder, came out in costume (and in character) with his pal Figment at his side.

Now, I’m not prone to sentimental hyperbole. If you’ve read this blog you know I’m suspicious of the way Disney has evolved to prey on sentiment as a marketing tool. I’m constantly getting nasty tweets about how bitter and cynical I am.

However.

This was awesome. The only way I could think of at the time to describe it was the closest one could come to a religious experience at a theme park convention. When “Dreamfinder” came out on stage to sing along with Richard Sherman, the place went insane. Even if you had never seen the ride or knew the character, the reaction of the crowd would have given you chills. People were weeping openly. Seriously. It sounds dumb now, but the energy in that room was amazing. And I’m not the kind of person who says things like “the energy in that room was amazing.” But it was.

And THAT… that is what it’s all about. The whole reason that otherwise sane (no comments) adults like myself pay loads of money to be in a frickin’ “fan club” for a cartoon studio / theme park empire can be summed up, somewhat existentially, in that single moment. I don’t really know what it means, but that singular moment is why we’re there. It’s why we bothered to show up. And it’s what is missing from the more managed and “messaged” events like the 2011 Expo. It’s a connection with fans, and with memories of lost treasures, and a way to revive things that should never have gone away in the first place. That is exactly what D23 should be about.

Destination D Orlando used the resources of the Archives in the way they should be used, and far more effectively than other events. Using artwork to recreate Western River Expedition was an incredible idea, and allowed us for the first time to truly realize what riding that attraction would actually have been like. That’s a huge achievement, and the sort of thing that devout fans are desperate to see. I’ve studied that ride for years, but never had an idea of its actual flow… and now I do.

The selection of insane vintage video, or the presence of really-for-real Dreamfinder – these are things that only D23 has the ability to do, which makes it all that much more tragic when they don’t. Bloggers like myself can try to unearth treasures to share, but no matter how much we scrounge for old issues of Eyes & Ears on eBay there are simply things we don’t have access too. D23 does. When they use them properly, as they did in Orlando, it can be transcendent. When they don’t use them, or even worse, when they don’t even know the treasure they have in their care, it’s a sad waste.

So I guess the gist of all this is that Destination D Florida managed to do more for fans of Disney history than the 2011 Expo, and with a fraction of the budget and time. And I assume the reason for that has to be that Destination D was put together by people who loved the material just as much as the audience for which it was intended. Such a product is always going to be far more sincere and substantial than something pieced together by marketing folks straight out of their MBA program for whom Disney is “just a job.”

I’ll state again that I know the Expo, by its very nature, needs to serve and attract more than just die-hard fans and history buffs. It’s OK if it serves the kids who (for whatever reason) enjoy Disney Channel, or the people who are in it for the merchandise, or for people who want to see celebrities. That’s fine. And I fully realize that there are things beyond the control or management of D23 itself. But if these are going to be events for all fans, shouldn’t they be programmed to service all fans?

Because I have news for Disney corporate – if you held a fan convention for ABC, or ESPN, or Consumer Products, or Disney Interactive, very few people would show up. No one became a huge Disney fan because of Desperate Housewives. The obsessive fans – the bedrock upon which all this empire has been built, and around whom any large gathering must coalesce – are fans because of Walt’s legacy. The parks, the animation, the films. You can’t ignore that, or you’ll lose your base; you might as well just have Miley Cyrus perform at the Mall of America or something. If you want the fans to show up, look at what the fans respond to. I would hope that reaction to Dreamfinder gives you some ideas.

One last thing.

I’m sure a lot of you missed Destination D because you couldn’t make it, weren’t sure if it was going to be worthwhile, or were saving up your money and vacation time to head to the Expo in August. If so, you probably haven’t seen some of the things that I’ve mentioned in this article. And that, in itself, is a problem that D23 needs to address.

When I see all these fantastic presentations, and note that they seem to be videotaping them, I later think – where is this video? Why is it not posted online? Why isn’t it shared on the D23 website? Why wouldn’t they want to toot their own horn, and show how great these events are, and convince even more people to show up next time? Because if I was sitting at home in my pajamas and saw some video online of people going berserk because of Richard Sherman and Dreamfinder, I’d start booking my flight for the next D23 event ASAP.

All these things just seem to go down the memory hole; the fall issue of twenty-three magazine had some great content about Walt Disney World’s 40th anniversary, but no coverage of Destination D. There hasn’t been any real coverage on their site. And, again, no video. Why? Legal reasons? Much like the 2009 Expo, I don’t understand why when they have a real success under their belt they don’t choose to shout it from the rooftops.

It goes back to utilization of assets. Heck, I’d pay $5 to get that insane Grad Nite video on iTunes; if they’re not going to share it for free on their site or sell a DVD at least do that. Just make this stuff available. Why not share the re-creation of Western River Expedition? Or at least put some new artwork out in book form? Nothing frustrates fans more than having nothing to blow their money on.

The good news of all this is that D23 has something we want to spend money on. We just want more. Thankfully we have a template now for how things can be done right, and how they can be done wrong. It’s perfectly possible that lessons will be learned for the next Expo, and return some of the charm that was present in 2009 but missing in 2011. I also strongly hope that D23 returns to Walt Disney World sometime in the future. EPCOT will be thirty next year – does that give you any ideas, guys? There are vast depths of obscure and hilarious Walt Disney World left to plumb. Just cue up the Dreamfinder video and listen to the fans. Then, you know, put it online…

D23 Exposition (Rant Edition)

Michael — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:30:57 +0000

My recent “brief” blogging absence began, roughly, around the time of this year’s D23 Expo in August. Even before that point, though, I had quite a few things I wanted to discuss about D23 in general and this year’s events in particular. Writing about the “official Disney fan club” is rather complicated for me, as I feel I’ve been a big supporter of the concept overall – perhaps more so than most in my particular branch of persnickety fandom. But as eager as I am for the venture to succeed – after all, if it is eliminated, how long will we have to wait before the company takes another stab at celebrating its history? – its events this year reveal many undercurrents and tensions that bear examination and problems that demand remedy.

The two major events on the D23 docket this year were May’s two-day Destination D event in Orlando, and August’s three-day D23 Expo in Anaheim, California. These were fundamentally different events; while Destination D focused exclusively on the history of Walt Disney World (in observance of its 40th anniversary this year), the Expo was a catch-all promotional event for all divisions of the company and was much more “consumer” oriented.

This year marked the second of these biennial expos; the first was held in 2009 and was widely considered a success. I felt Disney did an excellent job lining up a diverse slate of events for its inaugural Expo, and while there were some major logistical issues at the time they could be chalked up to “first timer” mistakes that would certainly be ironed out for future events. Disney even appeared to be learning at the time; many changes were made during the 2009 event itself to allow larger crowds to see the more popular presentations. There were bumps along the road, but the event was very fun and a great success, garnering lots of online praise and free publicity. Given the short amount of time that they’d had to organize the 2009 Expo, one expected that the sky would be the limit for 2011.

One would think.

This is where we encounter one of the fundamental errors that Disney makes time and again and which is a constant source of frustration for me with current management in general. It’s a metastasization of Hollywood’s absurd “opening weekend” fixation – if something isn’t a blockbuster success, immediately, it’s considered not to be worth further examination. There’s no room for word of mouth (which the 2009 Expo had in spades), or growing momentum. That’s fine when you have to quickly recoup a movie’s budget, but it’s frankly absurd when you’re talking about a fairly expensive event that requires people to travel hundreds or thousands of miles and shell out an equivalent amount of cash.

There were many rumors of corporate hand-wringing back in 2009 about the volume of Expo ticket sales, and speculation of what this would bode for D23’s future. I have no idea how accurate these rumors were, but to anyone with those concerns I would have to grasp them firmly by the shoulders, shake them slightly, and ask, “What did you expect?”

The 2009 Expo was the first event of its kind. People really didn’t know what it was going to be, or if it was going to be any good. A lot of the key details weren’t announced until very late, and it’s a lot to ask to expect people to make major travel plans based on minimal information. The Expo isn’t exactly cheap, and for most requires airfare, lodging, food… and this in a “down” economy. Add to that the fact that the Expo itself was announced fairly late into the year, possibly too late for people to make vacation plans, and it’s not hard to see why some folks took a wait-and-see attitude.

But the funny thing is, if you do something great and people hear about it, they’ll want to come too. I reported from the 2009 event, and “tweeted” throughout, and despite the fact that my readership then was much smaller than it is today, I was constantly reading comments about how people were so sad that they hadn’t decided to attend, or that they had no idea how great it would be, or that they were totally jealous and could not wait until the next Expo. The uniform response, even from my small and anecdotal circle, was clear – “We are definitely going next time no matter what.”

I clearly remember thinking, “Wow. Next year is going to be huge.” The Expo concept had been proved, people had seen what it was about, and whether they wanted to be in the same room with Johnny Depp or Bob Gurr (or both), they wanted to be there. I figured, hey, D23 has a hit on their hands. Everyone in the world is going to come to the next of these things.

It never occurred to me that this would go over the head of D23 itself.

I don’t know who makes the calls at D23. I don’t know where these higher-level decisions come from, whether they’re mandated by corporate or at which level. We all know that the D23 staff itself is full of actual fans, into the same things we are, but at some point up the ladder that stops. At some point – the level where some of these decisions are made – the shots are called by people who have absolutely no understanding of Disney or its fans. How else to explain that that the 2011 Expo, after all the build-up and hype that came from two years of 2009 attendees talking up their experience, would offer considerably less to do than the previous event?

My uninformed, backseat-driver prognostications proved correct; a ton of newcomers showed up this year. The twitterverse and blogosphere were full of fans making their first trip to Disneyland, all flocking to this event they’d heard so much about. Those of us who had talked it up for two years felt a little sheepish to discover that this much larger crowd was greeted with much less to do, and far less time to do it in.

This baffles me. We knew that the event had been shortened by a day, but I never expected its offerings to be trimmed so drastically, and limited to such small venues. It was possible to miss out on an exceptionally popular session in 2009, but even if you did there were always one or two other fascinating presentations to attend as a backup. In fact, some of the more interesting things we managed to see in 2009 were presentations we walked into on a whim.

Not so this year. Not only were there less events scheduled overall, but very few of them ran parallel. That meant that not only were there loads more people attending, but instead of three or four options of things to see, they might just have one. This resulted in lines. Very, very, very long lines. I think my most onerous wait in 2009 topped out at under an hour, but queues were regularly out past capacity three to four hours in advance this time. I did not get into a single non-arena presentation this year, partially due to a lack of interesting offerings and partially due to an unwillingness to wait three hours to maybe get into some session.

The result was striking. In 2009 I found myself occupied, running from one thing to the next, from first thing in the morning until nine or ten (or later) at night. There were screenings or performances every night; it was a constant stream of stimulus. This time I spent a lot of time standing around on the floor, standing around in the lobby, standing around talking to readers (yay readers!), and generally hanging out waiting for something to happen. At the previous Expo I was filing stories on a daily basis, but I didn’t submit a single one this year. Sure, seeing Scarlett Johannson was cool, but that’s not really news, is it? Certainly not Disney news.

One byproduct of all this waiting around was that I got to be a fly on the wall and observe other guests. I usually assume that if I’m out of sorts, everyone else is probably just enjoying themselves and aren’t noticing the problems. Or that all the new folks didn’t know how 2011 differed from 2009, and wouldn’t mind. I was wrong. During my little breaks I saw many, many unhappy people. And many incredibly angry people. We’re talking, straight-up-yelling, about-to-break-into-fisticuffs people. No joke, no exaggeration. I thought a few times people would literally have to be torn apart due to arguments arising from people waiting in line and the folks trying to do crowd control. One cast member would tell guests to queue in one spot; another would tell others to queue somewhere else. After an hour (or more) of waiting, one of the lines would file into the theater and leave others holding the bag. It did not end well.

It was remarkable. I spoke to people who had been in 2009 who were embarrassed about having talked their friends into coming, and other newcomers who just gave up and went to Disneyland.

The one part of the show that grew this year was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the show floor, where various divisions of the company put up their trade-show displays to advertise upcoming products. With more advance warning this time, the divisions had a chance to come up with their pitches for home goods or baby books or videogames. There might not have been anything for Disney history buffs – not a single sighting of a Jeff Kurtti, or a Tim O’Day, or a Jason Surrell, or a Don Hahn – but there was a stage blaring loud Radio Disney nonsense. And there were lots of opportunities to buy merchandise.

I realize that D23 is a pitch machine for the entire Disney corporation. It’s not just theme parks, and it’s not just animation or film – it’s everything. It’s a way for Disney to market junk directly to their core customers. That’s fine with me. And yes, Destination D was created as an event that focuses directly on historical aspects of the theme parks. But does that mean that Disney history – or heck, the theme parks in general – should be left out of the major official Disney event?

Because I have news for Disney and D23 – not everyone has the time, money, or desire to go to every single event. Not everyone who wants to discuss things that happened before 2010 can make it to Destination D when they assume these are things that would be mentioned at the tentpole D23 event. They were in 2009 – there were several great presentations at the inaugural event that delved into obscure corners of theme park history and the fabled animation vault and managed to turn up no end of surprises. Not so this year.

There is an entire, large segment of fandom that’s going unserved, and I don’t know exactly why. Obviously one would suspect it’s because that the folks running the show aren’t fans, and don’t know or care that certain things even exist to be celebrated. Last year Pollyanna and Toby Tyler both tuned 50, so where’s Hayley Mills? Where’s Moochie? There’s a whole sprawling history to discover, and D23 has the connections to make a lot of things happen and they’re not doing so. This is a shame because if there’s anywhere that obscure Disney celebrities and history would be welcome it’s at the Expo. Sure, if you had some festival at a mall somewhere in middle-of-nowhere America Miley Cyrus would outdraw Bob Gurr by an order of magnitude, but at the Expo he’s a rock star. This is the place to do these things.

Certain notable “in the bag” Disney corporate apologists have tried to excuse away the mistakes of Expo ’11, but that’s ridiculous. Disney is supposed to be the master of moving and managing people and in any case there’s no excuse for 2011 to be so remarkably inferior to 2009. Disney didn’t forget how to run an event in two years time. Any fool could see that more people + less to do = problems. Even with the limited slate of panels and presentations, why not have huge projection screens on the show floor to act as overflow space? Why not stream online, or at least record presentations for later replay?

Apart from the celebrity-heavy Studios keynote and the truly excellent presentation at the Imagineering pavilion, most if not all of the notable elements of the 2009 Expo were cut down or eliminated entirely this time around. It’s a trend that I truly didn’t expect, and while 2009 left me with a great anticipation of what would be next, this time I’m left wondering if the Expo will take a major hit in interest next time around. If empty spectacle cannot be shored up by actual diverse content, and this year’s issues aren’t publicly addressed, I’m concerned.

But that ain’t all folks! There are good things that have happened as well! Involving D23, a little resort in Florida, and a truly religious experience involving Richard Sherman and Dreamfinder. I’ll save that philosophizing for tomorrow.

Making The Great Locomotive Chase

Michael — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:31:43 +0000

Earlier this month I had the privilege of writing a piece for Storyboard, the official blog of the Walt Disney Family Museum. As readers will know, I’m a big fan of the museum so I was very glad to be able to help out. My story concerns the making of The Great Locomotive Chase, a 1956 Walt Disney production starring Fess Parker and Jeffrey Hunter. The Museum’s focus this month has been on Walt’s love of trains, and few of his projects better show this than Great Locomotive Chase; the “true-life” adventure tells the story of Union spies hijacking a Confederate supply train in 1862. It’s an incredible tale that makes for a fun film and it’s easy to see why Walt was interested – it gave him the chance to play around with trains!

I was especially pleased to be able to write about this particular movie as it was filmed in and around some familiar stomping grounds of mine – an area in the Appalachian Mountains between Franklin, North Carolina and Cornelia, Georgia. Both my paternal grandparents were from Franklin – my grandfather’s family has been living up there, in the same valley, for more than two hundred years. It’s still one of my favorite places to “get away from it all.” Furthermore my grandmother’s brother-in-law worked on the now-defunct Tallulah Falls Railroad, where Locomotive was filmed, and her family grew up in the wide valley overlooking where the railway passed from Otto, NC to Franklin. She had moved by 1955 when filming was underway, but her family was still there and I have always had these weird visions of them sitting on their porch while Walt Disney maniacally drove his train back and forth on the other side of the Little Tennessee River.

Local businesses still recall Walt’s visit. At the (truly fantastic, by the way) Dillard House restaurant in Dillard, Georgia, pictures on the wall chronicle the time Walt stopped there for some home cooking. In local histories, people recall seeing Walt come in to local diners and cafes and have lunch alone – just a regular guy, hanging out.

As I say in my piece, you can tell how important this project must have been for Walt – after all, Disneyland had just opened and it would take something remarkable to tear him away from his new sandbox in Anaheim.

For some more info, check out my article and others from this month at the Museum’s blog, and if you haven’t seen it I recommend you check out The Great Locomotive Chase itself. It’s nothing profound but it’s a really fun film with some great actors facing off and that really fantastic art direction you see in Disney productions from that era. You can buy it cheap from Amazon or rent it via Netflix.

Checking In…

Michael — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 19:28:27 +0000

I realize it’s been unusually quiet around here lately, and it’s likely to stay that way (mostly) until the D23 Expo next month. Tickets for the Expo, by the way, are still available; details about its offerings are still firming up but it looks to be a good time.

I wanted to get in a plug for our not-quite-Spring Cleaning auctions; we’ve put a slew of things up for sale, so what better way to spend your weekend than spending money – on me! Be sure and scroll down – there’s more for sale than just a billion Disney Newseseses. We have hard-to-find EPCOT info, Countdown to Extinction rovers, and Song of the South… on VHS… from England. Something for everyone (and by everyone, I mean hard-core nerds. Like, pretty much just me).

And my third plug comes on behalf of something that (to my mind) is only tangentially Disney, but still… I want to encourage any fellow nerds like myself to be sure and check out Captain America in the theater this weekend. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s an amazingly good time, and as (thank heavens!) a period piece, it feels just like the offspring of Indiana Jones and The Rocketeer. Unsurprising, since director Joe Johnston had a hand in the creation of both those prior films.

It’s ironic that this is not a Disney-produced or released film, since it feels exactly like the kind of summer “franchise” film Disney should be releasing. Big ideas, slick execution, an able crew, and a slate of talented and appealing on-screen talent. In fact, this was just the recipe they used back in Walt’s day to make all those classic live-action films; after all, what were The Absent-Minded Professor, The Shaggy Dog, or The Parent Trap but a high concept, good script, excellent production values, and a welcome cast of Hollywood character actors? Not that it’s super-easy to pull off, but it is a recipe for success.

What producer Kevin Feige and his crew at Marvel have done is nothing short of extraordinary, regardless of your opinion of summer blockbusters or superhero films. They have created an entire film universe from whole cloth, scripting movies that are self-contained entities but weave in threads connecting to a larger mythical world that have laid the groundwork for a series of franchise-spanning crossovers simply through the clever use of post-credit stingers. For as much as the Disney studio chiefs obsess over “the franchise” – how to create them and sustain them – Marvel has been doing it for years, and successfully. Of course it doesn’t hurt that these movies aren’t simple cash-ins; Marvel producers have done a great job matching talented directors to their properties (Jon Favreau to Iron Man, Kenneth Branagh to Thor, Joe Johnston to Captain America) and treating the films with respect (which sounds funny when you’re essentially talking about comic book films, but the fans can tell). And regardless of your opinion of blockbusters, I can guarantee that a lot more thought and love went into the creation of Iron Man than Rich Ross’s attempt at a franchise starter, Prom.

So those are my promotional spiels for the weekend. I’ll be back before the Expo with a few things of interest…

Let’s All Sing Like The Birdies Sing… Again!

Michael — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 05:20:27 +0000

My siestas keep getting chorter and chorter...

It began, like so many things, with one little spark…

Although this was not a spark of imagination, but of conflagration. More specifically, a fire that took place this last January in the Magic Kingdom’s Enchanted Tiki Room – Under New Management attraction. Since this was far from a popular show, the big question at the time was what would happen next?

First, there were only baseless yet fervent hopes and pleas for a return to the original Tropical Serenade. Then there were actual rumors, and then leaked information, and even more rumors. It soon became apparent that not only would the Tiki Room return, but it would return without some of the most offensive elements from the Under New Management show (which had either perished in the January fire or been ruined afterwards by the fire suppression system). There was even the possibility that the original show would return – or at least elements of it. But which elements? And why did the officially-announced reopening date keep getting pushed back?

The first real word was handed down at last month’s Destination D event in Orlando. At the end of a somewhat peculiar session discussing upcoming Imagineering projects in Florida, the voice of Tiki Room emcee José came over the convention hall loudspeakers and it was announced that the Enchanted Tiki Room would indeed be returning. But this announcement was tacked on to the end of the presentation and amounted to little more than “OhyeahtheTikiRoomiscomingbackkthanksbai.” There was no discussion of when it was returning, and in exactly what form; the announcement that Disney had tweeted approximately a half hour before the Imagineering presentation contained the bewildering phrase that the new attraction would be “reminiscent” of the original show. In this day and age, such vague verbiage is enough to send fans into fits of anxiety. What did they mean?

Thankfully, it appears that we have nothing to fear. Disney has announced that the Tropical Serenade will indeed return as simply “The Enchanted Tiki Room,” with a targeted opening date of August 2011. The tiki gods have indeed been kind; I can’t tell you how it truly warms me to the core of my soul to read – in an official Disney press release – the words, “The ‘new management’ has been let go.” Here are the other relevant parts of their statement:

The Sunshine Pavilion, featuring a show variously known as “Tropical Serenade” and “The Enchanted Tiki Birds,” debuted on Oct. 1, 1971, in Magic Kingdom. In 1998, following substantial refurbishment, it re-launched as The Enchanted Tiki Room – Under New Management, with two famous Disney birds – Iago from Aladdin and Zazu from The Lion King – taking control and trying to spruce up the show.

The “new management” has been let go and the future of the Adventureland landmark is in the wings and wit of José, Fritz, Michael and Pierre – four crooning parrot hosts who ushered in sophisticated Audio-Animatronics technology at California’s Disneyland in 1963 at The Enchanted Tiki Room.

In time for fall 2011 vacations, The Enchanted Tiki Room (as the Magic Kingdom attraction now will be called) is being prepared to reflect the show at Disneyland that represents a milestone in Disney theme park entertainment. While Walt Disney’s creative team previously had produced movable figures, none had the sophistication of the bird-brained cast of the Tiki Room. José, Fritz, Michael and Pierre produce movements when solenoid coils hidden inside receive signals recorded onto magnetic tape and are regarded as the first “true” Audio-Animatronics figures.

They introduce a musical presentation by more than 200 birds, flowers and tikis. Even the audience gets into the act, joining in during the musical ditty “Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing.”

For the devoted Disney fan, there are victories and there are victories. Restoring the original Tiki Room show to the grand and glorious Sunshine Pavilion – a facility more lavish than its Disneyland counterpart – is a victory on the scale of D-Day. It’s been a long time since fans have been able to see a proper show in the Sunshine Pavilion, with rain falling outside the windows in front of a distant, smouldering volcano. It’s hard to believe that something so long hoped-for has actually happened.

Of course, for those of us who are never satisfied, this begs other questions. What will the pre-show be like? The building’s queue area has been walled off for some time now, so it seems certain that whatever appears there will be something new. The pre-show is something that neither the original Florida Tiki show or its 1998 replacement ever got completely right, so there’s certainly room for improvement here. The Tiki Garden, which acts as a pre-show for California’s Tiki Room, is far superior in both content and atmosphere, and would of course be a welcome addition in Orlando. Current rumors suggest that there’s something interactive planned for the queue, which would certainly fit with Imagineering’s current fetishes, but I hope that whatever appears is more focused on creating a mood than squirting guests with water.

Certainly, a re-thinking of the Tiki Room queue could help solve problems with the attraction’s usage statistics; a re-located entrance along the corridor between Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean would help scoop up more passing guests who might otherwise continue on unawares. There has been a problem in the past with guests entering the pre-show area but leaving before the show begins; could this be because the uninitiated believe the amphitheater-like queue to be the show itself? Or is there simply too much dead time waiting in the unairconditioned queue waiting for something to happen? That’s not an issue in California, where the Flavor of Hawaii film and Tiki Garden show (not to mention a booming trade in Dole Whips) help keep things interesting.

Even better than a new marquee and a more prominent entrance would be a return of the Barker Bird, voiced by the inimitable Wally Boag. Not only would it be a nice tribute to the recently departed performer, but it would be a return of one of those lost bits of texture that used to make the Magic Kingdom special.

And since I am, in fact, taking credit for this whole turn of events (Disney obviously is only doing it to cave to my demands!) I will finish with these two … requests: An actual tree, in the Sunshine Tree Terrace. Seriously. Bring it back. Also, I demand a return of the original Citrus Swirl. With frozen orange juice, not any of that soft-serve shenaniganonsense. Square all that away, and all will be well with the Sunshine Pavilion, and I will have no more demands.*

So yeah, Tiki Room!

* The management reserves the right to continue all demands, beginning with the removal of the Flying Carpets spinner in Adventureland

Another Round…

Michael — Thu, 05 May 2011 16:09:23 +0000

As I mentioned last week, we’re continuing our fundraiser (and some Spring cleaning!) to help underwrite some big upcoming projects. We have a whole new lot of books, magazines, memorabilia and ephemera coming up for auction over the next couple of days, so if you’re starting a vintage Disney library, or just trying to fill out your collection, check it out!

Progress City Home Theater: Tangled

Michael — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:37:06 +0000

After a decade of troubled development, Disney Feature Animation’s take on the Rapunzel fairy tale finally arrived in theaters last fall. Despite near-constant meddling from executives and marketing mavens during those long years, Tangled scored a hit with both critics and audiences, and is one of the most thoroughly satisfying offerings from Disney animators in years.

While it took Tangled‘s sizable domestic and international box office take to offset the massive costs incurred by a decade of endlessly rebooted production, the fact is that the film was a big hit – which makes it all that much more confusing that its home video release (available on DVD, Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo, and Four-Disc Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy Combo) is so embarrassingly sparse. There are probably about 4-5 different versions of this film that were developed in the last ten years, and barely any of that work is hinted at in this release’s extra features. The apparent disregard by Disney’s home video department for fans and animation buffs is pretty glaring by this point, and the fact that a major new release comes out with barely any supplemental material shows how far things have fallen off at the studio since the glory days of the early 2000s. That being said, the movie is still excellent and well worth your time, so you might as well give into the darkness and check out this bare bones release!

The Film

I would be surprised if a single aspect of this film – save from the fact that it tells the story of Rapunzel – made it through the gauntlet of constant retooling that marked its development. Originally the pet project of veteran Disney animator Glen Keane, and intended to be his directorial debut, the film transitioned early on from traditional to computer animation after it was decided to move all Disney animation to the digital realm. Faced with the success of Dreamworks’ Shrek, the Eisner regime mandated that the film take a more “hip and edgy” bent, and for a while it became Rapunzel: Unbraided.

With Eisner gone, the film returned to its roots and became just plain Rapunzel again, but then came the surprising news in 2008 that Keane (citing “health reasons”) and co-director Dean Wellins were surrendering control of the project. In their place came Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, to whom John Lasseter had entrusted Bolt when it was wrested from the hands of its creator, Chris Sanders.

There was more drama – casting changes, a general confusion at Disney about whether or not they were in the business of making fairy tales, and a last minute, marketing-enforced title change to the less feminine/more confusing title Tangled – but thankfully a great movie managed to emerge nonetheless. One gets the feeling that the film is filled with fleeting references to probably dozens of abandoned characters and storylines, but the narrative that emerges is sleek and far more focused than Disney’s previous fairy tale, The Princess and the Frog (a film that I enjoyed very much).

The roots of the story are simple: a young girl is kidnapped and raised by a wicked old woman who needs the magical properties of the child’s hair to keep her young. She keeps the girl, Rapunzel, locked away in an tower, and fills her young head with terrifying tales of the horrible world outside. Still, Rapunzel wonders what’s out there in the great, wide world and sees enough from her tower window to encourage her wanderlust.

Things come to a head when the improbably named bandit Flynn Rider stumbles upon her tower and tries to use it as a hiding place for his ill-gotten gains. He is surprised and captured by Rapunzel, who eventually manages to blackmail Flynn into taking her on an adventure while the nefarious Mother Gothel is away on a lengthy trip. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

There are many remarkable things about this film. One is the fact that, despite its remarkably smarmy and obnoxious ads, the film plays as very sincere and likable. Rapunzel, voiced by Mandy Moore, is an incredibly appealing character and manages to project a sweet naivete without crossing over into obliviousness. Rider, voiced by TV’s Zachary Levi, was a major concern after seeing the film’s trailers, but all of his most obnoxious moments are dispensed with fairly early in the proceedings. His “smoulder” shtick is never as funny as it seems the filmmakers thought, and there’s the occasional echo of “‘tude” from lesser animated features past, but what came off as irritating in the trailers is much less so in the film itself. Levi is an extremely charismatic guy, and as the “Rider” persona fades into the background his character becomes winning in a way that is very rare for modern Disney male heroes.

The look of the film deserves special notice; it’s colorful and lush, and avoids the plastic look that plagues so many modern computer-animated features. It’s not the “painterly” look that we were promised for so, so long, but the human animation remains leaps and bounds above anything that any other studio – including Pixar – has done before. There’s a lovely organic translucence to everything, and the backgrounds and color design deserve recognition. My only gripe in the artistic department would be with a number of secondary characters who push the bounds of caricature beyond the breaking point.

The music and a handful of songs come from Disney stalwart Alan Menken and collaborator Glenn Slater. The score is reminiscent at times of other Disney classics such as The Little Mermaid, and that helps contribute to the overall feel. The few songs in the film are enjoyable if not especially memorable, although my absolute favorite – the number that Rapunzel sings to kick off the film – is scored in a really obnoxious jangly frat-rock style that clashes completely with the film. It’s a shame, because it’s a really great song and does a fantastic job getting across the Rapunzel character to the audience.

Mention should also be made of the villain, Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy). It’s interesting to make your big bad a kind of passive-aggressive, smothery mother – especially since I’ve encountered a few of those myself in my time. Her big production number, in which she combines warnings about the many evils of the outside world with little asides about Rapunzel’s weight, is kind of hilarious in how it plausibly portrays how the girl has been convinced to stay in the tower for her entire life. I have some qualms with the number itself – while the song is fine, the way it’s staged is by far the most “Broadway” moment of the film and, especially considering Murphy’s stage experience, on film it comes off as very “New York” in a way that clashes. It’s funny – I really liked the song when I heard the soundtrack before the film was released, but it’s just a little over the top on the screen.

One last compliment I have is for the animal “comedic relief” in the film, warhorse Maximus and Rapunzel’s pet chameleon, Pascal. In modern era Disney films, wacky animal sidekicks are best when they’re limited to silent pantomime – witness Flit and Meeko in Pocahontas. Rapunzel builds on this tradition by keeping its animals silent, and it really works well.

It’s been a rough decade for fans of Disney animation, and it’s nice to see it end on a high note with Tangled. Much of the studio’s future remains in doubt, but if they continue to produce work of this caliber, hopefully they’ll start to receive the respect and independence they deserve. There are definite nits to pick with the film – many are probably vestiges of its long development, and there’s a particularly egregious deux ex machina towards the end, that should have been finessed in some other fashion, but the long story short is that overall it’s a fun, enjoyable, extremely pleasant film and that’s too often a rarity anymore.

The Discs

Released March 29, 2011 – Rated PG – 100 minutes
Four-Disc Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy Combo – $49.99
Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo – $39.99
Single-Disc DVD – $29.99

The increasingly onerous Disney release model steps up to the plate once more with three different versions of the film available for purchase: DVD, Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo, and Four-Disc Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy Combo. The insanity of this scheme can be seen in the fact that if you buy the most expensive iteration, you’re getting the exact same film on four separate discs in four separate formats, with hardly an extra between them. That’s insanity.

Video & Audio

The film looks great, whether on Blu-ray or DVD, in 1.78:1 Widescreen. The Blu-ray features DTS-HD 7.1 surround audio, while the DVD comes in Dolby Digital 5.1.

Bonus Materials

Here, again, is where the release falls apart. Most of this material is promotional stuff that was released online before the film’s release, and I’m kind of baffled as to why this film didn’t get the respect it deserved. Maybe because it doesn’t feature a jumping lamp?

As usual, DVD viewers get the worst of it; the few extras included on the DVD release are marked with an asterisk below.

Features

Deleted Scenes – Three brief deleted scenes are included in storyboard form, with introductions by the film’s directors. They hint at story elements that were cut from the final film.
Storybook Openings * – Two takes on a traditional “storybook” opening considered for the film. I wish they had used this conceit, but the information they convey is pretty similar to that contained in the actual film’s introduction. Again, the filmmakers appear to frame the clips – too bad the camerawork is really obnoxious…

50th Animated Feature Countdown * – This clip, released online before the film’s release, runs through each of the now-canonical Disney animated features starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and ending with Tangled. At some point in recent years, it’s been decided to shoehorn 2000′s Dinosaur into the canon, even though it was not a product of Walt Disney Feature Animation. But this revisionist history allows Tangled to become Disney’s 50th animated feature, hence this montage.
Extended Songs – Two slightly longer versions of songs from the film are presented via rough, unfinished animation.
Untangled: The Making of a Fairy Tale – This is what amounts to the “making of” feature for this release, and needless to say it does not get the job done. Distilling ten years of development into its 12-minute running time would be impossible, but that brevity is made worse by the fact that much time is spent re-hashing the previous 49 Disney features as well as dabbling in other trivia. In fact, this piece feels more like a bunch of promotional web shorts spliced together. The one saving grace are the hosts – Mandy Moore and Zach Levi – who are extremely likable people and come off as charming despite the weakly-scripted material. With these two highly affable hosts, the making-of special could have been exceedingly enjoyable. Instead, it’s just a waste.
Promotional Films – The disc does not include the film’s trailers, but it does include nine promotional videos that were produced for television and the web. These are actually pretty funny; some are styled as infomercial-type ads for items from the film, and manage to be contemporary without reflecting poorly on the film.

In Summary…

It’s always great to go see an animated film that pushes all the buttons with success, and it’s especially rewarding to see Disney do well. If you missed this in theaters you need to ignore the advertising and check it out; while Disney’s home video department should be ashamed of the shabby treatment it hahs given the title, the film is still fantastic despite the disc’s lack of extras. Highly recommended.

Click to buy on Single-Disc DVD, Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo, and Four-Disc Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy Combo