Category: General

The Economist: March 16, 2006

Me: October 13, 2005

Day 6

I spent all of today at Epcot. I arrived at the park at 8:45 to take the World Showcase tour. Me and two other people spent 3.5 hours walking around the world showcase, going behind the scenes, and getting the story behind the story.

I had fun.

We had dinner at Artisan Point, which is the upscale restaurant here at the Wilderness Lodge. We’re flying out early tomorrow. I hope to have a wrap up of the week and other thoughts when I return.

Day 5

Morning at Magic Kingdom. Afternoon at MGM Studios.

Crowds were down significantly today, which was a huge relief. We went on Splash Mountain which is a very interesting ride for one overwhelming reason.

The theme of the ride is the 1946 Disney movie, “The Song of the South”.

That is not the interesting fact. The interesting fact is that “The Song of the South” has NEVER been issued on VHS or DVD in the United States. Its the flim that Disney is now embarssed to have ever made. The only remaining thing in the Disney corporation, that I know of, that acknowledges the existance of this movie is Splash Mountain, which was created back in 1971.

Wikipedia gives this brief summary of the movie:

Song of the South is a feature film by Walt Disney, first released on November 12, 1946 and based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. It was one of Disney’s earliest feature films to combine live action footage with animation and was the first Disney feature film in which live actors were hired for lead roles. The live actors provide a sentimental frame-story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the adventures of Brer Rabbit and his friends; these anthropomorphic animal characters appear in animation.

Splash mountain only deals with the animated characters and totally ignores Uncle Remus and the live characters. In the ultimate admission of how embarssed Disney is, the souviner store at the end of the ride has only a very very small number of items which show the animated characters from SOTS. The rest of the items are all generic Disney/Mickey Mouse items.

The controversy surrounding the movie is how blacks are portrayed with with respect to whites in the movie. The movie takes place in the reconstruction south, and the blacks have a very subserviant role to the whites in the film. Those relationships are not the focus of the flim, but nonetheless, its a pretty big scar on the movie.

There has been lots of rumor and debate surrounding Disney releasing it on DVD. The new Disney CEO Bob Iger stated last week at the Disney shareholder meeting:

I screened it fairly recently because I hadn’t seen it since I was a child, and I have to tell you after I watched it, even considering the context that it was made, I had some concerns about it because of what it depicted. And thought it’s quite possible that people wouldn’t consider it in the context that it was made, and there were some… [long pause] depictions that I mentioned earlier in the film that I think would be bothersome to a lot of people. And so, owing to the sensitivity that exists in our culture, balancing it with the desire to, uh, maybe increase our earnings a bit, but never putting that in front of what we thought were our ethics and our integrity, we made the decision not to re-release it. Not a decision that is made forever, I imagine this is gonna continue to come up, but for now we simply don’t have plans to bring it back because of the sensitivities that I mentioned. Sorry.

I think its a matter of time until they find some way to redo Splash Mountain to eliminate all references to SOTS.

….also, all the robot Brer Bear figures on the ride are really homoerotic. Really.

Tomorrow morning I’m finally taking the World Showcase Tour.

Day 4

I was alone most of today. I woke up to get to Epoct by 9 so I could take the backstage tour of the World Showcase, but found out when I got there that I needed to reserve a spot before hand. (BTW, why is it that people from NY/NJ are all dicks?)

I wound up walking around, going all the way to the Boardwalk and the Swan/Dolphin hotel, before coming back to Epcot to go on the Soarin’ ride. Soarin’ is a new attraction at Epcot which simulates a hang glider flight over California. Its a curved screen of IMAX height, and your elevated to the middle of the screen to make it seem like your flying. Its not bad, but they had too many edits and tried to cram too much into one short ride.

I also did the backstage tour of the The Land exhibit, where they show you how the hydroponic gardens are run. This is really (to me at least) the really entertaining part of Disney. I want to do a few more tours before I leave. They actually grow everything hydroponically for all their gardens at Epcot

Unfortunately, the level of explaination given to their science and technology exhibits is about a third grade level. The tour can jack that up to about junior high/high school. I don’t expect much more than that really, but it would be nice if they didn’t dumb everything down so far.

BTW, at Epcot they have “futureworld”. Guess what is totally lacking in “Futureworld”? Oh, the internet. There is NO internet anywhere other than overpriced ethernet in the hotel rooms, anywhere at Disney World.

I’ve been walking around with an eye for what I’d be doing on my trip. My camera is good for something which can fit into my pocket, but its not great overall. You’ll see some photos on Flickr that don’t look very Disney. That’s because I’m just trying to take photos as if I weren’t at Disney. I’ll be goofing around with Photoshop with some of them when I get back. I’ve shot some video, but the quality is very poor (its from my digital camera) and I can’t zoom or do anything once the video starts.

Tomorrow I’ll be at the Magic Kingdom and MGM studios I think. Schools in Florida were out Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully it will be less busy.

Day 3

On Monday, we went to Animal Kingdom in the morning. The idea behind Animal Kingdom is a good one, but the implementation isn’t very good. The park is small, there aren’t as many attractionas as there are in other parks, its crowded, and there seems to be more souviner and food sales than anything else. The park also closes earlier than the other parks.

We ended up just leaving in the afternoon because of the lines. I did do the Dinosaur ride, which was OK, and that was about it. They have a new Everest roller coaster, but we didn’t get to try it.

Once problem Disney World has compared to parks like Six Flags, is that they are compelled to over theme everything. They can’t just build a cool roller coaster. They have to link it to a movie, an animated character, give it to imagaineers to make it look like something else, and then link a large gift shop to it. As a result, the rides they have usually aren’t as fun as a Six Flags type ride, and usually cost a helluva lot more.

We had dinner at the Grand Floridian, which was pretty good. Not as good as the France pavillion, but more than passible. I’m not sure if my caloric gain from this trip has been greater than what I’ve burned from walking.

At night we went to the MGM studios because it was opened after hours for people staying at the resorts. Unfortunately, they shut down all the cool rides so it was sort of stupid.

One thing I’ve noticed is that there are as many electric scooters being driven by the old and obese as there are strollers for children. Part of this is just a matter of demographics. People are getting old. (We met one guy on a scooter that had more gold Disney pins around his neck than Mr T. He is retired, lives nearby, and visits Disney World EVERY DAY) Mostly, its people who just refuse to walk. Some I’ve seen were my age. If your on one of these scooters, its not like being in a wheelchair. You can walk. The people I’ve seen go to amazing contortions with their scooters to not walk. They drive it in a restaurant, knock over chairs and tables, rather than park it outside and walk 20 feet to their table.

They are great for some eldery people, but the majority of people driving these things really don’t need them.