While I sit here in my frigid apartment, saran wrap covering my windows, I dream of better times ahead: Disney World in May 2009. Seriously folks, we're only talking about six months from now; we're talking about after this set of finals, after my junior recital with my flatmate, and directly after my second (and second to last... EVER... in my undergrad career) set of finals. [Side note: my mother dropped out of college after two years, my dad finished an undergrad and now has a high-paying job... why do I so feel the need to go to grad school? Probably the same reasons I am becoming a teacher: I'm afraid to leave school and youth. Also accounts for the obsession with the World... hmm, maybe this wasn't such a side note after all.]
Only Hall of Presidents will be closed on our May trip. (Which is really too bad because it's going to be SO COOL to see Barack Obama on that stage. ...I should really stop acting like his house isn't just 45 minutes from mine. I make the people of Chicago seem a little obsessive...)
Monday, November 10, 2008
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Am I a Disney Purist?
The short answer is no.
The long answer:
It's really hard to say. Because whatever I saw/heard/experienced on a WDW trip when I was five years old defined the World for me, I have such a hard time defining Disney as anything else. But there have been so many changes from the time WDW opened in 1971 to the time I made this most memorable visit in 1994. For example: EPCOT.
Okay, not only did Epcot open in the 80s, but the ride inside its signature "golf ball," Spaceship Earth, had gone through multiple soundtracks and narrators before I even saw it. Now when I hear that first song... "Tomorrow's Child," I don't think of Disney at all. I think of what I last ate and what that means for my upcoming vomit's coloration. But when I heard they were revamping yet again, and taking away my beloved Jeremy Irons (whom I grew to love outside of Disney for his portrayal of Humbert Humbert... it was a trying time in my life) and the musical soundtrack you heard as you made your backwards descent back towards the entrance, I was devistated!
But change, that's what the parks are all about. I wonder, how many of these people who consider themselves "purists" would actually come back as often if no changes were being made. I'm sure there are a handful of them who, after Mr. Toad was scrached, actually never went back to WDW. (Which is a pity... Winnie the Pooh is almost my favorite Fantasyland ride.) I always thought that Peter Pan could use some updates... not in layout or story, but in actual props. Peter Pan was never a ride which was that important to my family until my 4 year old sister made that her all-time favorite movie (for the past 9 years... seriously, she owns at least five film versions of the story and her room has been totally decked out in Tinkerbelle for close to five years now... the only competition Tink has seen has been from Batman... again, all versions). That's when I really discovered how popular it was, when every visit to any Disney park in the last nine years included a lenghthened wait for this ride which was deemed "skippable" until then.
Now, I have YET TO SEE Pirates and Haunted Mansion since their most recent updates. Already, I am disappointed that:
...in PotC they added some of the film soundtrack. I want my unborn, currently-genetically-divided children to think of Pirates as an "Attraction that Inspired the Movie," and I don't want them to have to wish they remembered or could have seen the original, un-movied version the way I wish I could remember Horizons, or my sister wishes she had been around for the original Journey into Imagination. Listening to the Disney 75th Anniversary Collection's version of Pirates (edited to sound like you are on the attraction) brings me instantly back. I am glad the new animatronics looks so good! ...But I'm afraid it will make the old ones look dated.
...they didn't just nix the bride or, in the update, add the hatbox ghost. We have ALL seen the pictures! We know it was there for at least a little while! (I don't believe the blood-curtling scream from the guy in the spiderweb, though...) However, I've heard the effects are fantastic, and I'm so excited that after 38 years, Madame Leota can finally leave her table! ...I must be okay with these changes because they don't reflect the poor movie that I won't keep around the house for my children to see.
Okay, so Disney first and then these films. I guess that's the moral of this story. Maybe we'll only stick to the Land at first, what with the return of the Sleeping Beauty walk-through, the fact that I've never seen the dinosaurs on the Railroad, the original Enchanted Tiki Room, and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
So, short-long answer: sort of.
The long answer:
It's really hard to say. Because whatever I saw/heard/experienced on a WDW trip when I was five years old defined the World for me, I have such a hard time defining Disney as anything else. But there have been so many changes from the time WDW opened in 1971 to the time I made this most memorable visit in 1994. For example: EPCOT.
Okay, not only did Epcot open in the 80s, but the ride inside its signature "golf ball," Spaceship Earth, had gone through multiple soundtracks and narrators before I even saw it. Now when I hear that first song... "Tomorrow's Child," I don't think of Disney at all. I think of what I last ate and what that means for my upcoming vomit's coloration. But when I heard they were revamping yet again, and taking away my beloved Jeremy Irons (whom I grew to love outside of Disney for his portrayal of Humbert Humbert... it was a trying time in my life) and the musical soundtrack you heard as you made your backwards descent back towards the entrance, I was devistated!
But change, that's what the parks are all about. I wonder, how many of these people who consider themselves "purists" would actually come back as often if no changes were being made. I'm sure there are a handful of them who, after Mr. Toad was scrached, actually never went back to WDW. (Which is a pity... Winnie the Pooh is almost my favorite Fantasyland ride.) I always thought that Peter Pan could use some updates... not in layout or story, but in actual props. Peter Pan was never a ride which was that important to my family until my 4 year old sister made that her all-time favorite movie (for the past 9 years... seriously, she owns at least five film versions of the story and her room has been totally decked out in Tinkerbelle for close to five years now... the only competition Tink has seen has been from Batman... again, all versions). That's when I really discovered how popular it was, when every visit to any Disney park in the last nine years included a lenghthened wait for this ride which was deemed "skippable" until then.
Now, I have YET TO SEE Pirates and Haunted Mansion since their most recent updates. Already, I am disappointed that:
...in PotC they added some of the film soundtrack. I want my unborn, currently-genetically-divided children to think of Pirates as an "Attraction that Inspired the Movie," and I don't want them to have to wish they remembered or could have seen the original, un-movied version the way I wish I could remember Horizons, or my sister wishes she had been around for the original Journey into Imagination. Listening to the Disney 75th Anniversary Collection's version of Pirates (edited to sound like you are on the attraction) brings me instantly back. I am glad the new animatronics looks so good! ...But I'm afraid it will make the old ones look dated.
...they didn't just nix the bride or, in the update, add the hatbox ghost. We have ALL seen the pictures! We know it was there for at least a little while! (I don't believe the blood-curtling scream from the guy in the spiderweb, though...) However, I've heard the effects are fantastic, and I'm so excited that after 38 years, Madame Leota can finally leave her table! ...I must be okay with these changes because they don't reflect the poor movie that I won't keep around the house for my children to see.
Okay, so Disney first and then these films. I guess that's the moral of this story. Maybe we'll only stick to the Land at first, what with the return of the Sleeping Beauty walk-through, the fact that I've never seen the dinosaurs on the Railroad, the original Enchanted Tiki Room, and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
So, short-long answer: sort of.
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