Because it would be a shame to fly all the way to Los Angeles for one day, I hung around to visit the Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween celebration at Disney's California Adventure.
Even though Disney has done a lot to improve the place since they dropped a steaming, cheap-ass turd across from Disneyland, it's still not exactly the height of theme park design. Maybe once Coco Land and Avatar Land open up, there will be something more than one great ride (Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout) and one very good one (Toy Story: Midway Mania).
That being said, Cars Land has the best decorations in the park...
The event has a lot of rare and semi-rare characters making appearances. Some of them you can take photos with, but none of them are signing autographs, which is kinda shitty for an event which ain't cheap.
Here's Pain and Panic from Hercules...
And their boss, Hades, who is the most hilarious thing I've seen in a minute. Whomever they got to play him made a flawless casting choice...
Hercules wasn't there, but his girlfriend Megara was...
Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit...
And, look, it's Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb...
Texture mapping is getting seriously good...
One of my all-time favorites, Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove...
Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty who is not rare, but very cool...
And the Evil Queen from Snow White...
Good night, Mr. Oogie Boogie...
And good night to California Adventure...
So long and thanks for all the candy!
The reason I'm in L.A. is a quick diversion to see the 25th Anniversary of Haunted Mansion Holiday at Disneyland. I saw it the second year that they had it, then never made it back. Given my love of The Nightmare Before Christmas, in general (and Zero, specifically) I was interested in seeing how it had changed over the decades.
Turns out it's much the same, but there's also some things which are very different. Like they've been slowly upgrading it year over year. Ultimately it's a lot of fun, even though there are people who are pissed off it gets changed at all...
Halloween is probably my favorite holiday of the year, and Disneyland does a darn good job decorating up the place. Especially for nighttime spookiness...
Doesn't matter that it's two months until All Hallow's Eve, it's a good time to be in the Happiest Place on Earth.
Disney's annual fan conference, D23, was this weekend. It was largely a re-hash of information we've already known about. But there were gems to be found that I'm going to talk about ... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...
• D23! The most unexpected news was that the Yeti Audio-Animatronic Coming Back to Life Inside Expedition Everest...
When the ride debuted, the yeti took a swipe at you when you went by. It was kinda terrifying. But then it turned out the animatronic was so heavy that it was cracking the support structure. So they turned it off and added a strobe light... leaving us with "disco yeti" that was more annoying than scary. And it sounded like it was going to stay that way forever because genius imagineer (and notorious earring abuser) Joe Rhode said they'd have to rip open the mountain to fix the structure. So I guess they found a way to fix the structure and lighten the animatronic with servos or something so they don't have to dismantle the mountain to fix it. Very cool indeed, because the ride wasn't the same once they turned him off.
• A Vision in White! The first trailer from the new Visionquest series was released...
I'm in the minority that I didn't much care for Vision & Scarlet Witch and Agatha All Along, but I'm hopeful that the final entry into the trilogy goes back to being a comic book movie. I will say that I am thrilled that James Spader is returning as Ultron. He's one of my favorite actors, and I like what they're doing here.
• DON'T PULL THE LEVER, KRONK! There was a very strong rumor that the new Villains Land in Walt Disney World had been completely retooled after the artwork that was released. Primary of which was that the Maleficent coaster had been toned down to become a Yzma and Kronk coaster. Which, to be honest, is genius. It's such an epic scene from The Emperor's New Groove that was more funny than scary. It made sense because Magic Kingdom is more of a family-friendly affair than the other lands. But then it was confirmed at D23 that this wasn't the case at all. Still very much a Maleficent coaster that's looking scary indeed...
I really hope that it's a more intense coaster for adult guests. There's loads of rides for kids at Magic Kingdom, so it would be nice to have something more grown up. Like the very popular Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind coaster from Epcot. Here's hoping. And, oh yeah, they also showed this from the Magic Mirror dark ride they're building...
Looks like Pirates of the Caribbean but with villains instead of pirates. I hope that they at least pack it with plenty of animatronics instead of skimping like they did in the Splash Mountain re-theme.
• Branding! Branding! Branding! I was so impressed with the gorgeous logo they made for Villains Land that it deserves it's own bullet. Because look at this!
Love it. Somebody at Disney really knew what they were doing when they designed that!
• Tomorrow! Another big piece of news to come out of D23 was that they are reimagining Tomorrowland at Disneyland. Apparently they are bringing it back to be something closer to what Walt Disney intended for it. The problem with Tomorrowland has always been that no matter what you do to update it, the area is always outdated. Tomorrow is just a day away, after all. Which is why I far, far prefer how they approached Tomorrowland in Disneyland Paris. Instead of trying to imagine what the future will be like, they ran with what people from yesteryear thought the future would be like. For example, their Space Mountain was a Jules Verne From Earth to the Moon kind of affair where you get shot out of a cannon and get blasted to the moon. It was a genius idea...
And now they've announced that they're going back to this idea and restoring the Paris Space Mountain to what it originally was. Which makes me very, very happy. I wish they'd use that aesthetic for Disneyland California as well.
• Monstrous! The new Monsters Land at Disney World will be opening next year in 2027. Except the brilliant "Door Coaster" won't open with it. That comes later. Apparently the only attraction set for opening day is the re-theme of MuppetVision 3D. Which, fine... but the coaster is what everybody is actually wanting to experience. Though the 3D movie does look interesting...
And would probably be even more interesting if they didn't already re-theme the 3D theater in Animal Kingdom from It's Tough to Be a Bug to Zootopia.
• New Splash! As a massive, massive fan of The Princess and the Frog, I was cautiously optimistic about the re-theming of Splash Mountain in Disneyland and Walt Disney World to become Tiana's Bayou Adventure. But it ended up being a massive disappointment. The ride is sparse and breaks down all the time. But now they're building a new "splash mountain" ride from scratch in Paris, this time based on The Lion King...
And I am once again cautiously optimistic. I hope that they learned their lesson from the Tiana fiasco. I hope they pack it with animatronics and make them more reliable. I hope they come up with a ride story that actually makes sense. I hope they put some actual thought into how it should work. But who knows? We have two very good examples of Disney dropping the ball on this.
And that's a wrap for your Disney-based bullets.
It was announced that a woman in her 60s went non-responsive while riding the Haunted Mansion this past Monday at Disneyland. She was later taken to the hospital where she died.
This is incredibly sad. She was likely visiting the park with family or friends, so now the Happiest Place on Earth will have sorrowful memories for them. The Haunted Mansion (one of my all-time favorite attractions) isn't all that scary, so I'm guessing that it was a medical issue which could have happened anywhere.
At the end of the day, there's danger in everything you do. Just walking out the door exposes you to danger. There's danger in your home. Crossing the street can be lethal, especially in a day-and-age when people are looking at their phones instead of watching the road. But you really don't anticipate dying during a theme park visit (there was another death earlier this year at Orlando's Epic Universe).
In an article over at Entertainment Weekly, a former creative director with Disney Imagineering said that they had discussed removing the hanging corpse of the Ghost Host which appears during the first part of the attraction in the stretching room. And while I understand this is easily the most triggering part of the entire ride, I really hope that they don't do that. It's a frickin' haunted house. Things like this should be expected. Furthermore, it's not all that easy to see in the first place. It's kind of obscured by a screen, and you have to know what you're looking at to really understand it. This is the last attraction overseen by Walt Disney himself, and they've already made some poor decisions by altering it (removing the axe from Constance Hatchaway was clumsy and ridiculous)... it would be nice that at least some of what he intended is preserved.
I may not have a three day weekend like some people in the USA, but don't you fear about me making time for bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Small, Small World! The Disfarers YouTube channel has been interesting, and I've been going back through them to see what I missed. This one from three months ago is hands-down one of the most fascinating Disney Parks video I've ever seen. It's not just about It's a Small World, it's about the fascinating process of Imagineering which has a lot of cameos by a lot of rides...
While not a fan of the ride so much, I'm a massive fan of Mary Blair, and have always appreciated the artistry of the ride. And now I appreciate it even more.
• Wedneday Murder Club? Why. Why would Netflix make a major change to The Thursday Murder Club when they KNOW that this has screwed up faithfully adapting the future books? Insanity. Just insanity. I know the book was much deeper and some things (like back-story) would be lost when translated to a 2-hour movie (requiring some things to change), but this? THIS?!? What possible reason? My opinion of Chris Columbus as a director just dropped several stories. And the pacing is awful. Slow at the start where things could have been cut, then rushes to the botched ending where the time should have been spent. Character personalities are changed to bad effect. A good director would understand the books well enough to realize that this change wasn't a good one, and had the writers re-think things. Jeez what a disappointment. If you buy the rights to the book to turn it into the movie... ADAPT THE FUCKING BOOK! Two out of five stars because I'm mad a book series I love with actors I love was mostly good... until it wasn't.
• Atom Man vs. Superman! YouTube has a lot of cool restoration videos. The ones I'm enjoying now are the paper poster videos, because it always amazes me how they can just dump water on everything in order to flatten it (something I've tried after watching it, and it works... if you're careful). This last one I saw is very cool because it's so big...
I cannot imagine how much this kind of restoration would cost.
• Peaches! In my news feed, there was an article about Thomas Rhett's wife being pregnant with their fifth child. And I didn't know who that was. So I Googled him and some images popped up. Didn't recognize him, but he's obviously a famous country singer. then I see him in a Boston Red Sox jersey and am like... okay... I like him already. Then I see how famous he is, and I'm like... oh... I'm sure I've heard his stuff then. I click on the Boston photo and it's from his Instagram. I click though to that. He's got a beautiful family. And then I see gem...
Legendary dad material.
• Cracker! I didn't think that the new Cracker Barrel logo was terrible (for the minute it was used). But it was beyond terrible FOR Cracker Barrel. The thing about branding is that people can get incredibly attached to stuff that they form a relationship with. If you're changing something, for better or worse, they're going to react. So you had better have a very good reason to do it. And you need to be very smart about how you do it. This was a massive misstep from the jump, all because whomever was in charge of this mess committed the First Sin of Branding... they did not know their own audience. Because to say that this was a glaringly obvious disaster is not an understatement...
I don't even have Cracker Barrel where I live (the nearest one is in Vegas) but I reacted with a wince to the rebrand because I knew immediately how it would be received. Because I've been to one of them once. A decade ago. What's ironic is that they probably did it hoping it would be more appealing to society at large because sales were sliding. Now they're in the dumpster having to try and crawl their way out.
• Negative Four-And-A-Half Stars! Maybe I was too quick condemning Paramount+ for canceling Strange New Worlds after an upcoming abbreviated fifth season. Because Four and a Half Vulcans has got to be one of the shittiest episodes of ANY Star Trek I've ever seen. Good Lord. Somebody watched this dumpster fire and thought it should air? How did it get past script stage in the first place? It would have been better to cut it completely and come up an episode short this season than to air something this horrendously bad...
Apparently when you take the Vulcanizing serum, it changes your hairstyle!
The stupid... it still lingers.
• Insecticide! And lastly, allow me to once again comment on a botched adaptation. Butterfly, the comic book series, was a brisk four issues. It was breakneck storytelling and an interesting read. So when I found out that Prime Video adapted the comics with a leisurely six episodes, I was excited. Watching it, I didn't think it was as good as the source material because it got repetitive in ways that weren't interesting... but I liked the cast and thought "Well, this will be a nice diversion!"
AND THEN I GOT TO THE END WHERE THEY CREATED A STUPID FUCKING CLIFFHANGER AND A NONSENSICAL FUCKING TWIST TO SET UP A SECOND SEASON THAT I WILL NEVER... NEVER EVER... WATCH. What a lazy-ass pile of shit. Why is it that nobody can just complete a series any more? It always, always has to have a stupid-ass cliffhanger for a next season that may never come. Lazy fucking writers. Just tie everything up with an ending in case this is all we get! Then, if you get a second season, you can find a new and exciting angle to begin again. But NOPE! Easier to just fuck over the audience. And "easy" is all these talentless hacks have to offer. My God. It's getting to where I don't want to watch TV series any more. Though movies are doing it too. Netflix made a shitty The Old Guard sequel, which I hated, then ended that MOVIE on a cliffhanger which probably won't be resolved. I need to create a new website explicitly where people can share whether or not a show ends on yet another lazy-ass fucking cliffhanger so people can decide whether or not they want to invest time in something THAT MAY NEVER BE FINISHED. At least The Thursday Murder Club was smartly written enough to have a satisfying conclusion (well, if you haven't read the books).
If you're an American who's off work tomorrow, enjoy your day off from labor. If you're an American who's not off work tomorrow (like me) try and enjoy your Monday.
The Dog Days of Summer may be slowly fading, but the Bullets of Summer are still sticking around... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Yesterland! This video of Disneyland in 1956 is wild. Everybody dressed up for a day out at Disneyland... from dress shirts with long pants and full on suits... to sundresses or Capri pants... nobody was in jeans and a T-shirt (and where were short pants for the guys?)...
I remember for my first visit 20 years later it was the same. My brother and I were dressed up in matching green suits that my grandmother made. And the reason I remember them so clearly? Because the threads in my suit glowed when we were riding It's a Small World. I remember the suits right down to how the buttons looked (but don't ask me what I had for dinner last night). And, wow, were the attractions very different at the beginning! No E-ticket rides in 1956 because they didn't come until three years later. And of course this were back in the days where not much was politically correct. Something I didn't know is that Disneyland was never segregated. Walt Disney wanted everybody with the means to pay to visit the Happiest Place on Earth. That being said, there are precious few non-white people in this film (except for the "Indian Village" entertainment, of course). Interestingly enough, the boat skippers on The Jungle Cruise fired AT the hippos instead of in the air to "scare" them back in the day. Vicious.
• I've Been Framed! Every payday I've been buying picture frames to hang up prints and art and maps and bits and pieces I've been collecting over the past 50 years. Last time, I bought some frames that arrived in a totally a different color than I ordered, so they refunded me 50% of the cost and I just spray-painted them. Score! Today they finally stopped smelling, so I hung them up. They're prints by Bill Mudron as a tribute to Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli films (based on prints by Kawase Hasui). I love them. There were actually five I wanted, but two of them were sold out, so I got the these three, which are incredible. They're in the hall as I walk in the front door...
Dang. I wish I could afford glare-free museum glass (to get a closeup glare-free look at them, you can visit the artist's website here). What I really love is that the characters from the films are almost hard to spot in these prints because they're very small. In mine for Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, you have to look a minute...
I really wanted the prints for Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo as well...
You can buy reproductions on Mudron's website, but you can't get them at the size of the original prints, dangit. I may buy a few smaller reproductions to hang somewhere else in my home, because they're so frickin' amazing.
• The Plot Thickens! If you've never seen Robots Draw, you're missing out. I knew about the account, but I didn't know that the guy behind it did a TedTalk...
Before I could afford a dot matrix printer, I had an Atari 1020 4-color pen plotter, which I'm reminded of every time I see a Robots Draw reel...
The printer was mostly for fun because the paper was only 4.5-inches wide, but it was better than nothing. Even if it took forever to print text because the letters had to be drawn one by one. Wikipedia has a short article on the unit here (which is where I got the photo).
• Gooey! I honesty don’t know how in the hell got to be THIS BAD at Apple after Steve Jobs’s died. Granted, I am using a public beta of the latest iOS, and this might be fixed... but... what the fuck does this last button do in Apple Music?
The first is shuffle. The second is repeat. The third is infinity auto-play. But that fourth button provides no feedback as to actually doing anything, so I have no idea. This odd set of buttons could very well be the worst GUI design I’ve ever seen. Coming from a company that used to care about GUI! Fortunately, long-time blogging friend LeSombre managed to remember an article about this very topic and was able to tell me it means "AutoMix" and Apple describes it as "Songs transition at the perfect moment, based on analysis of the key and tempo of the music." So I immediately turned it off, because I wondered why in the hell the end of a song was either sped up or slowed down in weird fucking ways as it faded to the next song via CarPlay. No thank you. And, on that note... APPLE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PROVIDE SOME FEEDBACK FOR YOUR FUCKING BUTTONS SO PEOPLE KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ACTUALLY DO!
• Only Connect! If you've ever been frustrated by The New York Times puzzle "Connections," you should know that it was inspired (or stolen) from a UK quiz show Only Connect. These puzzles always feel incredibly difficult, and I can't fathom having to solve them within a time limit. It usually takes me forever when I have forever!
In other news... "Father's Day" was invented at a YMCA in Washington State?!??
• Atmosphere! Alaska Airlines has rebranded their loyalty program as "Atmos" now that they've merged with Hawaiian Airlines. Which is fine, I guess, if not for the fact that Dolby Atmos home theater sound standard already exists. I'm guessing that there was no trademark danger since they are wildly different industries, but I still wonder why they'd go with this?
"Atmos" isn't a real word. At best it's an abbreviation for "atmosphere" (which is where Dolby got it, I'm sure, because they're creating an atmosphere of sound). Not sure where Alaska's head is at here, but I can't help but think they could have come up with something better.
• Winds of Waiting! I am clinging to the idea that the person asking this horrific question has challenges gauging social situations and perhaps didn't know that what they were asking is awful. Anything else just beats down my faith in humanity to new lows. I don't care how impatient you are for the next book, this is inhuman. And I have zero doubt that this question already haunts George RR Martin himself. So... why?
That. Being. Said. While undeserving of... whatever this was... Martin has kinda brought fan frustration on himself. He has been stringing everybody along for thirteen YEARS. All the promises and all the assurances of Winds of Winter being a "priority" falling by the wayside while he finds another TV show or movie or game or book or convention or talk show or whatever to do. Anything but actually getting the work done. Add to that the HBO adaption utterly destroying the ending of the A Game of Thrones adaptation and making fans even more anxious to know how everything "really" ends... and, well, it takes things to new levels. — No, he did not deserve this terrible question. But I have to wonder if George RR Martin wasn't constantly making promises he couldn't keep, would we have an environment where people feel entitled to ask a question like this in the first place? Something to ponder. Also something to ponder? BRANDON SANDERSON COMPLETING A SONG OF FIRE AND ICE?!? Good Lord. I'd rather have no ending than that. These authors in no conceivable way complement each other. Like... at all.
Now it's time to go pick tomatoes for my dinner.
One of the easiest rabbit holes for me to fall down is anything related to the Disney Parks. Especially Disneyland, which I've obsessed over since I was a kid. More so for the way it was built over the experience of being there.
The latest video to pop up on my YouTube feed is this one, which has an interesting look at what was happening at Disneyland during the planning of Pirates of The Caribbean...
Walt Disney died in 1966. Pirates of the Caribbean opened in 1967 and was likely the final attraction he was personally involved with at every level. You can see it in that video. Other attractions, like the Haunted Mansion, had Walt involved in the planning stages, but were completed by other Imagineers. Meaning that Pirates has a place of special regard to Disney fans.
They don't build 'em like that any more.
As I've already said... I have zero problem with Disney (the company) deciding to make an animatronic of Disney (the man) because Walt Himself had zero problems with dredging up people like Abraham Lincoln to be turned into a robot. So why not? In the end, I actually thought that it was a good thing.
At least I did until I saw what they came up with.
Does Walt Disney Company not have photos of Walt Disney? They did a terrible job of making something that even remotely resembles the guy...
I know it can't be perfect... but getting the hairline, eyebrows, and nose right would have gone a long ways towards a better resemblance.
I can't even figure out what era this is supposed to be from. It's not near his last appearance (bottom), that's for sure. Why wouldn't they take his look from the middle of the extremes that people recognize him from (top)? That would have made a lot more sense.
Yikes.
I guess those people saying that he should have never been ressurected as an animatronic have nothing to worry about.
Because that ain't him.
If you've been here at Blogography for any length of time, you know that theme park design is a big obsession of mine. So of course when Disney Parks Blog had an entry this morning about the new expansions to Disneyland, I took note.
To start, the new bridge over S. Harbor Blvd. which goes to a new load/unload zone and 6,000 space parking lot (along with the new entrance on the east-side) is very cool...
But my attention was laser-focused on the information for the new Coco ride...
I loved Coco. The gorgeous art of the film and incredible visuals would make a fantastic idea for an attraction. All we really know about the ride is that you're in a boat...
Now, one would assume that this new ride is going to be at least as big as It's a Small World or else why do it? On the Google Map below, It's a Small World is in the upper-left in pink. Dropping the ride at the location in the press release would put it at the location of the green building I've dropped in the lower-right of the same map below...
Except, a few problems...
And so the actual "Coco Land" will more likely be somewhere within the space I've drawn in green on the map at the lower-right below. It's located behind the IncrediCoaster...
The region I've drawn in yellow is the area available for the Avenger's Campus expansion (which I've already talked about here). The area in Blue is the area available for Avatar Pandora Land West (which seems surprisingly small)...
After these additions, the only real space available for expansion (other than the Disney Forward project areas which I talked about here) is the region to the north of the original Disneyland. That's assuming Disney doesn't buy more property in the area. But in order to use this land (which is fairly substantial, dwarfing even Star Wars Land), Disney would have to level a lot of expensive construction (including the massive Team Disney admin building and the warehouse where I'm guessing the parade floats are built and housed). This seems unlikely, but maybe a portion of this space could be used for park expansion...
At this point all I can really, really, hope for is that Disney doesn't cheap out and give us some crapy boat ride that's undeserving of Coco. It should be more than a bad retread of Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros from Epcot's Mexico Pavilion. Much more. It should be a destination-worthy spectacle that draws people to the park just to see it.
The Coco ride should be every bit as big and impressive and jaw-dropping as what they did with Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
But will it be?
Only time will tell.
Happy Pride Month to all my LGBTQ+ friends out there! The world is better because you're in it! Soon I'll be watching a movie themed to this month's topic, but that will have to wait... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• BEES! NEWSFLASH: Millions of bees escape, start stinging after crash in Whatcom County. The first thing I did was go running to Maps to find out how far away these 250 million bees are from my house. Answer? About 3-1/2 hours, minimum. So no need to panic. Yet.
• Disney Be Expensive, Yo! “No we’re not going to Disneyland. We’ve got Disneyland at home!”
Absolutely classic.
• Sloppy! Peacock TV should just renew Poker Face for ten new seasons to be filmed twice a year. The latest episode Sloppy Joseph is phenomenal, as usual. But it leaps ahead of the pack for one reason. The child actor leads they got for this episode are amazing. AMAZING... and also, in one case, amazingly disturbing. Whomever cast them deserves a raise...
Plus it was deftly directed by ADAM ARKIN? And is that DAVID KRUMHOLTZ?!? Sweet! — I wish they could clone Natasha Lyonne so she could appear in more stuff. Then make a second clone and put her into suspended animation so we have a spare in case we lose the original two.
• Wes! If anybody has $400 that they're trying to get rid of... give it to The Trevor Project or Trans Lifeline. But if you have $400 more that you need to get rid of, you could always buy this for me...
Sure I already own all these movies in digital format (and more than a few on DVD and Blu-Ray), but 4K off of Blu-Ray is a considerably different experience than "4K" off of digital streaming.
• Linguistically Yours! I love this...
Language is ever-changing and ever-evolving. This is just the latest thing.
• Cursed! Sage, sage wisdom being dropped here...
I wish I could reclaim all the time I wasted trying to please people who don't care about me.
• Yummy! This video came up in my Facebook memories. So much more clever than Baby Shark...
CHEESE! CHEESE! CHEESE!
• Drag News Hour! Yet another drag queen endangering our children! Oh... wait a second... nope! Not a drag queen... color me un-shocked! NEWSFLASH: MAGA Influencer And Fox News Guest Indicted On Child Sex Abuse Charges.
And, on that note, it's time for me to make dinner. Until next Sunday...
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