The House Next Door

Have a safe trip back, though something tells me you'll be trapped in the airport longer than Tom Hanks. It is BAD UP HERE, and the storm is far from over.

I love Disney parks too. I've been to Anaheim once, but to Disney World a staggering 11 times. Every time has been an adventure, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. Well, maybe I'd trade one thing. I'd love to Brillo out the memory of being stuck in the It's A Small World ride for over 2 hours. They never turned the music off, either. I had nightmares for years.

It's too bad they never opened a version of Disney World to promote their R-rated and adult oriented features. Call it Touchstone City. They could have the Swing Kids jamboree and the Down and Out in Beverly Hills therapy ride. Film critics are not allowed. :)

Get home safely!

Well, we'll see how it goes. If I have to stay another day it wouldn't be the worst thing. I was looking for an excuse to revisit a couple of my favorite rides. Dunno if you've been to Disney World or Disneyland recently enough to ride Soarin', the Imax-ish virtual reality thing where they strap you in hanging seats in front of a gigantic screen filled with helicopter footage. If not, that's definitely one to check out. As in every great Disney ride, there are tiny details you don't notice until you've ridden several times, like the air current changes and subtle whiffs of scent that change from scene to scene. For instance, when you fly through a narrow river canyon in a coniferous forest, you feel a slightly channeled breeze in your face and faintly smell pine needles.

Blizzards suck, unless you're a little kid.

I envy you for being trapped in Florida. I can see nothing from my window. (I can't see clearly now, the snow ain't gone...) From what I hear, most of the airports here are closed.

I was in Disney in 2004, but I don't recall if the helicopter ride were there. Makes me think of The Apocalpyse Now Experience if Coppola ever opened a theme park.

Regarding The Wonderful World of Disney: It used to come on Sundays at 7 when I was a kid. It was one of the last things I got to watch before bed. They used to show Winnie the Pooh a lot. Winnie the Pooh is the most psychologically damaged cartoon in the history of animation!

We also used to get those Disney Summer Hit Parade double features at the Loews Theater in Jersey City. Did you have those? They would show a Disney animated feature like Fantasia, and a Disney movie like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, the Witch Mountain movies, and Herbie, the Punch-Buggy Odie Hates with a Passion. I think the last one I saw was a double feature of The Rescuers and The Cat from Outer Space. Can't wait for the remake of that one, preferably with Meryl Streep. As the cat.

Disney first introduced me to Helen Hayes, Kurt Russell, Angela Lansbury and others. I wonder how those movies would stand up if I watched them today. I've always wanted to revisit some of those live action features as an adult, especially Song of the South, a movie I know I've seen but of which I have absolutely no memory. I might be sorry.

Even though I love Disney World, I never warmed up to any of their cartoon characters--except for Scrooge McDuck. That occurred long after my childhood had expired. I was always a Looney Tunes kind of guy.

Whenever I think of their famous cartoon characters, though, I think about that conversation in Stand By Me, a movie I didn't like when I first saw it, but made me cry like a baby when I saw it with older , more nostalgic eyes. (It also contains one of the biggest computer mistakes I've ever seen in film history, which is why I was crying of course.)

Bring back some sunshine from Florida! We have 14 inches of snow here, and it's not over yet!

Hey Wow, a man after my own heart! I hope you guys have a wonderful time. I went to Disneyland when I was five years old and haven't been the same since. Back in 5th grade, I would compulsively draw maps of Disneyland and had an aerial photogragh of the park circa 1962 that was one of my most prized possessions. I thought Imagineers were the coolest people on earth, and theme-park maps covered my bedroom walls 'til I was far older than I should probably admit.

Yes, plop me on a bench beside a plunging log flume, let me people-watch where I can hear banjo music piping from a speaker hidden in a bush somewhere, and I'm happy as a clam. And hell, I admire their stategic method of entertaining you while you wait in line, with plenty to look at and listen to, and then setting you on a seven minute dark ride (those guys work miracles with black lights) and finally spitting you out immediately into a gift shop.

If you haven't read "MouseTales" 1&2 by David Koenig, then I recommend it. The books have background info on the parks and lots of anecdotal stuff from employees. My favorite is still the term the Matterhorn workers use for a skinny guy and his fat gal friend when they mount one of the bobsled's straddle-seats. The call him a "Gumby".

While some people might like to honeymoon at some beach resort, or go to Vegas, or take a sea cruise, or fuck, or whatever the hell else it is that "adults" like to do, my wife and I said "screw that, we want teacups." Thank god she didn't think I was weird at all when I planned our assault on the Magic Kingdom like it was a military operation.
"Look at this map, we're going to take these 42 objectives."
Even after a 4 or 5 day pass, when everyone is completely mouse-whipped, my after-burners kick in, and I have to be practically dragged out because I'm trying to ride things one last time.

I think that'll be my advice to my kids when they get older. Find yourself a girl that loves Disneyland (or Sergio Leone) and bind her to ya with a ring of gold.

Is my love complicated? I don't know. Sure, I have friends who would probably hate the happiest place on earth, but I just love it for the artifice and fakery of it all. Hell, I still get sad when I think of Nikita Kruschev's inner child being denied a visit back in '59. In the end I have to fall back on the artifice, and some lines remembered from Yeat's Byzantium, about 'hammered gold and gold enameling, to keep a drowsy emperor awake'.

Dave: Quoting Yeats by way of Disney? Welcome to The House Next Door. And check out the post above. I have a feeling it's right up your gold-enameled alley.

I haven't read the David Koenig book, but I will soon. Thanks for the recommendation.

Here's a link to a good piece on the TOMORROWLAND/DISNEY AT WAR discs by The Onion AV Club's Noel Murray, who has a similar fondness for all things Walt:

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/7937

Have you ever heard T Bone Burnett's brilliant song "Hefner and Disney"? It's about the builder of a soulless plastic empire designed to snatch away the world's innocence, and the wizardly creator of an idealized fantasy world. Burnett leaves you to wonder which is which.