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THE LAW IS A ASS for 12/25/2001
JOURNAL ENTRY
"Court's Adjourned" Installment # 1
Originally published on World Famous Comics December 25, 2001
I'm a little busy now roasting chestnuts on the open fire and keeping that frelling Jack Frost away from my nose.
What does that mean for you? It means that even though revising my old "The Law is a Ass" columns doesn't take up much time, it does take time. Time I don't have.
It means there will be no new old "The Law is a Ass" column installment reprinted this week.
Which is not to say you're free of my smart-aleck comments for the week. I do write for other outlets and my personality there is no less charming than the one I manage in my column. So this week I'm starting a new column which will run here from time to time. It's called "Court's Adjourned," to indicate that it's one of the things I wrote that has nothing to do about the law. It's what I'll try to put in here, on those occasions when I don't have time to update an old column. Just to give you warning, I won't have time next week, either; so the second installment of "Court's Adjourned" will appear on this page next week.
I got the idea to do this alternate column last week, when I reprinted the opening paragraph of something I wrote for CAPA-Alpha, the foremost and oldest comic-book Amateur Press Association publication in the country. As those who belong to CAPA-Alpha, I love going to amusement parks. So, last Summer, when I went to the new Disney park, Disney's California Adventure, I wrote a lengthy review of the park for one of my APA 'zines. It's not the type of review you're likely to find in the Official Guide to Disneyland, but it was too much fun to limit to just the pages of CAPA-Alpha. So, when I ran a paragraph of the review last week in the docket entry, I got the idea of re-running the whole review here as the first installment of "Court's Adjourned."
So that's what's going to appear this week.
It's kind of Ingersoll-lite. All the smart-assed comments, but none of the law.
******
"Court's Adjourned"
Installment # 1
California Ad Venture
by
Bob Ingersoll
What can I say about DCA? Let's try: I wouldn't say California Adventure was lame, but the combined efforts of Jesus Christ and Ebenezer Scrooge couldn't make it walk. Or according to the literature that Disney puts out, DCA is, supposed to celebrate the fun, spirit and adventure of California. The state should sue for defamation of character. Or California Adventure was built by tearing up a parking lot and putting an amusement park in its place; thereby decreasing the property values. (Can I get an "Amen ," brothers? Or, at least, a rim shot?)
Don't believe me? (What, after all this time and all my reviews, you haven't come to trust my opinions on amusement parks?) Okay, let's take this park item by item.
You enter through the Golden Gateway, twin walls of mosaic tiles flanking a small-scale recreation of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Bridge has monorail tracks on it, so the monorail passes over it, and that's about the only cool thing about the Gateway. After you enter the Golden Gateway, you comp upon Sunshine Plaza. (By the way, in case you missed it, we're out of Flashback mode.) In Sunshine Plaza you find the signature piece of the park; a perpetual wave fountain with a big sculpture of the sun over it. That's the signature piece of the park. Disneyland, The Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, Disneyland Tokyo, and Euro Disney all give up an entire castle as a signature piece. EPCOT gives us the Geosphere, that huge geodesic golf ball which even has a ride in it. Animal Kingdom has the Tree of Life Hell, even Disney/MGM gave us a recreation of Mann's Chinese theater as the signature piece. Disney's California Adventure gives us a fountain. Okay, it has some programmed water effects, but it's still just a fountain with a sculpture. (Apparently Disney doesn't want Sunshine Plaza to feel too self-conscious, it's announced plans to replace Mann's Chinese Theater as the signature piece of Disney/MGM with a giant recreation of Mickey's sorcerer hat.)
To the left of Sunshine Plaza is Hollywood Pictures Backlot. To the right is part of Golden State. Straight ahead is the rest of Golden State. Beyond that is Paradise Pier. For our purposes, and it's basically for convenience, it really doesn't matter which way we go the park is on a par no matter where we go in it, we'll proceed clockwise and go left.
Just as you enter the park by going through a special gateway, you enter Hollywood Pictures Backlot by going through some gates built to resemble the famous gates of the Paramount Studio or the old MGM studios. And they might, if they didn't have silly-looking sculptures on them. You head down the area's recreation of Hollywood Boulevard (which doesn't do nearly as good a job in the recreation as Disney/MGM in Orlando or Universal Studios in Orlando, but who's comparing. Oh, right, me.) The first attraction you come to is the Disney Animation Studio. In Florida, the Animation Studio features a short movie with Robin Williams and Walter Cronkite, followed by a tour where you see actual animators working on things. (Okay, they're interns working on things, the actual animators are really working in another Animation Building, which is hidden behind bushes, but at least you see something that looks like animators at work) Here in California Adventure, you get the same movie but no tour (Not surprising in California, all the animators are working in the Animation building out in Burbank, so they can't even pretend you're getting real animators working on real cartoons.)
Instead of the tour of an actual, working--if faked--animation studio, you get the following. There's a live show in which an actor playing an animator appears with Mushu from Mulan and teaches you about how character designs can change from original conception to final produce. You learn, for example, that Meeko from Pocahontas was originally going to be a turkey, and doesn't that just make the movie more enjoyable? And that's about the most interesting thing you learn.
You exit from this exhibit into the only interesting part of the Animation Building. (Okay, the movie I talked about earlier is interesting, but if you've seen it once--either here or in Orlando-- you don't need to see it again; it hasn't changed.) This is a display area in which original character designs and maquette statutes are on display.
The other part of the Animation Building is a hands-on exhibit. You can draw stick-figure animations on paper strips and put them into one of those early animation machines for viewing. You can touch buttons and play animations. Oh and you can use the interactive Magic Story Book. Here you answer questions and the Magic Story Book will tell which Disney animated character you're most like. (You can get heroes or villains depending on how you answer this question: "Which would you rather do A) meet nice people for lunch or B) eat nice people for lunch." (Naturally I went with "B.") The Hands On exhibit killed about twenty minutes, fifteen of which were spent waiting in line for the Magic Story Books to free up. But other than that, having experienced the Animation Building once, I didn't see a real need to do it again. It doesn't look as if the exhibits will change. So, after you've done it once, you've done all that will be there.
Past the Animation Building is the Hyperion Theater. This is supposed to be a recreation of the old-style, glamorous movie houses of the 30s. I suppose that could have worked but for one problem. The movie palaces made themselves ornate with carved marble columns and bas relief. The Hyperion theater seeks the same effect with painted scrims.
To be fair, the reason they use painted scrims (other than the cost factors of actually carving real marble nowadays) is that occasionally the dancers in the live show "Steps in Time" also dance behind the scrims. But, to be fair to marble columns, they would have been more interesting than the show put on in the Hyperion Theater."
The pre-show (at least where we were sitting) consisted of a guy asking Disney trivia questions. I got to the point where I'd raise my hand just to show that someone knew the answer rather than always blurting out the answer. The questions weren't particularly challenging other than his question of naming all of the feature-length animated cartoons which had one-word titles. The reason this one was so challenging is that the moron included Tron. Sorry, I don't consider Tron, Mary Poppins, Bed Knobs and Broomsticks or Pete's Dragon to be feature-length animated movies. They're live action movies that incorporate some animation. Tron is a live-action movie, which featured early and rudimentary computer graphic effects. It's no more an animated movie than Jurassic Park was.
"Steps in Time" is billed as "A Hollywood salute to the timelessness of Disney musical storytelling." They accomplish this little feat--okay, they don't accomplish it, but they try to accomplish it--with a live-action show in which a twelve-year-old boy learns a valuable lesson about life: you can succeed if you stick to your dreams and are nice to your little brother. It's done through a banal story which also appropriates such songs as "Chim, Chim Chiree," "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes," and "Hakuna Matata," drops them into the show, and ruins them. Bet you didn't know "Hakuna Matata" was a rap song, did you?
That's what you get if you proceed straight after passing through the gates of Hollywood Backlot. If you go to the left, you come upon the movie Muppet Vision 3D, yes, the same movie that plays in Disney/MGM in Orlando. There's a reason for this. One of the major animation studios in LA is DIC, which everyone in LA claims stands for Do It Cheap." And that's the philosophy of Disney's California Adventure. Why spend money developing a ride, when you can simply bring one in from Orlando? That way you save all the development money. So, you get the same animation studio movie in the Animation building and the same Muppet movie in the Muppet attraction. There was talk about building an attraction based on the movie Armageddon in Hollywood Pictures Backlot. Not even a ride, but a "walk through," like Backdraft in Universal Studios Hollywood or Twister in Universal Studios Florida. Certainly this would have fit in nicely with the Do It Cheap philosophy of the park. But, apparently not cheap enough. Plans for Armageddon were scrapped. Instead they built Who Wants to be a Millionaire? which is the exact same attraction they have in Disney/MGM in Orlando. (Again, it spares development costs.) This wasn't open yet, when I was out there, so I can't report on it.
I should also mention that initial plans for Hollywood Pictures Backlot also had them building a Twilight Zone Tower of Terror here. It would have fit in nicely with the Hollywood motif. And it would have given that area of the park a decent ride; something worth doing and to come back for. It would even have fit the philosophy of using old attractions from Disney World, so that there weren't development costs. Unfortunately, it didn't fit the philosophy of, why put in expensive rides that have sophisticated themeing and require lots of computers, when you can build a stupid and cheap ride that requires much less themeing and fewer and less-complicated computers?
Speaking of cheap rides that require less themeing and less-complicated computers, that brings us to the final attraction in Hollywood Pictures Backlot: Superstar Limo. There's a reason that Disney Park regulars call the ride Superstar Lame-O. Try to guess what it is.
This is a dark ride, in the tradition of Snow White's Scary Adventure of Peter Pan's Flight, except that part of the tradition of those rides is that they're good rides. In Superstar Limo you're supposed to be Hollywood's newest star who has to ride a stretch limo to the premiere of your new movie. While you ride through the "whimsical" recreation of Los Angeles and see audio-animatronic recreations of Drew Carey, Tim Allen, Whoppi Goldberg and others, you also get frequent calls from your agent (who appears as a computer animated character on a TV screen in your car). The ride has all the production values of the movie Robot Monster, but without any of the charm. One also wonders what's going to happen in ten years or so, when the stars I mentioned don't have shows on ABC. Maybe the ride will be re-tooled with new stars. Or maybe, and we can only hope, it will be re-tooled with The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
And that brings us to the end of Hollywood Pictures Backlot. You're right, I probably wasn't doing justice to the area. Nothing short of bulldozing could.
Now if I didn't make Hollywood Pictures Backlot sound appealing, that's nothing compared to the wonders that await you in the Golden State District. Golden State has six sub-districts: Condor Flats, The Bay Area, Golden Vine Winery, Pacific Wharf, Bountiful Valley Farm and Grizzly Peak Recreation Area. Taking them in no particular order, other than the order I just put them in when I listed them, we come first to Condor Flats.
Condor Flats, along with some restaurants and shopping--naturally, this is a Disney Park, after all--has Soarin' Over California. This is it, the big ride in California Adventure. The one that has all the lines in front of it. Of course, the fact that this attraction is a ten-or-so-minute Imax movie with only one screen which can only sit about three hundred people at a time, probably has something to do with the lines. Think about it. Figure ten minutes for the movie and five minutes for loading and unloading the show area produces about one thousand two hundred people an hour the ride can load. Hell the Hyperion Theater can seat almost twice that in one show. But on Soarin' Over California, you wait for fifteen minutes without moving, them have a quantum leap of movement, to be followed by fifteen more minutes of waiting without moving. At least Andy Warhol promised fifteen minutes of fame. All you get here is fifteen minutes of not moving.
(It should be noted that as designs go for proper queing technique, this one rots. If you have little kids with you and you're in a long line for The Matterhorn, at least you can point out that the line keeps moving, so you're getting closer. With this ride, you can't even make the occasional reassuring comment, "See, Billy, the line's always moving, so be patient." Here you get to say, "I don't know when the line's going to move, stop hitting your sister!")
The gimmick of the ride is that you're supposed to pretend you're hang gliding over California. You sit in a seat which allows your legs to dangle beneath you and then you're lifted between fifty to one hundred feet in the air (depending on what row you're in) and watch the movie. It's a nice enough movie, but I never got the feeling of hang gliding I was supposed to get. The original plans I had heard about the ride indicated the hanging seats would also be on a small-scale motion simulator, so that your seats would move in time to the movie. That would have been fun. I suppose costs and averting panic from the more-easily-frightened guests could have had something to do with there being no motion simulator. But it wasn't what I had been led to expect.
As it was all you did was sit in a chair, dangle your feet and watch a movie. Having seen it once, I don't know that I'll need to do it again. In most rides, even roller coasters where you're going over the same track, some of the experience changes from ride to ride. Here, the only way anything will change is if they bring in a new movie.
By the way, you may have noticed that this is the third attraction in DCA that centers around a movie. (There will be more.) Conventional wisdom in amusement parks has learned that movie-based attractions don't have a long shelf life for exactly the same reason I just mentioned. You go once and see the movie. You don't need to do it again. So, amusement parks with movie-based attractions find that, if they don't replace the movies every five years or so, attendance in the attraction starts to drop off dramatically. All of the people who go to the park regularly (annual pass holders or people who make it there once every year or every other year) have stopped going to the movie, because they've seen it. I suspect Soarin' Over California will suffer this fate.
The Bay Area tries to recreate San Francisco. It has expansive gardens, Victorian architecture, Art Deco stylings and winding pathways. It also has one attraction, Golden Dreams, which is, guess what? A movie.
A twenty-two minute movie that celebrates the people and events that have helped shape the character of California. This is done by having Whoppi Goldberg appear as the America Indian goddess after whom the state was named. The movie recounts the history of California, with Whoppi, the Goddess, appearing from time to time in the movie to give encouragement to the people who are disheartened. For example, when Spanish settlers encounter an earthquake, she convinces them to go onward. An important time in California for an Indian goddess, considering what the Spanish did to the Indian locals. Later she appears to a man who has been unsuccessfully prospecting for gold. He overcomes his discouragement and finds a piece of gold about as big as a dime, then immediately starts celebrating his find. (The movie doesn't show what must have happened next, which is that all of the people around him jumped his claim while he was away from the stream celebrating and they all killed each other in the ensuing fight.) Still later, Whoppi appears to a young Japanese mail-order bride who was brought to San Francisco to be the companion of an older Japanese immigrant. She is disheartened that her husband-to-be is much older than his picture. She's even more disheartened, when she encounters prejudice from the San Franciscans who don't want the Japanese there and throw vegetables at her. But at this critical moment, Whoppi encourages her to go on. (Again, a noble act by this goddess, considering what this Japanese immigrant had to look forward to: years of prejudice and, if she wasn't killed in the 1906 earthquake, internment in some Japanese camps of World War II, where she would probably have been too weak to survive so died under the worst conditions.)
So, we have another movie which I don't need to see again. Not only because once was enough considering it's a movie that won't change, but also because I found the subject matter questionable.
Golden Vine Winery allows you to stroll through vineyards they recreate in the park and watch a movie about wine making hosted by Robert Mondavi, a famous California vintner. Not only is this another movie "attraction" it's a movie about wine making. You know, when a young family is traveling with a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, that's just what I expect will be first on their list of things to do: "Daddy, take us to an amusement park where we can learn about wine making." (Keep that sentiment in mind, it will become a running gag.) Moreover, it's not only a movie about wine making, it's an elaborate advertisement for Mondavi wine.
Pacific Wharf recreates an exciting waterfront district. It has the usual shops and restaurants and two attractions. Mission Tortilla Factory is a short tour through an actual, working factory of the actual Mission Tortilla Company. You know, when a young family is traveling with a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, that's just what I expect will be first on their list of things to do: "Daddy, take us to an amusement park where we can learn about tortilla making." It's also an elaborate advertisement for the Mission Tortilla brand name. At least at the end of this tour you get an actual tortilla to eat. Time it correctly and you can fill up on tortillas instead of eating the more-expensive food in the Wharf restaurants.
The other attraction in Pacific Wharf is the Boudin Bakery, in which you tour an actual sour dough break bakery. On the up side, you get a piece of sour dough bread to eat. On the down side, not only is this an elaborate advertisement for the Boudin Bakeries which are prevalent in Southern California, but it's a tour of a bakery You know, when a young family is traveling with a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, that's just what I expect will be first on their list of things to do: "Daddy, take us to an amusement park where we can learn about sour dough bread making."
I really don't know what Disney was thinking when it included these exhibits.
Yes I do. They're not only cheap, we can probably get Robert Mondavi, Mission Tortillas and Boudin Bakeries to defray some of the costs in return for the advertisements we're giving them.
Bountiful Valley Farm allows you to shop (of course) eat, stroll through working citrus groves-- you know, when a young family is traveling with a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, that's just what I expect will be first on their list of things to do: "Daddy, take us to an amusement park where we can learn about orange juice making"--and watch the movie It's Tough to be a Bug. For the record, another movie attraction and another movie attraction imported directly from Disney World. It's a diverting little piece featuring Flick and the stars of A Bug's Life, but it suffers from both problems we've already discussed in the other attractions which are both movies and movies imported from Walt Disney World.
The final section of Golden State is the Grizzly Peak Recreation Area. It has shopping, the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, and Grizzly River Run. Redwood Creek Challenge Trail is one of those playgrounds with rope ladders and slides and the like which are cropping up in amusement parks and Sea Worlds all over the country. The only difference between this one and any of the others ones is that it's in a redwood forest theme. (Oh, that and the fact that you have to pay a lot more to get into a Disney park than a Sea World.)
Grizzly River Run is a white water rapid ride. Just like all the white water rapid rides you can find in virtually every amusement park in the country. Okay, this one has more elaborate themeing in it and you don't get as wet as you can in other parks' rides. But when I come to a Disney park, I'm not expecting rides I can do in virtually every other amusement park in the country; I'm expecting something uniquely Disney.
Hold on to that thought as we leave Golden State and move into Paradise Pier. We've got another one of those running gags. Except gags are supposed to be funny aren't they? There's little that's funny about the whole California Adventure experience.
Part of the problem with DCA is that there wasn't a lot of room for it. It takes up about two-thirds of the former parking lot (the other third being split between a parking lot and that Frank Lloyd Wrong hotel I talked about earlier). So it's not very big. In fact it's about one-third the size of Disneyland. What faced Disney was how to cram as many rides as possible into so small an area. Part of the solution they came up with was Paradise Pier.
Paradise Pier recreates one of those small amusement parks on a pier like Coney Island or the Santa Monica Pier. Those parks were expert at putting a lot of rides into a small space, and DCA imitates them by putting the same kind of rides into a small space. And therein lies the problem.
Actually, two problems. Not only are there still two such piers still in existence in California within one hundred miles of DCA, but the rides are the same sort of rides that these pier parks use. There's Mulholland Madness, which is nothing more than a wild mouse ride, available at virtually any park. Jumpin' Jellyfish is a kiddy version of the old parachute jump ride. Okay, the parachute ride isn't around much, but this kiddie version is still quite common. Golden Zephyr is a tall tower which three suspended rocket ships move around it-- very slowly. This ride was so lame, we got rid of the one we had in Six Flags Worlds of Adventure in Ohio two name changes ago. Orange Stinger is a swing ride that spins around inside a giant fake orange with giant fake bees. (It should be noted that not only is this same ride available in lots of other parks, it's available to lots more people in other parks. Orange Stinger has an upper weight limit of 200 pounds, which not only excludes many fat people, some people who aren't exactly fat but are overweight and most tall people even though they're in perfect shape.) S.S. Rustworthy is another one of those climb and slide playgrounds. The Maliboomer is a standard spaceshot ride in which seats are shot up a tower some hundred feet into the air on compressed air jets and them bounce around a bit. This one is themed to look like one of the hammer strength games on a midway, but that's the only thing that makes it different from every other space shot in every other park that has one. And there's lots of parks that have one. Sun Wheel is a Ferris wheel over water. I suppose it has a thrill in that if it breaks and the car you're sealed into falls into the water, you could drown, but when the best part of a ride is wondering what would happen to you if it broke, you have problems. King Triton's Carousel is a merry-go-round with fish instead of horses. Finally California Screamin' is a roller coaster. It's probably the best ride in all of California Adventure, and I did ride it twice, but it's just a roller coaster. And I've ridden better roller coasters in other parks.
And therein lies the problems. You can ride all of these rides in other parks. Some of them just down the road from DCA in those other pier parks I mentioned. There's nothing unique, nothing Disney about the place.
Oh, there is one last attraction in Paradise Pier, the one that has true Disney afficionados up in arms: Games of the Boardwalk. These are nothing more than the ring toss and dunk the punks and other games of chance that you find on any midway of any amusement park or state fair. What has Disney afficionados up in arms is their quite proper claim that they shouldn't be there.
When Walt Disney first built Disneyland, he gave interviews in which he said among the things he was proudest of in Disneyland was that it had no midway games. He hated the games, thought they were phoney and rigged and believed they cheapened the park. That the Disney Company would now put these things into a Disney park, when their founder detested them, has Disney purists fuming.
They should.
And there you have it. That is, literally, all of Disney's California Adventure. If the same park were picked up and put down in some mid-west suburb, it wouldn't be so bad. But this is a Disney park. We expect so much of a Disney park, and didn't get it. Moreover, as it's only one-third the size of Disneyland and has only about one-third as many rides, most people can't quite figure out why they charge as much to get into DCA as they do to get into Disneyland. Maybe, if they had a reduced admission, the park wouldn't seem like quite so much of a rip-off.
To say Disney isn't going over, understates. It isn't drawing at all. I went here in mid-July, which is right in the middle of the park's busy season. The longest wait I had for any ride was twenty minutes. And that was in the middle of the afternoon for California Screamin'. Admittedly, Soarin' over California had a longer wait (remember the loading problems I mentioned earlier), and Grizzly River Run had a longer wait, because everyone wanted to get wet to cool off, but I had already done them, so avoided the lines. Still, when one of your big ticket rides--your roller coaster, no less--only has a twenty-minute wait in the middle of a mid-July afternoon, you know you have attendance problems.
One of the things Disney did to try to solve those attendance problems was to offer price breaks to Southern California residents. Nice for them but it doesn't help us travelers much. Another thing they did was to revive one of Disneyland's most popular attractions and transplant it into DCA. That's why the Disney Electrical Parade no longer goes down Main Street, USA but along Condor Flats and the Pacific Wharf. And has other people in California going, "Huh? We get rolling blackouts and Disney gets to put on an electrical parade?"
Bob Ingersoll
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