We started off our last morning slow and lackadaisically. We didn’t have to be out of there until 11 a.m. or so, having a 2 p.m. flight, so we didn’t…
We started off our last morning slow and lackadaisically. We didn’t have to be out of there until 11 a.m. or so, having a 2 p.m. flight, so we didn’t push things any. I did a little blogging, Katherine watched TV, Margie puttered around a bit.
Off to a leisurely breakfast, then a bit of last-moment shopping at the lodge store …
Wander back to the room …
Start packing …
Suddenly realize it’s 11 …
Eek!
Okay, it’s not really a million dollar idea — at least, I’ll never see a million dollars from it. I’ve watched the 1946 Disney feature Song of the South, due…
Okay, it’s not really a million dollar idea — at least, I’ll never see a million dollars from it.
I’ve watched the 1946 Disney feature Song of the South, due to the “underground railroad” of folks selling cross-region DVDs of it, since Disney will not release it in the States (and, to be sure, there are some folks in the US would have apoplexy were it to be released, albeit for reasons I think are goofy).
The fact is, it’s overall a pretty mediocre movie. The live action parts of it, at least, are objectionable not so much for their allegedly racist content (i.e., showing “contented” blacks down in the South), but for just being trite and boring.
The animated portions, though, are much fun, with the various Br’er Rabbit tales brought to life in vastly entertaining ways. They’re good enough that, despite a lack of video, they’ve been fine fodder for the vastly enjoyable Splash Mountain rides at WDW and DL.
The fact is, though, there are a ton of enjoyable Br’er stories. So why doesn’t Disney just do a Br’er Rabbit movie?
It’s that simple. Leave out the live action parts of the original SotS, make it all-animated, expand the story a bit, pick up on the “Br’er Rabbit takes to wandering to find his Laughing Place, tricks Br’er Fox, and realizes there’s no place like home” story line from the rides and make it a full length animated feature? Or draw on some of the other Harris tales, or make up one using the same characters. Heck, they’ve got the story, the characters, the rides, the merchandising just rarin’ to go — why not make use of them? Is Song of the South so laden with PC horrors that even the source stories — from African and African-American folktales — are also verboten?
Disney’s sitting on a gold mine here. A shame it doesn’t dare exploit it. It can’t do any worse than, say, Home on the Range.
(Your trivia item for today: The “Br’er” prefix on the names of all these Uncle Remus tales characters has nothing to do with the “briar” patch. Instead, it’s short for “Brother.”)
We reeeeeally didn’t want to go to the Princess Breakfast at 8:40a on Thursday morning. Alas, the event desk, when we called at 8 about arriving later, suggested that, in…
We reeeeeally didn’t want to go to the Princess Breakfast at 8:40a on Thursday morning. Alas, the event desk, when we called at 8 about arriving later, suggested that, in a pinch, they could push it back to 8:50 …
So we raced into action, throwing on clothes, gathering good, and heading out. We drove like maniacs to Epcot, trotted through it’s pre-opening deserted avenues, and arrived at Norway (the site of the breakfast) at … 8:40. Huzzah.
Wednesday was designed to have a slow start. Margie had a half-day session. I was footsore, and Kitten was tired. She and I dawdled over breakfast, took a walk around…
Wednesday was designed to have a slow start. Margie had a half-day session. I was footsore, and Kitten was tired. She and I dawdled over breakfast, took a walk around the resort, and then hopped on the boat for Downtown Disney, where we were to meet Margie later on.
Stitch is big. Part of that may be the new Stitch ride — but Stitch is big at the Disney parks. Lots of Stitch swag, of all sorts. Stitch seems…
Stitch is big. Part of that may be the new Stitch ride — but Stitch is big at the Disney parks. Lots of Stitch swag, of all sorts. Stitch seems to have “broken through,” at least for the moment, into the canon of Major Disney Icons.
But why? It might be that he’s the most successful recent Disney property that isn’t from Pixar. But it’s more than that. I realized as I was wandering about the Magic Kingdom, seeing the umpteenth display of Stitch Christmas shirts and dolls and hats.
I think Stitch fills an ecological niche that’s been missing.
Stitch is Tink, only for boys.
Tinkerbell is the sassy, attitudinal rule-breaker of the Disneyverse. She’s cute, sure, in that wild child sort fashion. She learns some lessons the hard way, but she’s unabashedly her own person, very little guilt, lots and lots of fun.
There are some other female characters who touch on that a bit, but most of them learn harder lessons. The only other “extreme” Disney female, though, is Jessica Rabbit, who is more of a character for, um, the guys. She still shows up, usually in conjunction with as sexual a message as Disney dares.
So Tink is it. Want a “bad girl” with a twinkle, a mixture of innocence, mischief, and sass? It’s Tink.
Plus, she’s kind of safe. She’s a fairy, after all. No “bad lessons” there. She’s a force of nature, and you can admire her spunk and independence without fear that some kid will really take her on as a role model.
Which brings us to Stitch.
Well, that’s all Stitch, too. Jackie’s comment, after seeing the original movie, was that Stitch is “evil.” Certainly he’s a force of nature, mischievous, sassy, destructive — and, yet, as an artificial life form, he’s also safe. You can laugh at him, admire his independence (which remains a bit innocent because he never learned better until recently), without fearing that he’s being a bad role model for kids.
Hell, I have a lot of fondness both Stich and Tink, for the same reasons, even if they are probably the characters most diametrically opposed to my own personality.
Stitch has two additional advantages. He’s “fresh” (relative to Tink), and he’s a boy (it is presumed, and he is so labelled). That means that boys, who would never be caught dead with Tinkerbell on their shirt, can have Stitch with no worries about being labelled as, well, a fairy.
He’s even a bit more animalistically aggressive (not just attitudinal) than Tink. Perfect for boys.
There’s nobody else in the Disney canon that fits that. Donald is prissy and egotistical. Peter Pan (Tink’s cinematic buddy) would have been a possibility, but he hasn’t had the exposure of late, and he seems to have fallen out of favor with kids. Simba has his slacker phase, but he eventually becomes his father (a memetic fate worse than death). Who else (villains aside) fits, especially if you avoid the Pixar characters (which, with some minor exceptions, Disney does)? Everyone else is too much of a good guy, too much of a nice guy, too much of a “kiddy” character, and/or too female.
Which leaves us with Tink and Stitch.
Probably this is considered cliched wisdom in some quarters, but I’ve never heard of it. I’m rather proud of the revelation, to be honest.
The day looked cooler than the one before, so I was not happy when Katherine announced that she Had to Wear Her Tank Top. After a great deal of angsty…
The day looked cooler than the one before, so I was not happy when Katherine announced that she Had to Wear Her Tank Top. After a great deal of angsty demonstration, I gave in — since she was putting on a sweatshirt over it, anyway. She spent the rest of the day happily showing everyone that she had a tank top on.
Today was the day for Animal Kingdom and Epcot. Margie was going to have a business dinner, so the plan was that Kitten and I would spend the morning and afternoon at AK, then bus over to Epcot for dinner and fireworks.
That’s not quite how it turned out.
Margie did actually have to work while we were down here — the IHI conference being the excuse for our travels — so early Monday morning she got up, got…
Margie did actually have to work while we were down here — the IHI conference being the excuse for our travels — so early Monday morning she got up, got dressed, and slipped out.
Kitten — and, thus, I — stayed sacked out until 9.
Sunday was Magic Kingdom day. Off we went, after a brief feed of the ducks and breakfast. We parked in Minnie again, row 42 (we’d been in Minnie 43 the…
Sunday was Magic Kingdom day. Off we went, after a brief feed of the ducks and breakfast.
We parked in Minnie again, row 42 (we’d been in Minnie 43 the day before). We decided to take the ferry across to the park, the last time we did that, since it was (a) a lot slower than going by monorail (no matter what they say on the parking tram) and (b) a lot colder.
We had an elaborate schedule of park visitations set up, cross-referencing park traffic figures from various sources. Couldn’t find the print-out, and tossed it out the window. Instead, we headed…
We had an elaborate schedule of park visitations set up, cross-referencing park traffic figures from various sources.
Couldn’t find the print-out, and tossed it out the window. Instead, we headed off for Epcot. And, for reasons that now escape me, we didn’t drive directly to Epcot, but drove to the Transportation Center and took the monorail to Epcot (scoping out the fallen trees in the neighboring forests as we went, courtesy of a trio of hurricanes).
On the flight from Dallas to Orlando, they managed to (barely) shoehorn in a viewing of Thunderbirds. Allow me to say, that’s the best $21 for a DVD I’ve never…
On the flight from Dallas to Orlando, they managed to (barely) shoehorn in a viewing of Thunderbirds. Allow me to say, that’s the best $21 for a DVD I’ve never spent.
While not the abomination that some folk consider it, and bearing in mind (a) it has the Thunderbirds air/space/watercraft in it (boo-yah!), and (b) I enjoyed Howard the Duck, the movie is still … disappointingly lightweight, illogical, and inconsistent in tone.
There are about three B-grade movies (straight action-adventure, rebellious teen coming-of-age, camp goofiness fest) at war here, and none of them survive enough to give the movie the scarred and feeble but all-too-necessary heart it would need. With material like this, you either take it seriously, or you don’t. This tries to have it both ways. You either play it consistent with the original or you simply take inspiration from it. This tries to have it both ways. And you have to decide on your demographic (original fans, kids, adrenaline junkies), and this tries to have it all ways. As a result, it’s muddled, muddled, muddled, and — aside from some sheer coolness moments — unmemorable. Pity, that.
And who the hell had some gambling markers on Ben Kingsley that forced him into a starring role in this? Or was he a fan of the original, and only too late realized what he was involved in?
Glad I saw it, but glad I didn’t buy it. Until it shows up used at $2.47 on Amazon, some time in January.
We wrapped up packing and travel prep a bit after 1:00a Friday morning. Standard kudos to Margie for managing to fit twelve suitcases of stuff into three big bags and…
We wrapped up packing and travel prep a bit after 1:00a Friday morning. Standard kudos to Margie for managing to fit twelve suitcases of stuff into three big bags and a variety of carry-ons. Kudos to me for managing to improvised 4-foot poster tube for Margie’s big presentation (along with a midnight trip to FedExKinkos for the raw materials).
As we climbed into bed, I saw that Margie’s clock was off by an hour. I suggested she might adjust it to the correct time — 1:20 — since she was setting the alarm.
She did so …
I took extensive notes on my Palm for our trip last week to Walt Disney World, and will try to post them all in order as much as I can….
I took extensive notes on my Palm for our trip last week to Walt Disney World, and will try to post them all in order as much as I can. A lot of this will be trivial (more reminders to our family in the future of what we did than anything that would entertain most readers), but there should hopefully be a few bits of interest to general readers.
For easy reference to the whole series:
Day 1 (sidebar)
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5 (sidebar)
Day 6
Day 7 (sidebar)
Day 8
Photos can be found here.
UPDATE: I’ve actually gone and created a Travel – WDW 04 subcategory here that will allow an easy single viewing of all these posts.
My daughter is an adrenaline junkie. Oh, sure, she’ll enjoy the Pirates of the Caribbean — but she’s moving from one part of the boat to another, or grabbing onto…
My daughter is an adrenaline junkie.
Oh, sure, she’ll enjoy the Pirates of the Caribbean — but she’s moving from one part of the boat to another, or grabbing onto a rail to pull herself up and see better.
Given her druthers, however, she wants action. She wants excitement. She wants Tea Cups, or Goofy’s Barnstormer Roller Coaster, or Dumbo Elephants, or something else that gets her going fast, high, around and around, or all three.
Of course, she’s also a control freak — if she inherited the love of novelty and excitement from her mom, she got that from me — so whatever ride we’re on, she wants to see, she wants to be in control, she wants to dictate which color car we’re in, whether we go again, etc. Outside of the rides, she wants to push the stroller, control the stroller, have what she wants when she wants it …
And she remembers. If you mention we’ll go back to the Tea Cups later, then, by jimminy, she’ll ask you about the Tea Cups — probably right when you’re checking the stroller back in at the park exit.
I’d say, in case it wasn’t obvious, that the Tea Cups were the hit of the day. I managed to get her giggles of delight on video tape — though cannot at all recommend riding the Tea Cups with your eye glued to a viewfinder. My stomach didn’t settle again for hours.
So. Adrenaline junkie. And control freak.
I predict an intersting few decades.
