John Williams’ annual concert of film music with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl has been an annual tradition for me as long as I have lived in Southern California.  I’ve been a huge fan of Williams’ music since I was a kid and I love these regular opportunities to hear his music live, particularly with Williams conducting it himself.

Even though I have continued to attend, and thoroughly enjoy, the concerts every year, my last review was of the 2005 concert.  The concerts are great fun, but the content is basically similar from year to year.  The concerts tend to be targeted more towards the fans of Williams’ mainstream blockbusters than at film score enthusiasts, which results in the selections usually being drawn from a somewhat limited subset of Williams’ exceptional repertoire of compositions.

Williams typically includes a section featuring additional material besides his own during his concerts, sometimes including guest performers.  My interest in those parts has varied from year to year.  Generally, I have most enjoyed those segments when they have been very focused on classic film music that clearly influenced or otherwise connected strongly with Williams.  The second half of this year’s concert featured a lengthy tribute to musicals directed by Stanley Donen, with each piece introduced (in person) by Donen himself.  This was easily my favorite "extra" yet from the Williams’ Hollywood Bowl concerts I have attended.

As is traditional at the Hollywood Bowl, the concert opened with The Star-Spangled Banner, which is always great to hear performed by a full orchestra. I honestly kind of feel bad even complaining about it, but it was hurt a bit this time by someone behind me that was singing along very loudly and very off-key.  Obviously, it is perfectly normal and expected to sing along with the national anthem and I even admire the show of patriotism, but it was still a bit hard to be right in front of rather loud, off-key singing like that.

I wasn’t too surprised that the regular program started with three of Williams’ Olympic themes, considering that the concert was just a week after the end of the 2008 Summer Olympics.  First was Bugler’s Dream / Olympic Fanfare and Theme, Williams’ very familiar arrangement of the well-known Leo Arnaud piece that has long been the Olympic theme, which then transitions directly into Williams’ popular theme for the 1984 Summer Olympics.  This was followed by Song for World Peace, which Williams didn’t actually write for the Olympics (it was actually written as a tribute to a friend), but which initially was recorded on the American Journey CD that was released in conjunction with the 2002 Winter Olympics.  Although I have that CD and, I think, have even heard the piece at least once before in concert, it isn’t among Williams’ most familiar works and I doubt I would have recognized it without looking in the concert program.  The segment then concluded with Olympic Spirit, Williams’ composition for the 1988 Summer Olympics.  This last piece was accompanied by a video montage from the 2008 games, shown on the Bowl’s large screens.

The next selection was a suite from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is my favorite of John Williams’ film scores.  Even though I’ve heard his standard concert suite performed live quite a few times before, I always am glad when it is included in the program at one of his concerts.  For this performance, it was accompanied by a somewhat oddly chosen video montage that implied that the primary story arc of the film was the progression from the abduction to the eventual return of Barry, the little boy played in the film by Cary Guffey.  In fact, Williams’ spoken introduction to the piece also pretty much explained it that way.  I think this is a somewhat odd interpretation of the film, although I guess it makes a certain amount of sense as the concert suite most prominently features the abduction music and the finale music from the landing of the mothership.

This was followed by "Flight to Neverland" from Hook, one of Williams’ more rousing and soaring themes.  This isn’t one of his best known scores (I noticed a few people around me searching their programs to identify it), but I’ve noticed that this theme seems to have become one of his favorite concert pieces.  I thought the placement was particularly good here, providing a somewhat more melodic and upbeat interlude after the somewhat darker and very complex Close Encounters music.

The first half of the concert ended with a suite of music from Williams’ newest score, this summer’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  The suite included two of the main themes from the film, "The Adventures of Mutt", which accompanied portions of the big truck chase and sword fight late in the film, and "Irina’s Theme", the primary theme for the film’s villain.  These were then followed by a full performance of the familiar "Raiders March", which is essentially a concert version of the end-title suite from Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Williams opened the segment with a short introduction that talked a little bit about how the themes fit into the film as well as a bit about how they were going to be presented.  Surprisingly, he also gave away one fairly major spoiler from the new film, but it was one that has been discussed enough that I suspect even those in the audience that hadn’t seen the film probably already knew it.

During the first selection the video screens only showed various close-ups of the orchestra, but film clips were used during both "Irina’s Theme" and "Raiders March".  The former has a musical style that somewhat brings to mind the scoring of classic film noir, which was underscored by the use of a montage of images of femme fatales from classic films.  The montage did include quite a few images of Cate Blanchett as Irina as well as a few quick shots of the other major female characters from the Indiana Jones films (I especially thought the inclusion of Kate Capshaw in this montage was a bit of a stretch), but most of the clips really were pretty disconnected from what was playing and the montage seemed pretty unnecessary.  The film clips over the "Raiders March" were all from the first three Indiana Jones films, so they obviously were a much better fit.  I did find it a bit unusual that they didn’t use any clips from the new film in that montage, though.

After the intermission, the orchestra opened the second half with Williams’ arrangement of "Hooray for Hollywood!", which also incorporates bits of "There’s No Business Like Show Business".  I’ve heard this arrangement many times before (I think it was originally done for The Boston Pops) and it made a good introduction for the tribute to MGM musicals that dominated the second half.  It is a very peppy, upbeat arrangement that effectively got the audience into the right mood for what was to come.

Williams then introduced Stanley Donen, the famed director/choreographer of numerous musicals for MGM during the 1950s and 1960s.  The orchestra provided live accompaniment to a series of dance numbers from Donen’s films (with the video portion shown on the Bowl’s giant screens), each introduced in a semi-interview by Donen and Williams.  At age 84, Donen is still very spry and sharp and proved himself a charming and amusing storyteller.  Right at the beginning, Williams noted that his own early career had included playing piano on the scores to some of Donen’s films and the two definitely had the rapport that suggested a long-time association.  This led to Williams showing very genuine admiration for Donen, but without ever coming off as fawning or awe-struck. 

The first featured number was "You’re All the World To Me" from Royal Wedding, which accompanies Fred Estaire’s famous gravity-defying dance on the walls and ceiling of the room.  Donen wisely introduced the number by simply describing it and how it fit into the film, holding off on the explanation of how it was filmed (a statically-mounted camera in a room that was inside a giant wheel) for after the audience had already seen the sequence.  It was particularly interesting hearing the explanation for how this was accomplished with 1950s technology, with Donen noting that one of the biggest challenges being that there were no remote-operated cameras in that time, meaning that they had to figure out how to strap down a camera operator in such a way that he could still run the camera and not get overly sick.  A short computer simulation video was used to demonstrate the technique used for the filming, although Donen seemed a bit irritated that they showed it before he was ready for them to do so.

The next number was "Bless Your Beautiful Hide", which accompanies the elaborate barnyard dance sequence from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  This is the only one of the featured numbers that featured more than one or two dancers, basically showcasing choreography of a larger scope than the other featured numbers.  Donen’s introduction to this sequence talked a bit about the decision to use dance to illustrate the country brothers’ challenge against the townsmen for the girls’ affections.  He mentioned that it was a tough sell to convince the producers that dance could be a very athletic and manly activity.  He was pretty blunt as he explained that the producers had told him outright that they feared audiences would assume the brothers were gay.  The basic implication was that Donen saw this as a pretty key film in its role of changing some of the public viewpoint towards dance.

This number, in particular, really emphasized both the skills of the orchestra and Williams’ skill as a conductor as they were able to make the synchronization of live music to filmed dance appear almost effortless.  Even Donen made a point of specifically calling attention to the sheer difficulty of what was being accomplished.  I’ve seen orchestras play film scores live to scenes before, but it is hard to even imagine the precise amount of timing needed to synchronize to dance and still have it work.  Williams commented that he had to watch the scenes pretty much frame-by-frame in order to work plan out the performances.

The next three numbers all came from Donen’s fairly extensive collaboration with Gene Kelly.  The first, and probably least well-known, was "I Like Myself" from It’s Always Fair Weather.  This dance number is especially notable because Kelly performs it entirely on roller skates.  Donen explained that Kelly was already an accomplished skater and that Donen had been searching for an excuse to let him use that skill in a film.  He finally decided that it would work ok here since they could basically suggest that Kelly’s character was in such a happy mood that he just forgot that he was wearing the skates.  Donen admitted that was a stretch, but it was a fun sequence.

Next was "The Worry Song" from Anchors Away, the well-known dance sequence featuring Kelly and Jerry the mouse from the Tom & Jerry cartoons.  Donen’s introduction for this one was a story I had heard before, but it was still fun to hear him tell it.  He talked about how the original idea was for the cartoon character to be Mickey Mouse instead of Jerry.  Louis Mayer was able to arrange a meeting with Donen and Walt Disney, but the answer ultimately was that Mickey doesn’t appear in movies for MGM.  One other interesting tidbit from the intro was that Donen himself danced Jerry’s part as the live-action model for the animators to use.  He said that the sequence ultimately took about a year to complete, which was something of a point of contention with MGM as the executives were not too happy to be sitting on an otherwise completed film that they couldn’t release.

The last number of Donen tribute was the title song from Singin’ In the Rain, almost certainly the most famous sequence that he ever directed.  In his introduction, Donen said that he very frequently is asked what town the sequence was shot in and always has to explain that it was actually filmed on the backlot at MGM Studios (which is now Sony Studios) in Culver City.  The sequence was shot during daylight hours (cheaper to light that way) during a typically dry and warm August.  One complication was that they would typically lose water pressure for the rain-generating machinery by early-afternoon as local residents started watering their lawns.  Donen also talked about the overall complexity of the sequence, including the fact that they had to even carefully measure the depth and positioning of every pothole in order to ensure that every splash was just right.  He did give me some new appreciation for an already very familiar scene.

After the performance of Singin’ In the Rain, Donen left the stage, but quickly returned for a curtain call after the enthusiastic ovation from the audience.  At that point, Williams then stated that he had received a call from Warren Beatty telling him that it would be wrong to have Donen there without asking him to dance.  That was a sufficiently odd bit of name dropping that I can’t help but assume it was true.  The orchestra then played a bit more of the tune to Singin’ In the Rain as Donen danced a few steps.  It wasn’t an awful lot, but it was a pretty impressive performance for someone Donen’s age and the audience certainly got a huge kick out of it.  After that, Donen left the stage again and that part of the program was over.

Williams has long had an obvious affection for solo violin in his music (at least dating back to his work on the film version of Fiddler on the Roof) and, in recent years, his concerts have pretty consistently included at least one piece intended to showcase that instrument.  This year’s concert included a performance of the violin arrangement of Williams’ theme for the remake of Sabrina, with concertmaster Bing Wang expertly playing the solo.  For the film, this piece was actually written to feature a solo piano instead of a violin, but Williams had created this arrangement for the "Cinematic Serenade" CD that he did with Itzhak Perlman a few years back.  It was nice hearing this somewhat less-common arrangement of a piece that isn’t heard all that often anyway.  A little bit of added poignancy came from the recent death of Sabrina director Sydney Pollack, which Williams alluded to but wisely didn’t dwell on in his introduction.

The main program ended with a tribute to the films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, with the orchestra accompanying a film that Williams indicated had been created for a recent tribute event (I don’t recall what organization).  This medley included the most familiar themes from Jaws, Star Wars, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.  In his introduction, Williams noted that the film clips (and music) for Raiders would be at least partially a repeat of the performance that closed the first half of the concert, but he felt the audience would still enjoy the tribute.  Since these are probably his most popular works, the sequence was certainly a crowd pleaser.

I may seem like a bit of a party-pooper here, but I did have one big complaint about this segment.  As has now become commonplace during these concerts, a sizeable number of people in the audience started waving around toy lightsabers during the Star Wars portion of this medley.  I know that is something of a crowd pleaser, but I think it ends up being a serious distraction from the music and I’d, quite honestly, be really happy if the Hollywood Bowl would start banning them at the concert.  Basically, when they start up, so many people start focusing on them that it causes a lot of stirring and chatter.  At one point, I was even blinded for a bit when someone across the aisle took a flash photo.  I realize that there are a fair percentage of people at these concerts that are there because they are Star Wars fans, but I would really like to get back to where the fan-behavior takes a backseat to the music.

The Lucas/Spielberg tribute was the last of several segments of the concert that included film clips on the video screens.  This has become a pretty common element to the concerts since the screens were added during the refurbishment of the Bowl a couple years ago, but it is something that I have mixed feelings about.  Unquestionably, the screens were essential to the wonderful Stanley Donen sequence and I also felt that the Olympic clips used during "Olympic Spirit" were very welcome.  I also definitely appreciated the screens during Williams introductions and the interview segments with Donen as well as various solo performances.  Before the screens were there, use of binoculars was usually necessary to see those types of things effectively and the screens work much better.

I’m less enthusiastic about the use of film clips during the various movie score performances.  While film scores are obviously originally written to go along with the film’s visuals, these are typically concert suites and the clips shown on the screen aren’t generally the exact ones that were intended to be synchronized to the music that is playing.  I suppose that the use of clips might make the performances a bit more accessible to the casual fans, but as someone that is used to listening to film scores separate from the films, I find the clips to sometimes be a bit of a distraction.  As a specific example, I particularly enjoy listening to the music from Close Encounters in concert as the music can provide a particularly emotional experience for me when I am fully focused on the performance with minimal distractions.  I found that to be lessened quite a bit due to the film clips, which are extremely difficult to ignore and take some of the attention away from the music. 

Williams usually includes a few encores after the end of the announced program.  The specific encores have generally gotten a bit predictable, but were less so this year since the usual ones (E.T., Raiders, and Star Wars) had already been performed as part of the main program.  He still didn’t have a hard time coming up with familiar pieces from well-known scores for this year’s encores, though. 

The first was "The Imperial March" from The Empire Strikes Back, which is probably the 2nd most recognizable Star Wars theme after the Main Title music.  The second encore was an extended arrangement of "Marion’s Theme" from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  In his introduction, Williams indicated that the arrangement used was done for Crystal Skull, although it still seemed to be pretty clearly a concert arrangement and this version wasn’t on the soundtrack CD either.  While portions of the theme had been heard as part of the earlier "Raiders March" performances, it was still fun to hear this extended version.  Finally, the concert ended with a performance of the very familiar march from Superman: The Movie.

While I always leave these concerts with a bit of a wish that Williams would dip a bit deeper into his rich history of film scores, I still do thoroughly enjoy hearing the familiar works and the Stanley Donen appearance and tribute was an absolute treat.  This was one of the best of the many John Williams concerts I have attended.

For the most part, I have generally avoided writing posts that were too focused on technology for this blog.  I have a pretty good idea who my main readers are (most are friends or family) and I have a hunch that the interest level wouldn’t be overly high on most technology-related topics.  At the same time, it certainly is an interest and I often come across bits of technology news or various tech-related tips or experiences that I’d like to relate.  For this reason, I have maintained a second blog for quite a while for more technical posts.

When I first started that blog, it was very narrowly focused on Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs).  I bought one of the earliest models released in that category and thought I’d have a lot to say as a bit of a pioneer in that area.  Eventually, I kind of started to run dry on things to post on that topic and expanded the subject to include all kinds of mobile technology.  Even that was a pretty limiting topic, though, and I eventually kind of abandoned that site as well.

I have now converted the blog into the generalized Bigbeaks Technology Blog.  My plan is to make it more of a traditional weblog with shorter, more frequent posts, frequently highlighting interesting news items or articles that I encounter.  I will also periodically post my personal discoveries or tips regarding technology and I’m sure I will also sometimes write reviews or longer essays as subjects come along that strike my interest.

Occasionally, I’m sure that there will be topics that are technology related (or at least tangentially so), but which still seem to be general interest enough for this blog as well.  In those cases, I probably will post on whichever blog seems to be the best fit and then put up a post on the other one linking back.  I suppose there may be rare occasions where I could choose to just cross-post to both as well.

The new movie, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is an animated feature that serves as essentially the premiere episode of an upcoming series of the same name that will be airing starting this fall on Cartoon Network.  The idea behind the series is to fill in the details of the titular war, which was initially referenced in passing during the original Star Wars way back in 1977.  The war became a key story element in the much more recent prequel movies, but most of the actual war mainly took place off-screen between the events of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

Like a large portion of my generation, I basically grew up with Star Wars, seeing the original film during its first run (although I didn’t really take to it until a second viewing during the reissue 2 years later).  The release of The Empire Strikes Back and especially Return of the Jedi were then huge events during my childhood.  Collecting toys and other memorabilia related to the series was a big thing, with my sister and I even maintaining our "Star Wars wall" in the basement, which was covered in news clippings and other paper goods related to the movies.  Growing up, I suspect I would have found it impossible to imagine not going to see a new Star Wars film opening weekend, much less deciding to forgo seeing it at all in the theater.

When I first heard that George Lucas was planning on returning to the Star Wars universe via television projects (both this upcoming animated series as well as a planned live action series that would bridge the gap between the two trilogies), my reaction was cautious interest and an expectation that I would probably at least check them out.  The news earlier this year that the animated series would be kicked off with a feature film also left me with the impression that I would probably end up going to see it, even despite the fact that my movie-going has been curtailed quite a bit since the birth of my son.

My enthusiasm quickly started to wane once the first visuals from the movie and series started to come out and then pretty much dropped like a stone once I saw the trailers.  Quite simply, I immensely dislike the visual style that is used for the animation.  For some reason, they seem to have gone for something vaguely resembling the Japanese-style of animation, which I’ve never really cared for all that much and which seems hugely wrong for Star Wars.  I think one of the things that has always been appealing about the movies was that, despite the otherworldly setting, the whole Star Wars universe had a basically realistic look to it.  Even at its most alien, the setting always seemed like it was in places that could really exist.  I didn’t get that feeling at all from the look of this animation, though, which instead seems exotic and excessively stylized.

Of course, I admit that this is kind of judging the book by its cover and that it is completely possible that the visual style is something that I could adjust to.  That brings me to the second problem, which is that I generally have a hard time mustering much enthusiasm for this particular aspect of the Star Wars extended storyline.  I’m not one of those that especially disliked the prequel trilogy, but I also wasn’t particularly excited by them either.  I enjoyed all three films (especially Revenge of the Sith), but have not had much interest in revisiting them.  I have seen each of the films of the original trilogy more times than all of my viewing of the prequel films combined.  I haven’t really taken any interest at all in the related merchandise (other than the soundtrack CDs) or the various novels set during that part of the story.  While the films were fun, I just don’t find the characterizations or situations all that compelling.

Related to my preference for the parts of the story surrounding the original trilogy, I will say that I haven’t completely lost interest in all things Star Wars.  While I have little interest in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I am somewhat interested in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game, which is set during the time between the two trilogies.  Similarly, I am at least somewhat interested in the announced live-action TV series that will also take place during that same time period.  On a somewhat broader subject, I do look forward to the time in the next couple years when my son will be old enough to introduce him to the films, although I’m definitely more excited to share the original trilogy with him than the prequels.  I do know with some certainty that I’m going to encourage him strongly to watch the movies in the order they were released.

I’m really pretty torn when it comes to my overall feelings about Star Wars at this time.  While I still have a definite affection for it and certainly still admire the creativity and overall breadth of George Lucas’ creation, I also can’t help but feel like something that I once found extremely special has been diluted by an excess of mediocre product.  On the other hand, I also can’t help but recognize that it might be just as much a reflection of my own aging and changing tastes and priorities too.  I was 13-years-old when Return of the Jedi was released and I’m sure my impressions of all the films are inevitably colored by my stage in life when I saw them.  Had I been an adult when the original trilogy came out, I’m sure my views on those films would have been somewhat different as well.

Even taking into consideration that my views on the films are filtered through childhood nostalgia, I do still think the films of the original trilogy were simply better movies.  The original Star Wars (I’ve never been able to bring myself to call it A New Hope…) had some pretty bad acting and goofy dialog, but it also had a very tight, self-contained story and the big advantage of being an introduction to something truly new and exciting.  With The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, George Lucas wisely brought in much more skilled screenwriters (Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan) to flesh out his stories and also handed the projects off to more technically-skilled directors.  I really think Lucas is much more effective when he takes a role of creative oversight while letting others handle the details.

Critics of the recent Star Wars projects often bring up the idea that George Lucas should be working on telling other stories, including possibly the "small films" that he has sometimes talked about wanting to do.  I admit that I’m now finding that I am wondering if Star Wars might be the one and only great creative concept that Lucas really has.  Sure, he has done a few other projects that have had some success.  The Indiana Jones films are the most obvious, although I do tend to think that a lot more of the credit for the success of that series really should likely go to Steven Spielberg than to Lucas.  American Graffiti, which was Lucas’ one big hit prior to Star Wars is his one other pretty much unquestionable personal success, but it was a very early work that is also pretty clearly autobiographical in nature.  I’m not really sure how likely he is to have another story of that kind in him, particularly at this late stage of his career.

Regardless of what Lucas does going forward, I do think his place in film history is pretty secure.  Weaknesses aside, the Star Wars saga is a pretty remarkable accomplishment that really has been tremendously influential and is also likely to ultimately survive the test of time, at least to some extent.  His companies have also been responsible for a great deal of innovation in film, including significant advances in special effects, sound, digital editing, computer graphics (a lot of people don’t realize that Pixar was originally a division of Lucasfilm), and digital photography.  Even as I think he may be overextending Star Wars itself, I can’t see anything he does ever erasing or even substantially diminishing those accomplishments.

As a concluding note, I suppose my commentary in this post has been kind of all over the place, but it really is a reflection of very conflicted feelings.  The original motivation to post this was really the fact that I wanted to want to see the new film, but I just don’t.  In many ways, Star Wars has been an important cultural component of a large portion of my life.  I can’t help looking at my fading interest with a bit of wistful sadness.

Most people will likely remember that an unusually large number of strong hurricanes hit the southwestern USA, including Florida, during the Summer and early Fall of 2005.  This, of course, included Hurricane Katrina, which so severely devastated New Orleans and other communities in that part of the country.  Orlando was in the direct path of a few of these hurricanes and at least suffered some severe weather from most of them.  Having family in the Orlando area, we had followed these events very closely, but we generally weren’t giving too much thought to any potential impact on our late-October vacation plans, since major hurricanes that late in the season were previously exceptionally unusual.

It did start to grow into a concern during the last week or so prior to our trip as Tropical Storm Wilma formed and eventually was upgraded into a very strong hurricane.  It pretty quickly became apparent that Florida was within its most likely path.  Out travel plans had us arriving in Orlando on the evening of Saturday, October 22. Initially, Wilma looked pretty likely to pass through before our trip, but the storm slowed down somewhat and it ended up making landfall on the southern part of Florida very early in the morning of Monday, October 24.

As the timing of the hurricane became more obvious, we did give some consideration about whether to change our travel plans. While we had heard that Disney and the airlines were generally being pretty generous about waving penalties for late changes to reservations due to the hurricanes, we had also heard numerous reports (including first-hand accounts from family) on how WDW had generally fared well during the previous storms of the season.  The combination of my work schedule and the typically long lead time needed for most WDW reservations led us to realize that our only likely alternatives to going as planned would be to either cut the trip short by a couple days or cancel it altogether.  We ended up deciding to take our chances.

I admit that we did come awfully close to canceling on Friday, though, as our son (just under 2-years-old at the time) woke up that morning with a bad case of pink eye.  We did get him in to see his doctor that day, who very helpfully prescribed a liquid antibiotic that required refrigeration, not exactly the best thing when we had a full day of air travel coming up the next day.  That problem was solved by a quick trip to the store to buy a soft-side cooler and some Blue Ice, but it still was yet another concern.  Late that afternoon when my wife started complaining of a sore throat (typically the first sign of a cold for her), I couldn’t help but wonder if we were seriously tempting fate by planning to continue the trip.  Fortunately, neither of their ailments actually turned out to be overly long-lasting or severe (they were both pretty much fine by Sunday), but we didn’t know that at the time and I admit to being something of a nervous wreck by Friday evening.

The flight from Los Angeles to Orlando on Saturday ended up being pretty non-eventful, fortunately.  We were a bit worried about whether the bad weather would start to hit Florida early enough to have any impact on our flight, but fortunately it pretty much held off until Sunday evening.  This was our first trip using our Disney Vacation Club (DVC) points and we checked into our 1-bedroom villa at the Wilderness Lodge around 7pm or so Florida time.  We had a nice dinner with my Orlando-area family at one of the hotel restaurants (Whispering Canyon) that evening, but otherwise turned in fairly early after being exhausted from the travel day and the loss of sleep due to being so nervous about the trip the night before.

For our trips to Walt Disney World, we tend to do quite a bit of pre-planning as to where we are going to be on any given day.  This is mainly to accommodate the need for reservations at table-service restaurants, but we also find it helpful for general time budgeting.  On Sunday, our plans called for us to spend the day at Disney/MGM Studios (now known as Disney’s Hollywood Studios) with lunch reservations at one of the park’s sit-down restaurants (Sci-Fi Dine-In, I think).  Since the weather was clear in the morning and the storm wasn’t really expected to hit until late in the day, we went forward with that plan, meeting up with my family at the park not too long before our lunch reservations.

The weather that day really did feel like pretty much the definition of the cliched “calm before the storm”.  For most of the day, it was extremely hot and humid, with air that felt almost eerily still.   While the park wasn’t deserted that day, it wasn’t overly crowded either and everyone there did seem pretty wary of the situation and pretty focused on the weather.  Around 6pm, the weather started taking a definite turn for the worse.  In a fairly short time, it shifted from a pretty major stillness to a noticeable (but still not very strong) wind.  The dark cloud patterns in the sky did have a look about them that definitely seemed to suggest that something was coming.  The humidity was continuing to increase such that it definitely felt like rain would be arriving fairly soon.  This started around the time that we were headed over to ride “The Great Movie Ride” and we ended up stopping at a gift shop first to purchase several rain ponchos, one of which we used to cover up our stroller before parking (we also parked under as much cover as we could manage).  It wasn’t raining when we got off the ride, but we still wanted to be safe instead of sorry.

One of the main reasons why we had chosen Disney/MGM Studios for that first day was that the park was scheduled to stay open later for hotel guests as part of the “Extra Magic Hours” program.  We initially held on to the idea of sticking around  later and started looking around for somewhere to get dinner.  We found that there wasn’t really all that much opened, though, despite the fact that it was the typical dinner hour.  I was never really sure if that was fairly normal for that park or if they were starting to close things down early for the weather, although I had a hunch it was fairly normal.  For one thing, they were still distributing the Extra Magic Hours wristbands (required to stay in the park) and also were still indicating that the night-time “Fantasmic!” shows were still expected to run.  Even under the best conditions, we aren’t that fond of the counter-service options at that park and finally decided that maybe it would be wise to get back to our hotel before the weather got worse anyway.  Therefore, we decided to leave the park around 7:30pm to head back to the Wilderness Lodge for dinner at Roaring Fork, the hotel’s fast food place.  It actually started pouring rain while we were on the bus back to the hotel.

After a fairly quick dinner with my parents at Roaring Fork, they headed out so that they could get home before the storm really hit.  Our original plans for Monday were to spend the early part of the day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and then head over to the Magic Kingdom for dinner at Tony’s Town Square Cafe and to see the nighttime parade and fireworks.  We were pretty uncertain about how long it would take for the storm to move through and when/if the parks would re-open, though, so we left open any plans for meeting up the next day, instead planning to connect via phone/email in the morning.  We then stopped at the hotel shop to stock up on some pre-packaged food (at seriously inflated prices…) from the hotel shop, just to be safe.   The DVC villa had a full kitchen, so that eating a meal or two in our room on Monday was an easy option if needed.  We actually didn’t end up using the food we purchased and, instead, gave it to my parents before we left town, but at least we had it if we needed it.

We then headed back to our room to ride out the storm.  By this time, it was fairly late in the evening (around 9pm) so our first order of business was getting our son off to bed after the fairly long day.  The separate bedroom in the DVC villa was particularly nice in this case as it allowed us to put our son to bed in the living room, but still watch storm coverage on the bedroom TV without disturbing him.  He is a really sound sleeper and never seemed bothered at all by the storm, even as the wind really picked up and the thunder and lightening became more intense.  My wife and I did end up staying up pretty late, monitoring the situation.  In addition to watching the news coverage on the TV, we also had our laptop computer with us, which allowed us to get information via the Internet.  I also periodically posted “on the scene” reports to a couple of Disney-related discussion boards.  My posts from that night to the MousePad discussion boards on Mouseplanet.com can be found in this thread (my handle there is “JeffG”).

The DVC villa was really a rather nice place to wait out this kind of storm.  Despite the intense weather outside, the room remained warm and comfortable.  We never had any power outage (at least that we knew of), which certainly helped in this respect as well.  The villa (like all the 1-bedroom DVC villas) had a big whirlpool bathtub that also provided some very welcome relaxation during the rather tension-generating situation.  If I remember right, exhaustion did finally overwhelm the tension around 1am or so and we finally went to sleep.  It was still very windy and rainy when we woke up around 10am or so on Monday morning, but it ended up being a generally fast moving storm and finally cleared the area by around noon or so.  That morning, we mostly hung around the room using the laptop or watching Disney movies that they were showing on the in-room TV system.

Orlando was largely on the northern edge of the storm’s path, and it had also weakened some before it got that far in-land, so damage was very minimal.   We saw some downed foliage and a few knocked over signs here and there, but nothing serious.  The parks and all the other entertainment areas remained closed until around 1pm, when they finally opened The Magic Kingdom and Epcot.  Animal Kingdom and Disney/MGM Studios remained closed the entire day and I believe many of the other secondary areas (such as water parks and golf courses) also remained closed, although I don’t remember for certain.  Officially, I believe the parks were supposed to be only opened to hotel guests, but I don’t think they really enforced that.  I think that was more of an announced policy intended to discourage people from driving over to the area unnecessarily.

Once the storm had passed, we ventured over to  Roaring Fork for lunch before heading to the Magic Kingdom around 3pm or so. The park was the most uncrowded that I’ve ever seen for any WDW park.  My parents did drive in to meet us at the park and were particularly marveling at the empty parking lot and Ticket and Transportation Center.  He couldn’t resist taking the below picture of the usually very busy road and pedestrian walkway completely deserted.

Every attraction was pretty much a walk-on  that day.  We could have probably used the opportunity to hit all the major headliner rides over and over with little to no wait, but we were instead largely pacing our day around our son’s interests.  That meant that we mostly focused on the Fantasyland rides and on other kid-friendly attractions like the Tomorrowland Speedway and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (Peoplemover).  He seemed to really have a lot of fun visiting the Magic Kingdom rides with little to no wait.

We did make it to our reservation at Tony’s for dinner that evening, although it was slow enough that we probably could have gotten in to any of the table-service restaurants as walk-ups without much of a wait.  Even better, that evening we were able to walk right up and find uncrowded spots in the hub for both “Spectromagic” (the parade) and “Wishes” (the fireworks show) pretty much right before their scheduled start-times.  For the fireworks, it felt especially strange standing in pretty much the most in-demand viewing location with only a few other people around us.  That was definitely a rare experience.

The rest of the week, the parks continued to be fairly uncrowded, although more crowded than on Monday.  A visit to the Universal Orlando parks later that week found those parks to be especially empty, although I understand that is actually fairly common there that time of year.  The weather also remained very nice for the rest of the week and, in fact, the hurricane largely seemed to have an effect of blowing away a lot of the heat and humidity.  As is typical after any big event like that, there was a bit of a “shared experience” atmosphere and we found ourselves pretty regularly drawn into chats with other guests about the hurricane experiences.  One thing we noted was that quite a few people at the parks later in the week were actually from South Florida, having headed up for impromptu Orlando visits while hurricane damage was being repaired back home.

Overall, I wouldn’t really say that our experience vacationing during a hurricane was anywhere near the negative one that we thought it might be.  I can even say that the hurricane ended up having certain advantages for us when it came to crowd sizes and weather once the storm had passed.  I do think we were fortunate that the storm was fast moving and didn’t hit Orlando as directly as some of the others have.  There was definitely the potential that the storm could have resulted in a much more significant disruption to our vacation.   We did learn that Walt Disney World seemed to be extremely well-equipped to handle this kind of storm, though, so I also would probably not be too quick to cancel a trip on the threat of a hurricane.

During this visit, we let our son largely set the pace and do a lot of the choosing when it came to the rides and shows that we visited, but we also gave him a lot of encouragement to work some new experiences into the visit as well. He visited his favorite attractions (King Arthur’s and King Triton’s Carousels, Mad Tea Party, Tuck and Roll Drive ‘em Buggies, Goofy’s Playhouse, Playhouse Disney Live, Enchanted Tiki Room) while also talking him into visiting several that weren’t on his previous "approved" list (such as MuppetVision 3D, the Aladdin stage show, Toy Story Midway Mania, and the Mark Twain Riverboat). We still didn’t do any of the major thrill rides, even though he is now tall enough for many, but he definitely is making progress.

One thing to note is that we did almost entirely stick to visiting attractions that our whole family could do together. I really was the only one in our party that could have done most of the major thrill rides, since our son isn’t really up to them yet and everyone else in our group has restrictions due to medical conditions. I’m certain I could have gone off to do some of the coasters had I wanted to, but I really was far more interested in family time. I do look forward to the time when my son is ready to do some of those bigger rides with me, but I’m also in no rush about it. The experience of seeing the attractions with my child is so rewarding that I don’t miss the thrill rides.

In the rest of this post, I’m going to write up specific notes on a few key attractions. Our visits to the Disneyland Resort have become less frequent than they used to be and these trips ended up being the first opportunity to see a few new attractions and shows. I’ll also include a few notes about some of the other attractions and shows that included some memorable element.

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage

The re-themed and re-opened version of Disneyland’s classic Submarine Voyage was the major new attraction for summer of 2007. Due to the extremely long lines (often over 2 hours or more) combined with our son’s skittishness, we hadn’t yet visited it before this trip. We were pretty determined to finally see the ride on this visit, with my father (who is a major Disney-enthusiast) being particularly excited to have the opportunity to ride the subs again.

During our first full day at the parks (Monday 6/23) the ride was having a lot of technical difficulties, resulting in it being closed for much of the day. I’m not really sure if it ever actually opened that day as it was listed as "temporarily closed’ every time we checked in. We did leave the resort for dinner at Knott’s that evening, though, so it may very well have opened later in the day. Seeing it closed so much on Monday did make us (my father in particular) pretty nervous about whether or not we would actually get an opportunity to ride it. On Tuesday, though, the ride was opened and we found that it had a posted wait time of around an hour shortly after we had finished our lunch at the Blue Bayou.

One really nice feature of the ride is that they offer a special, alternative experience for disabled guests who are unable to board the submarines. Off to the side of the dock where guests board the regular ride, there is a building containing a small theater (it seats about 30 guests) where they show a high-definition video presentation of the full ride experience. My mother suffers from severe arthritis in her legs (she has to use a motorized scooter much of the time) and couldn’t possibly have managed the narrow ladder to get onto the ride. My wife has a back condition and also had doubts about whether or not she could board, thus she decided to join my mother and attend the alternate version. They took our son along as well, since we were pretty doubtful that he would be willing to board the rather claustrophobic submarine.

Guests using the alternate experience enter through an entrance near the monorail entrance. With the fairly high-capacity and fairly low-demand for it, they found that they only had to wait for the next available showing. After helping them to get situated in the line for the alternate experience and arranging where to meet later, my father and I were prepared to head around to get into the hour-long queue for the regular ride. Much to our surprise, the ride attendants instead escorted us to a nearby waiting area and told us that we would be put onto the next submarine. That means that we boarded the regular ride about the same time that the others entered the theater, thus minimizing the amount of time our family was separated.

Having read plenty of threads regarding disabled policies at the parks on various discussion boards, I admit that I hesitated a bit to even post about our experience, considering the fact that it essentially meant we were able to reduce a 60 minute wait down to around 10. I want to state clearly that we did not ask for that accommodation and were fully prepared to wait in the line. We did really appreciate it, though, as that essentially gave us back about an hour of family together time in the park that we hadn’t expected to have. Certainly the various health issues do have an impact on the amount that we were able to do in any given day and I have to say that I think Disney’s decision to help out a bit in this way is a good one.

The ride itself is a lot of fun and I really think they have done an excellent job with it. It definitely is a very different experience from the old Submarine Voyage (there is a great nod to the original ride at the end), but I do think the more fantasy-oriented approach works well, although I kind of wish they had found a way to shift the ride entrance over to the Fantasyland side instead of keeping it in Tomorrowland. The various projection techniques are reminiscent of the Finding Nemo ride-through that was added to The Living Seas in Epcot a couple years ago, although the scope of the Disneyland ride is much larger.

The vehicles do continue to be a bit of a hindrance to the experience. Besides the slow-loading nature (which results in the ultra long lines), they have also made the seating a bit more cramped than it used to be, probably in an attempt to up the capacity a bit. I don’t know if it is a result of the projection effects requiring a more precise viewing angle or if I’ve just gotten older since the old ride closed, but I also found that I had to lean forward a lot more than I remembered from the old ride, leaving me with a bit of a sore back at the end. For this reason, I actually think my wife would have a really hard time with the ride and probably should stick with the theater version. I’m at least glad that the alternate experience is available in order to provide something for the guests that can’t ride the subs themselves.

Toy Story Midway Mania

We didn’t wait as long to ride the big new ride for this summer. We have now been on Toy Story Midway Mania at California Adventure three times, once during the 4-day stay, once on the morning of July 5, and then one more time this past weekend before joining some friends for dinner at Downtown Disney. The ride has very quickly become a family favorite. The wait times were all in the 45-60 minute range and the line moves pretty continuously, so we have found it to be a pretty easy wait.

Considering our son’s typical reactions recently, we really didn’t have particularly high expectations that we would be able to get him to go on this one. When we went on the ride for the first time, we decided to all get in line and see if we could arrange a parent swap at the front of the line if he didn’t go on it. We figured that, worst case, one of us would sit the ride out and then get back in line while others babysat.

While he was pretty fussy and quick to give his "I don’t want to ride" arguments when we got into the queue, he did finally end up deciding to ride. I think the nearly an hour wait worked quite a bit to our advantage as it gave us some time to talk with him and try to reassure him. We talked quite a bit about how the ride was based on Toy Story (he hadn’t seen the movies at that time, but he knew the characters) and also spent a fair amount of time emphasizing the other kids in the line, including ones younger than him. It also helped that my father had already ridden the Walt Disney World version and was able to help describe parts of it.

It also turned out to be helpful that we had already taken him to see MuppetVision 3D, so there was an immediate sense of familiarity when we got to the part of the queue where the 3D glasses were distributed. The final deciding factor came, though, from a bit of cleverly-themed phrasing in the safety spiel that was heard in the last part of the queue right before boarding. In that spiel, they referred to the ride vehicle as a"game tram". When we heard that, we immediately emphasized with our son how he regularly rode on the parking lot trams without being afraid. He accepted that and even now sometimes calls the ride the "indoor trams".

One part that was really funny was that, even though we had been emphasizing the theme of the ride throughout the wait, as soon as the ride started and we went past the first pictures of Woody and Buzz he exclaimed "Oooh! It’s a Toy Story ride!" The first time through, he did tend to grip the lapbar pretty tightly the whole time (the ride does have some fast turns) and did seem a bit nervous even though he was obviously having fun. He didn’t really try to actually work the interactive element of the ride during the first two times and I basically scored all the points that he got (on the second ride, I typically switched to using his gun when they started the count-down to the end of a game). By the third time, he was taking more interest in the controls and actually scored most of his points for himself. He took a pretty strong interest in his score and often brought up how many points he got even quite a while after riding. It is a shame that they didn’t use the "email-a-photo" technology that is on Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters, but it did occur to me on the 2nd and 3rd rides to use my cell phone camera to snap a photo of our scores.

There have already been a lot of articles written about the ride itself, so I won’t go into much details there. I really think that the mix of the 3D ride-through technology with the interactive "shooting gallery" concept works extremely well. Unlike previous interactive rides, the cause and effect is very clear and obvious. As for the 3D, I was impressed by the technology involved with the Spider-man ride at Islands of Adventure in Florida, but felt that the ride itself was kind of lacking in storytelling and particularly heart. I am pleased to now see Disney using similar technology and applying their superior storytelling skills.

One of the highlights of the ride is actually outside in the queue area. They have an animatronic figure of Mr. Potato Head that serves as an old-fashioned midway barker, giving various speeches intended to attract riders. It does use the voice of Don Rickles (who voiced the character in the movies), but is programmed with a very wide variety of phrases. An operator is stationed somewhere within site of the queue, which allows phrase selection that simulates a limited amount of interaction with the crowd (i.e. referencing the color of someone’s outfit or acknowledging when a joke gets no reaction from the crowd). It is a lot of fun to watch. During our first visit to the ride, our son was so focused on his indecision about the ride itself, that he didn’t really notice the animatronic. By our second visit, it definitely did catch his attention and he was watching it with a big grin on his face. Of course, he then spent the rest of the queue periodically asking us "why was there a talking potato?"

My only real complaint about the ride is that, even as good as it is, it really does seem a tad redundant. From the very first time that I started to hear details about what this ride was going to be, I found myself really wondering about whether adding a Toy Story based interactive dark ride really was the best idea they could come up with, considering that they already had Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters in Disneyland (as well as similar rides at some of the other Magic Kingdom parks). Both are really good rides and, in each case, the theme really does work very well with the concept. Still, I can’t help but think that this suggests that the vision of the current Imagineers is a a bit more narrow than it should be.

Innoventions Dream House

Pretty much since it opened, I have always felt like Innoventions was perhaps the biggest missed opportunity in the park.  The basic idea of a large exhibit in Tomorrowland that is used as a showplace for new or future technologies is a solid one.  It fits the land’s theme well (in fact, better than some of the other attractions there) and could certainly provide fun and interesting experiences for guests. Unfortunately, the attraction has pretty consistently fallen down badly in execution.  With a few exceptions (must notably, Honda’s Asimo robot demonstration), the sponsors have generally used Innoventions for exceptionally mundane presentations.  The result has been an attraction that should be pretty well suited to frequent visits has instead been one that we avoid.

Recently, Microsoft joined existing sponsor HP to fully re-work the lower level of Innoventions into a new high-tech house of the future exhibit, both an enhancement to the existing Innoventions complex as well as a bit of a throw-back to the House of the Future exhibit that was part of the original Tomorrowland when the park first opened.  This takes up the entire first floor of the complex and is a pretty highly-themed exhibit representing the interior of a house equipped with lots of high-tech equipment, although mostly current or soon to be available items from HP and Microsoft.

The Dream House exhibit had just been showed to the press the week before our visit and was expected to be opened that week.  We stopped by on Monday of the 4-day visit, but found that the exhibit was still closed off with guests instead entering Innoventions through the exit ramp up to the second level.  We talked with the attendant at the entrance, who told us that it wasn’t expected to open for at least another week.  We never thought to check back again during the rest of the 4-night visit, although I later heard that it actually opened on Tuesday.  We finally did visit the attraction on the 4th of July.

I have to say that I was generally rather impressed by the exhibit, a lot more than I had expected to be.  For starters, the entire exhibit is considerably more elaborately themed than anything I had previously seen in Innoventions.  The different sections are all made up to look like different parts of a real house (living room, dining room, girl’s and boy’s bedrooms, etc.) with pretty extensive decoration.  It all has a rather cozy feeling to it that I found quite appealing.  The storytelling aspect to the exhibit is further strengthened by having the attendants all playing the part of various members of the fictional Elias family (the name comes from Walt Disney’s middle name), staying in characters as they gave various demonstrations.

The technology in the exhibit isn’t extremely futuristic and I do think it could have used a bit more variety, but it still is interesting to see.  The most dominant technologies are Microsoft’s Windows Media Center (the audio/video/photo management software that is a standard part of Windows Vista) and Microsoft Surface, which is the table-top sized touch screen interface that they have recently been showing at trade shows and other similar venues.  Media Center is shown on the big-screen TV in a media room as well as on various smaller screens throughout the various rooms of the exhibit.  The idea is that it is all connected to a centralized media server and you can call up various media from pretty much any part of the house.

Microsoft Surface was used in various table-tops throughout the attraction, providing access to a variety of entertainment or informational function.  Some of the demonstrations involved using the touchscreen to manipulate photographs in various ways, including organization, sizing, cropping, etc.  Another really cool example was the use of a Surface table as a big electronic book where you could actually turn the pages by simply moving your hand across the book.  The dining room had a demo that was guided by one of the "family-member" performers who showed how various specially designed objects could be placed on the table to trigger specific programs.  One example that I recall included a figurine of a fish that triggered an interactive "fish tank" program.  Not very practical, but interesting.  One thing that I thought was particularly notable was that our 4-year-old very quickly took to interacting with the Microsoft Surface tables and was easily able to figure out the user interfaces.

My favorite part of the exhibit was the boy’s bedroom.  When you go into this room, one of the family members reads the story of Peter Pan as various clips from the movie are displayed on big video screens mounted to the walls of the bedroom.  There is even a cannon toy in the room which a kid from the crowd gets to use during the battle scene of the story, with the shots actually registering on the screens.  The whole thing is very charming and also rather effective.  The girl’s bedroom featured an interactive mirror where a touch-screen interface could be used to electronically try on various outfits or different hair styles.  I wasn’t as impressed by that, although admittedly that might be because I’m male…

We actually spent about an hour or so fully exploring the Dream House exhibit and would like to go back and spend some more time there on a future visit (for one thing, a few elements weren’t working).  I do think they could stand to upgrade the technology a bit with a bit more variety, but I overall think this is a huge improvement for Innoventions.

Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Stone Tiger

As a tie-in to this summer’s release of Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Crystal Skull, Disneyland replaced the long-running Aladdin storytelling show in Adventureland with this new kid-oriented Indiana Jones show.  Everyone in our group pretty much agreed that the show was a misfire on several levels and hoped that perhaps the vastly superior previous occupant of the theater would return once the value of tying in to the movie is pretty well past.

Pretty much everything about the show points to it being a pretty obvious rush job to quickly take advantage of the renewed interest in the character (which is, of course, already featured in a major E-ticket attraction in Adventureland).  All of the hosts and hostesses at the theater were still wearing the middle-eastern style costumes that were designed for the Aladdin show.  The set on the stage is still largely the same, even including the large walk-through tiger’s head designed after Aladdin’s Cave-of-Wonders.   The globe-trotting nature of the Indiana Jones character does make it pretty easy to adapt a show to just about any setting, but it still is a pretty obvious indication that not too much effort or expense went into this show.

The new show maintains the basic storytelling format as the previous Aladdin show, even though Indiana Jones really isn’t as kid-friendly a basis for such a show.  The seating is still set up with a large section of ground-seating in the front for children and then a number of rows of chairs behind for adults (and kids that, like our son, are still timid about sitting by themselves).  The storyteller this time is introduced as a female colleague of Indy that enlists the help of the kids in the audience to work out a series of clues that were left behind before Indy disappeared in his quest for a legendary object of great power.  Of course, Indy himself eventually shows up at the end after a few kid volunteers have helped out with the various tasks indicated by the clues.

The basic idea isn’t that bad, I suppose, but it really doesn’t amount to all that much other than some nice photo opportunities for the kids that are chosen to help out.  The old Aladdin storytelling had a lot of humor and a fairly substantial story (the plot of the movie) to hold the attention of the rest of the audience.  This show really gets rather tedious during some long segments where most of the audience is basically just watching other people’s kids going through some fairly uninteresting motions.

There is also a major story problem with the way the show has been structured, but I can’t really go over that without spoilers.  If you want to see the show and don’t want to know details about what happens, please skip ahead to the next paragraph.  BEGIN SPOILERS: The big twist of the show is that the storyteller ends up to be a villain who was trying to obtain the powerful artifact for herself.  The climax of the show is a fight sequence between Indy and the storyteller, who eventually is defeated.  The problem is that Indiana Jones isn’t really a character that instantly generates any kind of audience connection when he isn’t played by Harrison Ford.  That results in an ending where you are basically expected to be rooting against the character you have followed for the first 3/4 of the show and rooting for a stranger that just showed up.  That really doesn’t work.  The Indiana Jones show in Florida gets around this problem by making the whole presentation a behind-the-scenes demo and identifying the person playing Indy as a stuntman.  Trying to make a more literal Indiana Jones show really was a pretty bad idea at its root.  END SPOILERS

In addition to the show in the Oasis, they also added "Indiana Jones Moments" at various points around Adventureland.  These are just short (about 5 minutes or so) little stunt fights between Indiana Jones and some random villain.  The specific one we saw was on the upper level of the Jungle Cruise queue.  While I suppose these can be a bit of a disruption of crowd control in the already confined area of Adventureland, they also are kind of fun.  I think this was really a better choice of tie-in than the fairly lame longer show.

The Enchanted Tiki Room

The other attractions that I’ve discussed in this post so far have been new ones, but I did want to make note of our visit to this one classic attraction.  June 23rd (the second day of our visit) was the 45th anniversary of the opening day of The Enchanted Tiki Room.  When we visited the attraction that afternoon, we were pleased to find a completely packed theater and some very appropriate attention being paid to the anniversary.

Upon arrival at the waiting area for the attraction, the castmembers at the attraction all made a point of letting the visitors know of the anniversary.  Most of the castmembers were also wearing the standard Disneyland "Happy Birthday" buttons (with the number 45 printed on them) that are usually given out to guests.  A pretty large percentage of the guests at the show also seemed to be fans who were pretty aware of the significance of the day, although I did overhear one fairly clueless visitor inquiring at the nearby juice bar about whether the pre-show was the entire attraction or if there was something else to it…

The castmember that usually "wakes up" Jose to start the show first gave a short speech in recognition of the anniversary.  I wish that I had made a recording of it or could even find a transcript online as I thought it was really excellent.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Walt Disney Imagineering prepared a script for this as the speech managed the delicate balance of acknowledging the show’s significance without breaking the illusion.  The speech talked a bit about the characters and their connection to Walt Disney and then went into a brief discussion of how they led the way for such attractions as Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion.  The speech managed to convey all of this while never using words like "animatronic", "mechanical", or anything else that would even begin to suggest that the birds were not real.

I made a number of visits to the Florida park (at the time there was only one) when I was a kid and the Tiki Room was very much a family favorite.  I’m saddened that the Walt Disney World version has been replaced with a very poorly-conceived attempt to update the show, but I remain very happy that the original show is mostly still intact at Disneyland.  It is missing the old Offenbach segment, a trim that I do acknowledge was probably a correct one as its elimination has almost entirely stopped walk-outs.  I do wish they would perhaps program the show to allow that segment to be added back in on special occasions like the anniversary, though. 

While we pretty carefully avoided the pre-publicized anniversary merchandise event that was held the day before (and I heard was something of a madhouse), I’m really glad we were there and able to visit the show on the actual anniversary.  It made for a pretty special occasion.

Fireworks (including Fourth of July)

The fireworks shows at Disneyland (and the other Disney parks) usually have a lot more substance and complexity than you find in a typical fireworks show.  Disney pretty much pioneered the synchronization of fireworks to music and, particularly in recent years, they have been regularly raising the bar for the use of fireworks as a storytelling medium.  The various versions of Illuminations at Epcot and the finale for Fantasmic! at Disneyland really started this trend and then Believe…There’s Magic In the Stars, the fireworks show introduced for Disneyland’s 45th Anniversary, definitely set a new standard for the traditional over-the-castle fireworks show.  They have continued to grow this talent with the current Remember… Dreams Come True at Disneyland and Wishes at the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom as well as special holiday shows in both California and Florida.

Our main reason for braving the crowds and working out all the complex logistics to visit Disneyland on the 4th of July is because we consider it to be the best place in this area to see a great fireworks show.  For the past several years, Disneyland would show the regular fireworks show followed by a special patriotic addition that was usually both  highly moving and viscerally spectacular.  Those special performances shot off an amazing number of fireworks in a very short time, while still managing to continue Disney’s recent mix of expert synchronization and storytelling.

This year, we were pretty excited to find out that Disney was producing a full-length, original patriotic show for the 4th of July instead of running the regular fireworks show followed by a tag as in previous years.  The new show had the somewhat awkward title Celebrate America: A Fourth of July Concert in the Sky and versions were being produced for both Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.  The Disneyland version was scheduled to be shown only on the 4th of July itself, although the Walt Disney World version did run for a couple different nights around the 4th of July.  Unfortunately, through no fault of Disney, the evening ended up being marked by a fair amount of disappointment.

From experience, we have found a favorite place for viewing the 4th of July fireworks that still affords a good view, but isn’t as crowded or logistically difficult as most of the more popular locations in the park.  We do still generally have to stake out our spot about 2-3 hours before the scheduled start time, though.  Fortunately, other good friends also view the show from the same location, which allows for some good socializing during the wait for the show to begin.

The first sign of trouble came about an hour before the show when a castmember came over to where we were sitting and let us know that there was a small chance that we would be required to move.  She indicated that wind conditions were such that there was a little bit of concern that we could end up in an area that would have to be evacuated out of concern that ash and other debris from the show could fall there.  She said that they would likely make the final decision around 30 minutes before show time.  Fortunately, we never heard anything more about this and were able to stay in our seating area.

The next sign of trouble came about 15-20 minutes before the start of the show with an announcement that the show might have to be "modified" due to wind conditions at upper elevations.  This announcement was repeated a couple times before the start of the show and it never was entirely clear what the modifications might be.  Our guess was that the show probably included some low-level fireworks set off near the castle (a standard element of the regular show) and that those might need to be removed.  That was really only a guess, though.

The show did start on schedule without any additional announcement at start time about potential modifications.  It opened with some patriotic narration and then launched into a substantial and impressively choreographed display of fireworks set to various patriotic music.  While our location didn’t provide an optimal view of the castle, we could see that they were, in fact, using the low-level fireworks near the castle as well as all the other various launch points used during the regular show.  It was an impressive display and one that we were enjoying tremendously.

A little over half-way into the show, though, it abruptly came to a halt.  First, the audio cut-off and then soon afterwards all of the lights that had been dimmed for the show quickly came back on.  At that point, an announcement came over the sound system stating that the show could not continue due to wind conditions at high elevation.  The show was then over and our next possible chance to see the rest of the show, including what I’m guessing would have been a spectacular finale, will be July 2009.  The portion of the show that we saw was absolutely great and I’m glad to have seen it, but I do have to say that this ending really did cause a tremendous deflation of mood.  As we made our way out of the park and back to our hotel, I can’t say that we ever were quite able to shake the rather downbeat mood that this abrupt ending brought on.

Again, I don’t really fault Disney at all for this as they clearly can’t control the weather and also must stop the show if it becomes unsafe.  I am sure that they made every effort to keep the show going and I strongly suspect that the fireworks never would have started at all had it been any night other than the 4th of July.  I later heard that there was a long line at Guest Relations as people were asking for refunds and that Disney was pretty freely giving them out.  Asking for a refund for this kind of thing is not something I could ever see doing personally and I do tend to think it is a pretty tacky request, but I also can at least understand the mentality behind it.  I certainly can understand Disney’s reason for deciding that it was probably better to give out refunds when they didn’t necessarily have to than to deal with highly disappointed customers telling their friends (which, today, could be large numbers of people on the Internet) about their disappointment and Disney’s lack of caring.

What I saw of the show was great and there are videos of the full Walt Disney World show (which had an identical soundtrack, although the pyrotechnics were customized for each park) pretty readily available online that give an even better view of what the whole show would have been.  I do hope that they do the same or a similar show next year and that the weather cooperates so that we get a full performance.

On a happier note, we did see Remember… Dreams Come True in its entirety twice during our 4-night June visit and we still saw bits and pieces of it on the other two nights as well.  On Wednesday night, we staked out a spot in the Town Square area (near the train station) of Main Street to watch the show from inside the park.  We have found that this part of Main Street doesn’t fill up nearly as early as the areas closer to the castle, but you can still see pretty much all of the effects in their entirety from that vantage point.  It also puts you pretty close to the main gate, allowing for a pretty quick exit at the end of the show, if so desired.

The partial showings we saw were on Sunday and Monday night.  On Sunday evening, we went into California Adventure to watch the Electrical Parade and the fireworks started going off as we were walking back to the hotel.  The view isn’t very good from much of anywhere inside the park, so we just kind of glanced at them through the trees and between the buildings during our walk back.  On Monday night, the fireworks started going off just as we got off at the Disneyland Drive exit during our drive back from dinner at Knott’s.  We ended up watching most of the show from the Grand Californian parking lot before heading up to our room.  We even could faintly hear the soundtrack, which was being piped into the pool area at the Paradise Pier Hotel, which is right across from the parking lot.

Finally, our last viewing of the show was on Thursday night from the balcony of our hotel room.  During the 4-night stay, our room was located on the 4th floor of the hotel and the window faced directly towards Disneyland.  We had a pretty good view of the Matterhorn from the room and could even see the top of the castle.  This also meant that we were in a pretty good location to see pretty much all of the fireworks.  To make it even better, there is a TV station available in the rooms at the Grand Californian which plays the soundtrack during the show. 

Thanks to all of this, our last night of the initial 4-night visit ended with us getting a few desserts from the concierge lounge and then sitting on our balcony watching the fireworks show as the soundtrack played through the TV speakers in the room.  All-in-all, that made for a rather magical way to end that visit.

With it being 6 years since the series ended (and 10 years since the last feature film), Carter and his co-writer Frank Spotnitz (also a regular contributor to the series), wisely decided to go with a story that very easily stands on its own without substantially involving the complex, and sometimes kind of convoluted, conspiracy mythology that ended up generally dominating the later seasons of the series. The result actually has more of the look and feel of an episode from one of the earliest seasons, back when the main focus was on stand-alone plots about a crime with, often somewhat ambiguous, supernatural overtones. While I did enjoy the conspiracy aspects of the series, if nothing else for its pure complexity, I tended to prefer the more standalone episodes. Because of that, this movie largely fit with what I generally liked best about the series. I can understand pretty easily, though, why this film could feel disappointing to fans that preferred the conspiracy stories or who were hoping for a feature film that had grander ambitions.

It has been pretty widely reported that 20th Century Fox would only green-light another "X-Files" feature if Carter agreed to keep it to a very low-budget. Reportedly, the film ended up costing around $30 million, which is amazingly low for a major studio feature today, particularly one built around a known franchise. Fortunately, they came up with a story that fit the budget instead of trying to cut corners. The film is very dialog-driven and does not feature large special effects sequences or big set pieces. The film builds a fair amount of tension, and is even downright scary at times, and that is largely accomplished via fairly old-fashioned filmmaking techniques, including frequently relying on the viewer’s imagination to fill in what isn’t shown directly.  Score composer Mark Snow (who also scored the entire TV series and the previous film) again contributes greatly to the tension and overall mood of the film.

The scale of the film is small enough that I could see a pretty good argument being made that perhaps they should have done this as a TV movie instead of a theatrical release. They did largely ignore the conventional wisdom that a feature film requires a story that is much grander and larger in scope than the typical TV episodes. The longer running time of the film does provide room for more story development at a more leisurely pace. I suspect that will may find the film a bit slow as it doesn’t have the rapid cutting and frequent action sequences that are typical of most summer thrillers. The pacing of this film is actually quite a bit slower even in comparison to the first "X-Files" film.  The film does also benefit from some effective use of the full wide-screen frame, particularly during a few key sequences set in snow-covered fields as well as during one very well-shot foot chase.  I also think that the somewhat complex and dialog-driven nature of the movie was well served from the generally stronger focus given to a movie in a theater than with the usual distractions of a TV viewing.

A lot of effort was made to keep the plot of the film mostly under wraps. Having seen the film, I suspect that was done largely to mask the pretty low-key nature of the story, which doesn’t really try to expand the series mythology. The primary mystery involves a series of missing person cases that end up being connected to body-part (including the head) transplant experiments being done by a Russian doctor in an attempt to save the life of his gay lover (seriously…) Obviously, this is more than a little bit silly and the full details of what exactly they were doing isn’t even entirely clear by the end of the movie. This is obviously the film’s biggest weakness, but it actually isn’t as big a deal as it may seem. Even with the plot being somewhat nonsensical, it is depicted in such a way that a fairly strong tension is maintained and these weaknesses weren’t really strongly evident until I started thinking this through more after leaving the theater.  Most significantly, the details of the mystery are really a very secondary aspect of the film, which is much more focused on various moral decisions faced by the characters.

Very central to the film is an excellent performance by Billy Connolly (an under-appreciated character actor) as Father Joe, a priest who had been convicted of child molestation, but was now claiming to be experiencing psychic visions related to the missing persons case.  What I found exceptionally effective about this aspect of the film is that they wisely maintained a great deal of ambiguity about whether the psychic visions were genuine or if they were being faked either in an attempt to obtain some level of forgiveness or because Father Joe was a co-conspirator in the crimes.  Even at the end of the film, compelling evidence remained for each of these possibilities.  Some of the best episodes of the TV series left similar ambiguity about whether or not the supernatural elements of the story were true or not, although there seemed to be less of that during the later seasons.  I was pleased that the film took that approach.

Seeing Duchovny and Anderson back in the roles of Mulder and Scully felt a lot like visiting old friends, although with the natural progressions in life experience that are likely to be evident from a lengthy separation.  Although the series ended 6 years ago, the characterizations had kind of gone off the rails during the last couple seasons, to a large degree due to Duchovny significantly limiting his appearances during the second to last season and then only appearing in the series finale during the final season.  The series ended with Mulder a fugitive and both characters in hiding, something that the film didn’t ignore but also wisely dispensed with very quickly by having the FBI offer Mulder a complete dismissal of the charges (which had been faked anyway) in exchange for his help on this new case.  I appreciated that they didn’t just try to pretend the events at the end of the series hadn’t happened, but that they also didn’t dwell on it much, particularly since the film really needed to be accessible to newcomers and to the many fans that gave up on the show during those final seasons.

The other big development towards the end of the season was the transition of the Mulder/Scully relationship from a plutonic partnership to a romantic one.  This was continued in the film, with the characters depicted as now living together.  With this, I still felt that they found exactly the right tone for the relationship, basically showing it as a natural progression of the intimate professional connection that developed over most of the series.  The romance isn’t portrayed as overly passionate or at all mushy, but instead as a mixture of pretty much unwavering trust and a strong dependence on one another.  The romance is threatened (including a tentative break-up) over the course of the movie, but in a very believable and logical situation as Scully struggles with the potential of being pulled back into "the darkness" (as she describes it) as Mulder returns to the type of investigative work that she thought they had escaped.

The use of "I Want To Believe" as the film’s sub-title was a very eaappropriate one.  The phrase already had meaning to the fans as the slogan on a poster that was prominently displayed on the wall of Mulder’s office at the FBI (in this film, it was on the wall in a very similarly decorated home office), but it was also very much a running theme throughout the film.  The most obvious example was that Mulder wanted to believe that Father Joe was genuine, both as a validation of his life-long focus on the supernatural as well as out of a genuine hope of reaching a successful conclusion to the missing person case, particularly since the visions were giving hope that the victim might still be alive.  I did like that there was a running theme that Mulder was particularly determined to succeed because of his continued pain over his sister’s childhood abduction, another key element that carried over from the series. 

Scully’s actions in the film were also motivated  by a key event from the TV series, specifically the child that she gave up during the final season.  She showed a particularly strong revulsion to Father Joe’s past crimes and, thus, a very low willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt.  The film features a fairly substantial B-plot involving Scully, who had started practicing medicine full-time at a hospital (even in the series, she was a medical doctor) and was debating a radical treatment option for a child with a usually-terminal illness.  I’ve seen some complaints that this subplot was fairly superfluous, and the connections to the main storyline are very slight, but it really did play heavily into the overall theme of seeking the strength to choose belief over skepticism.  I particularly liked that Father Joe at one point planted the idea in her mind that she should go forward with the difficult treatment for her patient, despite her hesitance to believe him and uncertainty if that was even what he was talking about.  Finally, I thought that it was another interesting and effective choice to ultimately leave this subplot unresolved instead of explicitly telling if the treatment was successful or even fully completed.

Father Joe’s character very strongly fit into this theme of belief, both in his impact on Mulder and Scully (as described above) as well as on his own.  Although the authenticity of his visions is never fully determined, there is an overall theme that he still has hope that redemption, at least in the eyes of God, are still possible.  There is a significant religious theme throughout the film, obviously with Father Joe’s religious affiliation, but also with Scully working in a Catholic hospital and facing opposition from a well-meaning, but skeptical, priest as she pursues treatment for her patient.  Of course, the hope of retaining religious faith is certainly another possible interpretation of the film’s title.

The movie did have a couple other significant supporting performances.  Amanda Peet is quite good as one of the lead FBI agents on the case and the one responsible for bringing Mulder and Scully into it.  It was an effective choice making her character a skeptic who didn’t really believe Father Joe, but also an agent so thorough that she didn’t want to leave any possible angle unexplored.  The character’s death about 2/3 of the way into the film was a genuine surprise and added quite a bit to the overall tension.

Other than Duchovny and Anderson, the one other actor from the series that returned in the film was Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Skinner, Mulder and Scully’s boss in the TV series.  He wasn’t in the published cast listing for the film and his appearance in it was largely kept a secret, all the way to the point of Pileggi doing an interview or two where he complained about not being included.  His arrival very late in the film to play a key role in the climax was very welcome and extremely well received by the audience at the showing I attended.

Probably due to a combination of the time that has past since the series ended as well as the heavy competition from the bigger-than-expected success of The Dark Knight, the opening weekend for the movie is being reported as only around $10 million, which is something of a disappointment.  This could represent the end of the franchise, although with the film’s low budget it could still end up being profitable enough that Fox might consider another, particularly if the film gets a wider audience on video.  If this does turn out to be the end, I’m still glad to have had the chance to visit Mulder and Scully one last time.  I also really appreciate that Carter decided to include a final shot at the end of the credits of Mulder and Scully waving to the camera from a row-boat near some tropical island, which served both as a goodbye to the fans as well as a suggestion that just maybe they managed to find some peace and a happy ending.

We left the Disneyland Resort a little before 11pm and traffic on the North 5 was moving along at pretty much full speed until just past the 91 interchange, where it came to almost a complete halt.  I wasn’t able to see the brake lights until we were too far past the 91 to cut over to it as an alternate route.  The big problem at this point was that they were doing construction work that had all but the far left lane closed.  This brought traffic to a near stand-still, even fairly late at night.

While in this, I heard a traffic report on the radio indicating that there was a Sig Alert at the Slauson exit a bit further north, so I definitely wanted to get off the 5.  I decided to try and exit at either Auto Center Drive or Beach Blvd. and then cut across surface streets to the 91.  It turned out that the Auto Center Drive exit was closed completely, but there wasn’t a "ramp closed" sign until you were pretty much right at it.  That actually resulted in me merging to the right at one point into a lane that was about to end, because I didn’t realize the exit ramp wasn’t accessible.  I then continued to stay as far right as I could, since there were no signs indicating where I needed to be to get off at Beach, assuming that exit was even opened.  It did turn out to be opened, but it took us about 20-30 minutes (I lost track of the exact time) or so to go the 1-2 miles from the start of the construction zone to the exit.

The Beach exit actually drops you onto Auto Center Drive, just a bit north of the exit for that road specifically.  You then turn onto Beach at the next light.  When we got to Beach, we found that it was actually closed as well at that intersection.  That meant that we then had to turn on Stanton instead and then cut over to Beach near Knott’s Berry Farm in order to backtrack over to the 91.  Just to further my rant against road work, I should mention here that we did get stuck behind a sweet sweeper for part of the way as we went down Stanton.

The 91 was basically smooth going.  We then got off on the N-710 and found that they had the 2 left lanes closed on that road as well.  Fortunately, we were only going a short distance there (up to the 105) and traffic is generally light enough on the 710 that time of night that the construction didn’t slow things down that much.  It didn’t take us very long to get onto the 105-W, which we then took over to the 405-N.

The 405 wasn’t too bad through the LAX area, but then slowed to a crawl right around Culver Blvd.  Yes, as you probably guessed by now, Caltrans had a couple lanes closed for construction between Culver and the 10 interchange.  That stretch of road is pretty bad even under the best of circumstances (this is one of the busiest stretches of road in the country), so traffic was once again barely moving.  Obviously, this wasn’t as bad as it could have been during rush hour, but it still took quite a while to get through there.  To make matters worse, I was starting to need a restroom pretty badly, which helped to make the rest of the drive even more miserable.  With the traffic largely stopped, it would have been incredibly difficult to force our way over to the right to get off at any of the exits.  In addition, it was after midnight by this point, so I think there was little chance that there would have been anywhere opened with public restrooms that were both available and safe to use.

Once we got past that construction zone, fortunately traffic was moving pretty much full speed the rest of the way.  By this time, we were all pretty completely wiped out and miserable, of course.  In fact, I ended up getting home and sending a note off to my boss at work that I was planning to come in late this morning (they owe me a few hours anyway…), so I guess I should probably head there once I finish typing this.

I certainly do see the need for construction work on the freeways, and I understand why Sunday nights are a good time to do it, but last night certainly was frustrating.  I couldn’t help but think that there must have been some way that they could have better planned the projects so that someone driving a fairly common route (Orange County to the San Fernando Valley) wouldn’t keep continuously finding construction zones pretty much everywhere they turned.

Having grown up as a fan of the Muppets and with very fond memories of the movie, my wife and I both were very enthusiastic about this opportunity to take our 4-year-old son to see the film on the big screen.  We heard about this screening only a couple days after our son had seen (and liked) the Muppetvision 3D movie at Disney’s California Adventure for the first time, so we felt it was likely that he would be reasonably receptive to the movie.

I suspect that anyone that is actually opening a blog post about this 29-year-old movie has probably already seen it, so I’m not going to spend much time "reviewing" the film.  I think it is likely that even most big fans of the movie probably haven’t seen it for quite some time.  Before Monday’s showing, the last time I saw the movie was probably around the time the DVD came out, which was likely close to a decade ago.  My wife indicated that she didn’t think she had seen it since she saw it as a kid during its original theatrical release. 

With the passage of time, we both still had a lot of nostalgia for the film, but we had kind of forgotten how good a movie it really is on its own merits.  Much of the dialog has a very genuine and rather intelligent wit to it.  As was typical of the Muppets, there is a lot of humor that is directed very squarely at the adults in the audience.  Jim Henson and his team were exceptionally adept at accomplishing this while still keeping the movie completely kid-friendly.  The movie does have its fair share of sight gags as well, although they aren’t as dominant as in the later Muppet projects.  A good comedy is always better with an enthusiastic audience and that was definitely the case at this showing.   Seeing this movie with an audience of fans was really a lot of fun.

One aspect that I hadn’t forgotten (as much thanks to the soundtrack CD as anything) is how good Paul Williams’ songs for the film are.  The most famous is "The Rainbow Connection" (its inclusion in the AFI’s Top-100 Movie Songs list was the reason for the screening) and it really is a wonderful song, but the others are fun too.  I particularly get a huge kick of out Frank Oz’s extremely tortured rendition (as Miss Piggy) of the big romantic ballad "Never Before, Never Again".  The exaggerated vocals combined with the visuals of Kermit and Miss Piggy in way over-the-top parodies of classic romantic movie scenes are really quite hilarious and received an extremely big reaction from the audience.

I hadn’t remembered that the film was as low-budget an effort as it was.  The movie wasn’t a major studio release and, at this showing, there was actually a bit of laughter at the obscure "Associated Film Distributers" logo that opened the movie.  While the movie isn’t as slick as the later efforts (particularly the big-budget Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island that were made for Disney), the puppetry definitely still holds up.  I remember that the scenes of Kermit riding a bicycle got a lot of attention back in 1979 and those scenes actually do still hold up.  Of course, even with the low budget, the film did attract an extremely impressive group of celebrity cameos, including James Coburn, Dom DeLuise, Steve Martin, Telly Savalas, Elliot Gould, Madeline Kahn, Mel Brooks, Cloris Leachman, Edgar Bergen (who died shortly afterwards — the film is dedicated to him), Bob Hope, Carol Kane, Milton Berle, Richard Pryor, and Orson Welles.  The movie came out during the run of "The Muppet Show", which attracted a similarly impressive list of guest stars despite being a non-network series.  That says a great deal about how appealing the Muppet characters really were.

I was a bit surprised that there were fewer kids in the audience for this show than I thought there would be.  While I did expect that the movie would be an especially big nostalgic draw for those in the same general age range as my wife and me, I also figured that a pretty large percentage of those attending would be parents that were taking their own kids to see it.  We certainly weren’t the only family there with a small child, but we did seem to be in the minority.  Fortunately, our son was very well-behaved the whole time.  Beforehand, we had emphasized very strongly that he had to stay quiet during the movie and he took that very much to heart.  In fact, we had a bit of a problem with him repeatedly reminding us of "no talking at the movie" when we tried to engage in conversation before the movie started.

This was only our son’s 2nd trip to the movies (the first was "Horton Hears a Who" a couple months ago) as my wife and I both felt strongly about waiting until we felt he was mature enough to behave appropriately in a theater.  While he was very well behaved, I do have some uncertainty about is reaction to the movie.  He certainly did seem attentive to the screen the whole time (other than occasionally peeking back at the projection booth) and he never asked to leave.  On the other hand, the movie doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression.  Our son tends to talk pretty non-stop about activities that really excite him, but he has had very little to say about the movie.  I certainly don’t think it was a bad experience for him or anything, but this is a pretty dialog-intensive movie that is probably targeted at somewhat older kids.

One of the major features of the Arclight theater is that all shows are strictly reserved seating instead of the more common general admission seating that you find at most movie theaters.  When I ordered our tickets, I think they had been on-sale for just a couple days, but seat availability was already becoming pretty limited.  I was able to find us three seats together about 2/3 of the way back, although pretty far over to the side.  Based on this, we were expecting a sold-out show, which definitely turned out to be correct. The demand for the movie actually turned out to be so high that they ended up shifting the screening into a larger auditorium than originally intended. 

This change did cause about a 15-minute delay in the start time since the change of auditoriums messed up the reserved seating a bit.  We picked up the tickets at the box-office about 30 minutes before the show and I later realized that the seats printed on it were different than the ones we had originally ordered.   They were in roughly the same spot, just on the left side of the theater instead of the right.  We later ran into a bit of an argument when another couple showed up believing they had the same seats (I’m guessing they had a "print-at-home" ticket).  An usher did try to get us to shift to the other seats, but I was hesitant to end up in different seat numbers than the ones printed on our tickets, just in case someone else showed up with a claim on those seats.  I was also concerned that there were 3 of us, but the other party with a claim on the seats was just 2 people.  Working with the theater employees, the other couple ended up moving to the other set of seats and we stayed put.  It was obvious that there were quite a few similar situations around the theater and I give the employees credit for managing to sort it all out fairly quickly and without major issues.

This is a 29-year-old, relatively low-budget film and that was reflected somewhat in the presentation.  The print, which I suspect may have dated back to the original run, was kind of faded, but otherwise in pretty good condition.  The sound definitely was a lot harsher and lower-fidelity than we are generally used to today as well.  With it being just a single screening, they showed the movie using reels rather than transferring it to platters.  The projectionist did miss one reel change slightly (we saw a bit of the leader), but otherwise they did a good job with the projection.  I even noticed the projectionist adjusting the framing and focus on a few occasions during the course of the movie, something that is all too rare at theaters today.

I tend to think the availability of classic movie screenings like this is one of the best parts of living in the Los Angeles area.  I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this old-favorite on the big screen again and was glad to have had the chance to share it with my family.

We have a membership in the Disney Vacation Club (DVC) timeshare and had originally planned to make a trip to Walt Disney World in late June right after our son completed his first year of pre-school.  After our October trip last year, we found that our son had become pretty skittish on rides and attractions and we decided it probably would be wise to delay our trip until December to increase the chance that he would grow out of that a bit.  Canceling that trip meant that we ended up with a number of DVC points that we had to use by August or end up forfeiting them.

My parents live in the Orlando area and they decided to come up to visit us during the same period that we had originally planned our Florida trip.  They were interested in staying down at the Disneyland Resort for a few days, so it then made sense to use up those points with a stay down there.  After researching, we discovered that we had the points available to cover the cost of a concierge-level room at Disney’s Grand Californian hotel for those 4 nights in June with enough left over for the 4th of July as well.  We had used points to stay there on July 4th for the last few years (avoiding the need to drive home after the fireworks) and it was very appealing to do that again this year while also having the chance to enjoy a longer, multi-day stay at the Grand Californian as well.

Instead of trying to test my memory with a day-to-day report on our visit, I’m going to categorize my report.  In this first part, I am going to concentrate on our dining experiences during the trip.  I’ll likely add additional parts to this over the next few days reporting on other aspects of the trip.

Character Dining

My parents arrived mid-afternoon on June 22 and we decided that a character dinner would be a good way to start the trip.  Around the 60 day mark before our trip, we made reservations at Goofy’s Kitchen (at the Disneyland Hotel) for that first-night dinner.  Our reservations were at 6pm and we were happy that they were able to seat us within about 5-10 minutes of our arrival at the restaurant.  Walk-up guests were being told that there was a 90 minute wait, so reservations are definitely a very good idea here.

Before seating, they gathered our family together for a photo with Pluto.  About halfway through the meal someone came to our table to try and sell us a pretty overpriced (around $40, if I recall) package of the photos.  They did the same thing when we did the character breakfast at PCH Grill later in the week (this time with Daisy Duck), so this must now be standard at the character meals.  In both cases, we declined as the packages were pretty costly and the photos weren’t that great.  I don’t remember encountering this there before (although it has been a while since we last did a character meal at DLR) and I don’t really care for this system.  I don’t mind the pre-meal photos, but I’d much rather they use Photopass to sell the photos.  At least at PCH, a CM did offer to also take a couple photos with our own camera, something that wasn’t offered at Goofy’s Kitchen.

The food at Goofy’s was ok, but nothing special.  This was consistent with our past experiences there.  We have always found that you definitely go there much more for the character-experience than for the food.  The food is definitely better than a low-end buffet like a Hometown Buffet, but I would also say it is closer to that than it to what you typically find at a high-end hotel buffet such as at the better Vegas hotels or at somewhere like a Hilton or a Hyatt.  Those used to the Walt Disney World character meals are also apt to be disappointed by Goofy’s based on our typical experiences.

The buffet does feature carved prime rib as a main entree and it was pretty decent.  On my first trip up there, I did get a piece that turned out to be quite a bit more rare than I generally like (and I prefer beef to be medium to medium-rare), but I can’t fault them too much for that since I didn’t specify a preference.  On a subsequent trip up there, I was easily able to get another slice that was more to my taste.  I do think they should probably ask before serving the meat that rare, but it still wasn’t that big a deal.  I did think the rest of the selection at the buffet