DiDeAd Part 3

Disney Hollywood Studios kicks things up a notch in terms of thrill rides, compared to MK. And it’s a more focused experience than MK, concentrating as it does on movies and entertainment. It was originally built to trump Universal Studios down the road. I am personally not one to knock Universal; after all, much of it was built by Disney alums. But it does lack the underlying Disney Disneyness, whatever that is. It’s ineffable, but it’s there. Frankly, I think there used to be a little more of it in the olden days. Maybe new management will bring some of that back.

Be that as it may, again our day started at 8:00 am, heading for the bus to the park. Liz and I started with breakfast, as did Denise. Old people eat breakfast: it gives them strength to get those kids off their lawns later in the day. By now I’d sort of gotten into the swing of dealing with the meal plan that was added to the trip, Disney’s come-on to the park during the off-season. (And it was the off-season; we never waited much for anything.) The plan is a combination of sit-down meals, counter service and snacks. The people working in the restaurants seem to spend half their working day explaining it to everyone. Wise Disney Dining management requires that, when you spend your credits, you get the most for them. Management of free Disney Dining means that, well, it’s free anyhow, so you don’t get your knickers into too much of a twist over it. A Dole Whip is a snack. So is a bottle of water. So is an apple or a cup of coffee. Choose accordingly.

I found it remarkable that we all actually did meet up each morning at 8:00. I chide O’C for moseying, but this is unfair. Every day he was a minute earlier, until one day he was a minute earlier than me. I should have photographed that.

Again, I won’t catalog everything we did in the park. Toy Story Mania was down, but everything else was up and running. We kicked off with Rock ‘n Roller Coaster, which is a really fun, smooth ride, and we got almost everyone in it, although do I recall correctly that O’C passed on this one? My cousin passed on Twilight Zone, as she finds the idea of falling down an elevator shaft about as entertaining as jumping off a cliff, which it closely resembles. We managed to find this out-of-the-way coffee shop for cappuccino and these wonderful carrot cake cookies as our morning break. And we followed the Guide again, as I say, never waiting for much of anything.

Of course, Star Tours, closing a couple of weeks after our trip, was high on O’C’s list. He rode it a few times, and Kate and I joined him for a couple of those. He bought himself an engraved medal honoring his 40th ride. He tried to get Disney management to schedule an award ceremony for it, but they were not interested. In the shop attached to the ride (and please note, there’s a shop attached to virtually every ride) he discovered some goodies previous unknown to him, and he started piling on packages like Dagwood Bumstead accompanying Blondie for their Christmas shopping. An eagle-eyed clerk recognized a sucker fan in the mix and pounced, and the next thing you knew, O’C and the clerk were comparing notes, trying to figure which one was the biggest Lucas fanboy. O’C ultimately claimed victory by naming the key grip on the Willow set, at which point the clerk committed ritual suicide with one of those plastic light sabers. It was not a pretty sight: that plastic hurts. On the other hand, he had now collected the equivalent of a year’s salary in commissions from O’C’s purchases (mostly of action characters of people who work in the shop attached to the ride—the cashier, the custodian, the clerk he had been talking to—twenty sets of these, if I remember correctly).

Our lunch was at the Sci-Fi diner, and I have to admit, anyone who challenges O’C’s knowledge of obscure or bad movies in the genre is bound to go down in flames. It’s not so much that O’C knows all this stuff, but that when we see a clip from an Ed Wood film, O’C has not only seen the film, he’s seen it twenty times, he owns it, and he threatens to make me watch it in a tabroom eventually. No doubt he also owns the action figures. I find the thought frightening. I kept my head down for the most part, eating my lunch (the Oreo shake was a marvel, the ribs were okay but it was so dark—the restaurant is themed like a drive-in movie, and you eat in convertibles while you watch coming attractions of B movies—that I couldn’t tell the bones from the meat from the napkin except for the damage any given bite caused my bicuspids).

There are a lot of shows at DHS, stunt shows like Indian Jones and a motor show (that’s not episode 5, btw, Indian Jones and the Motor Show, that’s two separate shows), and most importantly, Fantasia, the extravaganza that closes the place for the night. This is a great show. At Disneyland they work it into the middle of the park, which is pretty amazing, while at DHS they have a special amphitheater built for it. There’s lots of storm and fury and sound and light and effects and fireworks and Disney characters battling it out for the soul of Mickey Mouse (really). It’s a great way to end the day, but you have to get there way earlier than I had planned. We got SRO, which was okay because there’s an area where everyone sat until the show started, then it didn’t matter that we were on our feet.

As I mentioned before, I do miss the underlying Disneyness a bit. It used to be there were shops that sold items that were unique to that shop, which meant that in the Studios, you could find niftly little Hollywood thingies. Not so true anymore. Now it’s just the same merchandise pretty much in all the shops, and for that matter the same merchandise in the shops across all the parks. Occasionally there’s a ride-specific tee shirt, but that’s about it, aside from Star Wars merchandise. Years ago I bought a wonderful Bates Motel ashtray. That’s the sort of thing I miss, and that sort of thing was everywhere. Not that I don’t like Disney shirts and stuff, but the serendipity has been minimized. They’re missing a bet, if you ask me, but at least they’ve incorporated some retro stuff into the mix, which is a step in the right direction.

So, another great day was in the can.