Quick Bites

Come now—you didn't think you were going to get rid of me that easily, did you? I have no intention of abandoning this blog quite yet! Things are happening again, and I have things to say about them...I just don't have the brainspace to develop full posts about them. So here's a sampler platter.

After-Action Report: Star Wars Land/Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge/Batuu/Black Spire Outpost

What a mouthful! As Jenny Nicholson points out, the latest addition to the Disneyland map has no less than four names in common usage, representing, in this order: 1) An informal description of the area; 2) The official name of the area; 3) The fictitious planet represented by the area; and 4) The specific location on said fictitious planet. That's a lot of lore to absorb, just in what the place is called.

It kind of lets you know what you're in for with the land itself.

You can't honestly say Galaxy's Edge is not immersive. I would actually say it's immersive to a fault—the placemaking is so intense and so detailed that it's actually disorienting. I just did a quick stroll-through of the area, and it legitimately felt like being in a marketplace on some exotic alien planet...which is kind of a problem, since I'm not an exotic alien. I had trouble telling what anything was—most of the atmospheric signage is done in Aurebesh lettering, which I am nowhere near nerdy enough to read without a transliteration guide.

I suppose if you are that nerdy, Galaxy's Edge is a dream come true. It certainly feels like a roleplayer's paradise...for a game I'm not familiar enough with to enjoy. It was hard to tell what was even allowed for guests to do, vs. what was for show only.

Maybe—just maybe—all of this is why it's apparently underperforming? Go ahead and tell me I'm pandering to the lowest common denominator here, but I feel like you shouldn't need a primer in the specific backstory of a theme park area just to understand how to navigate and enjoy it. You shouldn't need to be a top-tier Star Wars geek to get into some casual Star Wars roleplaying during your vacation.

I know I tend to complain about the overwhelming theme park-iness of Disneyland, but this takes things too far in the other direction. Immersion is lovely, but perhaps it's time Disney rediscovered the fine art of presentationalism.

As a side note, Galaxy's Edge is color-coded tan on the park map, like I suggested. I want a ceremony of congratulations.

After-Action Report: Halloween Screams

On the other hand, we probably have that to thank for this. This year, the Halloween parties are being held not in Disneyland, but across the way in California Adventure, and I assume it's because they don't want any early shutdowns for the park that's boasting the new hotness. This leaves the Halloween-themed fireworks show—normally limited to the party events—without its usual venue.

Now, they could have just thrown up their hands and said “Whatever, we won't do Halloween Screams this year.” That's exactly what I would have expected from a management team that has been making deep cuts to live entertainment. But instead, to my delighted surprise, they did us a solid for once and made Halloween Screams the seasonal fireworks show for everyone visiting Disneyland in the meantime.

And that's super! I love Halloween, and I like Halloween Screams, and the Halloween parties have gotten so expensive that I was pretty resigned to never seeing the show live again. So that was a pretty terrific surprise on my recent visit.*

You know what though? You know what? I'm starting to feel like the whole Disney Villains angle on Halloween is getting played out. It's an obvious enough path from one to the other—Villains are scary and Halloween is all about controlled fear—but I think Disney has started taking that path for granted and skipping right to “Halloween = Villains,” and in the process we wind up with some wonky imagery on occasion. How Halloween-ish is Ursula, really?**

On which note, keep reading...

Second-Hand Report—World of Color: Villainous!

Okay, so I haven't actually seen this show—see above re: the rising unaffordability of the Halloween party events—so I went ahead and watched someone's video of it on YouTube.

It's...something.

The word I applied to it on Tumblr was “fanfic-y,” and I stand by that. On one level, it's exactly what you'd expect—a light and water show heavily featuring various Disney Villains and their various songs and aesthetics, all headed by Oogie Boogie. But on another level, for some reason they decided that instead of just having the Villains directly address the audience, the way they do in Halloween Screams, we needed a viewpoint character. Enter Shelley Marie,*** a small moppet with a very Tim Burton-esque design who considers whether to wear a Villain costume for Halloween and then, as near as I can make out, experiences a vivid hallucination wherein multiple Disney Villains cajole and threaten her into joining their ranks until she...does? She barely has any dialogue and the focus is very much on the Villains, leaving me bemused as to why they thought this character was necessary. If they're trying to create a new Halloween mascot character, this was not the way to do it. I don't care about Shelley Marie. Her costuming indecision is not my problem.

Also, the ending is weird. Just when it seems like the tide of over-the-top wickedness must turn Shelley off of the idea, she does a last-second face-heel turn and toddles out to beg candy in her evil finery, like a tiny CGI Daenerys Targaryen. If the message is supposed to be, as I assume, “It's cool to play Villain for Halloween,” then they should have made the baddies less frightening throughout. Otherwise we have a case where a very young child is really digging the idea of behaving just like Oogie Boogie and Ursula and Dr. Facilier and Hades, and I feel like that might be a bit socially irresponsible?

I'm probably overthinking this schlock.

LEGO Set# 71044

See, after the WDW Castle model came out, I thought they might do more theme park sets. I kinda didn't expect a lovely recreation of the Disneyland Main Street Train Station and a condensed DLRR train with an engine based on the C.K. Holliday. Look at it; isn't it gorgeous?

The detailing on this thing is really superb. The direct Disneyland references have been smoothed out into “Disney” references, but the lettering is perfectly on-point. The fun details inside the station include two minifig-scale model trains, a sly (and potentially recursive) micro-model of the Castle set, and an actual representation of a Main Street trash can. The designers here are just showing all the affection for my home park, and I am delighted.

Now, if only I had a good place to set the track up in a loop and actually play with this thing...

Anyway, they went with classic shorts characters for the minifigs—Mickey as the engineer, Minnie as...a passenger, I assume...Chip and Dale as stationmaster and conductor respectively, and a long-awaited Goofy minifig. So that has me thinking...does the future of the Disney theme parks line of LEGO sets depend on their ability to shoehorn well-known cartoon characters into each set? Should we only ever expect to get five figures per? Because both of these would hamper our potential to have, for instance, a Haunted Mansion set, and I really want a LEGO Haunted Mansion.

That's all for this time. I'll probably revisit at least one of these topics in greater depth in the future. Until then—or whatever I come up with—stay classy!

* It may or may not have made up for the fact that they haven't installed Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy this year. It has been pre-empted, surprising no one, by more Star Wars content.

** The correct answer is “somewhat”...provided you have first established a sub-theme of “Undersea Horror.” It's not an effortless connection, in other words, and in the limited time of a theme park fireworks show, you want effortless.

*** Go ahead and chuckle; I did.