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.

After-Action Report: GotG—Monsters After Dark

They should not have closed the Tower of Terror. I still hold that opinion. That ride was...basically perfect for its circumstances. It fit in exactly with Hollywood Land, it did an extraordinary job of building up atmosphere, it made guests the center of the story (“...in tonight's episode you are the star...”) and the effects were pretty dang...effective.

Guardians of the Galaxy—Mission: Breakout! is a distinctly inferior replacement. I have no animus against the GotG franchise itself—on the contrary, the movies are delightful and the second-worst thing about the firing of James Gunn is the wrench it throws into the production cycle of the third one*—but it's not the sort of thing that begs to be a theme park ride, and certainly not this theme park ride. It's awkwardly crammed into infrastructure that was designed for something completely different, it jettisons the Tower's beautiful melding of physical sets with digital effects in favor of a collection of movie screens, instead of making the guests the protagonists it makes them side characters in someone else's adventure, it has an unwieldy, overly wordy name, and the building is an eyesore.

Someone signed paperwork approving this design. Wrap your mind around that.

(Some people have the audacity to claim that this is an improvement on Tower of Terror. To them I say: On what grounds? Seriously, what does it do better? Also, aren't you the same people who were telling us we shouldn't be upset that it was being changed because it was still going to be a drop ride? Do you see the contradiction there?)

All that said, there is something at least moderately interesting about the ride's Halloween overlay, Guardians of the Galaxy—Monsters After Dark, and that's that it is framed as a direct sequel to Mission: Breakout! I don't think that's ever been done with Disney theme park attractions before—Star Tours: The Adventures Continue is framed as a prequel to the original Star Tours, what with the older Starspeeder model and glitchy prototype of Rex in the queue, but there is no sense in which the events of the one lead to the events of the other.**

Mission: Breakout! literally causes Monsters After Dark. The tower's generators get shut off during the former, and in the latter, the loss of power has freed all the dangerous creatures from confinement (hence the title). If nothing else, I appreciate the experiment. A Halloween overlay that only goes into effect at night (with the default version of the attraction operating during the day) is probably the only circumstance under which this conceit could really work, and I imagine it must be pretty cool if you manage to go on both in one day.

This is not to say that similar ideas couldn't work, especially if played subtlely. It could cross the borders of attractions or even lands. Imagine, for instance, if evidence were planted suggesting that the founder of the Jungle Cruise Co. got his startup capital mining gold in Big Thunder Mountain (before the disaster, of course). Obviously this would have to be used sparingly—Imagineering is doing something like this with the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, and the overall consensus from the snooty elitist fans is that it's not nearly as clever as the creators seem to think it is, doesn't really add anything to the attractions it touches, and discourages guest imagination by imposing One True Backstory on everything.

Anyway, back to Monsters After Dark: How is it as a ride? Eh, it's okay, I guess. It has all the same weaknesses (compared to Tower of Terror) as its non-Halloween/daytime counterpart, but some of the details are different. Pro: Since it is framed as a horror story rather than action-adventure, the queue is made creepier and more atmospheric, with reddish lighting and corrupted video transmissions playing on the big screen. Con: Instead of a more traditional eerie Halloween score or even the upbeat pop songs of Mission: Breakout!, our musical accompaniment is abrasive and repetitive heavy metal.***

I'm also not entirely sure it works as a Halloween overlay. Mission: Breakout! is already a ride that drops you at unpredictable intervals while various threatening situations play out on the screens and occasionally are staged to narrowly miss you. I'm not sure there is a way to make that scarier or more thrilling and aside from the unsettling elements in the queue, I am sure Monsters After Dark isn't such. It also doesn't reference Halloween by name, or use any of the holiday's specific imagery such as ghosts or pumpkins. If they decided to make it a year-round thing, it wouldn't exactly be out of place.

And that's about all I have to say on the matter. Should you check out Monsters After Dark, if you find yourself in California Adventure this Halloween season? Sure, why not. Unless you're legitimately afraid of heights/falling, darkness, monsters, fire, or Bradley Cooper.

Have a magnificent spooky holiday, readers mine. Next week...something different!

* The first-worst thing is that it was done at the behest of neo-Nazis. In case you were wondering.

** And that's not even addressing the fact that in aggregate, the events of ST:TAC are a stinking jumbled mess of shredded continuity.

*** I don't personally mind it, and it is composed by Tyler Bates, who also did the scores for both movies, but I imagine it must have fairly niche appeal among the theme park crowd.

The Second Sense: A Halloween Song For Every Land

In my various ruminations about how to further dress up the Disneyland Resort for the Halloween season, I have touched on the subject of seasonal music loops. I always include a few examples in my proposals—songs with spooky subject matter in the right genre for the area—but this time I thought I'd try something a little different and come up with one signature Halloween song for each area in both parks.

And for an extra bit of challenge...none of them can be Disney tunes. No “Skeleton Dance,” no “Headless Horseman,” no “This Is Halloween.” The Disney theme parks are in danger of losing themselves completely in self-reference, so I'm pulling back from that a bit.

Be fairly warned...this is a video-heavy post.

It Came From the Fandom: Disneyland Halloween Costumes

Anyone remember this post? No? Fair enough; it was an awfully long time ago by blog standards. I guess that means I'm not repeating myself too badly if I do another post about Disneyland-themed costumes!

First, I should probably go ahead and re-post my photo collage from...jeez Louise, five years ago at this point. AKA “That Time I Was the Small World Clock Tower For Halloween”:

Not pictured: my dignity

(If you're wondering, how did she do that?, please follow the link above. If on the other hand you're wondering, why did she do that?, I'm afraid I can't help you. Who knows why wackos like me do anything?)

In sharing the above with the internet, I have definitely outed myself as one of the geekiest of the Disneyland geeks. Disney Halloween costumes are thoroughly mainstream (and sold in the parks in children's sizes), but Disneyland Halloween costumes are the domain of the truly obsessed and, with very few exceptions, require DIY skills to achieve. So when you see someone walking around dressed as an iconic character from the parks—or even worse, an iconic structure (*cough*)—you know you're witnessing a True Believer at work.

We're rare, but we're out there. For this week's post, I'll share some of the ones I found perusing Google.*

(Disclaimer: Not all of these people are celebrating Halloween. Some of them are at conventions, including D23.)

Armchair Imagineering: Halloween Adventure

Many moons ago, I outlined a vision for a Disneyland Park going as hard (if not harder) for Halloween as it typically does for Christmas—unique decorations throughout every land, seasonal area music loops, nighttime attraction overlays, live entertainment, the works. None of it has actually come to pass, of course, but Halloween remains a highlight of the year, both at the Disneyland Resort and in the larger culture.

So now it’s the other park’s turn.

Like its older sister, California Adventure does a fair amount for Spoopy Day already, but there is tons of room for improvement, in terms of both refining what is there and adding more. One interesting aspect here is that the Halloween offerings only really kick in at nightfall, which is...certainly thematically appropriate! I might just let that stand.

Conversely, the one thing I find pretty irritating is the designation of Oogie Boogie as the park's official Halloween mascot. There's nothing wrong with a Halloween mascot per se,* but not only are there no specific links between California Adventure and The Nightmare Before Christmas or its characters, they don't actually do anything with this supposed mascot. His silhouette appears over the entrance gates and there are occasionally booming announcements in Ken Page's fabulous voice. That's it. There's no Oogie meet-and-greet tucked into an unassuming corner, no Oogie-based attraction overlay or stage skit.

So if we must have a mascot, then a) it should be a character with some legitimate connection to the park (such as perhaps?) and b) you should be able to tell that they're the mascot.

Anyway, let's get to the land-by-land breakdown. I admittedly have fewer solid ideas for this park than for the other one, mostly because...I was already an adult when California Adventure opened. I didn't grow up thinking about it; it doesn't live in my bones the way Disneyland does.

But let's see what I can do.

The 5 Scariest Disneyland Resort Attractions (That Aren't the Haunted Mansion)

There is a school of thought, concerning theme park attractions, that says: Scarier = Better. (It often overlaps with the related Faster = Better school.) Naturally, it comes to the fore during the fall season, when temporary Halloween attractions pop up everywhere and try their best to scare the pants off everyone who pays good money to experience them, and occasionally succeed.

Disney theme parks don't usually fare too well on the Scarier = Better scale. WDI tends to take a middle-of-the-road approach with attraction content, avoiding both the too-saccharine and the too-horrific. Exceptions, especially on the too-horrific end of the scale, come across as “not Disney enough” and may not last as long as they probably would in someone else's park. It's something of a pity—it would be nice if the world's finest attraction builders got to stretch themselves a little more, instead of having to stick within the bounds of a PG/soft PG-13 rating.

Regardless, Disney rides are not scary. At least, they don't have a reputation for being scary. Depending on the guest, they can be quite scary indeed...not always on purpose! The Haunted Mansion is the obvious example of a Disney attraction that is considered at least mildly spooky—so obvious that for this post, I decided it would be more fruitful to set it aside and talk about others instead.*

So here are—in my estimation—the five scariest non-Haunted Mansion Disneyland Resort attractions!

(Disclaimer: None of them actually scare me, nor ever have. Even when I was little, I think I had too firm a grasp of reality to be actually frightened by Disneyland. I knew it was all pretend and couldn't really hurt me.)

Armchair Imagineering: Halloween Music Loops

As the Halloween season gets into gear, I naturally start thinking about how Disneyland could improve their Halloween offerings. If you've been following me for a while, you might remember this post. Or perhaps not. Either way, this week I've decided to focus on an element of seasonal theme parkery* that I only touched on back then: music loops.

The great majority of themed areas in the Disneyland Resort include some sort of background music loop that can be heard throughout all or part of the area. During the winter holiday seasom, AKA “Christmas,” several areas play a special seasonal loop in lieu of the normal one. So with Halloween becoming as big a deal as Christmas in terms of decorations, live entertainment, etc....why not shore it up with music?

Part of the problem, of course—maybe the biggest part—is that there isn't a lot of immediately recognizable “Halloween music” out there. Sure, there are a few hits that all the radio stations play in October—“Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett, “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, and “Dead Man's Party” by Oingo Boingo being some of the most noteworthy—but nothing like the dozens of standard Christmas hymns and carols, which get covered and re-arranged into every conceivable musical genre so that no theme park music designer could fail to find what they're looking for.

So is this a fruitless project, then? Of course not. I would hardly have taken it far enough to post if it were. While the “canon” of Halloween music is very slim indeed and might seem too contemporary for the various historical and fantastical realms present in Disneyland, a little research turns up dozens of songs about ghosts and goblins, witches and vampires, and assorted things that go bump in the night, going right back to the Jazz Age and even earlier.

So here, in (relative) brief, are some ideas for music that could be used to enhance Disneyland's Halloween seasonal flair!

Kidnap the Magic: Disneyland Jack-o-Lanterns

Okay, help me out here. When did Halloween pumpkin carving become so...awesome? When I was a kid, riding my giant ground sloth to the playground, everyone I knew just drew a few triangles and circles on a pumpkin and cut them out with a kitchen knife. I felt fancy if I managed to include pupils in the eyes. I remember starting to see those specialty carving kits with the gnome-sized miter saws when I was in my teens,* and sometime between then and now, it just exploded as an artform.

Pumpkin has become a medium of sculpture in its own right—a feat all the more impressive when you remember that these globoid gourds are available only seasonally and the resulting creations are necessarily ephemeral. Despite its fragility, in the hands of an expert carver the flesh of a pumpkin can hold fine details as well as soft wood, and its translucency allows for subtle shading effects that only become apparent when the candle inside is lit. At the extreme end, we get stuff like this:

Most people probably don't have it in them to create anything that elaborate—I know I don't—but “rough image of a face” is no longer the default. Between the aforementioned carving kits and the widely available pattern templates, even the average neighborhood candy-giver is as likely to have pumpkins carved to resemble miniature scenes, or favorite media characters, as simple faces.

And occasionally, they turn to a Disney theme park for inspiration.

Disney jack-o-lanterns, per se...those are everywhere. Always quick to jump on the bandwagon of anything child-focused, Disney prints loads of pumpkin templates, in little booklets themed by character family. You've got your Mickey & Friends, your Princess, your Winnie The Pooh, your Pixar, probably your Jake and the Neverland Pirates. If you want a design specifically related to the parks, though, you're on your own. Naturally.

Nonetheless, some people pull it off, and it is my very great pleasure to show you some examples of their work. I had to work a bit harder than I anticipated (with some much appreciated help from The Sister) to collect all these...it turns out that Googling “Disneyland jack-o-lantern” doesn't bring up many examples of homemade carvings by private citizens.

So without further ado...

Source Materials: Ghoul Love

As part of last week's criticism of Haunted Mansion Holiday, I mentioned the Séance Circle's weird grab bag of themes and imagery, to wit: Madam Leota recites an occult-themed, thirteen-verse spinoff of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” wherein divinatory tools have romantic functions, while giant Tarot-esque cards featuring characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas swirl around the room. It's three or four completely disparate things just mashed together because they needed to give Leota something Christmas-y to do and include more of of the Burton characters. The scene is appropos of nothing.

Or is it?

Readers, I have a confession to make. I may have—may have—misrepresented that scene. It may actually make more sense than I originally gave it credit for. See, I was thinking of it as a Christmas-related scene, but if we consider that the invading characters see everything through the lens of Halloween, it's possible that the Imagineers who designed it were alluding to some genuine, if nearly forgotten, old traditions.

Possible, not definite. It could be a coincidence. Then again, even Disneyland's coincidental design choices sometimes end up being profound.

After-Action Report: Haunted Mansion Holiday

We must face it: Haunted Mansion Holiday is something we, as Disneyland fans, need to reckon with.* Yet in the 21 months this blog has been active, the only thoughts I have shared on the matter are that a) I wish it didn't go up so early in the year, and b) I adore the thing it temporarily replaces. I haven't ever given my actual opinion on the thing itself, as a holiday overlay. So here it is:

Eh, it's okay.

As a rule, I am far more forgiving of temporary ride alterations than permanent ones. The latter have to constitute a definite improvement on the original for me to approve of them, while the former just have to be moderately entertaining since, after all, I'll have the original back soon enough. Even if I can't stand a temporary change, all I have to do is wait it out.

I'm happy enough to put Haunted Mansion Holiday in the “moderately entertaining” pile. I like some of the music, the visuals in the stretching room are pretty sweet, and I like seeing the new gingerbread house each year. (Though this year's is a little...uh...) I even think the often criticized mismatch between the existing Haunted Mansion imagery and the Tim Burton additions kind of works with the concept—the Halloweentown characters are imposing their style on the Mansion, are they not?

Of course, I am well aware that this is the kind of cheap post-hoc rationalization for lazy attraction design that Disney's own Marketing Department apologists like to use: “Of course it sucks. We were going for suck.” So I don't give it too much weight. And there's plenty else to criticize about the endeavor.

I just don't find myself criticizing it on the level of “This is a travesty against everything Disneyland outght to stand for” like many commenters do. It's more along the lines of “This could have and should have been done better.” So what I'll do here is, I'll go over various aspects of the ride, explain what I do and don't like about them, and then—as a bonus bit of Armchair Imagineering—sketch out an alternate way of adding The Nightmare Before Christmas to the Haunted Mansion for the holiday season that hopefully makes more sense and is more engaging.

Armchair Imagineering: Hooray For Halloween Parade

The first Mickey's Halloween Party of the year is this Friday. I got to go to that thing in 2013. It wasn't as mind-blowing as the advertising (and price tag) would have you believe, but it was fun enough. There honestly wasn't that much going on that there wouldn't be on any normal Disneyland evening, it's just that on this occasion, it was Halloween-themed. Speaking as a grown-up, the best part was getting to wander around Disneyland in a costume. (I was the “it's a small world” Clock Tower.) The “candy stations” were nothing to write home about and I don't usually go in for rave dancing.

And then there was the unique live entertainment, which I would describe as a mixed bag. The “Cadaver Dans”—i.e. The Dapper Dans with ghoulish makeup and a spooky song repertoire—were a lot of fun. The “Halloween Screams” fireworks show is fantastic, and I think it's practically criminal that they only show it at the party. The parade, though—”Mickey's Costume Party Cavalcade”—was rather disappointing. It just felt very thrown-together, with cheap floats, uninspired music and dancing, and an overall lack of imagination and effort.

Orlando's Magic Kingdom, by contrast, has a Halloween parade—Mickey's Boo-To-You Halloween Parade—that's pretty dang slick..but rather than simply wish to have theirs imported over here,* I thought I'd Armchair Imagineer a better one from scratch! Inspired by the wonderful A Christmas Fantasy Parade, I would make this parade an elaborate, tightly themed spectacle that really brings across the spirit of the holiday in all its facets (or at least all the facets that are family-friendly enough for Disneyland). Accordingly, rather than spamming the most marketable characters, I would choose characters and IPs that actually reflect aspects of Halloween...while still including plenty of crowd-pleasers so the average guest can still find a favorite!

Disneyland Dilettante readers, I give you...the Hooray For Halloween Parade!

Kidnap the Magic: How to Be a Theme Park for Halloween

This is a first for this blog: a Kidnap the Magic entry about something other than a themed party! I have numerous Disneyland-related craft project ideas, some of which I've actually done, but I haven't shared any yet because I haven't yet gotten in the habit of photo-documenting my works in progress. I did get a few good pics of this one, though, and the time is definitely right!

So a couple years ago, I was fortunate enough to attend Mickey's Halloween Party, the separately ticketed event that runs at Disneyland during the Halloween season. It's pretty much the only time when adults are allowed to enter the park in full-on, unambiguous costumes, and boy, did the guests ever take advantage of the fact. Practically everyone there was in some kind of Disney character costume. Many were obviously store-bought, but quite a few more were just as obviously homemade. Some people even went as Disneyland characters, such as the Haunted Mansion's Tightrope Walker AKA Alligator Gal, or recognizable individual buccaneers from Pirates of the Caribbean.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who showed up dressed as a ride, though.

I decided at the outset that I wanted to have a costume directly related to Disneyland, and not just to Disney's film library. When I hit on the idea of going as the “it's a small world” Clock Tower...I couldn't not do it. That's the sort of inspiration that strikes maybe once a year. Suddenly my head was full of ways to translate all those blocky shapes and clock gizmos into clothing on a human figure. I knew I had a winner.

I also knew I had my work cut out for me. The problem with choosing such an offbeat, niche-interest costume as the Clock Tower—or any other Disneyland icon that didn't originate in a movie—is that there are few to no pre-existing resources to help you out. From design to execution, you have to come up with it all yourself.

Wait...did I say “problem?” I meant invigorating challenge. There's a lot of satisfaction in creating your own unique costume and wearing it in a setting where it will be appreciated. If that sort of challenge sounds like your spinning cup of tea, read on while I walk you through the phases of my own such project.

Kidnap the Magic: A Haunted Mansion Halloween

I've really been looking forward to this one. Of the several Disneyland themed party ideas I've shared so far, this is the only one I've actually tried for myself, rather than merely speculating upon. So quell those doubts, readers—this stuff's been field-tested in advance by Yours Truly and my then-housemates!

Armchair Imagineering: Halloweenland

Disneyland has been in the Halloween business for less than a decade.

Oh, sure, there were bits and pieces. We've gotten a few jack-o-lanterns on Main Street for as long as I can remember. Seasonal character plush has a long history, Halloween included.* Haunted Mansion Holiday—which is treated like a Halloween overlay, even though it really isn't one—started in 2001.

But the first big, park-wide Halloween blowout wasn't until 2006.

It's kind of ironic, because other area theme parks have been doing Halloween events for a lot longer. Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights and Six Flags Magic Mountain's Fright Fest both date back to the early Nineties, and the first instance of Knott's Scary Farm was in 1973. So why was Disneyland so late to the Dead Man's Party?

Because of image, basically. Theme parks are entertainment venues. “Halloween” plus “entertainment” usually amounts to the horror genre. There are many ways of doing horror, but none of them are usually considered “family-friendly,” and since that's what Disney trades on, a typical theme park Halloween experience—strobe lights and haunted mazes and “scare-acters” leaping out at people and loud rave music—was right out. It was all part of the dichotomy that held sway throughout the Eighties and Nineties, in which Disneyland was considered “tame” and safe for families with young children, while all the other parks positioned themselves as the hip, edgy, teen-oriented alternative. Disneyland didn't need a big to-do for Halloween—in the theme park realm, it had a virtual monopoly on Christmas.

All this is so much rambling. The upshot is that Disneyland has not really been doing Halloween in a large-scale way for very long. And if you ask me (which hopefully you do, since you're reading my blog), the Powers That Be haven't really mastered it yet. Halloween Time still has a ways to go before it's really polished to Disney-caliber perfection. The seasonal decorations and themes are too sporadic throughout the park. I really think the place could benefit from a systematic, land-by-land makeover during this time. There are many dimensions to Halloween in the current era—a park as diverse as Disneyland could indulge them all.

So without further ado, here is my vision of Halloweenland!

After-Action Report: Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy

Can you believe it's October already? Bring on the Halloween-themed posts!

Space Mountain is probably the last ride you would expect to see dolled up for a holiday—any holiday. I mean...it's Space Mountain. There just aren't any major holidays where outer space is a big deal. Galaxy Day? All Comets' Eve? These are not actual things.

On the other hand, sometimes you get some interesting space motifs for Halloween. Aliens—abducting, probing, mutilating livestock, hunting us for sport, bleeding our planet dry*—are starting to take their place alongside more traditional horror monsters such as vampires and zombies and Swamp Things. Depending on whom you ask, they might be scarier than the old mainstays...after all, aliens might actually exist!

So maybe it's not too surprising that Space Mountain is the recipient of what is, in my eyes, the only proper Halloween overlay for a Disneyland attraction so far.

This is Halloween – The Case Against Haunted Mansion Holiday

Let's digress from Disneyland for a bit to talk about Christmas Creep. Even if you haven't encountered the term before, you're bound to be familiar with the phenomenon: the tendency for retailers to start stocking and advertising their Christmas items earlier and earlier in the year. Is it a new phenomenon, per se? Hard to say. The Peanuts had a gag about a Christmas sale in April as far back as 1974, but when I was a kid in the Eighties, people still rolled their eyes over the fact that tree displays went up the instant Thanksgiving was over.* Now, of course, we're shocked if any store waits that long. The standard is to flip straight from Halloween to Christmas, with poor Thanksgiving relegated to an end cap display.

This is understandable, of course. Both Halloween and Christmas are much bigger moneymaking opportunities than Thanksgiving. For Halloween, people like to buy costumes, elaborate decorations, and loads of candy. For Christmas, they buy elaborate decorations,** candy, occasional costumes, and gifts gifts gifts. Unless you're a supermarket or an airline, Thanksgiving just isn't that much of a boost for you...and if you are a supermarket or an airline, Christmas might still be bigger. On the consumer side of things, Thanksgiving isn't capital-F Fun the way Halloween and Christmas are, so most people are content to let it be eclipsed by its feuding calendrical neighbors.

Halloween itself wasn't always so prominent, of course. I think my generation was the one to decisively say “Screw you, adulthood, we'll keep dressing up if we want,” turning what had previously been thought of mainly as a children's romp day into an all-ages cultural phenomenon...and honestly? In light of Christmas Creep, it's a good thing we did. The prominence of Halloween gives us a stick with which to draw our line in the sand: “No, Wal-Mart, we are not shopping for Christmas yet; we are still celebrating Halloween.” And since it's become so easy to capitalize on Halloween itself, the retailers of America aren't too inclined to fight us on the matter. Don't be fooled by the appearance of fake pine garlands on the shelves in mid-October—those are just there so the transition can be made as quickly as possible once November 1 hits.

Now we can get back to Disneyland, which turns the whole thing upside-down by installing the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay in September.