After-Action Report: Disabled at Disneyland

Yes, the blog is still on hiatus due to Yours Truly's knee injury, but this topic intimately concerns said injury, so I figured I'd throw you a bone. (All, what, three of you?) I may do this from time to time until I'm properly back in the saddle and can commit to a weekly schedule again. The point is, a torn ACL, etc. is no excuse to cancel previously existing theme park plans, so the other day I got to undergo the Disneyland Wheelchair Experience.

My challenge was in fact twofold: 1) a complete inability to put weight on my left leg, and 2) this big honking immobilizing brace they're having me wear until further notice, additionally preventing me from bending said leg...unless I take it off, which is technically an option, but one I want to avoid as much as possible. I mention this because it serves as a contrast with my previous secondhand glimpses of the Disneyland Wheelchair Experience, with a party member who could walk, just not for hours at a time. No ride or attraction need be off-limits to such an individual. I knew from the outset that my situation was going to be a bit more dire than that.

So how did it work out? Here are some of the highlights. And lowlights.

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!