The Happiest Place on Earth: Part 4

It's interesting how the Happiest Place on Earth can be accompanied by so much drama. There was a lot of drama. Mostly, it had to do with shopping. Or swimming. It was a lot more than we wanted while at an amusement park, though. Drama and whining are distinctly unamusing.

The hotel, the California Grand that I mentioned in part 2, had a big pool with a big twisty slide, and my daughter wanted to spend time at the pool. The boys didn't want to, and I'm not really a big swim fan, so I didn't want to, but it became apparent that my daughter just wasn't going to be happy if she didn't get to swim, so, initially, we decided to split up the group: the boys and I would stay at the park, and the girl and my wife would go to the pool. The grandparents would just go take a break, which, on Friday, involved a nap. I kind of envied the nap. Anyway, it became more apparent that she would be even less happy if we split the group up. Basically, we all needed to be on her page, which became the least painful option. But it all worked out. I used the pool time on Friday and Saturday to write (a story which should be available soon-ish), and, Saturday, we had lunch at the pool, all seven of us, and that was fun.

There was still the shopping drama, though. Oh My Gosh, the shopping drama! All the kids had money to spend that they'd saved up for the trip, plus they'd been promised some spending money from their grandmother. They didn't know how much or when it would happen, though, and that drove them crazy. And me. And my wife. Because they wanted to GO SPEND their money but also, especially my younger son, wanted to know what they (he) were getting from the grandparents so that they (he) could figure out what (Lego) to buy.

Yes, we went to Disneyland so that  he could spend money on Legos. Yes, Legos that he could buy anywhere. But they had this cool Lego store in the Disney Mall area with these huge Lego sculptures! And, oh!, how I wish I had pictures of these things, but it was after my camera went on vacation. There was a huge Lego dragon on top of the store breathing green fire down on a Lego knight just like in Sleeping Beauty. I think that was the sculpt that has over 1,000,000 bricks in it. And there was an Aladdin and Jasmine with Genie on a flying carpet hanging inside the store, and a life-size Sully and Mike (from Monsters, Inc) by the doorway outside, too. My sons loved that store, and we had to drag them out more than once. Even my daughter got into the whole Lego thing, and she's (mostly) uninterested in Legos.

At any rate, my younger son is always completely paranoid that anything he wants to buy will sell out before he gets to buy it, so he always wants to buy whatever it is NOW NOW NOW! But he didn't actually know what he was going to be able to buy, and the not knowing drove him (and us) crazy. Until Saturday, that is, when he finally got to do his shopping. To be fair, he did also construct his own lightsaber at Star Traders, and that is something he could only do at Disneyland.

And, then, there were the pins. In the end, everyone got into the pins. The pins are SO cool, and they have so many really neat ones. I wanted to buy ALL the Star Wars pins. The whole pin thing is its own saga, but (probably) I will never write that. However, here are some pictures of the pins we came home with.

Oh, on Star Tours, one rider each time gets pegged as the "rebel spy." I didn't know anything about this going onto the ride. Rather, I did, vaguely, because my oldest son (who had ridden it before) tried to tell me about it, but he's not always the best at that kind of thing, so I came away from that discussion with, actually, negative knowledge. Yes, he actually sucked information out of my head through all of that, but, then, I think my kids do that to me on a regular basis. At any rate, the fact that there is a rebel spy on your ship is the reason the Empire is chasing you, and, when we did Star Tours the first time, my oldest son was chosen as the spy, much to our surprise and his overzealous excitement. After being the spy, he felt the need to buy as many items related to being the spy as he could afford, so he bought a t-shirt and this pin (which is almost the same as the shirt except smaller):

And this is the pin that kind of actually catalyzed the whole pin craze (my father-in-law bought it for the younger son):

My daughter's favorite of hers:

There was this one theme at Star Traders that they had all kinds of items for. There was a mug, but it wasn't quite tall enough; if it had been, I would have bought it, because I need a back up mug, but, maybe, the shortness is appropriate. There was a t-shirt, an action figure, a bobble-head, and I don't remember what all else, and I had to have something with this on it, so, eventually, after cycling through all the options several times, I settled on the pin:

All of that to say that the pin collecting thing they have going is pretty fun, but it's fairly expensive, too, because there are just so many pins. They do have trading there, and you can get some really good pins if you know what you're doing, but you have to really know what you're doing. I did manage one fairly nice roundabout trade:

We each got a Fillmore pin (lower left corner) with our Disney package. It's a limited edition pin (a lot of the pins are limited edition, as most of them are only produced for one season), which is cool, but we had five them, so my younger son decided to trade his away. He actually made a bad trade with his pin from a collecting stand point, but he got one that he wanted, so I didn't say anything about it. However, I was later able to trade the pin he got in the poor trade (because I got him a duplicate of it in a set) for the Lightning McQueen (upper right corner) pin which is a highly sought after pin from Cars edition pins. The thing is, the employees have pins that they have to trade if they are a designated pin trader, so she had to trade it to me and actually commented on how good a trade it was.

But I've gone on for much longer than I intended about the pins, which I only meant to mention, but they actually became an important part of the trip, so I'm leaving all of this stuff in.

Other things that were really cool:

They have this light and water show at night which involves spraying sheets of water into the air and projecting film clips onto them. It was incredibly cool

We went to see the Aladdin musical, and that was incredible. I think it was better than the movie. The guy playing Genie was hilarious. The sets and props were magnificent. If you ever get down to Disneyland, you should definitely make time to go see it.

We also went to see the Muppets 3D show, and that was awesome! I suppose if you don't like the Muppets, it wouldn't be a big deal, but we love the Muppets, so it was great. It involved having the theater (yes, the one we were sitting in) get blown up around us. How can you go wrong when the Muppets blow up the theater you're sitting in?

The Haunted Mansion is amazing! We looked up some stuff about it later, and they do all of that with mirrors which just blew me away, because they have ghosts dancing around and stuff right through solid objects, and it was just WOW! I really want to go behind the stage and look at how that's done!

Pirates of the Caribbean was a lot of fun. It has a place where they do film projection onto a sheet of fog or water (I don't remember) which is like what they did at the light and water show. I know they've modified the ride since the movies have been out, so it made me wish I'd been on the original.

All of that aside, possibly the most interesting thing about the trip had nothing to do with any of this. As I've mentioned, we don't do a lot of eating out, and we don't (usually) do much sugar. However, this was an eating out trip. You don't really have an option. We did the equivalent of a couple of years worth of eating out in 5 days on the trip to Disneyland. But my daughter, well, my daughter is enamored with eating out. She always wants to do it and always wants store bought processed crap over the much healthy options that we make at home (especially when it comes to bread). Several times during the trip, my daughter ordered French toast for whatever meal we were having (yes, it's one of her favorite things), and, each time (and some of these were kind of expensive places to eat), she said "dad's is better." That was surprising and gratifying to hear, because stating a preference for anything I make at home over something we buy somewhere else almost never comes out of her mouth. The boys, yes, but never her. That, hearing that from her (more than once (or, even, twice)), may have been the best part of the trip for me. Yes, even better than Star Tours. Maybe.

As it goes with things like this, as we were leaving on Sunday morning and hanging out in the mall area and doing our last shopping and looking and all of that, the question came up, "What was better Trinity lake (see my Let's go on Vacation series) or Disneyland?" Even the kids had a hard time with that one. It's like comparing nectarines to apples. So the question became, "If you could pick just one to do again, which would it be." The kids did better at that one and immediately piped up with "Disneyland!" They like the apples, and, yes, Disneyland is the apple of amusement parks (Six Flags is only the pear). I do like apples, but I had to go with the nectarine, and here's why: when we got back from Trinity lake, I felt rested. It was a great, relaxing trip. When we got back from Disneyland, I felt like I needed a rest. At this stage in my life, as much as I enjoyed Disneyland (and I did), if I had to choose, I would pick the more peaceful and relaxing choice (especially since mornings at Trinity involved sitting on the deck with my mocha and writing). Still, if I want an apple, a nectarine is not a substitute; it's just that, more often, I want a nectarine.

We'll just have to wait and see what develops for next year.

The Happiest Place on Earth: Part 3

Some of us got up early on Friday, because the plan was to get into the park ahead of the crowd. That was actually a possibility, because we had these passes that let us in an hour before the parks opened. However, when I say that "some of us got up early," what I mean is "I got up early." In all actuality, I didn't get up any earlier than I usually get up, which is 6:00am, but everyone else was supposed to also get up at 6:00am, and that just didn't happen. By the time everyone had been dragged out of bed (kicking and screaming, in some cases (okay, so I'm exaggerating a little (but only a little))), showered, and dressed, it was 7:30 before we got into the park, and we still had to eat breakfast. Clearly, we didn't have this whole thing figured out. By the time we got some food, it was 8:00am, and the park had opened for real and we'd missed the whole hour of extra time we'd had.

One of the first things we passed going into Disneyland on Friday morning was

which I thought was SO cool. See, I took a picture of it! But, seriously, it's an old fire engine; what's more cool than that? Okay, lots of things, but, still... Anyway, so I was being all "wow!" over the fire engine, and there was this old guy washing windows nearby, and he saw me being all "wow!" over the fire engine and the fire station and stuff, and he came over and told us that Walt Disney himself had lived in the apartment over the fire station while the park was being built and that he'd used it as his room for years when he'd come to stay. That was pretty cool, and I'm guessing a bit of inside info that most visitors don't get to hear about. Yeah, this guy was old enough that I bet he's been working at the park since it was being built and knew the information first hand. It was that kind of experience.

The first ride we went on on Friday morning was

and I have to say  that the line, which, actually, was almost non-existent at 8:00am, was just as good as the ride. The detail they put into the place was amazing, and there was so much to look at, but we were able to just rush through, so it wasn't until we came back to ride it again (on Saturday) that I was actually able to fully take in the details of the line area.

Going in.

A death trap.

Of course, all the kids had to pull the rope.

Oh, and, yeah, the ride was a blast!

After Indiana Jones, we went up into Tarzan's tree house.

We explored the jungle.

And we rode a steamboat.

We did some other things, too, but, well, my camera decided it didn't want to work anymore. Oh, it works again now, but that was the end of the pictures for the trip. Friday morning, it just decided that it was taking its own vacation and refused to turn on again. Yes, I checked the batteries. I'd actually just put fresh batteries in not long before it quit working. After we got home, I was able to upload the pictures I got before it died, which I wasn't sure was going to work since the camera wouldn't function. I swapped out  the batteries again, just on a whim, and something in the combination of those two things made the camera decide that it would work again. But I have no more pictures...

Which means I don't have pictures from Cars Land, which is... Oh, man, I wish you could have seen it! It was like they pulled Radiator Springs right out of the movie and brought it to life. But, you know, with people walking all around in it.

So we're sitting over at Flo's waiting for my wife's dad and step-mother, and, across the street, at the traffic cone hotel place is Lightning McQueen. Now, he's just sitting there, so, you know, I'm thinking he's a decoration. Just a model car sitting out in the driveway. But we're sitting there, and, suddenly, he comes to life and starts driving out of the driveway, and he's talking to people as he goes by, and it was just incredible! He pulled through the driveway and turned onto the street and drove right by us, and I wanted to reach out and touch him so bad, but, you know, if I was all famous and stuff, I wouldn't want people I don't know coming up and trying to touch me, so I refrained. Anyway, he drives off, and, a moment later, Mater drives up the street from the direction Lightning had gone, and he goes over and parks in the same place, and it was all SO COOL! I mean, it was seriously cool, and I can't even imagine what that would be like if I was six and Lightning McQueen drove up to me and talked to me. Well, I can, because it would have been about like Luke Skywalker walking up to me and talking to me, and I used to dream about that kind of thing all the time when I was that age, so, apparently, I can actually imagine it.

We rode The Tower of Terror, and that was amazing. The hotel is awesome! I mean, well, it's  like everything there; the attention to detail is stunning, and it's like being in some abandoned hotel, and we wondered if they have some guy somewhere that just specializes in putting cobwebs on things or if they actually hire spiders to take care of it. At the time, I didn't know this, but it's not just a simple drop ride. No, Disney was not content to be satisfied with something as simple as gravity, so the car that you sit in actually has cables that pull it down so that you achieve a speed faster than free fall. Riding that with my wife and younger son was awesome. They're both into screaming, but, see, my wife would scream and then burst into hysterical laughter, so I was laughing at her laughing, and my son was screaming but trying to also laugh, and that may have been the best ride of the trip with the way she screamed and laughed.

The boys and I went off to the Mad Tea Party while the rest of the group went off to get wet. I'm not a fan of wet rides. Well, it's not the rides; I like them just fine; in fact, when I was a kid, the log ride may have been my favorite thing; however, I hate walking around wet after the fact, and if the stuff in your wallet gets wet... and I hate having wet shoes. It's just gross, especially later when you finally take your shoes off. Anyway, we were trying to see this Tron thing that they had when the oldest boy was there in the spring, but it's gone, now, and has been replaced with the Mad Tea Party, which was pretty cool and included a band playing 80s covers with a lead singer that looked like Tom Petty. But the coolest thing there, and the thing I regret most not having pictures of, was these two guys on stilts wearing pink flamingo bodies so that they looked like they were riding giant pink flamingos. And they jousted. It was awesome.

But, you know, my camera was on strike, so I don't have any pictures.

Pixar's Ironic Messenger

Pixar's newest release is slick. And when I say slick, I mean it's SLICK. In the same way that Lightning McQueen is speed, Cars 2 is slick. Shiny. Mint. The animation is... there are no actual words for what the animation is. Especially the animation on the racing locations. I sat there thinking, "I want to go there." Especially when they were racing in Italy, and, actually, I have no real desire to go to Italy, but those scenes... I would have just stepped into them if I could have.

Cars 2 embraces everything kids loved about Cars and focuses in on it and makes it Bigger. Better. Faster and more intense (to quote a famous director (well, he's not famous for being a director, but that's the phrase he's known for when directing (points for anyone that knows whom))). Throw in Michael Caine as Finn McMissle, the James Bond of the movie, and you have  the perfect mix for the perfect spy spoof. And it is. If you can imagine a James Bond movie where he's accompanied by Johnny English (a Rowan Atkinson creation, if that gives you any idea). Actually, just see Cars 2, and you won't have to imagine it. Caine is suave and sophisticated while Larry the Cable Guy is, well, Mater.

In comparison to other Pixar movies, this one has been getting bad reviews. Which puts it on just about even footing with other movies. As a total aside, I find it extremely curious that the first movie that Pixar has released that attacks a particular group, in this case Big Oil, is the first of their movies to get any kind of negative reaction. In general, their movies have been about the human condition, and this one is, too, but Cars 2, specifically, makes the statement that Big Oil is bad. WALL-E has a similar theme, an environmental theme, but they don't target any particular group with that movie; they play it safe by equating their environmental message with said human condition -- humans need to "shape up" but not any specific ones. But, hey, I agree with them, Big Oil is bad. They are one of the big evils in the world, and, if Pixar wants to call them to the carpet, I'm good with that. I mean, when a Saudi prince starts talking about how they need to drive oils prices down so they can keep the US dependent on the Middle East for oil, you know something's wrong.

I'm not trying to say there's any kind of conspiracy against Cars 2 or Pixar by Big Oil, but I do find the negativity surrounding the movie to be, well, like I said, curious.

Moving past the oil thing, probably, the biggest "flaw" of the movie is its failure to meet audience expectations. Cars is about Lightning McQueen. He is the star of the movie. The trailers leading up to Cars 2 support our assumption and expectation that Lightning will, again, be the star of Cars 2. Pixar fails to prepare us for the reality, and the blame for that lies squarely with them. Or with Disney. With whoever prepared the trailers, but I'd find it hard to believe that Pixar didn't have some control over that. The truth is, though, is that Lightning is not the hero of the sequel. That distinction falls on Mater (If you doubt it, check to see who got top billing for the movie. Hint: it wasn't Owen Wilson). I think it's quite possible that adult audiences just couldn't come to grips with the comic relief from the first movie taking over in the spotlight in the second. Kids, though... well, kids love Mater, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't been an issue for them.

That's a failing I often see in reviews of movies for kids, the tendency to belittle them for no reason other than that they're for kids. Pixar, of course, has spoiled the wider audience by making their movies equally appealing to adults, so when they release a movie that is geared (no pun intended) more toward kids, adults get a little upset over it.

If Cars 2 does a have a failing, I'd say it's one of story telling. The big plot is the spy story with the message about big oil, but they needed something else to give it that emotional impact they're known for, so they tried to weave in a story about friendship and how we need to accept our friends for whom they are. Lightning is embarrassed of Mater. In fact, it is the early conflict over this that sends Mater off on his adventure. However, because the movie is focused on Mater, we never get the opportunity to make an emotional connection with Lightning over the issue, so there's no tug on our heart when we get to the pay off for that in the movie. Just an intellectual acknowledgment that, yes, we shouldn't try to make our friends be someone they're not. It's the failure of these two story lines to support each other that leaves the audience feeling that there could have been something more. Sort of like making one peanut butter sandwich and one jelly sandwich and leaving it to the audience to figure out what to do with them.

Having said that, I do feel the need to point out that this movie is still vastly superior to the average Hollywood offering. If this is the worst Pixar has to offer, and I'm not saying it is, because I actually enjoyed it a lot more than WALL-E, no one has any reason at all to complain. And it's worth saying: Big Oil is bad.