The Tragic Kingdom in 2023

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This is a report on the current status of the Disneyland Park (and to a lesser degree the Disneyland Resort) from a visit on January 25, 2023.  My partner in this adventure was Jill Fraser.  There is a lot to go over here from the lowest levels to the highest.  Jimini Crickett said to emphasize the positive but this review will have some negative as well.  Its up to you what order to read it in.  Topics will include the trivial (food at the Magic Kingdom), to the highest levels of aesthetics in theme parks, including the new Star Wars land and the dismaying decay and abandonment of Tomorrowland.

1. Timing and pricing.  We chose to go on a Wednesday when school is in session and the weather is cold(er).  For these days, Disney lowers prices for each park to $104/person but the park also closes earlier and does not have its big shows.  Everything else seems to be there.

2. The food was dreadful and expensive.  As bad as I have ever had there.  I recommend you pack some trail mix, eat like you were backpacking, rehydrate regularly and then eat something better when you get home or leave the park.

3. Perhaps the highlight of the park was, for me, three so-called cast members.  We had Xavier at the Magic Store on Main Street, some unknown people at the Penny Arcade and best of all "Mike" at one of the Adventureland emporia across from the Jungle Cruise.  Xavier demonstrated what could be done with the trimmed cards.  I asked Mike if they still had the shrunken heads you used to be able to find there.  He not only knew what I was talking about, he was able to remind me of the old Jungle Cruise exhibit/joke in which a Witch Doctor wants to trade two of his heads for one of yours.  I loved this guy and plan to look for him again the next time I am at the park.  Its the people who matter.

4. I am also happy to say that the Magic Shop and Mickey's theatre on Main Street are both there.

5. But what happened to the horse drawn carriages on Main Street?  And even if you get rid of them, you should replace them with "in period" motor driven vehicles.  Dont just drop transportation.  Not everyone wants to walk the 200 - 300 yards distance from the entrance to the castle.

6. That castle is looking a little small in context with everything else, maybe it is time to refurbish and enlarge it.

7. The new Star Wars land is spectacular.  It is very large, where did all that land come from?  The two main attractions are both amazing and I am curious to know how they pulled off some of those things.  No I could not figure out what our guides were saying most of the time, but that was OK.  

 

 

8. Genie Plus was worthwhile occassionally. But we had to pay an extra $25/person to get the "Lightning Line" feature at Rise of the Rebellion.  We felt that they were being overly greedy.

9. The food was a disaster.  Bring your own food.  Oh did I mention that before.

10.  Getting hooked up with the app was painful.  

11. Tomorrowland was a sad wreck of a land, once so filled with promise and optimism, now fallen into decay, a parody of itself.  The Carousel of Progress is a gigantic wreck in the middle of everything.  The decayed PeopleMover just has its track laid like pointless linguini on the land with the obnoxious wreck of what used to be a peoplemover terminal rusting in the middle.  One of the main attractions, the CircleVision 360 film about America is now a trivial shoot em up with several Pixar characters.  This is fun but very, very minor.  Where is the vision?  None to be seen.

Carousel of Failure

The Former People Mover

12.  The Tiki Room was as enchanted as ever and they should just keep it.  But the Jungle Cruise!? Forget about it, tear it down and do something else with it.

13. I always wanted to check if the entrances to back stage were really hidden in plain sight, and yes they were.  How amusing.

 

14. Perhaps the biggest failure is the disastrous parking system.  Really, Disneyland?  You want to make customers walk a mile or two after parking and wait for trams while trying to go to your park?  This is the best you can do?

 

15. I think it would be worthwhile to use one of these discount days to go to California Adventure.  Bring  your own food, etc. 

Kathleen Quaife Hodge ( ? -- 2021 )

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It seems completely impossible and unfair, but Kathleen Quaife Hodge passed away suddenly in her sleep a few days ago.  I am heartbroken.  She had been in a relationship with Mike Cedeno for 9 years or so and they were going to get married.

I met Kathleen at Roto Effects of America and we hired her as a freelance animator for the motion platform ride "Journey to the 4th Dimension" for Harper Films and Landmark Entertainment. 

Scale, Future and Decay at Disneyland

Christmas Day, 2014

This is the second part of my impressions of a recent trip to Disneyland, the original park, for the first time in many years. You can read the first part here.

It has been speculated that Disneyland has a function in our civilization beyond merely being an entertaining vacation destination. From Tinkerbell, to the ancient myths, to the promise of tomorrow, these concepts manifested in Disneyland but originated in our unspoken hopes and beliefs for the future. At least they were our beliefs in the future back when we were naive enough to believe in a future.

When I approached Disneyland on this occasion, I was moving fast to meet my friends who were waiting for me in Frontierland. I was late. I was also disoriented because the traditional parking lot was missing and the entire entrance now reconfigured into the space between two gates and a transit center. My pass worked and I sprinted to my rendezvous.

Having found my friends, I paused to catch my breathe. There was something wrong. I felt a sense of disquiet as I walked around New Orleans Square, past the river, across from Tom Sawyer's Island. It was something to do with scale. It was smaller somehow. Jungleland, Frontierland, the River it all seemed smaller than I had remembered.

Of course my first memories of Disneyland were from the mid-60s and I was much smaller and the park was much bigger, relatively speaking. Is it possible that the memories from visiting Disneyland all those times when I was young remained in ways beyond what we normally think of as memory, but as a sense memory of the rightness of things, of its basic size and dimensions? Could this unconscious dissonance be the cause of the unease that I felt?

Familiar and yet unfamiliar some of the dissonance was probably a reaction to the crass repurposing of classic attractions for more current popular product placement, the Swiss Family Treehouse was appropriated by Tarzan for example, but the feeling of a scale difference was persistent.

As evening approached this sensation finally went away. I had chosen to walk around the Matterhorn to New Orleans Square to meet my friends for dinner, and the dark of evening restored the sense of mystery and of scale that had been missing during the day. Night made it less apparent how the pieces all fit together, night allowed the park to expand in my imagination.

It was in this darkness that I was able to pass through Fantasyland and it was at night that I was finally able to get to Tomorrowland.

The old TWA rocket still remains, unlabeled, but defiant

Lets review for a moment the Tomorrowland of 1967 or so. On one side of the entrance is the AT&T Bell System Circlevision film with a working Picturephone to their headquarters in New York City. On the other side was the Monsanto exhibit “Adventure Thru Inner Space” which talked of the promise of microscopy and the quantum world through a journey into a snowflake. Dare I go any further into the center of the nucleus itself?

Further on was a recreation of our nuclear submarine force which had just recently gone under the polar ice cap for the first time. There was an external and beautifully plastic House of the Future. The GE pavilion's Carousel of Progress swept you away in a narrative of white suburban Americans singing about their home appliances. Trans World Airlines took you on a trip to Mars. The future of transportation opened in July 67 with the PeopleMover to augment the Monorail, the overhead tram, and the Disneyland Railroad. And even that 60s vision of world peace: There's so much that we share that its time we're aware: its a small world, after all.

We would go to the moon. We would explore the ocean floor. We would create new and unlimited sources of energy. We would look at the night sky and explore its mysteries.  We would heal the sick. We would live in a world of peace, freedom and harmony. We would save the world.

We jump to the present and we find the promise betrayed. AT&T and TWA no longer in business.  GE a shadow of its former self threatening to just go bankrupt rather than take responsibility for the gross environmental destruction of the Hudson river which they did with deliberate malignancy and for a fast buck.   A NASA without the capability of going to space without assistance from the Russians.  The people betrayed and unemployed.  A cluttered monstrosity of a “rocket jets” attraction destroys the symmetry of the entrance to tomorrow. The rotting hulk of decaying urban transportation infrastructure lies abandoned and rusting in the center of everything, attached to the former location of the “rocket jets”, now a transit hub to nowhere. Silent it stands abandoned at night. The Circlevision film about our country has been turned into some sort of video game arcade to promote a Pixar film. The Mighty Microscope (Monsanto Exhibit) becomes a redo of the original Star Tours continuing the theme of idle tourism for the wealthy  The Carousel of Progress is now a house of tomorrow that is more like a house of today, but for the very rich. You see, it seemed to be saying, this is how you could live today if you had a lot of money. The Submarine Ride which formerly presented the sense of adventure of those heady days of the submarine pioneers, now advertises a fish movie.

Abandoned rocket jets and Peoplemover turnabout

No transportation, the transport was all gone. Only the rotting infrastructure remained. The promise of how we would live in the future became the betrayal that said only the rich would live well. Advances in science were turned into cheap movie promotions. Symmetry became clutter. It was all outsourced to China, perhaps to Shanghai Disneyland, by our government.  I guess if you wanted to see the future you would have to go there, if you could afford it.

But if you look, you will find remnants of the former greatness. With the help of some docents at the Illuminations pavilion we were able to find elements of the Carousel of Progress hidden in plain sight on the outskirts of the exhibits.  In urban archaeology, you find the old doors, you walk to the end of the hallway and check to see if there is space beyond.  And there on the floor was the track of the former Carousel of Progress, now stopped with no promise for the future. But still there, nevertheless.

Look on the floor to see the seam that separated the unmoving stage from the rotating audience platform.

So what does the future hold for Tomorrowland?  We know that the Brad Bird movie of the same name and shot in part in Tomorrowland is coming out in a year.   I have no doubts that many plans are in the works for the rehabilitation of the future.   Will it convey an articulate and inspirational vision ?

Vision of Tomorroland from the first trailer for the movie

Trailer for Tomorrowland (2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11fgwFAk3fk

PeopleMover on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeopleMover

Updated 12/15/2025

Field Notes on Disneyland Winter 2014

This is a report on a visit to the Magic Kingdom gate at Disneyland in December of 2014. My two previous posts on Disneyland can be found here and here.

This time I visited the park with Harvie Branscomb and Yayoi Wakabayashi during their annual Thanksgiving visit to see Harvie's father in San Diego. They were there the entire day and aggressively achieved a very high attraction visitation rate.

I had a more eclectic agenda involving a variety of topics that have been on the backburner for several years now. I still need to return to see several new attractions (new to me, at least) and updates of some older, traditional ones.

Its important to know as you read this that I grew up in S. California and have visited the park many, many times in the past, perhaps 20 times. I remember when Space Mountain was just a drawing on the maps of the park they used to sell. I used to give an informal tour of Disneyland to visitors from outside the area. (1)

Here are my notes:

1. In all the times I have visited Disneyland, this is the first time that I never had to wait in line for an attraction, other than a very brief wait for the Disneyland Railroad. Fastpass completely changes the strategy of seeing the best of the park and makes everyone's time more productive. On the other hand, Harvie observed that the user experience associated with Fastpass per se is decidedly flat. Where is the entertainment value is just printing out a little ticket? At the very least it could resemble a Pachinko machine or perhaps Esmerelda could be located in all these machines (spiritually of course) and could also print a fortune while she is doing her Fastpass thing.

The boring Fastpass device could certainly be more entertaining.

For example, it could be made to resemble a Pachinko machine.

2. The Haunted Mansion was in its holiday version based on Nightmare Before Xmas. I had never seen this whereas I knew the traditional Haunted Mansion by heart. I liked the design but I felt something was missing, and that was probably the score. I would swear that they had been able to change the order of some of the rooms, something I would have guessed was impossible.

I thought the announcing angels of the apocalypse were a nice touch.

3. I had dinner with Yayoi Wakabayashi and Harvie Branscomb at the Cafe Orleans in New Orleans Square where Yahoi had thoughtfully made reservations. What stunned me, what completely flabbergasted me, was that the “usual vegetarian entree” was actually very good. It was regional, it was fresh, it was great. It is one of the best high end vegetarian plates I have ever had, and believe me, I have had a few.

4. There seem to be no more animals in the park. Horses powering trolleys and carts were an important part of the recreation of the turn of the century America. Now kids will only realize that horses had something to do with transportation and motive power through the archaic term “horsepower”.

5. The attendants in Jungleland were extremely helpful in understanding what I was looking for in terms of shrunken heads and glowing skulls, and reported that those tschotskies had not been at the park for a long time. I did notice, however, some excellent faux snakes and bats that would have fulfilled the same role in a horror-oriented young visitor.

6. The attendants / docents of the Disneyland Railroad answered our questions (we sat right behind the engine) and explained where the five locomotive engines had come from, and various other technicalities of the track, the cars and so forth. These are real steam locomotives, something that barely exists anymore, but was so critical to the history of the modern world. The Small World alarm clock animation helpfully went off while we were waiting inside it.

7. I explained to Harvie the vital necessity of finding the access roads and the places where the park turned inward and became behind the scenes. This is particularly productive when using the railroad or the monorail, as both take you behind the scenes, if only unwittingly.  We noticed that they would occasionally paint fences and gates with camouflage.

8. I had heard that the Main Street Cinema was no longer there but fortunately this is not the case. It is still there, and it still attracts its tiny number of appreciative adults and children. To my amazement, the glass blowers on Main Street were still on post as well, although on lunch break when I happened through. The Penny Arcade has been turned into a Disney Store while retaining a few key exhibits from its more glorious past. Esmerelda is still telling fortunes and the electric hand grip manhood evaluator is still there to evaluate your potency.

Esmerelda will foretell the future.  The penny arcade one reelers are to the left.

9. The Kodak store has been turned into the Nikon store. I don't know for sure what they sell there, but there is no more film sold anywhere in the park. Just think how symbolic this is, the great American company is no more, so they outsource the storefront to a far eastern company and do not actually sell anything there. Its beautiful

10. I refused to see that traitor Lincoln, or his robotic avatar, unless I could throw tomatoes at it. Sic Semper Tyrannis.

11. Harvie points out that the audience at Disneyland is far less interesting than the audience at Burning Man.  Although that is no doubt true, I think this is something of an unfair comparison.  The whole point of Burning Man is that the audience is the performance, and the people who attend Burning Man are people who buy into that aesthetic.    The Disney parks are based on a more traditional audience / performer dichotomy.   I also point out that just our one park that we attended that day had 50,000 or so attendees, and they do numbers like that more or less every day of the year.  Burning Man does about 50,000 attendees a year, and the attendees spend a non-trivial amount of the year preparing for that 1 week event.  It is certainly an interesting comparison but they (Burning Man and the Disney Parks) are very different sorts of things.  I might even call Burning Man a more elite counterculture type of event, which by its very nature can not be sustained year round.

12. Harvie and I both noticed that people seemed to be wearing "custom" mouse ears that were very colorful and creative.  Harvie concluded that people had made their own, which was my first impression as well.  They are very nice mouse ears, don't get me wrong, but I am pretty sure that everything I saw was for sale at various places in the park.  I think that Harvie was observing this through his Burning Man filters and giving the audience a bit too much credit here.  The mouse ears were no doubt entertaining and value added however, but I am pretty sure they were an expression of a whimsical purchasing decision not a personal creative endeavor.

We will discuss the dramatic and insidious shrinking of the park and the wreckage of our future that is Tomorowland in our next post.

_____________________________________________

List of current Disneyland attractions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disneyland_attractions

1. My tour was called “Transcendental Style in Theme Parks” and discusses how the divine and eternal are represented at Disneyland.

Gary Goddard and Succes de Scandale

This post may not be suitable for children of any age.

I have met a number of interesting people during the course of my so-called career. And many of them are in the news now and then. But recently someone I know has been in the news in a very awkward way and I have been debating what to say, if anything, about it.

A long time ago, deGraf/Wahrman did two very long, involved theme park productions for Harper Films and Landmark Entertainment. Landmark was founded by two partners, Tony Christopher and Gary Goddard and we worked mostly with Gary.   These two 70mm, stereo ridefilms for Harper and Landmark were among the last projects we did at deGraf/Wahrman.  It wasn't a happy time for anyone, the client or us.  By no means did these projects put us out of business, but it was certainly part of the bad feelings that seemed to be everywhere.   The projects got done, they are beautiful.  I do not have copies of either of them.   But in spite of the awkwardness I can tell you that I enjoyed working with Landmark and Gary.

Gary is a complete character. He is larger than life and filled with that sort of self esteem that can be measured by the ton. He directed Masters of the Universe (1987) which was arguably ahead of its time and plunged into creating a mammoth company called Landmark Entertainment to provide design and production services to the themed entertainment boom of the 1980s and 1990s. I know that something happened such that Gary was no longer associated but the company still seems to be there and doing well, at least as far as you can tell from an internet web page. I had and have confidence that Gary would transcend whatever problems he might be experiencing and be back on the scene.

He has, he believes, the common touch. The ability to conceive of and design and to understand what the average man and woman, boy and girl, expects and needs to see and experience in a themed environment. 

Anyway, Gary seems to be in the news these days in a big way. Unfortunately, it is not the best news. There seems to be some accusations about sleeping with ... well I dont know. It makes no sense to me. I just hope that none of it is true, and that he goes on to use this unplanned publicity to his advantage and achieve his creative destiny, whatever that may be.

Gary Godard (left) and Bryan Singer out on the town

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/new-sex-abuse-lawsuit-targets-701110

What Are Those Damn Pirates Mumbling About Anyway

In Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland there is a place near the start of the attraction which involves some different voices warning you of something (the accursed treasure, as it turns out). For years I went on that ride but could never quite make out what they were saying what with the rushing water and the screams of the people in front of you not to mention the cheerful yet ominous pirate music that is coming in and out of focus as you move through different areas.

Jwalt Adamczyk, renowned impressario and real-time animation performer, pointed me to the following Youtube soundtrack from the attraction and I finally know what they are saying. I have transcribed it here for other people who have been anxious to know (not that it really makes a difference, the intent of the voices comes through clearly: we are being warned of some terrible danger, and really that is all we have to know).

The soundtrack can be found here.

There are three voices. A Distant Voice which is muddied and always repeats "dead men tell no tales" and two other voices, which I will call the Dark Ominous Voice (DOV) and a crusty less ominous, but still concerned, voice (Voice 3).

Distant Voice:

                          Dead men tell no tales. Dead men tell no tales. Dead men tell no tales.

Then we have an interlude of cheerful music that suddenly becomes ominous in tone. The music changes instrument to be (primarily) harpsichord to help set the time period in which our dark ride takes place.

Dark Ominous Voice (DOV):

                         No fear have ye of evil curses, says you. Ha (chuckle). 

                         Properly warned ye be, says I.

                         Who knows when that evil curse will strike the greedy beholders 

                         of this bewitched treasure.

Distant Voice:

                         Dead men tell no tales.

Voice 3:

                         Perhaps he knows too much. He has seen the cursed treasure;

                         he knows where it be. Now proceed at your own risk. These be

                         the last friendly words you'll hear.

                         You may not survive to pass this way again.

Distant voice:

                         Dead men tell no tales.

And that is what they say.

I am sure you will sleep better knowing this.

Story Structure in Theme Parks and the Mystery of the Self-Illuminated Ears

On March 14th I visited the new Disneyland Resort in Anaheim for the first time since it ceased to be Disneyland and earned its second gate and the "resort" label. For only the second time in my life I was hosted by the Walt Disney Company which surprised me but which was certainly very courteous, not to mention unexpected, of them.

To put this in context, I used to go to Disneyland at least once a year when I lived in Southern California after college depending on the timing of visitors from out of state who often wanted to go there.  I used to give an informal tour of Disneyland called "Transcendental Style in Theme Parks" or how theme parks have become a spiritual experience for our volk, who hold hands around the magic castle as the fireworks go off and the luminous Tinkerbell miraculously appears. Then I moved to New York, the economy collapsed, and a decade went past before I could visit again.

But now I have returned to that happiest place and wish to review for you something amazing that I learned at the new World of Color show at the California Adventure Park. During this show I witnessed the unexpected transformation of a key Disney, and hence American, symbol: the mouse ears. Yes, the mouse ears have changed, wildly and radically, as I will describe.

Even the most dull among us must recognize that Disney represents an aspect of our culture, our time and our "civilization", such as it is. To ignore "Disneyland" is elitism of the most egregious sort for it ignores one of the fundamental phenomena that makes America what it is in the eyes of the world. For better or worse, the Disney company, in all its contradictions and complications, is embedded in our consciousness. Were the Disney parks ever to decline then I think it would signal the decline of American civilization as a whole.

Sure it is easy to dismiss people walking around in Mickey Mouse ear hats, but that is to shallowly ignore the semiotics of identifying with, and indeed emulating, the most famously endearing rodent in all our history. Mice are certainly cute as long as they are in their place and not rummaging around the kitchen while you are trying to sleep and these are not just any mouse ears we wear, these are symbolically Mickey's ears, the ears of our charming ubermouse.

Those ears, those very mouse ears, have been technically updated by Imagineering R&D in a way that is oddly symbolic of our technological present and future, as we discuss below.

The World of Color is the latest in a long tradition of climactic end-of-day shows that have appeared at Disneyland. The first of these was almost certainly the classic fireworks show around the Fantasyland Castle, a choreographed and carefully designed show over the iconic castle which concluded with the miracle of the arrival of Tinkerbell, who will only appear if you believe in her, the divine made flesh as the sky explodes in a crescendo of fire and light. 

This type of end-of-day show has an important place in the structure of a day's visit to the Park, I believe.  And I speculate that the people at Imagineering are very conscious about this when they design not just an attraction, but the park as a whole, and the nature of the experience that a visitor will have at the park.   This end-of-day show is the climax of the visit: an event that visitors make special provisions to be able to see, often with their family, before they slowly and regretfully leave the park, either to drive home in the classic Southern California version or to make their way back to their hotel in the resort version.  In story structure terms,  this show is the climax, the obligatory scene, the required event, after which the slow departure from the park would be the slightly sad denouement: the regret that it ever has to end.  I suspect that the importance of this type of event to the day's experience gives it a priority in park planning and budgeting.   And since things must not stay still or they become embalmed, the show must be recreated in new forms but still serving that same purpose in the structure of the day.

From fireworks, this type of show evolved in many ways at the various gates which are the larger Disneyland entity. Two other examples would be the Electric Parade with its synchronized and abstract design and characters or the IllumiNations show at Epcot which combines fireworks, fountains and music. Both of these two later shows were immense and impressive. World of Color continues that tradition in a pure water, color, projection and music show.

A vast and wonderful Triumph of the Mouse 

To set the stage, the World of Color happens in the lagoon in front of the Ferris Wheel / Rollercoaster at California Adventure. At a later date I will review some of the architectural issues of the new park, and at that time I will be rather puzzled. But the rollercoaster and the ferris wheel are the exceptions: they have a grandeur and presence that architect and Minister of Armaments Albert Speer would have approved of. The great big beaming face of Mickey within the wheel that encompasses our fate shines down on the World of Color and grants His approval. 

The World of Color has many impressive show elements more or less combined into a larger show. Certainly the most striking are the fountains which can shoot a stream of water 200 feet into the air, is illuminated at the base by LEDs, is illuminated in the air by projectors and lasers, and whose direction of spray is controllable on an individual fountain basis. And how many fountains are there? The press release says 1200 and that might be true: if one does a back of the envelope calculation of 50 per row and 20 rows, the numbers add right up.  So its believable. The water is all recycled of course as it falls back into the pond and is reused, but that trivializes the accomplishment of pumping that much water simultaneously at that velocity at once and over a 30 minute show. I would love to know the numbers.

There is a vast infrastructure that we do not see to support such an extravagant expression of water at pressure.

For those who are surprised that the colors can be so vivid or that one could project onto a wall of mist very recognizable images, remember that in a laminar flow fountain we have removed most of the turbulence so the spray and the droplets are for the most part symmetric and reflective. The surface tension of water provides the projection screen, a moving and transforming one, and that works very well.

A lot of effort was put into creating interesting abstractions with color and water as synchronized with audio, and when it was abstract I felt it was always rewarding. But this is Disney after all, and there have been criticisms that the new park was not tied in with Disney characters enough, so the World of Color created a pastiche of elements from many Disney films and used them as projections on the water. I felt this was overdone and that their purpose would be equally served with a few carefully chosen properties. But I admit that I am not in the important demographic here, and perhaps the audience wants to see their favorite characters, or other considerations.  I could remedy the situation in my case by defocusing  my eyes if I cared to and, voila, abstraction returns.

Do these colorful self-illuminated ears contain a secret menace?

But now to the discussion of new technologies at the park and the shocking revelation of networked and distributed mind control of enslaved mouse ears.

Yes you read correctly.

As I was waiting for the World of Color to begin I noticed that many in the audience wore a new type of mouse ears, these had a more robust skull cap and large, well-lit colored ears that would change color and blink happily and at random. Each pair of ears would do its own thing and while they were amusing, I wondered if it might not interfere with the show. The ears were bright, the lights were about to go down, those ears would be a distraction I thought.

I should not have worried.

As the show began I noticed that the ears seemed to turn themselves off all by themselves. Of course I am not looking at the ears I am looking at the show over the water. But as the show continued I realized that something quite odd was happening with the ears. Interspersed through the audience there were several hundred pairs of ears that from time to time would all blink together as if in synchrony with the music.  

And then I realized the truth. These innocent looking hats must have a radio controller in each one, such that they could be slaved to a signal and then controlled from a central source. The individual mouse ears had become unwitting slaves of a master show controller and now mindlessly served the greater good by dedicating their photons to the centrally directed World of Color.

My sources tell me that this project was the brainchild of a mysterious Imagineer and CTO by the name of Scott Watson.  Surely this could not be the same Scott Watson I knew from the early 1990s? He seemed like such a nice guy.   [Note: Mr. Watson has not replied as of yet to my emails.  I suppose he is just too busy hanging out with his real friends].

People are foolishly concerned about the NSA when perhaps they should worry about things closer to home.  What are the privacy and first amendment issues of these new mouse ears?   Are our positions being sent without our knowledge to some mouse server in a vault?  Is this project part of a larger collaborative effort to develop mind control technology with the CIA?   Is Burning Man somehow involved?  These and many other questions flashed through my mind all at once but I have none of the answers.

But this is certainly a topic that needs to be discussed in a public forum and ultimately our loyal public servants need to determine whether or not there should be regulation to protect the freedom and privacy of mouse ears everywhere.  As with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in public skies, this technology has policy implications.  

Oh brave new world to have such mouse ears in it.

Miracles from Molecules

(This post is in progress).

I miss the cold war, when not everyone was using computers to steal money and distribute pornography, and we thought a new world was coming, a world with freedom and economic security for everyone.  A world where the rich would not oppress the poor, where disease would be defeated, and where everyone could explore their full potential, irregardless of the circumstances that the accidents of their birth allowed.

This is the world that the composers of the post-show of the Disney/Monsanto Adventure Through Inner Space celebrated.  I was listening to this song this morning and I felt compelled to transcribe the lyrics, an artifact from a past that imagined a future very different from our present.

Please watch your step as you leave the vehicle and step on the moving walkway.  

The composers of this song created a perfect statement of the triumph and potential of modern (e.g. 1960's) chemistry and sings the praises of a new hero, the industrial chemist.  The song is called "Miracles from Molecules" and it was composed by the Sherman Brothers (1) for the Walt Disney Company.

      Miracles from molecules are dawning every day
      Discoveries for happiness in a fabulous array!
      A never ending search is on, by men who dare and plan,
      Making modern miracles from molecules for man!

      Every atom is a world, an infinity unfurled,
      A world of inner space without an end!
      A world of mystery, of endless energy,
      With treasures more than man can ever spend!

      Miracles from molecules, around us everywhere,
      There are miracles from molecules, in the earth, the sea, the air!
      Now men with dreams are furthering what nature first began,
      Making modern miracles from molecules for man!

      Making modern miracles from molecules for man! 

The song encapsulates the early 1960's vision of the future and the promise of a world with unlimited energy, and new materials that solve previously unsolvable problems, a world without limitations, amen. This was a  vision of hope when some would despair in a world of poverty, war and the threat of nuclear destruction.  It was for all of us, the worldwide community of Americans of whatever nation, all citizens of this new and synthetic world that was right around the corner.

Of course you had to be 12 years old to believe in such a thing, and a naive 12 years old at that.

But at least it was a vision of a better world, and stated with total sincerity, in a large-scale corporate marketing world exposition sort of way.

Today, do we hear a similar refrain from the promise of nanotechnology?   Perhaps, but they don't have a catchy song yet.

Get on the moving walkway and follow the arrow to your future.

A simulation of the complete attraction with the official soundtrack, is below.  This song is part of the post-show and it starts at approximately at approximately 8 minutes, 20 seconds into this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA3uFkF1A9o

My previous post on the Adventure Through Inner Space is below.

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-mighty-microscope-recreated.html

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(1) Richard and Robert Sherman composed a tremendous number of songs for the Walt Disney Company, for both films and theme parks.   Not only "Miracles for Molecules", but also the lead song from the Carousel of Progress as well as It's a Small World.  Both of these will be subjects of their own post.  A Wikipedia page for these two is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Brothers

Remembering Monsanto's Adventure Through Inner Space

[Revised 1/15/2013]

If you grew up on Southern California in the 1960s as I did there is a good chance that you share certain cultural experiences, a baseline as it were, with your fellow Southern California adolescents.

Some of us went surfing, some did not; some obsessed on and drew hot rod cars (e.g. RatFink and Big Daddy Roth) and some did not. Perhaps you went to that famous intersection where you could buy Red Devil or Black Cat fireworks, just about everyone went there.  (1)

But whoever you were, if you lived in Southern California, you went to Disneyland and went on the Adventure Through Inner Space, the Mighty Microscope, and experienced the world inside an ice crystal and the perils of shrinking ourselves to smaller than a molecule.

I always remember that anguished question "Dare I enter the world of the nucleus itself?  No!  I must turn back!  Or I will go on shrinking, forever!"  

The Adventure Through Inner Space was replaced (nothing could replace it, of course, not really) with Star Tours. How could they ? Well, they could. Time marches on, and Tomorrowland is not "1960s land" after all. Even if the 1960s was the highest expression of American Culture, it apparently did not fit in to the new Tomorrowland.

Then several years ago, Disney released a 6 CD boxed-set of audio from the original Disneyland, including the complete soundtrack of Adventure Through Inner Space.  This included what you heard while waiting in line (the preshow) and what you heard while exiting the attraction (the post show).  For the first time, I could hear exactly what was being said.  I sent excerpts to various friends who I knew had grown up in S. Calif to see if they would recognize it and got a reaction from every one.

I thought about doing some computer simulation of this attraction, in schematic form, without too much attempt to recreate it really, but just a bit of an outline.   Then I discovered, to my amazement, that someone out there took the time and energy to do a very detailed 3D simulation of this cultural landmark, attempting to preserve it for future generations.   His name is Steve Wesson and I have a link to his website and to the 3D simulation of the attraction in all its glory at the bottom of this post.

Simulated water molecules in the recreation of the attraction.  The original was projected, and so this is not so far from that.  Are these water molecules (H2O) or do we perhaps have hidden Mickeys?

But the real world interferes even with this selfless and probono work. Someone has posted the 3D simulation of the Mighty Microscope on Youtube where you can enjoy it free of cost, but he did so without asking Wesson, who would like to make some money on his work.  Of course, he doesn't own the intellectual property either, the Walt Disney Company does.  So its a little sticky.

But we won't worry too much about that.   I invite you to review this amazing simulation on Youtube and to visit Steve Wesson's site as well. Possibly you will even send him some money via Paypal or something to reward his extraordinary effort and devotion to the excellence of theme park attractions.

The video on Youtbe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA3uFkF1A9o

The Steve Wesson site:

http://themightymicroscope.com/home.htm

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1. The intersection was somewhere out in the San Fernando Valley, possibly near San Fernando Road itself.   I was very young and being driven by my father so I probably did not even know exactly where it was.

The Firesign Theatre, The "President Ride" & Unemployment

[This post was modified and extended on 9/23/2012]

In the Firesign Theatre's radio play, "I Think we Are All Bozo's on this Bus", there is a theme park and in that theme park is "the president ride" where you can ask a question of "the president".  So someone goes up and says:  "Mr President, where can I get a job?",  and the President ride responds: "Many busy executives have asked, what about the job displacement program? ... " and of course completely avoids answering the question.   Just like the real presidents.   The Firesign Theatre was remarkably prescient.

Both the Democrats and Republicans studiously avoid talking about the unemployed, and the many issues related to it.   There is a good reason for this and that is because they have caused this situation with their policies and their failures to create policy and they have done so in an unintentionally bipartisan way.  They have no intention of changing their policies because they are working just fine and doing what they were intended to do.   Their goals were to make large corporations richer, impoverish the middle class, and destroy worker's rights.  If these were not the goals of their policies then our elected officials must be very incompetent indeed because that is what they achieved.

Yes, yes, I know, you think this sounds paranoid or unfair.  I will explain what I mean by this in more detail below and it is a little more subtle than it sounds at first glance.  No, of course they did not vote to impoverish Americans, not exactly, but if their actions or inactions have the same result, then I think it is fair to hold them responsible.

With great power comes great responsibility.    That is the deal.  When one becomes President, or a senator, or a member of the House of Representatives, then not only is one given a salary in the top 5% of all Americans, but one is also given access to vast resources: money, intelligence, raw military power, and support of many kinds.  In return, you are expected to keep the country out of war when you can, to fight a war successfully when we must, and to see that the people that you represent are free and prosperous.   If you fail through your actions or your inactions, as an individual or as a group, then you should be held accountable.   "The Buck Stops Here."  Perhaps someone else would have had the brilliance, wisdom and charisma to have led us through those troubled waters successfully when you did not.

In the US Navy, a captain of a ship is held responsible for whatever happens to that ship and he is judged by the rules and laws that pertain to the responsibilities inherent in being captain of a military vessel.  If a ship runs aground, even if it does so because of an unexpected event of natural causes, such as a storm, then the captain of that ship is held accountable and his behavior and decisions are reviewed by a court martial (literally, a military court).   And during the time of this procedure he is relieved of his command, and he may only be restored if he is completely exonerated.

There is somewhere between a 15% to 22% unemployment rate in this country.  Our elected representatives have done such a bad job that it is not even possible to get the real number.   There is vast misery and inequality, ageism and racism, and a massive deficit where before there was a massive surplus.  Maybe "globalism" is the cause and maybe it isn't.   But even if it is, we are not a passive victim of globalization, more than any other country in the world we helped to create it.  So if globalism is the storm, then you are the captain that navigated right into it.   However the Great Depression happened, it was FDR and the New Deal who got us out of it.   You guys kicked the can down the road too many times and the 800-lb chickens have come home to roost, so to speak.

As a world class practitioner of passive aggressive behavior, I can testify to you today that failure to act is a form of action.   Failure to have  a coherent policy is a form of policy.   You are our elected representatives and we hold you responsible.

Here is an article I stumbled upon that talks about some of these issues, unemployment and worker's rights in particular.   It is s short and I think it has some good information in it.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/18/the-job-crisis-the-unemployable-and-the-fiscal-cliff/

Everything Old Is New Again or Frame Rate in Hollywood

Once upon a time, movies were projected at 16 FPS (frames per second) and each frame was flashed three times, for a total of 48 flickers per second. At 48 or better FPS you get so-called "flicker fusion", and the viewer does not perceive the light going on and off. It looks continuous to him/her.

Then, as time passed, we moved to 24 FPS (double flashed). This had a variety of advantages and this is the reason that when you see old movies they appear to be running around like mad, they were designed to be projected at 16 FPS, not 24.

But although movies seemed to stay at 24 FPS (and then video at 30 frames, or 60 fields per second), in fact there was an arm of the entertainment industry that always played with the frame rate. This is the world of "special venue" which includes theme parks and world fairs. The special venue people experimented with everything from 30 FPS to as fast as they could get film through a projector. Showscan is famously a company that Doug Trumbull and partners started after doing experiments which they believed told them that 60 FPS was the optimal rate for human perception.

So now that Jim Cameron and Peter Jackson want to play with a faster frame rate, everyone and their brother is running around with their heads cut off wondering what they are going to do. Well, I am here to tell you what was learned from Special Venue and suggest you talk to some of the players in more detail.

The major results were this (or this is how it seemed to me, from my very limited view point, obviously not having access to the inner thoughts of major players, but nevertheless...):

1. Yes, a faster frame rate can help, especially with fast action, exactly like you imagine.

2. But not all scenes or topics benefit equally from this technique. In some scenes, slow moving mood pieces, for example, it may even be counterproductive, because more information is not always better.

3. The other thing to realize is that when you change the frame rate you change many, many things with it. You change how you light things, how makeup works, what kind of actors and actresses you cast. The reasons for this will be obvious after you shoot your first tests, and what you do about it is to be determined. But do not think that you merely increase the frame rate and now action scenes just look better. That isnt how this works.

4. Some people find the increased frame rate annoying. I know that my own response to it was that it was amusing for a few minutes but I wasn't sure how I was going to like watching 90 minutes of something like this.

Here is an image of Dr. Emilio Lizardo watching a high frame rate test in Buckaroo Banzai.

5. You will hear people say that an increased frame rate makes things look like video. It certainly does for me.

I want to encourage anyone involved in this matter to pick up the phone and call some people you know in the world of special venue. There is a weird overlap between special venue and motion pictures, some people go back and forth between the worlds, some people stay in their own world. But I would certainly begin by talking to Douglas Trumbull, his partner Richard Yuricich (you can reach both of them throught the ASC) and probably someone involved with the work at Imagineering. (I do not know who that would be, but I am as certain as I can be that there is someone there who has done a lot of work with this).

A separate topic is whether the digital projectors really have the bandwidth to do this. My feeling is that the answer depends on which projectors we are talking about.