parktrotter

The railroad is one of the only things in the park that has not changed since I was a child in the 1970s, except for the stop at Toontown (the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit is now over twenty years old, so I wonder what percentage of the park’s guests know what is being referred to—but again, as I’ve noted before, no one knows who Mr. Toad is either).  It still takes you past the Grand Canyon and back in time to the Animatronic dinosaurs, a scene based on the movie Fantasia, and so not particularly new, either.

Our trip on the train the previous night had been ruined, for me, by the employee conductor who threatened to STOP THE TRAIN if the passengers did not more exactly obey his orders.  I was probably the only one who noticed—which is what the employees rely on so that they can get away with behaving like this.

As it is now Christmas, the Angry Dad will go easier on the Christmas Fantasy Parade at Disneyland.

But it is overwhelming, of course. Here is the bland, generic description from the Wikipedia page on this subject:

• Aladdin and Jasmine ride on the Magic Carpet, driven by The Genie.

• 8 Snowflake performers skate down the parade route on roller skates.

• A snowy Christmas Tree rolls down the parade route.

• 8 Snowpeople scurry along, 4 male, 4 female.

• Mickey and Minnie ice skate atop the Ice Rink float.

This is only one “unit” of seven such units (I imagine if the “Snowpeople” were to scamper instead of scurry, the whole production might be blown to hell). But here is the peculiar feature, from the Angry Dad point of view: just when you want to leave, they do something surprising, something that leaves you thinking, “That’s pretty cool.” For me, it was the ballerina on top of the music box, an actual human doing actual ballet on an oversized music box twenty feet up on the top of the float. Like guys all up and down the parade route, I thought, “Impressive…and she’s pretty hot.”

By the time we settled down on a curb for the 6:30 Christmas Fantasy Parade, we had been in Anaheim for three days, nearly all of that time in the grip of Disney, and I was approaching the point at which I had enough of the Magic.

Disneyland is, of course, a wholesome version of Las Vegas, an intentionally overwhelming experience. Here is a fine description of the mental atmosphere in Las Vegas, from In the Desert of Desire: Las Vegas and the Culture of Spectacle by William Fox. He is describing developer Steve Wynn’s art collection, and the opening of a Guggenheim gallery on the Strip:

Both the art and the gambling are aspects of spectacle. The Strip, once competition arrived in the form of gambling in other states and on Indian lands, morphed into mass spectacle.  It became a pedestrian experience where people go to stroll the neon-lit sidewalks at night in order to participate in something larger than life, larger than themselves.  You go to Las Vegas precisely because you want to be overwhelmed by an excessive visual ordeal.  We define and describe spectacle by the use of superlatives, and Wynn tells you on his taped message that his paintings are the “most expensive” and “the best.”  The Guggenheim’s advertising offers the viewer no less.

Disneyland operates by the same kind of absolute sensory overload, only of a very sugary sort. In the parades, the dose of sugar is dangerously large.

Think about it: that drunken pirate on Pirates of the Caribbean ride who rocks back and forth on the cannon, while shooting at his friends and singing “yo ho,” has been doing that for twelve-plus hours a day nearly every day for 41 years. No wonder he looks a little worn out.

To repeat, here is one of the essential strategies of a Disney theme park: set up some little thing, like a mannequin singing a song, and drive people past it once every ten seconds or so. I mention this here mainly because, toward the end of our trip, it started to freak me out a little. It is so easy to imagine the pirates bored to death–and so easy to see why robots always turn on their human masters.

But another Disney strategy is to sit the park visitors still and run the repeating exhibit past them. Just from thinking about this subject, I have this other piece of deathless verse stuck in my head:

On this very special night

We wish we may we wish we might

Have the wish we wish tonight

In a Christmas fantasy.

The words from the song that plays during the Christmas parade that runs down Main Street during the season. It was, for me, the last straw.

The essence of Disneyland is a kind of extreme repetition. Note, for instance, this deathless verse:

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.

We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.

Drink up me hearties, yo ho!

We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot.

Drink up me hearties, yo ho!

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.

The song the pirates sing in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, of course: Repeat one billion times. There are other verses to the song, but no one can understand the words, and see if you don’t get the “yo ho” part stuck in your head right now (here is a nice page written by a fan of the ride, with the rest of the song on it).

Why is this the essence of Disneyland? It is one of their basic techniques: set up some little thing (an animated mannequin singing a song, often) and drive people past it once every ten seconds. The pirates have been singing that song almost nonstop for 41 years.

I have now had just about enough of the Disneyland park employees. I suppose the karma runs both ways: the company makes them wear absurd uniforms and perform almost unbelievably repetitive jobs, and they have their revenge. Disney, it will one day be revealed, has a management strategy that, like Six Sigma at Motorola or Continuous Improvement at Toyota, has a name: 70ALC. As in, “We hope one day to have at least 70 percent of our employees exhibiting an acceptable level of contempt at least 70 percent of the time.”

It had me thinking of this Onion news classic: “Disney Family Vacation Ruined by Walt Disney Corporation.” But the details are not entirely correct:

ORLANDO, FL–A magical Walt Disney World family vacation was ruined last weekend by the stringent policies and protocol of the Walt Disney Company.

“They call Disney World ‘The Happiest Place On Earth,’ but being there was oddly stressful and upsetting,” said David Mahaffey, 36, a Dover, DE, insurance-claims adjuster who, along with his wife and two children, endured a four-day visit to the Orlando theme park. “Why did Disney have to ruin the Disney magic for everyone?”…

The family…found itself put on edge by the passive-aggressive friendliness of park employees, or “cast members.”

“They were always wearing these hollow, insincere, glued-on smiles, whether they were selling you a $6 croissant or strapping you into the ‘It’s A Small World’ ride and genially ordering you to keep your hands by your sides at all times,” David said. “The creepiest example was the guy outside Space Mountain who said hello to us with a big grin on his face as he was on his hands and knees cleaning up vomit.”

No, that’s not right at all. Here at the original Disneyland, none of them smile ever, and are as abrupt as they can be without getting in trouble for it. If I hear “Can I get you to stand over here?” one more time, I am going to snap.