Disneyland I: The Happiest Place on Earth.

The clear morning sky is the sort of pure cerulean blue that you only see in video games or in California.  In front of us, the bronze statue of a smiling man gestures to the azure horizon as if explaining his vision of the future to the attentive waist-high cartoon mouse who holds his other hand.  A laughing little girl with a bubble wand adds an unexpected touch of whimsy to the passing crowd, which is too intent on planning a day of fun and excitement to do more than just notice the partners on the pedestal. Nearby, an unscripted pigeon wanders across the immaculate pavement in a futile search for even a crumb of discarded food which has been missed by the grounds staff.

Welcome to Disneyland - the happiest place on earth.

And, to be honest, it is pretty happy.  I completely enjoyed our three-day visit to Disneyland and its sister location, California Adventure - it was a lot of fun, more fun than I had expected, to be honest.  My childhood didn't include anything even remotely similar to Walt Disney's sprawling 156 acre extravaganza, and I really didn't know what it would be like.

I found that it engaged me on two levels:  on one hand, I was simply entertained and amused. Disneyland offers all of the pleasures of any amusement park, plus its signature experience-oriented adventures, and I was unexpectedly charmed by the classic animated movie rides. On the other hand, I was fascinated by the park itself, by the degree of artifice and imagination that has gone into the creation of both the attractions and the framework in which the Disney imagineers have placed them.

Disneyland draws upon only a portion of the epic library of source material available to its parent company to create this experience. In addition to the traditional fairy-tale content such as Snow White or Pinnochio which characterized Disney's early years, and its more modern animated offerings such as Dumbo, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, Disneyland is able to find inspiration in acquired properties ranging from the Muppets to Marvel Comics, and from Pixar to Lucasfilm.

However, there's an unexpected sort of Darwinian struggle evident at the park, where only the fittest - or most popular - survive. Fame is fleeting at Disneyland:  Space Mountain morphs into Hyperspace Mountain, Muppet Vision 3-D is pushed out by Frozen Live, Honey, I Shrunk the Audience is replaced by Star Tours, a Star Wars based 3-D adventure, and Tower of Terror is currently being rebuilt with a Guardians of the Galaxy theme.

On the other hand, it's not all about the latest and greatest. In addition to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Karli and I visited a number of the older rides such as Snow White's Scary Adventures, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan's Flight, and, of course, "It's a Small World", all of which more than demonstrate their popularity by the length of their lineups.*

 

To my surprise, many of these classic Disneyland rides aren't really what I would consider to be "rides" as such.  Whereas many of the attractions at Disneyland and the California Adventure draw upon the traditional amusement park catalogue of ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, roller coasters and so on, there is also a wide selection of what could be classified as primitive immersive environments, where the riders pass through the plot of a movie presented as a series of animated tableaux.

Although the older, simple rides remain popular (possibly because of their complete friendliness to all ages and physical capabilities) Disneyland has not rested on its laurels over time.  In fact, it would be possible to work your way through the rides chronologically and observe the increasingly more sophisticated techniques being used to enhance the experience.

The 1995 Indiana Jones adventure, Temple of the Forbidden Eye, is a good example of the results of this evolutionary process.  The entire ride is over 50,000 square feet in size and cost $100 million to construct, taking over seven years from conception to completion.

It takes place in the bowels of a massive temple complex - riders actually walk through close to half a mile of meticulously detailed passageways to reach the boarding point of the ride. Once there, they climb onto simulator motion platforms disguised as all-terrain transport vehicles to travel through the temple.

Riders then experience a combination of forward motion, which takes them through an environment featuring smoke, flames, and (of course) giant stone globes, and extreme motion platform effects, which exaggerates the rider experience without having to make the track physically match the range of convolutions and twists programmed into the platform.

The cumulative effect is a complete success - Karli and I went through the Temple three times, and would undoubtedly have done more return visits if time had allowed.  

The 2012 debut of Radiator Springs Racers raised the ante, with six acres of vivid desert scenery recreated from Cars at a cost of more than $200 million, making it the most expensive attraction constructed by Disney. The incredible backdrop of Ornament Valley rears hundreds of feet into the sky, and also features underground caverns filled with animatronic characters from the movie.

 

But where does Disney go from there?  What's the next step in this process?

Personally, I was surprised to see the number of other adult couples that were visiting the park without children, which indicates that the phenomenon of the Magic Kingdom has an appeal which extends beyond the stroller demographic. One has to wonder if Disney has ever considered widening their scope to include more mature themes. Imagine if the imagineers focused their skill with epic landscapes and believable animatronic characters on a park that featured more adult content - perhaps making the leap to elements of violence, or possibly even sex.

Maybe something with a western theme...

- Sid

* Lineups are the price of doing business when you visit Disneyland, a necessary evil caused by thousands of people wanting to visit a limited number of venues.  Disney recognizes that this is a negative aspect of the park experience, and does everything they can to minimize the effect.  The lineup environment is referred to as "Scene Zero" of a ride, and as such the waiting areas feature animatronic characters, videos, and set dressing, all intended to entertain (and distract) guests standing patiently in queue.

 

Newer attractions are also constructed to stage out the lineup process so that it takes place at different locations - a twenty minute wait will involve five minutes at the entrance, ten in the middle, and five at the ride itself.  In addition, there's a Fastpass system that allows ticket holders to reserve seats on popular rides during a set range of times.

Ultimately, though, there are times when you just have to stand and wait. Karli and I visited during one of the slowest times at the park, and as such rarely had to wait longer than ten or twenty minutes to board a ride. Peak times can involve lineups of 90 minutes  - or longer.

Ukulele lessons.

blog (bläɡ/) noun: blog; plural noun: blogs

1. A regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.

Today marks the tenth anniversary of my first posting on The Infinite Revolution.  Since then, I've posted a total of 637 short pieces featuring my thoughts on science fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural.  I've talked about science, spaceships, giant Japanese robots, movies, comic books, cosplay, interplanetary voyages, visits to bookstores in foreign cities, zombies, artificial intelligence, space exploration, video games, ghosts, time travel, Canada, Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Great Cthulhu, Conan the Barbarian, Hugo Gernsback, psychotic belly button fans, and whatever else has caught my passing fancy and seemed worth writing a couple of paragraphs about.

Acquaintances who discover my blog are often surprised that someone would actually do that - write for fun - and it is fun for me, even after ten years.  Sadly, the fun has been somewhat adulterated over time by a sense of pressure to produce:  if I don't post for a few weeks, I start to feel that I'm somehow behind, and I begin to stress about finishing topical postings so that I can move on to other content which is closer to completion.  (As an example, this piece is pushing back a half-finished post on Disneyland.)

The odd thing about this is that, really, there is no pressure - it's purely a hobby, and pending Bill Gates paying me to do this, it makes not one bit of difference in the world whether I regularly post something or not.

Nonetheless, I put a lot of thought and consideration into the postings. The final paragraphs are the most challenging, because for me, that's the punchline.  If I can't come up with a clever ending, I feel that I've somehow failed, even if the rest of the posting feels well-written and interesting. The titles are equally challenging, but more fun - I try to use as many obscure genre references as possible.

I actually first started talking about doing something like TIR in about 1992 - it's a testament to my archiving process that I still have the first version of the logo that I designed for the site, as seen at the top of page.  (Please note that my initial usage of the atomic structure graphic predates The Big Bang Theory logo by 15 years - and that's the only part that survived from the logo, as my end mark.  I also experienced a change in demonstrative adjective from "an" to "the" when I did finally start the site.)

At the time, I pictured it as more of a resource-oriented web site, with author profiles and bibliographies and so on, but one of my co-workers commented that it sounded more like a blog to him.  I nodded gravely, then crept away and looked up "blog" online.

At the time, nothing came of it. I was incredibly busy with work, a condition which continued for more or less the next decade, and I really didn't have a clear idea of how I would actually go about turning my idea into a real thing.  However, when my friend Colin started his blog, it demonstrated to me just how simple and straightforward it would be to create, update and maintain something like what I had imagined. (Full points to Blogger™ for having set up a system which allows for such easy site creation and maintenance - although I live in fear that they'll start charging for the privilege.)

To my complete surprise, this site has also become a significant part of my social life.  I have conversations that end up here, and I write things here that then become part of conversations, and I have to send links to people so that they get the whole story - it's a vicious circle.

Even more surprisingly,  I seem to have established ownership of the brand.  A Google search for "the infinite revolution" returns over fifty million results - and my little blog is the first on the list.

However, I have sometimes wondered how long it will keep going - how strong is my commitment?  As an illustration to the question, when I first started dating Karli, she had been taking ukulele lessons for some time. Not long after our first date, someone asked Karli how her lessons were going.

"What ukulele lessons?" she replied.  "I have a boyfriend now."

As a result, "ukulele lessons" has become a euphemism in conversations between Karli and I for the things you do to fill the time when you don't have anyone important with whom to share your life. Initially I was concerned that my relationship with Karli would displace blogging, and that The Infinite Revolution would just fade away along with her interest in the uke.

I'm pleased to say that this didn't turn out to be the case. Over the past two years, I've more or less maintained my level of output, and it would appear that TIR isn't a ukulele lesson after all. In fact, Karli has even contributed to the site, which I think clearly demonstrates that it HAS to be love.

At the exact moment that I cut and paste the number, The Infinite Revolution has had a total of 211,830 visitors - roughly the population of Regina*. I realize that a lot of that readership is web bots, crawlers, spiders and spammers, but I'd like to think that at least some portion of that number is actual human beings who stumbled across the blog for whatever reason, in addition to the people who read it because they know me personally.

If you do represent one of those 211,830 visits to the site, I'd like to thank you very much for your interest - even if you just looked at the picture of cosplayer Jessica Nigri in an armoured bikini and then moved on.

- Sid

* For non-Canadian readers unfamiliar with the Jewel of Saskatchewan, you can substitute either Akron, Ohio or Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This.

As discussed in my previous post, the titular role in Doctor Who is up for grabs yet again, and I'm pleased to say that the current front-runner with the bookies* is female:  Tilda Swinton, with odds of 7:2 in her favour.   Other female favourites are Olivia Colman (5:1, but a Doctor Who veteran, which may work against her), Maxine Peake at 8:1, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Who? 12:1, regardless) and the intriguing long shot of Gwendoline Christie at 20:1.

No ill will, but I actually don't want Ms. Swinton to get the part. She's certainly a talented actress with lots of genre credibility, but I feel that every time someone wants to cast an unusual female character, her name is the first one on the list, and it would be interesting to look past that sort of obvious casting choice. I also can't help but feel that her performance would be somewhat predictable - again, no ill will, but having seen her in a number of roles, she does tend toward a somewhat uniform delivery.

So let's think outside the box for a minute. Scottish actors have been popular, and of course we want the person playing the Doctor to have a strong personality.  A couple of the actresses on the list have a touch of androgynous appeal to their look, and there's some feeling that the Doctor should have a certain maturity - Helen Mirren isn't on the odds sheet, but her name has come up in the past as an ideal candidate for the first female Doctor.

Our survey says?  Annie Lennox.

Yes, I know, not an actress as such, but think about it!  I mean, just look at that face, that fabulous combination of humour, strength, experience and insight.  And she's overtly Scottish, what a fun piece of continuity.  I can easily imagine what her Doctor would be like, a far more restrained and low-key presentation than Smith or Capaldi, but with hidden depth and passion - earnest, committed, caring, and powerful.

Do I expect her to get the role?  Of course not, I sincerely doubt that the BBC has even momentarily considered scheduling Annie Lennox for an audition. The purpose of this exercise is simply to demonstrate that an unexpected replacement for Peter Capaldi might well bring a new dimension to the part.  Hopefully new show-runner Chris Chibnall will be equally willing to consider the benefits of a surprising choice when the time comes.

- Sid

* Odds are courtesy of The Independent.  For a full list of candidates and their chances, visit their web site.  I have no idea where you would place your wagers, but, as per the BC Lottery Corporation, The Infinite Revolution requests that you gamble responsibly.