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MyEarth
Last time I reported that Spaceship Earth had turned on the personalized
ending in the descent tunnel, but that I hadn't yet seen it. I got to go last
weekend, and the results are about as I expected. Admittedly, there was some
humor in it, so it's not the worst-case scenario. But overall, it's still pretty
bad.
Indeed, the use of your own face on the already-animated body, which is too
thin for your face on purpose, does in fact remind one of the JibJab cartoons
online. But your mouth doesn't move; your face is frozen.
Instead, your body moves around more than the JibJab cartoons, and this is
where the humor comes in. What was a highly boring, toxically dull cartoon
before, with just generic faces, now has some actual giggle quotient injected
into it. With the default faces, it was hard to see that the movements of the
arms and legs was going to be funny. With your own face on it, the motion does
exaggerate just enough to make you crack a smile (or laugh, as some others
around us had done). It's not a panacea, and I still think this ride has lost
about 80% of its repeatability, but it's not as bad as the bare cartoon had
been.
On my ride through, one of the faces stayed in the default mode. But I wasn't
alone in the car; I was holding up my 1-year old son for a picture. He had a
pacifier in his mouth, and a strap on the pacifier covering up his chin, so I
wonder if the strap interfered with whatever automated process snips out the
faces? Or maybe the baby had turned away or looked down at the last second?
Whatever the cause, his face was simply not used in the end cartoon.
On the one hand, this is encouraging. The technology is obviously advanced
enough to not show a garbled face, and just shows nothing instead. On the other
hand, though, this is going to be common, isn't it? Especially with children,
who don't know where to look.
On our ride, we were also stopped during the descent, so we finished the quiz
early and then started the movie early. That meant we finished everything early,
and when the ride started back up, we just watched the screen cycle through its
field of green dots, while the very muted music droned in the background;
completely uninteresting. This is a design flaw that will happen every time the
ride is stopped.
For that matter, the ride shut down four times on us. I don't know if there
was a lot of assisted boarding, or if we just had bad mechanical luck. It occurs
to me that when rides are new at the Disney parks, there are more frequent
e-stops and slow downs to the crawl mode, so that Guests needing assistance can
board. Is there any correlation at all to a ride being new and increased visits
by folks needing assistance? Or is it just that ride operators learn how to
accommodate them better as time goes on?
In any event, the shut downs do provide a means to study the sets more
closely, which is a real boon in the first half of the ride, which I still find
really exciting and quite fresh. It's a major pain, though, in the boring
descent tunnel, which is not getting any additional effects or sights on the
sides.
I know, I know. They want you to look at the screen, and not all
around you. But really, the joke isn't that funny. In fact, I might have liked
it better than my four-year-old, who was, shall we say, not amused. Of course,
he was annoyed when they took away the wand, too, so let's not overstate his
opinion!
Sigh. I miss the old descent tunnel. It had such beautiful music, and it was
relaxing. Maybe on my next visit I'll just close my eyes, listen to the old
music on the iPod, and pretend it's 2007 again.
The Complete Walt Disney World 2008
Julie and Mike Neal burst on the Disney guidebook scene in 2007, roaring from
zero to a perch near the top almost right away. The 2007 version of their book,
the Complete Guide to Walt Disney World, was practically perfect in every way.
It was comprehensive in a way that other guidebooks only hint at, and it
featured some gorgeous photography and high-quality paper. A real keeper.
Just in time for 2008, the revised version of their guide book sticks pretty
close to the same formula. There is no grand re-jiggering of the vision here, so
if you own the 2007 version, you may not need the 2008 version. Of course, the
2008 version is up-to-the-second in terms of updates. The studio park is labeled
as Disney's Hollywood Studios, the pictures include such recent additions as the
stage show for HSM2. There is even text about the new scenes in Spaceship Earth,
so you just know this thing is white-hot coming off the press.
It's still the one guide book I would recommend for travelers who want a
keepsake out of the book. The Official Guide is too much like a press release.
The Unofficial Guide benefits from honest and frank opinions, but it doesn't
have the art and class of the Complete Guide. Admittedly, the Complete Guide
doesn't offer negative opinions about rides and shows. A discerning reader will
have to learn that when a particular ride isn't praised overly, that's a sign
that the experience isn't really up to par. But this happens so infrequently at
Disney that it may not matter. In the meantime, I'll take the guide book with
the great layout and the fabulous pictures. You could easily do much worse, and
it's worth every penny. |
