In Search of a Laugh (continued)

Last up is little Marty Wazowski, the nephew of our emcee Mike.

Marty commiserates with human children. But his mom quite literally has eyes in the back of her head, he says! Then he finds a child in the audience, and asks what grade she’s in. Our girl has Pre-K, and Marty replies "my uncle says pre-K was the hardest three years of his life." He then riffs that he has a test tomorrow... it’s an eye exam. And he’s the only pupil!

The groaners keep coming. Marty asks the next kid why six was afraid of seven. The child didn’t know, so Marty gave the answer: Because Seven "Ate" Nine! (Sounds like 7-8-9.) Marty then graduated to a joke submitted, presumably by someone in our very audience on the cell phone. "How much did the pirate pay to get his ears pierced? A Buck an Ear!" Finally (some might say, mercifully), the third act was over, Mike comes back on to check the canister, and we see the canister is quite full and now emits some steam.

Roz returns, and grudgingly admits she must promote the guy who is responsible. Mike assumes it’s him, but Roz says "this guy" and the spotlight (and side screen) return again to the audience member who has been the silent recipient of several jokes until now; the guy they keep picking on. The show ends with Mike thanking us, and everyone files out the rather barren hallway, back into Tomorrowland (below is a reverse view looking back toward the theater):

My first reaction was that the show ended rather abruptly, really almost in a flat manner. The words "that’s it?" flitted across my consciousness. Somehow the crescendo just didn’t cap the show properly. In retrospect, I found it hard to encapsulate the experience in a single word or two. I wouldn’t say that I loved it or that I hated it. I did laugh once or twice at Sam and Ella (especially that mock-horror look on their faces), and Roz was consistently funny, but I found myself trying to figure out what kind of laugh it was. Not a guffaw. Maybe a chortle? An extended chuckle?

Frankly, the ideal visitor will be a child old enough to like puns and to understand the homonyms, but not so old as to have outgrown the kinds of jokes we used to find on Dixie cups (I have no idea if those jokes are even still around on Dixie cups in the modern era). My four year old didn’t understand a single gag, and he protested that he didn’t want to go back when we returned a few hours later. Yes, in the interest of science, and despite my four-year-old I went on the attraction a second time that same day. (Man, you people owe me).

With the second viewing I found that 98% of the show was identical to what I saw earlier. It’s true that the three monster comedians are "live," but they use similar or identical jokes, just molding them around to whatever the audience said. Buddy Boil couldn’t hear the number from 1-50, so that was different, and an animated hook from offstage almost got him. When Mike came back out, he had a pre-recorded message that Buddy would have gotten it with more time, so this was clearly scripted for, and it was smoothly handled. Ditto when one girl instantly replied to the "why did six hate seven" joke, with the right answer of "7-8-9."

In fact, seeing a second show in one day drove home the point that I won’t need to see this show again for a long, long time. Frankly, and it hurts me down to the gumline to say this, Stitch’s Great Escape may have more repeatability than the Laugh Floor. At least there are animatronics to look at there. Telling essentially the same joke to a unique and live prompt doesn’t count as interesting enough in my book to warrant visiting again.

It comes down to this: kids of a certain age will like it. Adults will probably range in reaction from bored up to pleased, with a majority settling on wryly or mildly amused on a few occasions. They’ll chalk it up to an effective retreat from the Florida sun (or downpour; we have both here in abundance), and move on with their day. That’s harmless enough, I suppose, but it’s a far cry from giving the audience MORE than folks expected, the way Disney parks used to deliver when they’d open new attractions. Since when is "good enough" the rallying cry?

I’ve already touched upon the other effect of this attraction; it further displaces futurism for more cartoonization. Tomorrowland is not becoming "todayland" out here; it’s becoming Pixarland. I don’t know about you, but I hate taking that lying down. This is Walt’s legacy? Where’s the sense of history? And speaking of history, if there are tributes to Timekeeper or his companion 9-Eye, I missed them and would really appreciate someone pointing them out to me. It would be so like Imagineers to drop a hint somewhere in the theater or queue that the Circle-Vision attraction used to be there.

At least when Timekeeper was the show here, it fit the theme of the land well enough. I can easily picture people who were underwhelmed by the new Laugh Floor realizing its thematic disconnect with the land around it. Pixarification is bad enough. But letting Emeryville take over with a bad show is doubly problematic, because a mediocre presentation calls attention to itself as not-futuristic and not in tune with the rest of Tomorrowland as it was originally conceived.

Although in a way now that I look at it, I guess this *is* in tune with Orlando’s current version of Tomorrowland, which years ago was re-cast as a spaceport for zany aliens. Pop your head sometime into Merchant of Venus, the store which functions as the exit to Stitch’s Great Escape. You’ll see the walls are painted as though they were windows out into Tomorrowland, and guess what you’ll see strolling around the painted landscape? Colorful, inventive aliens. They were inspired by the Lilo & Stitch movie, but the monsters of Monstropolis would fit right in too.

Alas. I’d rather have my hopeful futurism back.

Thanks again for all the contributions to Give Kids the World.

I'm delighted to report that several readers are sending in their own prizes: Previously, I said that we can use the help of other Disney webmasters, authors, columnists, and bloggers to make this a combined effort of the entire Disney Online Community. And I put a link to this "fundraising Widget" for people to put on their Disney Fan Community website or blog and help us spread the word:

http://www.firstgiving.com/rss/GetFundraisingBadge.asp?eventgivinggroupid=207263

To make it even easier for webmasters to add this to their sites, I've come up with some wording you could use to introduce the whole project. Here's some language you can use wholesale, or adjust as desired:

The Disney online community is coming together to help Give Kids the World Village build a dedicated villa for families visiting Disney World and other Orlando attractions. Even very small contributions add up, and if we online fans pool our resources, we easily have enough to make this happen. What better synergy could there be? What better charity for Disney fans is there than the very operation which enables children with life-threatening illnesses to visit Disney? Please help.

Please everyone, if you haven’t donated yet, consider doing so. We’re doing really well, but we must continue to spread the word. Together, we make a difference.

(A more comprehensive update was posted in my column late last week, but just in case you missed it scroll on down the following linked page to see what's been happening.)

My Newest Book:
The Unofficial Dining Guide to Walt Disney World
(2007 Edition)

An indispensable reference tool for vacationers in Orlando, this book brings you all the menus and individual prices from restaurants around Walt Disney World, including parks, hotels, and even Downtown Disney. Updated several times within each year, The Unofficial Dining Guide to Walt Disney World lists complete menus from every eatery and provides actual dollar amounts, not just approximations. Best of all, handy indexes for each park make it simple to find the food items you're looking for at a quick glance. There's even a guide (and index) for restaurants near the Walt Disney World, should you wish to venture off-property. Everything you'd ever want to know about the dining experience at Disney World is here, making it not only an ideal tool for planning your trip, but a perfect companion when visiting the parks.

The Unofficial Dining Guide to Walt Disney World offers more than just complete menus and prices for all restaurants at Walt Disney World. Every aspect of the dining experience is covered here: available discounts, purchasing the Dining Plan, when and how to make reservations, and even character dining.

Each restaurant in Walt Disney World has a page dedicated to it, so it's a snap to browse through the entire theme park's offerings all at once. With this book in hand, you won't need to cross the whole park to find out just which food items are offered, or exactly how much each of them costs. Save time, save money, and get exactly the food you want instead of settling for a second or third choice simply to get back to riding attractions.

Visitors with special needs or cravings will find the indexes especially helpful. Got a finicky eater in your family? Enduring food cravings yourself? Trying to steer clear of some food items due to allergies or preferences? The indexes make it all easy. In addition to offering the ultimate resource for searching food items, the indexes for each park also serve to generate ideas. Hungry but not sure what you'd like to eat? Just browse through the alphabetical index and scan the listings until something looks good.

If you're still unsure, consult the recommendations for each theme park, covering such topics as "best value," "best fine dining," and "best escape from the weather outside." Or browse through the book while waiting in lines for attractions, and brush up on your restaurant trivia, included whenever there is space on the page.

The Unofficial Dining Guide to Walt Disney World has it all. What better way to plan your vacation and expenses in advance? What tool could be more useful to bring along in the parks?

As I wrote it, my thoughts flooded with all the situations where having such a book would be invaluable:

• You're in line for Space Mountain and suddenly feeling hungry for baked ziti. Most Cast Members don't know the menus that well, so you'd normally need to travel through the entire park, checking each menu.
• It's lunchtime, and your party wants to visit the American Adventure at Epcot but you want to eat. You won't have time to check the menus at the America, Italy, and Japan pavilions manually and still have time to eat before they finish the attraction.
• Your family is sitting in the hotel room, wondering what the restaurants in this hotel have to offer and how expensive they are.
• You have a child who is a picky eater and you need to know exactly which menu items are available at a given restaurant, and prefer not to walk all over the park to find out. Guest Services also does not have the full menu.
• You want to kill time waiting in line for Tower of Terror and might as well plan your dinner that evening.
• You're pregnant and suffer from food cravings that are different every day—who knows what you'll want today?
• You're on a budget vacation and want to leave Disney property to save money on restaurant bills, but don't know the streets and have no idea what kinds of restaurants there are nearby. Furthermore, you don't relish just driving around without a destination.
• Someone in your party wants to park-hop to another park, but everyone is undecided if you should eat in the first park or the second park.
• Your vacation package includes the prepaid Dining Plan and you're looking to maximize the value of the coupons by searching for the most expensive items.
• Your family wants to plan the vacation in minute detail weeks before you even leave for the airport.

I know what you're thinking. Won't this thing be out of date before it even arrives back from the printer? Surprisingly, no. Almost all of the prices at Disney World update just once a year, in early October. I spent most of the past year creating a book with prices I knew would be outdated, and then have been scrambling since October to recheck the prices (and menu items too, when those changed). The result is the 2007 edition, current as of this printing. But things do change even during the year, and I plan to print multiple times each year in small quantities so as to keep the book up to date. That said, the book is 100% current at the moment, and it's at 274 pages, including menu prices, with those supremely helpful indexes, and even trivia.

It's been brought to my attention (thanks John!) that people would benefit from knowing what to expect in my new menu book. So I've put the entire Magic Kingdom chapter online as a PDF. In addition to the menu listings and trivia, be sure to scroll to the end, when you can browse the index for the park. You'll see what a useful tool this book will be when visiting Walt Disney World!

One of Kevin's more recent books is called 101 Things You Never Knew About Walt Disney World. There are lots of Disney guide books in the world, but where are the books detailing interesting stories behind odd theming choices, hidden tributes, or the weird references to names or numbers scattered around that probably mean something specific but aren't explained? This book fills that void and was created to be accessible for every level of Disney fan. Newcomers to Disneyana will be bowled over by the volume of detail, the rich layers of self-reference, and the abundance of insider tributes. Readers accustomed to such stories about Walt Disney World will find a useful resource that not only catalogs such occurrences in one spot, but goes far beyond the usual, and brings a wealth of new stories and anecdotes to the table.

The individual 101 Things referenced by the title are all items you can actually point to at the parks, so that the book provides a kind of walking tour of the parks (in guided tour format, rather than "question-and-answer" format) that yields a glimpse of the deeper history percolating below the surface. Moreover, each of the 101 "interesting facts" comes with an explanation as well as an embellishment that goes in related, but different, directions. These embellishments are practically interesting new facts all by themselves, so what you get is closer to 202 Things You Never Knew About Walt Disney World. Read more about it here.

Kevin is also the author of two books about Disneyland. Follow the links above to buy 101 Things You Never Knew About Disneyland, a volume that details the insider tributes and homages at Disneyland, and Magic Quizdom, a trivia book dedicated only to questions (with long informative answers!) about Disneyland. To view a description and sample of Magic Quizdom, click here.

Kevin Yee may be e-mailed at his address, kevin@miceage.com - Please keep in mind due to the volume of e-mail he gets, he may not be able to respond to each note personally.