The Adventures of Team Parker

It’s Walt Disney World. Which incidentally also created the Gummy Bears.

Disney World has a reputation of almost mythic proportions. Unfortunately, if you get there at the age that we are you start to see things in a totally different way. You’re too old and jaded and you know too much about the world. But for all that you can still appreciate the brilliance of the whole concept.

A family vacation, where everything is planned out, your every need is catered to (at a price), and “cast members” are on stand by to help you with anything you need. Special buses are chartered to take you to and from every park, there are helpful manuals and concierges around every bend. The rides are organized into things for toddlers, things for littlies, and things for teenagers. Strollers, wheelchairs and scooters are rented out at the entrance, there’s row up on row of stroller parking, and ramps going everywhere to everyone has access to all the rides. And then there’s Fastpass. Ah the joy.

Sameer told me that the concept was originally invented by Universal Studios but it never really took off. However Disney co-opted it and it’s now working wonders for them. Well, having used both Fastpass at Disney and Express at Disney, I can now tell you the difference.

Fastpass allows you to swipe your entry card once every hour or two to receive a pass which will allow you skip all the queues if you agree to take a ride at a designated time. So for example, you get to the Space Mountain ride and find that the queue is 40 minutes. You walk over to a vending machine, swipe your park entry card through it, and it spits out a little voucher that says “Return between 11:30 and 12:30. Next Fastpass available at 12:30″ So you go off and do another ride or see a show in the meanwhile, something that has a very high capacity and little to no wait time. Then you return at say 11:45, skip the entire queue, and head straight for the ride. Brilliant! The system works by timing things so that crowds to each ride are staggered throughout the day. Anyone can get a Fastpass as long as there is a scheduled time available. They let in 25 Fastpass holders for every one person on Standby (the regular queue) so it’s a good idea to get one if the wait time for a ride is ever more than 20 minutes.

Here’s how it works at Universal. Everyone queues for everything. If you’re willing to pay $48 dollars extra, you can get Universal Express – a special ticket that allows you to skip all the queues for all the rides, one time only.

Now here’s the thing that I hate about Universal Express. Unlike the fluffy bunnies and flowers mentality of Disney where everything is equal opportunity and everyone plays together, at Universal they make you pay a premium for Express tickets, which are a privilege reserved for the rich. At Disney, when you see people pass you in the Fastpass queue, you don’t mind because if you really wanted to, you too could choose to use your Fastpass for this ride. At Universal, every time you see someone pass you in the Express queue, you think “Bastard” and then start swearing under your breath and complaining about how unfair it is that just because they have more money, they can skip queues.

And that’s my rant about theme parks.

To be honest, Sameer and I were a bit disappointed by Disney. Not because it wasn’t interesting, with great sets and effects and integration of video, sound, and sensory effects but because we were too old and jaded to fully appreciate it. Truly, the best age to go to Disney is between 9 and 11 — you’re old enough to go on all the cool rides but young enough to be in awe of the slower, more set/playground oriented ones aimed at the younger set. For older people, I guess the extent of your enjoyment depends on your ability to suspend your disbelief. Needless to say, I enjoyed it more than Sameer. At any rate, we’ve decided that it would be really great to bring our kids here some day.

Universal definitely had better rides — they were faster and more thrilling. Also, they had this wonderful thing where every single shop there was not selling Universal merchandise. On the other hand, they could so learn a thing or three from Disney about organization. Things at Disney just run so much more smoothly and easily. And people are so helpful and upbeat. Even the slightly jaded ones like our guide on one of the river tours (see below). She had the most cynical manner and her entire schtick was just puns, puns, puns! (The Magic peeps would have appreciated it muchly.)

The type of ride you see above is actually one of the staples of the amusement parks. You get into a raft, barge, or boat with a tour guide who talks you through it, and then there’s rocking and shaking and usually something jumps out at you from the water – a Great White Shark in the Jaws ride at Universal and a T-Rex in the Jurassic Park ride. (I thought that one was the best executed one of the lot.) The one in the picture above had hippos and other wild animals jumping out at us.

Anyway, back to my battle of the amusement parks comparison.

The loser in all of this was Seaworld. Oh my god. Seaworld – like a big aquarium with an island theme. And lots of big sea animals in small tanks. I mean seriously. I know I always wanted to go to Seaworld to see the Orcas but after seeing that mum and baby swimming round and round in circles in a concrete tank with nothing else in it – not even other sea creatures like the sharks and fish have – it was just a bit depressing. Even as aquariums go, I have to say I’ve seen better. The Shedd Aquarium was way cooler, minus the Orcas of course. When you look at it that way, you really begin to see that they’ll never actually release the Orcas – it’s the only thing they have going for them over other aquariums.

Oh and concerning my dolphin porn comment from the last post, well, heh-heh. That comment was actually more to do with the auditory stylings of theme parks rather than the copulatory habits of our seafaring cousins.

Each theme park has it’s own distinctive sound. Disney plays lots of movie music and cheesy scores from old Disney cartoons, generic happy-happy music piped in through hidden speakers all the time. It’s alright. You can pretty much ignore it. Universal just plays theme music. Every time you walk through a particular area you get a certain sound — Jaws music when you walk through Amity, Men in Black near the MIB ride, Jurassic Park near the Jurassic Park rides, Simpsons themes near the Simpsons ride. (Interestingly, once you walk past a certain area, the music from that area fades out of hearing and the next area’s music fades in. Great sound engineering that.) Seaworld plays stab your eyes out elevator music. It is absolutely horrible. It has nothing to do with anything but there it is, as you pass the Arctic zone and as you pass the Penguin habitat.

So now a story. We were watching the dolphins swim around and there were two or three coming to within reach of us and people kept trying to touch them. But then there was a group that kept swimming in circles, splashing in and out of the water, flipping over each other. I told Sameer “I wonder what’s going on there? They look like they’re playing.” So we go down to the underwater viewing area and bam – dolphin penises. Two of the male dolphins were trying to mate with one of the females. What was really funny was the reactions of the other adults in the viewing area, very puzzled, sort of like “Is that…” — “Uh-huh”. And then the kids “Mommy, they’re playing!” — “Yes, honey. Why don’t we go see the penguins!” Then we noticed the cheesy elevator music playing in the background and that just took it to a whole ‘nother creepy level. We looked at each other, both had the same thought “This is so porno!” and then we skedaddled real quick like. I know aquariums are supposed to be educational but really, TMI!

Moving on swiftly. Rides. Which rides rocked. The best ride out of the whole thing was the Aerosmith Rockin’ Rollercoaster at Hollywood Studios. It’s a crazy fast rollercoaster ride in the dark set to the song Sweet Emotion. Thrilling! My one regret was not riding it a second time. Then there was the Dueling Dragons at Universal – these were great. Two intertwined rollercoasters – a red “Fire” dragon and a blue “Ice” dragon – that release at the same time and which sometimes run parallel to each other and at other times towards each other. This was the best! Fast enough to give you butterflies and the sensation of flying but not so twisty and turny that you feel naar. (Which is more than I can say for the Incredible Hulk ‘coaster, which just made me feel sick.)

Then there was the Mummy rollercoaster at Universal which was also great but mostly because it was indoors and had a whole “running away from the mummy” theme going for it. Very scary, with fireballs going across the ceiling and mummies jumping out at you.

The new Simpsons ride at Universal was also really cool. It’s a motion simulator that feels almost like a rollercoaster but it’s set up in front of a huge Imax type screen that goes to the edges of your vision. This one had a whole storyline involved and it really felt as though you were inside an episode of the Simpsons. Not only that, but it was really funny! The Amazing Spiderman ride was similar — you felt like you were inside the story — except the carriage spun around and rocked and the whole experience was 3D. Doc Oc and the Hobgoblin throwing rocks and flaming pumpkins at you while your ride shakes and screeches was fantastic!

On that note, the 3D shows were great. I originally wanted to go to Universal to see T2-3D, which I’d heard about when I was a Terminator obsessed teenager. Well, the show was great but sadly outdated. It still looked amazing and had great 3D effects but after watching Mickey’s Philharmagic and Shrek in 3D you expect something extra, a bit more sensory interaction — water on the face when there’s a splash of water, a puff of air when something shoots at you, or something brushing past your legs when Shrek drops spiders on the floor. T2-3D being a much older 3D show, had none of these, and in that way it was a bit of a let down. Good but not great.

Water rides. Slap me silly. In this way Disney, Universal and Seaworld are all the same. When you see that plastic poncho on sale in the shops don’t go look at the $6 price tag and go “Meh!” For God’s sake buy it! Florida has a tropical climate which means that even though it is burning hot, blindingly bright and sauna-like in humidity, there is usually a thunderstorm at 3pm! Not only this but water rides, unlike the Monkey Falls at Ratanga, will not just sprinkle you or wet your shirt, they will soak you inside and out, down to your underwear and socks. Water will run from your hair and clothing in rivulets for literally hours. You will not dry off in the hot sun but rather exude this sticky, sweaty smell and go squelch-squelching around in your soggy sneakers. Yes, all of those parks are making millions each day on towel and t-shirt sales from stalls set up where water rides exit.

Oh, the picture above is Sameer and I, soaked to the bone after riding the Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom.

Oh, and last but not least, was live action shows. I can’t speak for all of them because, to maximize time we only watched the highest rated ones but the ones we saw were great — a live action singing, dancing, glowy costume wearing Nemo Musical, an Indiana Jones show which was all about fight scenes and stunts, and Lights, Motors, Action! which was all about car chase scenes in movies. These were all absolutely amazing, particularly the last one which had high speed chases, handbrake spins, driving in reverse, flying over trucks and streams, explosions and stunt men on fire. Awesome!

Despite our initial disappointment, we had a good time. It wasn’t that things weren’t good, it’s just that we had very high expectations. We thought that if Rantanga Junction was a 5, Disney would be a 12 but in fact Disney turned out to be closer to an 8. Better than Ratanga for sure, and with loads more imagination and much better organization, but not out of this world mindblowing.

And maybe we spent a bit too much time there. At the right time of year, with Fastpass and the right touring plans (taken from The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2008) two adults can easily do all four Disney parks comfortably in two days with an extra day for the water parks if you want to do them. You can do all of Universal in one day if you have Express. Seaworld you can skip altogether. I’d much prefer to see the Orcas in the wild anyway.

After our five and a half days in Orlando, Sameer and I are now completely over theme parks for at least another 12 years.