The World of Color Dessert Party

Mrs. DisneylandTraveler is not huge fan of DCA's World of Color water show spectacular. Oh, the show is fine, glorious in fact. Mrs. DLT's issue is the endless standing. Standing to wait for the show to begin, standing throughout the 25 minute performance. After and hour and half of standing around, it's then time to leave and Mrs. DLT, after being on her feet in one spot for that long, is pretty cranky.

But the Disney people are solutions oriented and understand the issue with their guests having to stand for endless amounts of time for a nighttime show after running around their theme parks all day. The good folks at Disney announced a World of Color Dessert Party offering last week which promises a nice seat with the prime view of the show. And you get a dessert to boot. The cost for a seat and something like a cupcake? How about a nice $79 per person (but that includes tax and gratuity).

Mrs. DLT is sleeping in this morning. Can't wait to tell her that Disney is finally offering a seat for the World of Color show. She'll be thrilled. And when I tell her it's only $79, she's probably going to want to break something. I'll tell her the good news, probably at a safe distance of about 20 ft.

World of Color's Winter Dreams

Official Disney artwork for World of Color Winter Dreams

I guess the official announcement was made last week on one of the days my surgically repaired face was hurting so much that the pain medication made Disneyland the furthest thing from my mind. It had been a rumor for a few months but now it's a reality. World of Color will have a brand new holiday themed show featuring the blending of some new characters from Disney Animation's November film release - Frozen - and the classic characters from Disney and Pixar we all know and love. And the promise is the new show will be more narrator driven which will lead the audience into yes..... singing. 

This is welcomed news (I think). Certainly Disney California Adventure needs its holiday theming to be picked up a notch because it does lag behind Disneyland's efforts. There is also the unsubstantiated rumor that DCA is upgrading their holiday theming because Disneyland is about to put their special holiday features behind a separate admission event similar to Walt Disney World's Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.

Again, whether I make it back to Disneyland this year or not, what WOC's Winter Dreams means is the return of the herd and the show packing people in like when WOC first opened a few years ago. And it will make someone in my demographic age group almost certainly buy some sort of dining package to avoid at least a little bit of the intolerable lines and waiting (and waiting, and waiting) I would expect.

The show is set to debut November 15 - first day of the official Disneyland Resort Christmas season but I would expect a few days of perhaps soft openings and preview shows. 

Me and Karl Strauss Check Out The World of Color

Prepare to Assemble

They were dropping like flies. It only took 3 little words to send others in my traveling party to go scurrying out of the parks and into "we've got other things to do tonight". The 3 words are World of Color. Mrs. DisneylandTraveler - "I think I'm going back to the hotel to do some laundry." My sister and her husband - "I think we're going over to Tony Roma's for dinner, are you sure you don't want to join us?"

No...it was World of Color night and I'm going to see it. Let's explore.

Mrs. DLT and I watched the Pixar Play Parade, went over to Flo's for dinner, then parted company for the next several hours - she to her laundry and me to the World of Color. Showtime was probably still 2 hours away.

WOC - an insidethemagic.com photo. My pictures of WOC stink.

You've heard and read (and probably seen) what a great show World of Color is. It is. But I'm here to tell you about the other side of WOC, the side that sends some Disney fans fleeing into the night in the opposite direction.

The wait for WOC is an ordeal, an effort in patience and the eventual onset of mighty sore feet. Knowing what my like was going to be like for the next several hours, I paid a visit to an old DCA friend, the Karl Strauss beer truck found in the Pacific Wharf area. Most DCA regulars over 21 know exactly where it is.

So I sat down and thought about my day (fun) and pondered my night (my poor feet) over a couple of the San Diego based micro brewery fine beers - The Red Trolley Ale. Not as potent as the Tower 10 IPA but rich, smooth, and balanced for those that like their hops. And even after finishing, I still had time to kill before the ordeal was to begin.

The Karl Strauss Red Trolley Ale - I'll take two please.

I wandered around Paradise Pier and had a good time watching people have a good time. In general, Paradise Pier may be my favorite area of DCA. Disney wanted to capture that seaside amusement park look and feel, and while not perfect, they have improved that area of DCA. Paradise Pier has a feel of completeness about it. Probably easy to do when it basically goes around in a circle.

Bayside Brews - Paradise Pier

It's a long walk from the Pacific Wharf area to the far side of Paradise Pier (well, not really) but a man can work up a thirst on the walk around Paradise Pier. Disney thought of that and put up a beer hut next to the Boardwalk Pizza & Pasta and Paradise Garden Grill restaurants. Over here they serve different kinds of beer from the horrid Bud Light to the excellent Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA. But this was a night for me and Karl Strauss and the Bayside Brews served up the Karl Strauss Pintail Ale a far more herbaceous brew than the Red Trolley Ale. After the Red Trolley Ale, the Pintail Ale tasted like brewed up freshly mowed grass clippings which is kind of funny because I had a Pintail Ale two days earlier with the 5 cheese ravioli from the Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta and enjoyed it thoroughly. There's a lesson here somewhere.

Before I made it to the World of Color Mosh pit, there was one more stop to make on the way. Yep, the Corn Dog Castle. The corn dogs from the Corn Dog Castle are so large (and greasy) that me and Mrs. DLT usually split one. Since Mrs. DLT deserted me on this night, I got the whole greasy corn dog to myself. Word of advice that I have passed on before - Disney offers either potato chips or sliced apples with their corn dogs. Pick the slice apples, it cuts through the grease that will begin to do a tap dance in your belly.

And so I arrive at my World of Color viewing area 3 beers (4 if you counts the Racer 5 I had at Flo's with dinner) and 1 corn dog down at about 8:15. Gee, I only have an hour to wait before the scheduled 9:15 show performance. And now you know why everyone else I was with disappeared when it came time for World of Color. As Tom Petty once sang, "the waiting is the hardest part". And for me, not just waiting - standing and waiting. Of course in my younger years, I could have done what many did around me and take a nice comfortable seat on the concrete ground. But I'm now many years on the other side of 40 (or 50) and the sitting on ground part of my trips to Disneyland is something I left behind years ago. No more. So I stood and waited for the World of Color. I actually go a spot by a post and chain link barrier which allowed a slight bit of leaning for some degree of relief. But its no fun, no fun at all waiting for the World of Color.

Another insidethemagic.com WOC photo. I've given up trying to take pictures of it.

So after standing and waiting for the show to begin an hour or more, the show starts. Its 25 minutes long of still more standing. I've written about the World of Color before, its a wonderful spectacle to see but could be better as the show tends more to meander rather than build. Some of the animated sequences work, some don't (Mufasa death scene from The Lion King). If you have never seen the World of Color - you just have to. If you have seen WOC a bunch of times like have, the biggest enjoyment from World of Color comes from the people around you seeing it for the first time. It's more Vegas than Disney. Fantasmic over in Disneyland is still the better nighttime show.

And so my exhausting World of Color night comes to an end. Thanks Karl, I couldn't have done it without you.

PS. For ten bucks ahead cover charge you can see World of Color from a seat at the Cove Bar. Yeah, it's a view from the side and maybe the back but that seat is a valuable commodity at my ages. I smell a new addition to my Disneyland Bucket List coming on.

Mrs. DLT Sets Me Straight On Glow With The Show

Glow With The Show Lighted Mouse Ears
A ThemeParkInsider.com photo

As she is not shy about doing, Mrs. DisneylandTraveler told me I was missing the point about the Glow With The Show events at the World of Color. It's an enhancement to the show where now the spectator is part of the show itself rather than a distant viewer. My point about 4000 people all wearing the same night light on their heads removes the individual spectator and replaces it with a mass ensemble of sheep was, well... all wet.

Here is the one thing we did agree on. Twenty-five bucks for the ears? My niece and her husband go to Disneyland quite often. She has four kids. Let's see...mom, dad, kids X 4 - sounds like $150. Ouch! 

Here is another problem that has surfaced since my original post yesterday. Most of the video of the World of Color Glow With the Show out on the internet came from a press preview event last Thursday. Everyone watching World of Color was given a set of ears to put on. No one had to lay out the $25. When the regular World of Color shows ran over the weekend, only a few people in the audience were actually wearing the lighted ears. There's a big difference when there are only 40 people with lighted ears on viewing the show compared to a couple of thousand. It loses a lot of impact, a lot.

And someone else pointed out another issue. You are spending $25 to watch other people's heads. You can't see your own. How do you know your own head is glowing with the show?

Disney is holding special Glow With The Show events for select annual pass holders later in the month. Once again, Disney will distribute the expensive ears for free. The hope is that if they can get annual pass holders to return to the park with the ears and participate in glow events then maybe the idea will catch on and everybody will want the ears. Seems like a stretch, a really big stretch...

Let's Glow With The Show....Or Not

Glow With The Show at World of Color
An O.C. Register Photo

As mentioned, I'm a sports guy. I like sports. Currently on tap is the NBA Finals with the Miami Heat (boo) vs. the  Oklahoma City Thunder (yah). Both teams, especially OKC, have rabid fans. And both teams do something similar. Before every game a cheap t-shirt is draped across the expensive seats that are within view of the TV cameras. It is hoped that everyone puts the t-shirt on. What is presented on TV is a sea of white if you are Miami at home and a sea of blue if you are OKC at home, basically the fans are wearing the same color as home uniforms of the players. Now it may look like a united front on TV with players and fans all wearing the same colors, but I struggle with this lemming type of behavior. Whatever happened to the individual? If I were fortunate enough to get one of these expensive seats, there would be no way I would put on the same shirt just because "everyone else is doing it". As my Dad said years ago, "if everyone else was doing it, would you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge too?" (his examples were a bit on the extreme side).

Which brings me to the great "Glow with the Show" experiment which is being test run with spectators of the World of Color water show at Disney California Adventure. Special lighted Mickey Ears can be worn which will turn colors to match what is being presented with the show itself. Emitters placed around Paradise Pier send signals to the ears telling your noggin to change colors. Yep, there is a certain amount of technology going on here but I'm not interested enough to try and explain it. I'm trying to figure out the purpose of doing the exact same thing as a few thousand other people standing there watching the show. I'm there to watch the World of Color, not look around and watch the top of people's heads. To me, the idea seems kind of lame. But I'm also perfectly willing to admit that this could be just me as there are people desperately trying to get into the special Glow With The Show World of Color. Did I mention the special ears cost $25? You get to look like the people standing next to you, Disney pockets large amounts of cash from ear sales.

I'm no fun at all.

Check out a few minutes of YouTube video from Glow With the Show from wdwinfo.com and decide for yourself.

Fantasmic Vs. World of Color

As far the epic battles are concerned, the war of words that center on the question "Which is a better show - Fantasmic or World of Color?" doesn't amount to a hill of beans. But Disneyland fans, not short on having opinions, definitely do line up on one side or another. Now many of them will say both shows are great (they are) but if you pushed their backs up against the wall, they would give you in detail why they prefer one of the night time shows over the other. The Disneyland Traveler is no different.

I'm a Fantasmic guy pure and simple. I've probably seen the show more than a dozen times over the years and I have to say I admire its creativity and imagination each and every time. This is some of Disney imagineer's best work. What Fantasmic does that World of Color fails to do is tell a story that builds to a climatic finish. Twenty-five minutes of pure Disney magic. And for all his prominence throughout Disneyland, this is a Mickey attraction. Although he has a house in ToonTown, there are no Mickey Mouse rides or attractions in Disneyland itself minus his appearances in parades or on the screens at the Main St. Cinema. Yes, Fantasmic is Mickey's chance to triumphantly shine in his own park by slaying the villains that creep into his imagination. It's a great story and one that bares watching over and over again.

Now watching the ever popular Fantasmic is a bit of a challenge but most Disneyland regulars have their own ways of spectating the event whether its staking out a perfect viewing spot for hours or just dropping in shortly before the show is about to begin. An evening of Fantasmic is what you make of it.

World of Color in Disney California Adventure is spectacular as I mentioned in my previous post World of Color or My Aching Feet blog post back in August. My feelings about the show are pretty much summed up in there. In the end, as impressive as the water display is, it just doesn't scream out Disney and seems more of a Las Vegas type of show - big, impressive, but somewhat shallow. And the idea of having to get a show pass to see the show seems rather intrusive (necessary, but intrusive). Hopefully in the future, as California Adventure completes all its expansion, the viewing of World of Color at least in the off seasons (what few of them are left) is a walk up affair and not something you have to plan a day around.

If I were to ask Mrs. DisneylandTraveler "On our next trip to Disneyland, do you want to do a World of Color dining package?"  (the thought of waiting in the GRR fast pass line isn't appealing at all)  I'm pretty sure the dining part of it would be appealing to her but the thought of the World of Color standing and waiting ordeal would not be appealing. All the water in the world being sprayed hundreds of feet in the air just isn't worth standing around and waiting for a couple of hours for the show to start. Now that we've seen WOC a few times (4 for me), I think we're good for a few years.

Why I'm Not A Fan Of The Lion King - Sorry

As mentioned in my What's New In Disney News - Vol 2 post a couple of weeks ago, Disney's animated classic The Lion King is having something of a rebirth.  Now remastered in 3D, Disney re-released the 17 year old film in theaters for what was supposed to be a two week limited engagement before the new 3D version hits retail stores with all the special packaging sometime here in October.  Well that limited engagement has been 3 weeks now as The Lion King remains on top, or close to the top of the weekly box office reports.  My post a few weeks back ended with "Three cheers for The Lion King" as I can only tip my hat to the magic of Disney taking down all comers with a 17 year old movie.

But....

I am not a big fan of The Lion King.  You can admire its brilliant animation qualities, its triumphant story line, its wonderful musical score, and I certainly do but for me, The Lion King possesses one key element that I find horribly unsettling and is present in many Disney animated features going back to the time of Walt Disney. And that is the need to tragically, and often quite sadly, kill off a featured character.  Does death belong in an animated movie that is primarily targeted for children?  I come up on the 'No' side of that argument and I find the Mufasa death scene absolutely heartbreaking in a movie I really want to enjoy.  The Circle of Life doesn't always trump death.

And for the life of me, I cannot explain why Disney imagineers would want to include the Mufasa death scene in World of Color.  It almost seems like an over the top grab at an audience's emotional heart strings rather than letting a story naturally play out.  For me, this almost cheap grasping at sentimintality keeps the show from being all it could be.  Three cheers for The Lion King but in the theaters or buying the new version in the store, I'll pass.

The World of Color or My Aching Feet

Disney California Adventure's World of Color water show has pretty much run non-stop for over a year now (except when my sister went to see it and it shut down after about 2 minutes because of "technical difficulties").  Everything you have seen or read about the show is true - it is spectacular and a must-see for any visitor to the Disneyland Resort.  At 25 minutes long, the large grid of fountains, fire, and digital animation projections bring you the world of Disney as it's never been seen before.  Walt would have been proud of this one because of the creativity and technical achievements of the show.

BUT....

Here is where the Disneyland Traveler may run into some trouble.  There is no real story in World of Color so it doesn't build to anything in particular.  The film clips show classic Disney (and Pixar) scenes but they look assembled rather than flowing cohesively.  World of Color meanders with some segments too long, others too short, and in some cases, a segment which should have been left out entirely (the Mufasa death scene from the Lion King). These are quibbles.  It's a great show, but it really could be better.

AND....

So you've just spent all day at the park and you're dead tired.  Now it comes to time to line up for the World of Color show and then be escorted into your viewing area where you stand and wait and wait.  Some people hit the ground and sit on the concrete but at our age, me and Mrs. DisneylandTraveler know that sitting for any length of time on the concrete ground is a risky proposition.  So you continue to stand and wait and wait while it gets more crowded, and more crowded.  But then, the misery in waiting quickly dissipates once the show begins and the fountains of color show their stuff.

Once I get back to my hotel room, the shoes come off in world record time and I am stretched out on the bed.  I tell my feet "it'll be ok, you'll feel better in the morning."  My feet tell me "shut up and get some Advil and don't do that to us again."  The feet have a strong argument for awhile but they'll be back waiting for the World of Color again some day.  The eyes insist on it.

One of the best YouTube video's ever is Disney Park's World of Color Aerial View.  Enjoy WOC from this spectacular perspective.

Land of Second Chances

We love in a great country - the good ol' USA.  It's a forgiving country.  It's a country that loves to give second chances. General Motors is getting its second chance now. Every time an athlete gets released from prison for doing something completely moronic and stupid someone is out there ready to give them a 2nd chance (provided they still run like they've been shot out of a cannon). Call it a do-over. We all need do-overs in some aspect of our lives.

Disney flopped all over itself  when California Adventure opened 10 years. Despite Michael Eisner's ear to ear grin, nobody had a lot of good things to say about his park. The biggest problems? There was nothing much for small kids to do. It was top heavy with exclusive high priced restaurants that theme park travelers had little interest in (lets see - pay through the nose to get in, then pay through the nose again to eat at some place that has the Wolfgang Puck or Robert Mondavi name attached to it)' The park had extremely muddled theming, the off the shelf carnival rides that were better suited for a county fair, and where was Mickey.

Now to be fair, DCA had a few great rides - California Sreamin' is a great coaster, Grizzly River Run is a great water ride, Soarin' Over California is a sensational experience, and A Bug's Life is a totally enjoyable show (as long as you aren't under 5 or deathly afraid of bugs), and Muppets anywhere are never a bad thing.  But after you did all those rides and attractions in about a half day there was little else to do except head over to Disneyland where you always got more bang for your buck.

The current 1.1 billion dollar make over is said to have started with the great Toy Story Mania. I really think it began long before that. The DCA makeover began right after the gates opened and Disney knew they had some major shortcomings with their new park. My impression is that almost everything that has been done with DCA over the 7 or 8 years has been an improvement with a few forgivable missteps along the way.

A Bug's Land gets regularly lampooned for its cheap county fair type rides. But if your under 5 what do you care if the rides are less than a minute long and lack the over the top Disney magic. The little rides are simple and fun. I've never been on Heimlich the train but I always enjoy watching it make its little journey. It's completely charming. And who wouldn't enjoy flying round and round in a box of Chinese take-out as you do in Flick's Flyers. The place looks wonderful at Christmastime. Yes, Disney was in a mad rush to put A Bug's Land in place so there would be something for kids to do but it was a needed improvement.

And improvement was the name of the game with the spectacular Aladdin stage show, the Hollywood Tower of Terror thrill ride, Turtle Talk with Crush, the Pixar Play Parade (not the forgettable Block Party Bash), the exhibit of the Toy Story Zoetrope, and the swapping out of Superstar Limo with Monsters Inc. These were all improvements that were made prior to the official makeover. They were also able to run Disney's wonderful Electrical Parade for a time (when the park wasn't filled with construction walls, cranes, and bulldozers).

As for the makeover itself, Toy Story Mania is Disney's best fun for all ride in a long, long time. The World of Color is nothing short of breathtaking despite the pacing that doesn't seem to build the way it should and some of segments are too long, too short, or just not needed (Mustafa death scene). I would never ride on something like Silly Symphony Swings but it is visually much better to look at than its hideous looking Orange Stinger predecessor (the Mickey bandleader on top is still about 3 feet too small though). The carny like Maliboomer needed to come down. Goofy's Sky School will be a much more welcomed theme to Mulholland Madness. Though not open yet, the new Paradise Pier restaurants should be a marked improvement over the previous dining facilities which were awful. You can criticize the Boardwalk Games as being ridiculously overpriced but if nothing else, they fit well the new Paradise Pier theming and a whole lot better than shooting basketballs into a hoop. It has its critics but the Little Mermaid dark ride was much needed in the park and show building looks fabulous. And this all continues with the opening of Buena Vista St. and Carsland in 2012.

Yep DCA - you've come a long, long, way and people like John Lassater, Larry Nicolai, Kathy Mangum, Steve Davison, along with countless others deserve an awful lot of credit for taking an eyesore and making it eye popping. Thank you.