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InexorableTash

Active member
FWIW I'll be visiting the DL with the family on the weekend of Aug 18th/19th (right before our annual passes expire).

I can probably ditch the family long enough to sneak over to Trader Sam's and buy a round for any patrons of the Raven that can make it.
 

Joe Brody

Well-known member
The Disney Adventure, Without the Kids

From today's New York Times:

(edited for length)

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(empties left by Pale Horse and roundshort not shown)

WHEN I told a New York friend I was heading to Disneyland to explore its appeal for adults, his immediate retort was that it would be a very brief visit. And when our group, not a person under 35, walked through the gates of Disneyland on a warm Saturday and contemplated the crush of elbow-high humanity before us, I wondered if perhaps he was right.
Yet seven hours and eight attractions into my first day, a bit exhausted and woozy from the jumps and jerks of our final ride — a bone-jarring if thrilling 10-story plunge in darkness — I began to realize that it might not be necessary to see Disney with a child in order to appreciate it. By my third day, as we ended it at the World of Color, the nighttime extravaganza of light, water and projections (enhanced, perhaps, by dinner at a high-end restaurant that included much wine), I was ready to summon my dubious friend west.

There are few corporations that appeal so singularly to children (and that reach so pervasively into their lives) as the Walt Disney Company. Is there a Disney movie character that has not been memorialized with a tube of toothpaste or a bedroom set?

But nearly one-third of the people who attend the Disney resorts in Anaheim, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., are adults who come without children, a Disney demographic so established that there is an official name for them: “nonfamily guests.”

To be sure, many of those nonfamily guests are boomers chasing down old memories. It is a popular destination for nostalgia-tinged weddings (over 1,000 at Disneyland and Disney World every year). But Walt Disney himself once said that Disney’s success rested in part on creating “a believable world of dreams that appeals to all age groups.”

And while Disney does not market specifically to older adults, the rising roster of restaurants serving alcohol in California Adventure, a part of the resort that opened in 2001 adjacent to alcohol-free Disneyland, suggests that Disney has no intention of ignoring them, either.

[…]

If you’ve never been to Disneyland, it’s hard to appreciate the rush of happiness that hits you walking through the turnstile into what is essentially an enormous sun-sparkled cartoon. Yes, it is a gaudy celebration of Americana, unrealistically perfect and flamboyantly promotional. And yes, you have to pay for it; the price of a one-day Park Hopper pass for those age 10 and over (which gets you entry to Disneyland and California Adventure) went up to $125, from $105 earlier this year.

But if you can surrender, it is a true escape. The weather on our visit (on all our visits; this is Southern California after all) was Uncle Walt-perfect: a soothing 80 degrees with not a touch of wind or humidity. “The happiest place on Earth,” the announcer reminded us from a speaker somewhere near the Mark Twain Riverboat, drawing our eyes to the lush topiaries molded into Disney characters.

First stop was the Indiana Jones Adventure, a serviceable-if-not-extraordinary ride that didn’t exist when I visited Orlando in 1974. And here came Lesson No. 1, new to me, but old news to Disney veterans: Get a Disney Fastpass. It is possible to waste a lot of time standing in line at Disney (we saw an 80-minute wait posted for Splash Mountain). So as soon as you enter, swing by everything on your must-do list and grab a free Fastpass, which allows you return at an assigned time for a minimal wait.

From my experience, the rides that work best for adults (and there are quite a few of them) combine narrative with trippy special effects. They should also be more exhilarating than traumatizing. Soarin’ Over California, one of the newer rides in California Adventure, is in some ways tailor-made for grown-ups: the thrill of movement combined with a bird’s-eye geographic and cultural tour of California in a simulated hang-gliding ride. Thanks to an array of special effects, riders feel as if they are clipping the tops of landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and Yosemite, swooping low over the vineyards of Napa and gliding between buildings in downtown Los Angeles. I did it three times.

YOU have to look awfully hard to find anything that deviates from the major chords of Disney’s relentless zoomy fun and excitement: Mickey Mouse is everywhere. So it was almost refreshing to find myself on a ride that I was pretty sure no one under 18 could appreciate the way I could: the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. The story line is derived, it seems, from an episode of the 1960s Rod Serling TV series and takes riders who are strapped onto hard metal benches inside a large elevator, up into the sky before dropping them back down into darkness. For me, the combination of black-and-white television memories with that plunge through the dark was a textbook example of a once-is-great-but-definitely-enough attraction.

[…]

As the day, and subsequent visits, went on, it became clear that even Disney isn’t completely perfect. For all the many pleasures, there were patches of the park that seemed cobwebbed. Tomorrowland, with its quaint spaceships pointed to the sky, now looks more like Yesterdayland. Holograms were pretty great 30 years ago; in this 3-D age, they can seem a little like the stagecoach.

Yet you have to feel for Disney; its fans are cultish. Disney officials say that even the smallest change in a popular ride risks a fierce backlash. Rumors that the Haunted Mansion was about to close down — when in fact, it is scheduled for a brief shutdown, from Aug. 27 to Sept. 13, for a holiday makeover for Night Before Christmas — produced a bit of a storm on some Disney fan sites.

Rides like Star Tours burst these constraints in no small part because, like Tower of Terror, they venture out of the Disney orbit. In the case of Star Tours, it draws its inspiration from a competing franchise, Star Wars. It reopened two years ago as an updated version of a 20-year-old attraction. Here it is with 3-D technology and random sequences of plot and characters providing 50 different versions of an adventure that makes you feel as if you are tumbling through the universe, narrowly evading fast-moving alien warships, barreling through asteroid belts, skipping past canyon walls and encountering different Star Wars characters along the way: Darth Vader one time, Princess Leia another.

Disney officials said they don’t design rides for adults, but there certainly are other not-for-children attractions. Napa Rose, a decidedly adult restaurant on the first floor of the Grand Californian Hotel, has high aspirations with a menu that rivals anything you might find at the highest-end restaurants in Los Angeles. The Grand Californian has its own entrance to California Adventure, and wine is a big part of the restaurant’s menu. Many nights, there’s also a mostly adults electronic dance party outside the World of Color.

Thirty years ago, I actually did work up the nerve to ride Space Mountain, and each time I have returned to the park over the last few months I felt a tug to ride it again, to see if it was as terrifying as I remembered. On our last night there I paused. Was this the moment? No. Some things are for kids.

What? No mention of the Haunted Mansion?
 

Pale Horse

Moderator
Staff member
An August gig may just be in order. Turns out Thanatosis and I wound up having a supremely satisfying adult evening. Been a little while...

Hey Joe! You ever gonna venture to make some empties out here?
 

Joe Brody

Well-known member
Pale Horse said:
Hey Joe! You ever gonna venture to make some empties out here?

Despite my margarine crack I'd love to make it to LA -- but I haven't much cause. I've got my short list of sites I'd like to hit and I'll keep you posted but with the rough family travel schedule we have planned, it may not be for a while.

On the other hand, I hope you can make it out East at some point. The Pittsburgh-DC-NY triangle is my home turf, so holler if you ever stray out this way.
 

Pale Horse

Moderator
Staff member
Will do. Jr. and the wife are aching to get me to D.C. That's pretty near there.

Word to the wise, if we meet and it's been more than a couple of days...know that my track record is 9 days....
 
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