Walt Disney World, November, 2012
Which brings me to his ultimate gamble - Disneyland, Anaheim, California (followed by Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida). Even in my cynical old age I still think there are things to admire in the parks in California and Florida - although Jean Baudrillard probably nailed it best with his description of hyperreality and now, walking around the Magic Kingdom, I cannot help but refer back to his excellent essay. Nowadays I oddly feel it far more difficult to immerse myself in the plastic fantastic of the castles, costumes and cartoon characters come to life as human-sized dollops of fake-fur. Blame it on Baudrillard. Or maybe just a growing pessimism at the ever growing expansion of the Mouse House which, for now, means turning Disneyland into a confused hodgepodge of pop culture that takes in everything from Darth Vader to Robert Downey Jnr.
The first Disneyland to open outside of America was in Tokyo. It opened in 1983 and was soon followed by Tokyo Disneysea in 2001. Wikipedia tells me these are the only parks not under Disney economic ownership but you probably would not notice. The Magic Kingdom looks very similar to those in America but my main interest was in Disneysea, which is unique to Japan and gets a lot of raves online. After visiting Hong Kong and having done the two parks in the USA during my lifetime I was a bit fatigued with the Magic Kingdom. Main Street had lost its allure and Space Mountain had been castrated in the Hong Kong park (see below). So it was, then, that Disneysea seemed the best option.
Then you walk in and... Oh really? Two hour waits for rides? Hmmm, well this is when the Fastpass comes in useful, right?
For those who have never been a Fastpass is part of the Disney ticket. You slide it into a machine that offers you (usually) the chance to come back in about 90 minutes or two hours and skip the bulk of the waiting line. The tickets are limited but they are spread around every attraction meaning that if you cannot get a Fastpass for, say, Space Mountain then you probably can for Splash Mountain. Then you go and wait for a ride (say 50 minutes) then by the time you are finished you get onto another one quickly via Fastpass and can then activate another Fastpass once you have used your old one. All told, in the American parks, even on a really busy day, you can probably ride everything thank to the Fastpass system.
In Tokyo, however, the Fastpass doesn't work.
When we get there, Disneysea is packed. Ride waiting times are 70 minutes to over two hours. OK, so we need to Fastpass. But even at 10am the earliest Fastpass available is for 5pm. Do the maths. This means that we get on a total of two rides - one of which we had line up to seventy minutes for. We chose to stand in the queue for Raging Spirits - a rollercoaster which turns out to be snore-worthy. Despite being built in 2005 it chugs along and does very little, with a bog standard track and a tiny loop-the-loop. I'm unsure of what the theme to this even is. Disneysea is (you guessed it) based around the ocean and its many mysteries. Fuck knows what Raging Spirits is doing then - no fish, no water, no nothing... just a crappy, exhausted, boring rollercoaster that you could take your grandmother on.
Disneysea actually does not feel very Disney.
Neither does it feel very Japanese. It just feels... odd. Tacky but not in the way Akihabara feels 'tacky'. It just feels... sullen. The same rocky mountains and coves everywhere but without any sense of exploration or imagination. Or maybe Raging Spirits just made me feel like I had lost 70 minutes of my life and it would be better drinking beer rather than lining up for two hours to experience Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull (not sure what this has to do with sea either, but Wikipedia explains that it is a near carbon copy of the Disneyland Calfiornia ride, which is admitedly first class). Yes, okay, so this is something Tokyo does do - it sells alcohol. The cynic in me believes that this is because the park is awful and the rides are tragic but, either way, it means you can at least have a beer or two before finally making use of your solitary Fastpass. In this case it was to ride something called Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Woohoo... only had to wait seven hours to ride this one (during which I think we circled the park in boredom about sixty times)... apparently one of the best attractions in the park...
And it's crap. Good Lord it's crap. If Tommy Wisseau made theme park rides it would be this. A big plastic mass of garbage that finally picks up some speed and ends. It lasts about 90 seconds and it feels half-finished. I am not even sure what happened on this thing. The effects were of a 1950s Roger Corman movie level. In Kirkcaldy (my hometown) we have something every year called The Links Market. It's Europe's longest running street fair and it takes place every April. It lasts a week and lots of travelling old carney families come in and set-up rides - ghost trains, waltzers, whatever... The crowd for The Links Market is a mixture of young people, mums and dads with an exciteable kid, alcoholics and junkies seeking to pick pockets (to be fair, this is the entire population of Kirkcaldy).
Man, I'm telling you, as low-rent as most of the offerings at the Links Market are, had anyone erected Journey to the Centre of the Earth, there would be moans and complaints. It's that rubbish.
So with rides stretching towards the two-and-a-half-hour mark, we opted to leave Tokyo Disneyland. Disappointingly, even the merchandise was diabolical. Then a kind lady came up to us and asked if we wanted two fastpass tickets to the Finding Nemo simulator. It was an act of fluke and we accepted. But the simulator was boring too. Sorry Tokyo Disneysea, but you are officially the dregs of all the Disney parks.
Opening in September, 2005, Hong Kong Disneyland was the second Disney park in Asia. It is easy to access thanks to Hong Kong's excellent monorail system and, obviously, it is the most English-friendly of all three Disney parks. The rides that require any kind of narration are given in English and not Cantonese. The designers have also played it remarkably safe - the solitary park, The Magic Kingdom, is a carbon copy of the ones in California and Florida, albeit far smaller than both. In a way this might make sense - Hong Kong being so densley populated, for instance - but, on the other, it makes the attraction feel like a half-day option at best. In truth, when we attended on a week day, with hardly anyone in attendance, it was possible to get around the park and on every ride we wanted within just two hours. Now this need not be a bad thing. I still remember going to Singapore's excellent Universal Studios back in 2012, finding that no one was there, and still filling up most of the day thanks to some A+ attractions. Unfortunately, Hong Kong Disneyland doesn't have a single ride that is worth doing a second time...
For a start, and this might be Disney-wide, but Space Mountain is now a mess. Re-dubbed Hyper-Space Mountain it has been reborn as a Star Wars ride with the soundtrack booming at full volume and scenes from the original trilogy playing on giant screens. Alas, this means Space Mountain (sorry, Hyper-Space Mountain) is no longer a dark ride. Instead, you can see each and every turn and, in the full blaze of light, Space Mountain is actually remarkably boring. Slow hand clap to Disney. The other rollercoaster (of sorts) at Hong Kong Disneyland is Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars. This ride is a spin-off from the Big Thunder Mountain ride that typified the 'old West' theme of Disneyland's Critter County and Disneyworld's excellent Frontierland. Hong Kong has a 'Grizzly Gulch' which is, again, like a minature version of the latter two 'lands' and it is not especially visually impresive. The Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars is fairly fun but it won't do much to impress the hardcore thrill-seeker. The only other rides I bothered with in Hong Kong were Mystic Manner, a Haunted Mansion style attraction which is unique to this park, and the Iron Man Experience. The former was the best attraction at Hong Kong Disney and, in its own way, just as good as The Haunted Mansion. The attraction takes in elements of British colonialism, which are obviously especially relevant to Hong Kong, and the thieving of foreign riches (with one item releasing spirits which create havoc in an old colonial house). With this said, Hong Kong and the Opium Wars are not mentioned by name (there is still a lot of pro-British sentiment on the island among native Hong Kongers - and it is interesting to note that the Union Jack flies over the Jungle River Cruise, something that would be unthinkable in the Shanghai park. The flag has oddly been reborn as a sign of protest against Mainland adminstration in Hong Kong, as uncomfortable as many of us - myself included - might feel with it being flown).
As for the Iron Man ride - hmmm, call me a purist but I hate seeing Star Wars and Marvel at Disneyland. They are not part of the Disney lexicon and I would much rather they were kept apart or at least designed as elements of a secondary theme park. Iron Man is never going to feel 'Disney' to me and the ride itself is lightweight. It is a 3D simulator ride, but unlike the excellent and hair-raising Transformers variant at Universal Singapore, this is really tame and one never feels as if they are really 'part of the action'. Whilst the visuals are not bad, and the designers do set the action in Hong Kong (predominantly on Hong Kong Island, which is the area most tourists will be familiar with I guess), I felt that the small screen and the drab 3D effects were positively B-grade. In comparison, I rode Transformers three times over - despite detesting the films - because it is absolutely absorbing and even quite hair raising.
All in all, Hong Kong Disneyland is a huge letdown. For the entrance price I doubt many adults could find much to do and the merchandise shops and layout are minimal. The park feels unfinished and it has a strangley grubby feel to it (the restuarants are nasty, for instance). When we attended there was only a small crowd - and, perhaps, for very young children there will be a few more things to take in. But this is the least Disney-ish Magic Kingdom park I have been to.
Still better than Tokyo Disneysea though.
Next up, and I was surprised by this, is the best of the three: Shanghai Disneyland.
Just opening a year ago, Shanghai Disneyland has no Main Street and offers a radical rethink of how a Disney park should look and lay itself out. It works well and points to a far more assured Disney experience than Hong Kong or Tokyo. Unfortunately, the same problems that hampered the Tokyo park are in evidence here.
First of all, once again the Fastpass system does not function. In fact, the park offers only two or three chances to get a Fastpass during the day and once these chances are exhausted no more are offered. The third Fastpass opportunity arrives at about 1pm - so you basically have a Fastpass opportunity at, say, 9am and the 11am and then 1pm. After that - none. And as Disney park buffs will be well aware, you cannot get another Fastpass until you have used your original. Does this mean pacing yourself? Not at all. Instead, Shanghai Disney simply rolls all three Fastpass opportunities back-to-back meaning that if the 9am Fastpass opportunity runs out at, say, 9.15am you then get your chance for the 11am and then the 1pm - meaning that all Fastpass opportunities for a given ride can be exhausted and unavailable after 9.30am. To put this into perspective, we got there early and grabbed a Fastpass for the TRON rollercoaster and were then unable to get any other Fastpass for any other ride that day. To add insult to injury as soon as the park clocked about noon the ride waiting times were stretching to three hours.
That's some ill-thought out insanity right there.
I don't understand why the Fastpass system is so badly utilised and misunderstood in Shanghai and Tokyo but it clearly is.
As such, we only got on two rides in Shanghai Disney - TRON (an excellent but far too short rollercoaster-in-the-dark ride which, were it a minute longer, might well be the finest Disney ride of all time) and Pirates of the Carribean. Now the Shanghai Pirates of the Carribean is a totally new imagining of the film franchise and nothing to do with the ride you might be familiar with from the American parks. And indeed it poops all over its now-dated American counterparts from a very high height. This is truly state of the art stuff and points to the future of theme park ambitions. It is breathtaking, frankly, sending viewers on a trip under and over water that totally immerses and amazes, although the entire experience is voiced in Mandarin.
And that was that. With enormous waiting times, there really was not much more to do at Shanghai Disneyland. It looks beautiful by night, though, and it has a lovely Disney-ish feel - far more so than its other Asian counterparts. Merchandise is also pretty good - including a range of classic Oswald the Lucky Rabbit stuff for the ultimate Disney nerds (such as myself).
The most amusing thing for me was wandering around and looking at this little slice of Americana in 'Communist' China and thinking of Uncle Walt spinning in his grave and the youth of Shanghai and Beijing mulling over how normal everything seems: they have their Disneyland, their Metallica concerts, their Starbucks, their McDonalds, Harry Potter, Victoria Secret, Louis Vutton and multiplex cinemas...
Nothing is missing in 21st century China.
Right?
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