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Graffiti On KONGFRONTATION
- Thread starter Al
- Start date
JBloom1029
New Member
well im sure its true cuz they still let ppl put their names on it and stuff, i have my name on it a few places. They also put a lot of things on themselves cuz if u look ull see "Jaws" and "earthquake" a few places. Just like in Men in Black and bttf ull see a few kinda sublimible things. bttf has jaws 3 in it and mib has spielberg readin the newspaper with jurassic park as the headline.
MrPromey
Well-Known Member
Re: TO: JBloom1029 (sublimible things)
I'm pretty sure the "Jaws" thing in BTF is in the movie itself and the thing in MIB is in the ride itself. He's one of the aliens. if you are in the car on the far right side you can see him to your right about half way through the ride.
I'm pretty sure the "Jaws" thing in BTF is in the movie itself and the thing in MIB is in the ride itself. He's one of the aliens. if you are in the car on the far right side you can see him to your right about half way through the ride.
JBloom1029
New Member
The sublimible messages are spread pretty sparrodic throughout the queving line but i do remember a Jaws sign near the service elevator for the express line.
JBloom1029
New Member
in king kongs elevator actually, im not sure if it was express now cuz im thinkin my grandma might have been there on the trip i saw it which means it was the wheelchair access.
General Grizz
New Member
Well, the queue area is pretty "graffitified". I also noticed that there are movie posters in the queue, but everyone wrote their names on it. They entire queue has people's names!
Kyle Brylczyk
New Member
There's also a Jaws subliminal DURING the BTTF ride. It's while you're riding through Hill Valley 2025. You pass the movie thater. You need to be quick on this since you haul past the sign. It says "Jaws 19". Pretty funny stuff!
RogueHabit
Well-Known Member
Re: Re: Graffiti On KONGFRONTATION
The movie posters are updated with the latest movies every so often, just on little way of keep the queue area 'current.'
FosLtheApostle
New Member
wow its been about 5 and a half years since anyone has posted on the subject.
Not that i enjoy reminding anyone the grim kongless reality we live in, but as some of you may already know (and were completely unaware when you posted here 5 years ago) the Kongfrontation ride has been closed, dismantled and replaced with Brendan Fraser's Mummy movie ride. But thats not really what brought me here; i stumbled across this thread while reminiscing about the old ride and in search of some old photos and maybe even video. I know thousands of people went on the ride, but like most physical things on this planet- it is simply faded with memory without people who were there to document it. I wanted to really point out the immense level of detail that went into the creation and accuracy of this ride. I REALLY felt as if i was in a New York city subway (it even smelled like a subway). The superior attention to detail kept the ride frozen in 1980s newyork forever; which was a throwback when if you were revisiting in 2002. The smell, the architecture, the banana breath, and even the graffiti in on the subway trains are all alien to new york is today. Now the Newyork subway systems are immaculate and the subway cars themselves are made of a sterile stainless steel (and Kong is on DVD ha)
Something that caught my attention was the writing phenomena that was occurring inside the subway line to the ride. The graffiti movement by itself during the 80s is pretty interesting alone as is; replicated directly from a published graffiti book on to create a perfect imperfect world of today (1988); and duplicated by ride attendees by writing on everything in site. Over 15 years of writing made it an authentic human experience that people were actually bringing markers, sharpies, and white out pens so they can write in the subways. I recall one year during Halloween horror nights they opened the whole ride up so that you could walk IN the city and another year they even set up a club atmosphere with a foam machine right in the middle of the city too! I searched the internet in hope to actually find some original photos of the construction of the ride and possibility the final days of the actual subway graffiti that developed on its own.
Here is a bit of background info i have gathered from the net:
http://www.totallyfuncompany.com/kongmedia/articles/kingkongarticle.htm
this is a man who helped with the ride and touches on the graffiti installation. He too claims that graffiti artists were hired, but saw just everyone going at it. An all around fun working atmosphere i can imagine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDfhTluM5dM
this is an actual video of the LAST day of the kong ride taken ironically by one of the men who helped create it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kJPaX6K3A8
Video from the year 2000 thats hows a bit more of the subway and another alternative view of the ride
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN1M7b48iLs
Original video form 1993 of the King Kong ride!
Other than a few blurry photos of Kong himself, this is one of the FEW photos online i found of one of the subway cars replicated for the ride. Digital cameras not being even invented yet and then not gaining popularity or an affordable status until perhaps around 03,04- rides like king kong only have a handful of photos because nobody will ever scan them and they are lost to shoe boxes forever!
Take a look at this photo here:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1346/1240614309_b187f34eef_b.jpg
Here is actual graffiti on subway train painted by artist "dondi" and published in a book entitled "subway art" -the first comprehensive documentation of Graffiti phenomena occurring in new york:
http://www.graffiti.org/dondi/bus_eric.jpg
If i may, since ive already gone this far, i wanted to share with you my own personal story including this ride in particular. When i was about 15 i went to newyork for the first time and was a changed boy when i returned. Growing up in a suburban part of South Florida, that visit to NY gave me a taste for the first time of what the big city was like. I have been and always was into art, and like any other impressionable 15 year olds, going to new york meant visiting a not so new but contemporary art movement that is simply referred to as graffiti. When i went on the subways of Kongfrontation, it was like going back in time to the 80s again and seeing everyone putting in there own 2 cents on the walls, i too promised myself the next year i went i would come more properly equipped. Previously a few years before that i had the right idea to bring the biggest blackest marker i could find and leaving my ERIC 97 behind. Much like the gigantic subway train painted ERIC, i jested at the idea that i one day i too could perform such heroic feats of public artwork. The very next year i came to revisit the orlando subways again but now wiser with experience and this time with hand drawn stickers. Over this long period of time i had a chance to begin practicing furiously every spare moment i could on paper and on wooden boards in my backyard- to one day be as good as the ones i read in my "subway art" book. Finally the day came when i thought i was ready to go public with my newly conscious artwork (leaving my younger inexperienced days behind me). But knowing myself i wanted the first place i ever tagged to be a sacred one and where else but the streets of newyork- where it all happened in the first place for my artistic awakening AND graffiti itself. Living in Florida and being a hair short of 18 years old now (at that time) I ran into several problems. For one an plane ticket wasn't readily available, also the biggest factor is that Newyork has since then changed significantly from its humble crime stricken Mayor Kotch days- the year was now 2001. Since i didn't happened to have a flux capacitor on hand, the only logical solution was to travel to the only New York i knew where the year is still and always will be 1988. That year i flew southwest with my friend on his 18 birthday party in that hot month of june to orlando, with me was 1 Black Marks a lot Marker, Several hand drawn stickers, Paint pens, 1 White shoe polish (which i never used before), and last but not least the true mark of a professional... A mini can of baby blue spray paint. Armed to the teeth, my friend amped me up the entire day how he was going to take pictures and document this occasion until the last moment where he claimed to be too exhausted to do it! So i took all the ammunition and i proceeded to Kongfrontation- not to see old banana breath but to finally visit those subway tunnels a more conscious man with a skill that can only be executed appropriately in that environment. When i look back on it now i laugh at how crazy it sounds, but in my mind i found absolutely nothing wrong or ill nature with what i was doing (and still don't but i can look back on how bizarre it is). So i walk into the subway and begin, i first break out the spray paint. I tagged everything in sight! Then i stood on top of the yellow guard rails and started tagging the highest part of the cement beams. People were looking on with enjoyment for the most part. There was a mixed audience, most with amazement, then some asking in a jovial nature if i worked there- they all thought i was part of the entertainment. There was even a request from a couple in love to paint there initials (which i gladly performed ever so eloquently). I find that out of every large group of people there will be a conservative few who are morally opposed to something most people don't care about. This older gentlemen screamed out "GO BACK TO NEW YORK!". Completely confused with this statement just replied sincerely "i am in new york?". Where everyone was enjoying watching me paint like a kid in a candy store, thinking i was an actor in the show (even when i assured them i wasn't) This same angry mans wife then approached me nagging "What if some people have asthma and they don't like the smell?? why do you do that? WHY do you do that!!" I ran out of paint so i replied "ok thats why i brought these!" and started using my markers. having no quarrel with the odor anymore she called off her dogs of disgust, meanwhile i attempted my first (and certainly not my last) attempt at using a kiwi shoe polish container. Not as easy as i thought it would be, suddenly a random kid a little older than myself asked if he could borrow it "get a word in" and proceeded to write on the blue canopy as we were approaching the elevated red Kong cars. He taught me that i had to squeeze it, no brainer. Awesome, so there i go writing all over the place with my new favorite toy. (This next part of the story should answer your questions about whether or not people are allowed or encouraged to write in the subway) Directly in front of one of the older kids working the cars, i was tagging the wall and he said "hey man you cant do that" and i replied "why not?" and he just looked dumb founded and said something along the lines of "youre not supposed to"- so i offered him the shoe polish and he said he couldn't. Overall my opinion now is since the subways were covered in 10,000 bits of writing over writing- i think they don't encourage it; but if it happens they really don't care but at the same time they cant ask people to go ahead and do it. After the ride was over i wanted to get one more tag on the way out of the ride where there was hardly any more stage writing and just blank faux concrete. With the last stroke of my kiwi i wrote big and drippy when suddenly a guy in a white dress shirt looking official said "EXCUSE ME SIR! you cannot do that!" He asked for my shoe polish, i handed it over and he threw it away in front of me! So i stood there saddened and i said "i'm sorry man if there is some confusion, its just there is graffiti all over the entire ride and i wanted to add my own here" I then asked him if he could take a photo of me standing in front of the tag i just planted while motioning the camera toward him (haha strictly innocent motives in retrospect). He replied that he cant take my picture then ordered me to leave before he had me ejected for the park! He then started barking orders at the employees saying that it was still "wet" and that we they could clean it off in time. Now let me remind you, this wasn't over any of the spray painted murals, it was a blank part of the cement wall with only sparse scattered stage tags (from what appeared as) workers who were building the park and wrote generic graffiti evenly spaced at 45 degree angles. I don't know if this guy was trying to get a raise but i do not see the point taking extreme seriousness in cleaning up graffiti on a graffiti engulfed set.
About 2 years later (probably shortly after the last time somebody posted on here) i called the theme park and requested to patch me in with someone in charge of the ride. I spoke to a woman and told her that the ride was getting dated and needed some new graffiti. She laughed and said that they sadly were going to close the ride soon (this would ultimately come to happen over a year later). I volunteered to do it pro bono but she said that she didn't think anybody was interested. She then told me that they originally hired "graphic artists" to do it. I don't know if that was supposed to mean graffiti artists? In any case i wonder what happened to the pieces of the set if it was just dumped or if some was auctioned off? All i hope is that somebody with perhaps an open mind with a unique appreciation could of documented almost 15 years of people participating in what was originally supposed to be a replication of an art form; into becoming a mark of human expression in itself. From the video you can see it was covered in writing, i myself to be honest and curious what some of it says today. I know for a fact that the higher places i painted with my spray paint still remained there.
Years later on one of the Halloween horror nights the subways were completely pitch dark, but there was one portion of a wall in particular i looked up and saw it; my original ERIC 97 looking right back at me after all those years was a moment indescribable to me. The subway never changed, after all that time a piece of my history was left there forever; writing can seem insignificant to some (like that angry fake asthmatic woman for example) but to others it can mean a great deal.
Well there you have it! That is my own piece of subway art history right there in King Kongs ride! At the time i did it because I knew that thousands of people went there every day, but nobody wanted to get to the point of painting it as much as i did. Maybe it took a bit of naive stupidity or just a drive to stand out above everyone else when making a statement. Either way i have that memory forever there in 1980s newyork and thanks for letting me share it with you.
FOSL, currently Age 24.
Not that i enjoy reminding anyone the grim kongless reality we live in, but as some of you may already know (and were completely unaware when you posted here 5 years ago) the Kongfrontation ride has been closed, dismantled and replaced with Brendan Fraser's Mummy movie ride. But thats not really what brought me here; i stumbled across this thread while reminiscing about the old ride and in search of some old photos and maybe even video. I know thousands of people went on the ride, but like most physical things on this planet- it is simply faded with memory without people who were there to document it. I wanted to really point out the immense level of detail that went into the creation and accuracy of this ride. I REALLY felt as if i was in a New York city subway (it even smelled like a subway). The superior attention to detail kept the ride frozen in 1980s newyork forever; which was a throwback when if you were revisiting in 2002. The smell, the architecture, the banana breath, and even the graffiti in on the subway trains are all alien to new york is today. Now the Newyork subway systems are immaculate and the subway cars themselves are made of a sterile stainless steel (and Kong is on DVD ha)
Something that caught my attention was the writing phenomena that was occurring inside the subway line to the ride. The graffiti movement by itself during the 80s is pretty interesting alone as is; replicated directly from a published graffiti book on to create a perfect imperfect world of today (1988); and duplicated by ride attendees by writing on everything in site. Over 15 years of writing made it an authentic human experience that people were actually bringing markers, sharpies, and white out pens so they can write in the subways. I recall one year during Halloween horror nights they opened the whole ride up so that you could walk IN the city and another year they even set up a club atmosphere with a foam machine right in the middle of the city too! I searched the internet in hope to actually find some original photos of the construction of the ride and possibility the final days of the actual subway graffiti that developed on its own.
Here is a bit of background info i have gathered from the net:
http://www.totallyfuncompany.com/kongmedia/articles/kingkongarticle.htm
this is a man who helped with the ride and touches on the graffiti installation. He too claims that graffiti artists were hired, but saw just everyone going at it. An all around fun working atmosphere i can imagine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDfhTluM5dM
this is an actual video of the LAST day of the kong ride taken ironically by one of the men who helped create it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kJPaX6K3A8
Video from the year 2000 thats hows a bit more of the subway and another alternative view of the ride
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN1M7b48iLs
Original video form 1993 of the King Kong ride!
Other than a few blurry photos of Kong himself, this is one of the FEW photos online i found of one of the subway cars replicated for the ride. Digital cameras not being even invented yet and then not gaining popularity or an affordable status until perhaps around 03,04- rides like king kong only have a handful of photos because nobody will ever scan them and they are lost to shoe boxes forever!
Take a look at this photo here:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1346/1240614309_b187f34eef_b.jpg
Here is actual graffiti on subway train painted by artist "dondi" and published in a book entitled "subway art" -the first comprehensive documentation of Graffiti phenomena occurring in new york:
http://www.graffiti.org/dondi/bus_eric.jpg
If i may, since ive already gone this far, i wanted to share with you my own personal story including this ride in particular. When i was about 15 i went to newyork for the first time and was a changed boy when i returned. Growing up in a suburban part of South Florida, that visit to NY gave me a taste for the first time of what the big city was like. I have been and always was into art, and like any other impressionable 15 year olds, going to new york meant visiting a not so new but contemporary art movement that is simply referred to as graffiti. When i went on the subways of Kongfrontation, it was like going back in time to the 80s again and seeing everyone putting in there own 2 cents on the walls, i too promised myself the next year i went i would come more properly equipped. Previously a few years before that i had the right idea to bring the biggest blackest marker i could find and leaving my ERIC 97 behind. Much like the gigantic subway train painted ERIC, i jested at the idea that i one day i too could perform such heroic feats of public artwork. The very next year i came to revisit the orlando subways again but now wiser with experience and this time with hand drawn stickers. Over this long period of time i had a chance to begin practicing furiously every spare moment i could on paper and on wooden boards in my backyard- to one day be as good as the ones i read in my "subway art" book. Finally the day came when i thought i was ready to go public with my newly conscious artwork (leaving my younger inexperienced days behind me). But knowing myself i wanted the first place i ever tagged to be a sacred one and where else but the streets of newyork- where it all happened in the first place for my artistic awakening AND graffiti itself. Living in Florida and being a hair short of 18 years old now (at that time) I ran into several problems. For one an plane ticket wasn't readily available, also the biggest factor is that Newyork has since then changed significantly from its humble crime stricken Mayor Kotch days- the year was now 2001. Since i didn't happened to have a flux capacitor on hand, the only logical solution was to travel to the only New York i knew where the year is still and always will be 1988. That year i flew southwest with my friend on his 18 birthday party in that hot month of june to orlando, with me was 1 Black Marks a lot Marker, Several hand drawn stickers, Paint pens, 1 White shoe polish (which i never used before), and last but not least the true mark of a professional... A mini can of baby blue spray paint. Armed to the teeth, my friend amped me up the entire day how he was going to take pictures and document this occasion until the last moment where he claimed to be too exhausted to do it! So i took all the ammunition and i proceeded to Kongfrontation- not to see old banana breath but to finally visit those subway tunnels a more conscious man with a skill that can only be executed appropriately in that environment. When i look back on it now i laugh at how crazy it sounds, but in my mind i found absolutely nothing wrong or ill nature with what i was doing (and still don't but i can look back on how bizarre it is). So i walk into the subway and begin, i first break out the spray paint. I tagged everything in sight! Then i stood on top of the yellow guard rails and started tagging the highest part of the cement beams. People were looking on with enjoyment for the most part. There was a mixed audience, most with amazement, then some asking in a jovial nature if i worked there- they all thought i was part of the entertainment. There was even a request from a couple in love to paint there initials (which i gladly performed ever so eloquently). I find that out of every large group of people there will be a conservative few who are morally opposed to something most people don't care about. This older gentlemen screamed out "GO BACK TO NEW YORK!". Completely confused with this statement just replied sincerely "i am in new york?". Where everyone was enjoying watching me paint like a kid in a candy store, thinking i was an actor in the show (even when i assured them i wasn't) This same angry mans wife then approached me nagging "What if some people have asthma and they don't like the smell?? why do you do that? WHY do you do that!!" I ran out of paint so i replied "ok thats why i brought these!" and started using my markers. having no quarrel with the odor anymore she called off her dogs of disgust, meanwhile i attempted my first (and certainly not my last) attempt at using a kiwi shoe polish container. Not as easy as i thought it would be, suddenly a random kid a little older than myself asked if he could borrow it "get a word in" and proceeded to write on the blue canopy as we were approaching the elevated red Kong cars. He taught me that i had to squeeze it, no brainer. Awesome, so there i go writing all over the place with my new favorite toy. (This next part of the story should answer your questions about whether or not people are allowed or encouraged to write in the subway) Directly in front of one of the older kids working the cars, i was tagging the wall and he said "hey man you cant do that" and i replied "why not?" and he just looked dumb founded and said something along the lines of "youre not supposed to"- so i offered him the shoe polish and he said he couldn't. Overall my opinion now is since the subways were covered in 10,000 bits of writing over writing- i think they don't encourage it; but if it happens they really don't care but at the same time they cant ask people to go ahead and do it. After the ride was over i wanted to get one more tag on the way out of the ride where there was hardly any more stage writing and just blank faux concrete. With the last stroke of my kiwi i wrote big and drippy when suddenly a guy in a white dress shirt looking official said "EXCUSE ME SIR! you cannot do that!" He asked for my shoe polish, i handed it over and he threw it away in front of me! So i stood there saddened and i said "i'm sorry man if there is some confusion, its just there is graffiti all over the entire ride and i wanted to add my own here" I then asked him if he could take a photo of me standing in front of the tag i just planted while motioning the camera toward him (haha strictly innocent motives in retrospect). He replied that he cant take my picture then ordered me to leave before he had me ejected for the park! He then started barking orders at the employees saying that it was still "wet" and that we they could clean it off in time. Now let me remind you, this wasn't over any of the spray painted murals, it was a blank part of the cement wall with only sparse scattered stage tags (from what appeared as) workers who were building the park and wrote generic graffiti evenly spaced at 45 degree angles. I don't know if this guy was trying to get a raise but i do not see the point taking extreme seriousness in cleaning up graffiti on a graffiti engulfed set.
About 2 years later (probably shortly after the last time somebody posted on here) i called the theme park and requested to patch me in with someone in charge of the ride. I spoke to a woman and told her that the ride was getting dated and needed some new graffiti. She laughed and said that they sadly were going to close the ride soon (this would ultimately come to happen over a year later). I volunteered to do it pro bono but she said that she didn't think anybody was interested. She then told me that they originally hired "graphic artists" to do it. I don't know if that was supposed to mean graffiti artists? In any case i wonder what happened to the pieces of the set if it was just dumped or if some was auctioned off? All i hope is that somebody with perhaps an open mind with a unique appreciation could of documented almost 15 years of people participating in what was originally supposed to be a replication of an art form; into becoming a mark of human expression in itself. From the video you can see it was covered in writing, i myself to be honest and curious what some of it says today. I know for a fact that the higher places i painted with my spray paint still remained there.
Years later on one of the Halloween horror nights the subways were completely pitch dark, but there was one portion of a wall in particular i looked up and saw it; my original ERIC 97 looking right back at me after all those years was a moment indescribable to me. The subway never changed, after all that time a piece of my history was left there forever; writing can seem insignificant to some (like that angry fake asthmatic woman for example) but to others it can mean a great deal.
Well there you have it! That is my own piece of subway art history right there in King Kongs ride! At the time i did it because I knew that thousands of people went there every day, but nobody wanted to get to the point of painting it as much as i did. Maybe it took a bit of naive stupidity or just a drive to stand out above everyone else when making a statement. Either way i have that memory forever there in 1980s newyork and thanks for letting me share it with you.
FOSL, currently Age 24.
RogueHabit
Well-Known Member
mousermerf
Account Suspended
Oy.. someone's first post.. on something completely irrelevent.. to only rant on about themself.. breaking the rules and not understanding how scenic design works...
Wonders never cease..
PS: I want the 5mins of my life it took to read that back.
Wonders never cease..
PS: I want the 5mins of my life it took to read that back.
InsideOtherPark
Member
Irrelvent? He was talking about the topic in the thread. I'm sure your first on this board...was something about cracks being paved over in Epcot. (With some time lapse pictures of course)
We all have to start somewhere. Way to bash the new people.
New People 0
Interweb Dewbs 1
I sure hope you feel better now.
:fork:
FosLtheApostle
New Member
I just remembered recently that during my usual insomnia about a month prior that i posted on this forum and i wanted to read over what exactly i may have wrote (without using a spell check apparently) and if anyone had anything interesting to say about it.
Much gratitude for the welcome, but i assure you it wasn't my actual intention to become a permanent poster on this forum. I believe my intention was to point out and recognize what i witnessed as the human element exceeding the bounds of the origional "scenic design". I was under the notion (being the only place I googled that recognized the graffiti and craftmenship behind kongfrontation) that you on here would be the only ones to appreciate my own... although strange but personal insight; if not then for at the very least the reflection and update of the ride alone. As i mentioned, some of the other websites i visited and listed included stories from the people who first worked on the project; i tried to organize all of that and present it to you-then decided to throw my own story on the table.
During that early morning i wasn't thinking of invading your politics on property, i don't expect you to agree with everything i did. I want to apologize for wasting your time, after not a single post in a half decade i felt that i could contribute my own story and feeling on the matter. I know now it was a foolish mistake to think that i could burden your time with meaningless intellectual speculation.
