As of Dec. 1, the Laugh Floor public previews have begun. We (my brother and I) were actually quite lucky since we only happened to walk by the attraction since I noticed the brand-new sign out front. As we went past it, we noticed a large crowd of people coming out the old Timekeeper exit. At that point I was thinking "what the..?" We hung around a bit after the crowd left and the exit was guarded by a bunch of Tomorrowland cast members, security, and managers. We came back after a quick lunch and, sure enough, about 45 min. or so later, the doors opened and we all walked in through the exit...
If you'd like to avoid spoilers, do not scroll down....
As we continued down the exit, the room opened up into a quite large, circular shaped comedy lounge that looks just like the concept art, except brighter inside. The stage looks almost just like the picture as well and the benches do have those funny looking lights in front of them. The benches themselves...well they're not exactly comfy, I'd compare them to the plastic small world benches. The walls are filled with the star projection lights moving around and a song, different, but similar in style to the Monsters, Inc. theme plays in the background. The screen on the left shows the Laugh Floor logo and, every so often, switches to a camera view of a person in the audience with a funny comment underneath it. The main screen is covered with a simulated red curtain with the large familiar Monsters, Inc logo.
After waiting the longest time an Imagineer quickly introduced the show followed by an introduction by Roz on the left screen of what we're about to see. The animation of Roz is on par with the Turtle Talk animation except sometimes the lips don't match the voice speaking. I'm sure that'll be worked out by opening. There'll be three acts to the show starting with a blue monster named Buddy, then the pair of Sam and Ella (haha, get it?) who are actually two conjoined monsters, and a smaller blue cousin of Mike named Ike. Mike opens up the Monsters, Inc. door (his animation is also superb) and introduces the first comedian, Buddy.
This is when the show first goes downhill. Once the curtain opens it's quite obvious that the animation is nothing like the first two. I'd compare it to an online game you'd play at Disney Online except on a low quality setting. Not only are the edges of the monsters a bit rough but they seem to suffer some frame rate problems and the voice also doesn't match up at times. (Hopefully this'll all be worked on too.) Buddy wanted to do slapstick and so (after a lame attempt on acting like he was afraid of humans) he started a joke about a dentist when he stepped on one of those planks on the floor that isn't nailed down and it smacked him in the face. Oookay... He stuttered a bit until he stepped on another plank and it happened again. Not that funny... He spent a couple minutes trying to figure out why he's on stage and why everyone was looking at him and he asked the audience a lot of questions. Some more time went by with the same stuff happening until he finally finished the joke with a not so funny answer and Roz pushed a button and Buddy fell down a trap door to the bottom of the stage. You're not funny, Buddy.:hammer:
Next, Mike introduced us to the conjoined monsters who started with a "why would a skeleton cross the road" joke, until they decide to turn it into a "why would a human cross the road" joke. Ella asks one of the audience members and he replies he wouldn't cross the road because he wouldn't want to get hit by a car. A few more minutes went by and the Sam fella starts wanting to know exactly what kind of person, what road, what cars are on the road, blah blah blah, in order to answer the joke. The answer to the joke was something like "because he didn't have the guts", and Ella was obviously referring to the skeleton joke in the first place. At that point it felt like a lot of wasted time went by and all I got was a stupid answer. Finally, they asked the guy what he liked to eat or drink and the guy replied he likes milkshakes. The duo then sang a quick song about milkshakes, one of those jingles where you can obviously drop any word into the song.
Finally, the last act was the little guy that looked exactly like Mike except he was smaller and blue. This guy or girl, sounded like a girl, was probably the better of the three acts although the shortest. Ike picked out a small princess from the audience and asked her a few quick questions and declared her the princess of Orlando (where she was from), and upon finding out that she was with her mother, declared her the Queen of Orlando. She also said something like she dresses up too but only on Halloween but not like "that guy", which at that point the camera switched to a reoccuring member of the audience. All of the monsters eventually used this joke in their acts and even though it was funny at first it quickly got old after like the fifth time.
Finally, Roz tells us that Mike is under the laugh quota for this show and as a final desperate attempt, Mike does one last "that guy" joke and exits. Roz concludes the show telling us that she's "always watching us."
Afterwards, the imagineer told us he's going to do a quick survery by a show of hands and he asks us a few questions like what did you think of this comedian compared to he/she 1. was hilarious 2. was okay 3. not my kind of comedy, or 4. needs to go back to comedy school. By looking at the show of hands and also my own opinions, most of them liked Ike, most thought Sam and Ella ranged from okay to quite funny, and Buddy ranged from not funny to okay. Afterwards, the cast members gave us all re-entry tickets and we were merrily on our way.
Alright, now that the description is over my overall opinion is, ... well, I can't say since it's still in an early preview phase. If I could give you an opinion for the current state, I'd say it was quite disappointing and needs a lot of work, which also compared to a couple other opinions from people I asked. So there you have it, by all means, you should stop by some time and try to catch this show and even though it's geared more for small kids and uses the same question-and-answer style like Turtle Talk, it's good to have something new in Tomorrowland, although I'd recommend if you were planning to see it, wait a little bit closer towards the opening date and hopefully the shows will get better as the monsters get a bit more acquainted in their roles.
Happy Holidays!:xmas:
If you'd like to avoid spoilers, do not scroll down....
As we continued down the exit, the room opened up into a quite large, circular shaped comedy lounge that looks just like the concept art, except brighter inside. The stage looks almost just like the picture as well and the benches do have those funny looking lights in front of them. The benches themselves...well they're not exactly comfy, I'd compare them to the plastic small world benches. The walls are filled with the star projection lights moving around and a song, different, but similar in style to the Monsters, Inc. theme plays in the background. The screen on the left shows the Laugh Floor logo and, every so often, switches to a camera view of a person in the audience with a funny comment underneath it. The main screen is covered with a simulated red curtain with the large familiar Monsters, Inc logo.
After waiting the longest time an Imagineer quickly introduced the show followed by an introduction by Roz on the left screen of what we're about to see. The animation of Roz is on par with the Turtle Talk animation except sometimes the lips don't match the voice speaking. I'm sure that'll be worked out by opening. There'll be three acts to the show starting with a blue monster named Buddy, then the pair of Sam and Ella (haha, get it?) who are actually two conjoined monsters, and a smaller blue cousin of Mike named Ike. Mike opens up the Monsters, Inc. door (his animation is also superb) and introduces the first comedian, Buddy.
This is when the show first goes downhill. Once the curtain opens it's quite obvious that the animation is nothing like the first two. I'd compare it to an online game you'd play at Disney Online except on a low quality setting. Not only are the edges of the monsters a bit rough but they seem to suffer some frame rate problems and the voice also doesn't match up at times. (Hopefully this'll all be worked on too.) Buddy wanted to do slapstick and so (after a lame attempt on acting like he was afraid of humans) he started a joke about a dentist when he stepped on one of those planks on the floor that isn't nailed down and it smacked him in the face. Oookay... He stuttered a bit until he stepped on another plank and it happened again. Not that funny... He spent a couple minutes trying to figure out why he's on stage and why everyone was looking at him and he asked the audience a lot of questions. Some more time went by with the same stuff happening until he finally finished the joke with a not so funny answer and Roz pushed a button and Buddy fell down a trap door to the bottom of the stage. You're not funny, Buddy.:hammer:
Next, Mike introduced us to the conjoined monsters who started with a "why would a skeleton cross the road" joke, until they decide to turn it into a "why would a human cross the road" joke. Ella asks one of the audience members and he replies he wouldn't cross the road because he wouldn't want to get hit by a car. A few more minutes went by and the Sam fella starts wanting to know exactly what kind of person, what road, what cars are on the road, blah blah blah, in order to answer the joke. The answer to the joke was something like "because he didn't have the guts", and Ella was obviously referring to the skeleton joke in the first place. At that point it felt like a lot of wasted time went by and all I got was a stupid answer. Finally, they asked the guy what he liked to eat or drink and the guy replied he likes milkshakes. The duo then sang a quick song about milkshakes, one of those jingles where you can obviously drop any word into the song.
Finally, the last act was the little guy that looked exactly like Mike except he was smaller and blue. This guy or girl, sounded like a girl, was probably the better of the three acts although the shortest. Ike picked out a small princess from the audience and asked her a few quick questions and declared her the princess of Orlando (where she was from), and upon finding out that she was with her mother, declared her the Queen of Orlando. She also said something like she dresses up too but only on Halloween but not like "that guy", which at that point the camera switched to a reoccuring member of the audience. All of the monsters eventually used this joke in their acts and even though it was funny at first it quickly got old after like the fifth time.
Finally, Roz tells us that Mike is under the laugh quota for this show and as a final desperate attempt, Mike does one last "that guy" joke and exits. Roz concludes the show telling us that she's "always watching us."
Afterwards, the imagineer told us he's going to do a quick survery by a show of hands and he asks us a few questions like what did you think of this comedian compared to he/she 1. was hilarious 2. was okay 3. not my kind of comedy, or 4. needs to go back to comedy school. By looking at the show of hands and also my own opinions, most of them liked Ike, most thought Sam and Ella ranged from okay to quite funny, and Buddy ranged from not funny to okay. Afterwards, the cast members gave us all re-entry tickets and we were merrily on our way.
Alright, now that the description is over my overall opinion is, ... well, I can't say since it's still in an early preview phase. If I could give you an opinion for the current state, I'd say it was quite disappointing and needs a lot of work, which also compared to a couple other opinions from people I asked. So there you have it, by all means, you should stop by some time and try to catch this show and even though it's geared more for small kids and uses the same question-and-answer style like Turtle Talk, it's good to have something new in Tomorrowland, although I'd recommend if you were planning to see it, wait a little bit closer towards the opening date and hopefully the shows will get better as the monsters get a bit more acquainted in their roles.