To make up for my substantial absence, I’m gonna peacemeal answer a ton of these Questions of the Day.
Question of the Day:
What's a cartoon series you would like to see made into a ride? (That you're not working on for your project atm)
Ooh, let’s go old school...
Wacky Races!!!
If the designers could pull off the interactive racing component (say Mario Kart meets RSR) mixed with some really zany Hanna Barbera humor, oooh boy!
Question of the Day:
What is your favorite non-park activity at the Disney parks?
Drinking
alcohol.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite specialty drink in the parks?
The
Scotch Mist at the Carthay Circle Lounge in DCA. It’s simply fine smoky scotch with crushed ice, the result being not watered down like it sounds but rather mellow and cooling. Reportedly it was Walt’s favorite drink too, so it has that going for it.
Question of the Day: What is your favorite trippy/surreal Disney sequence
Speed-reading this thread, I’m genuinely surprised the
Pink Elephants from Dumbo weren’t mentioned.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite "land" experience at any park? The pulp adventure of Disneyland's Adventureland? The European fairytale village of Disneyland Paris's Fantasyland? Something else? Let's hear it.
Stepping into the pages of a Jules Verne novel at Tokyo DisneySea’s
Mysterious Island. From a music-free volcanic caldera which genuinely feels like a lost isle in the Pacific, you can travel to the bottom of the sea or the center of the earth with the same sort of spatial verisimilitude as Galaxy’s Edge, with an even better sense of adventure.
Question of the day: What is the best live performance you've ever attended. It can be anything from a Broadway show or regional theater performance, a concert, or even just your favorite theme park show!
One of my hometown heroes is a man who made a career as the greatest
Groucho Marx impersonator of all time. His sold-out farewell charity performance in our local playhouse (very intimate, 50 people max) was simultaneously one of the funniest and most heartwarming things I’ve experienced.
Question of the Day: What is your favorite Disney song from any medium?
Kronk’s Theme Music
Much delayed QotD
Other than your current projects, what are some Disney IPs you'd like to see made into a Broadway Musical?
Infinity War: The Musical
Imagine a song which uses Thanos’ snapping for the rhythm!
QotD
What is your favorite Broadway show?
The Music Man! While other Broadway musicals typically use a very theatrical style of music, Music Man is the most quintessentially
American musical, what with its use of vernacular styles like barber shop, spoken word “song,” marching bands, even the metronome of a child practicing piano. It’s the best marriage of corny and nostalgic, and it reminds me of Main Street USA.
Question of the Day
What is the best use of "new" technology in a Disney ride? Shanghai Pirates? Pooh's Hunny Hunt? Mystic Manor? All the way back to the past with Haunted Mansion or OG Pirates or Enchanted Tiki Room?
What sticks with me is
the “pixie dust” effect from Mystic Manor which is so well done, you might not even consciously notice it. Albert opens the music box, the lights go out, and magical sparks float up into the sky. Then on a reride you realize
they’re flying in midair!!! How?! Elegant simplicity - light projections on black cloths which raise and lower without the rider ever seeing them.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite ride system?
RMC
Question of the Day: What is your favorite song of all time?
Again let’s start out old school...Mozart’s
Queen of the Night aria from Magic Flute. The technical difficulty of those high notes is just staggering!
Honorable opera mentions go to Madame Butterfly’s aria, and to Rusalka’s Song to the Moon.
Next, in honor of the great, recently departed maestro Ennio Morricone,
Here’s to You is a somewhat deep cut song which is guaranteed to make me weep every time I hear it. This sums up all the exhaustion and melancholy of a life lived.
Lastly, from master storyteller Taika Waititi, I give you
Trifecta (Ricky Baker’s Happy Birthday Song).
Question of the Day
What is a fairy tale Disney has yet to adapt that you'd like to see done?
Vasilisa the Brave. This is a Russian fairy tale which would be an
ideal fit for the Disney Princess brand. Vasilisa herself is a model of virtue in the face of evil, and her poppet doll would make for an excellent sidekick. Best of all is the tale’s villainess, Baba Yaga, what with her witchcraft and flaming skulls and rampaging chicken-legged hut...she’s ready-made to be the next great Disney Villain! Use the Russian storybook illustrations of Ivan Bilibin for art direction inspiration, and you’d have a visually distinct tale perfect for Disney.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite Disney resort
Hotel MiraCosta. Keep in mind I’ve only actually stayed at (some of) the Disney hotels in Asia, so this is from a very limited sampling. Still, that hotel room view of Fantasmic, and sleeping with the Mediterranean Harbor music loop coming through the window...and a generally nice hotel to begin with...make this an easy choice for me.
After a brief hiatus, the grand return of the Question of the Day!
What are the best and worst Disney park castles?
Best:
Paris’ of course. There’s a dragon in there!
Worst:
Hong Kong’s. At least the castle as I’ve seen it in person, pre-renovation. Not only is it a clone, but it’s dwarfed by the tropical mountains in the distance - which totally throws off Main Street’s scale. Plus there’s nothing to do inside of it.
Question of the Day
What is the scariest Disney moment?
Did you know that
Scream is (or was) technically a Disney movie?!
(Dimension Films, a subsidiary of Miramax.) So let’s go with that opening sequence involving Drew Barrymore why not?
Question of the Day
What ride do you think is overrated?
What is the deal with
Peter Pan’s Flight? It’s cute and all - and I’m talking about the Disneyland version here - but the hour-plus queue is never justified and for my money both Alice and Toad nearby are the better classic dark rides.
Peter Pan in Shanghai, though, improves upon
everything that irks me about the Anaheim version. It totally earns its reputation! That one truly is great!
Question of the Day
What are the best and worst parks in the world?
and why are they DisneySea and Walt Disney Studios Paris
Best: Sorry DisneySea, but presently I’m going with the OG
Disneyland. It wins big points for pretty much inventing the classic theme park template, and the sheer amount of things to do there is unparalleled.
Worst:
Action Park in New Jersey. It loses a whole lot of points for the constant preventable fatalities.
Question of the Day
Who is your favorite fictional character of all time?
Homer Simpson
Question of the Day
What are some of your favorite books or other pieces of literature?
Question of the Day
What are your favorite rides?
Disneyland’s
Pirates
Shanghai’s
Pirates
Cedar Point’s
Steel Vengeance
Question of the Day
What is your favorite nighttime spectacular?
The original Disneyland
Fantasmic! It set the standard.
Question of the Day
What are some of your favorite parades?
Pasadena’s Rose Parade...What, does it have to be Disney? Because
come on, Disney parades don’t begin with an F-14 flyover, and they don’t end with the greatest bowl game in history. They don’t feature dozens of live, incredible marching bands, or the scent of real flowers on freshly-made floats. Really, it’s my personal connections to this event that makes it even extra special: decorating my small town’s homemade float every year, or sleeping out on the parade route sidewalk overnight with my cousins.
Honorable mention must go to the
Doodah Parade, which is basically the Weird Al version of the Rose Parade (heck, Doctor Demento was the Grand Marshall once!).
Question of the Day
What is your favorite NIGHTTIME parade?
Going Disney for this one:
Paint the Night. It’s everything the Electrical Parade only wished it was: high energy, mesmerizing, fresh. Though Tokyo’s unique version of the Electrical Parade gets a very high honorable mention.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite show in any of the parks?
TIE!
Enchanted Tiki Room and DisneySea’s
Big Band Beats. Tiki Room needs no explanation; it’s a stone cold classic and a must-do on every visit. Big Band Beats, unless you’ve seen it in person (and there aren’t even any videos of it online apparently), there’s no way to describe the live energy which pulses off from the stage and through the audience.
Question of the Day
Has anyone read any good books lately?
No.
Question of the Day
Who is an author whose writing style you can’t stand?
Stephanie Meyer and her ilk. Just the artlessly unadorned prose...it’s so hard to actually pay attention, the descriptions are so so so bland and unmemorable, and not in a robust intentional way like Ernest Hemmingway, it’s just flavorless vanilla writing!
Question of the Day
Bouncing off from yesterday's question, who is a writer who's writing style you adore?
Ernest Hemmingway
