The Miscellaneous Thought Thread

[mickEblu]

So I’ve been monitoring the DLR wait times on the app the last few weekends and it looks like wait times are down for the Halloween season compared to the last few years. I’ve been seeing Indy with 25 minute waits in the afternoon. Space Mountain with FPs still available in early to late evening. POTC has been 20 minutes or less. It’s hasnt been too hot the last few weeks either with temps in the mid to high 80s in Anaheim.,

 

[SuddenStorm]

So I’ve been monitoring the DLR wait times on the app the last few weekends and it looks like wait times are down for the Halloween season compared to the last few years. I’ve been seeing Indy with 25 minute waits in the afternoon. Space Mountain with FPs still available in early to late evening. POTC has been 20 minutes or less. It’s hasnt been too hot the last few weeks either with temps in the mid to high 80s in Anaheim.,

I think this year as a whole has been far slower then years past.

Has Disney finally reached a balancing point with the crowds? Or, is everyone waiting to go next year for Star Wars?

I'm excited to see how next year looks, especially in the spring before SWL opens.

 

[mickEblu]

I think this year as a whole has been far slower then years past.

Has Disney finally reached a balancing point with the crowds? Or, is everyone waiting to go next year for Star Wars?

I'm excited to see how next year looks, especially in the spring before SWL opens.

I would guess a little of both. That’s true, next Spring could be extremely pleasant.

 

[Hatbox Ghostbuster]

The Good Reads reviews give it an average of 4.29 out of 5 with over 636000 ratings. The story itself was good. It was nothing fancy or groundbreaking but entertaining all the same, even though it had some pretty predictable moments. The author's obsession with (often-times obscure) 80s pop culture and video games sometimes got a little to heavy for my taste and our protagonists mastery of so much of it at such a young age didn't always seem feasible. Still it was fun to read.

I can certainly see why it has mass love, but yeah, the main character is just not realistic (yes, even for a sci-fi fantasy film). Endless streams of "I saw that movie a hundred times", "thankfully I had memorized the whole thing line for line", and "I mastered all the video games years ago" just got sooooo annoying. I think if someone broke down all the time it would have required for him to ACTUALLY do all he claimed he could do, it would have probably taken more than half of his life. Clearly the author's own personal fantasy, written out in book form.

I found Ernest Cline's Armada (which I actually read before RPO) to be just as poorly written. They're supposedly trying to make a movie version of that too.

 

[Rich T]

Not gonna lie: I'm skeptical about "Mary Poppins Returns," but the new trailer got me all misty-eyed. The animation and Mr. Van D. got to me. Fingers crossed that it's a good film.

 

[Rich T]

Which is why I'm assuming they changed everything in the film.

They did. Spielberg gave "Ready Player One" very much the same treatment as "Jaws:" Weak pop-culture hit book wrangled into a really fun film.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

Looks good. The original is pretty dated anyway. It was due for a nice CGI update with a younger hotter Poppins woman.

 

[Rich T]

Looks good. The original is pretty dated anyway. It was due for a nice CGI update with a younger hotter Poppins woman.

...and I almost believed you liked it for a second!

 

[Rich T]

Wait a sec... did they re-hire the animals from "Cats Don't Dance?"

JK...I'm *very* glad there's 2D animation in this movie.

 

[Phroobar]

Looks good. The original is pretty dated anyway. It was due for a nice CGI update with a younger hotter Poppins woman.

Obviously you've never see Julie Andrews in S.O.B.

 

[Phroobar]

 

[Hatbox Ghostbuster]

Holy...

Teaser image of Joaquin Phoenix in the new Joker movie...

 

[Phroobar]

Waiting to get into Knotts Scary Farm. The girls are going to freak out. It's their first time to this.

 

[Phroobar]

Waiting to get into Knotts Scary Farm. The girls are going to freak out. It's their first time to this.

Knotts scary farm was amazing. Universal horror nights was packed but not as good. More details to come tomorrow when I have a real keyboard.

 

[Phroobar]

I went to Knotts Scary Farm last Friday with my daughter and her friend. This was their first time. Since we have Knotts passes we went after school. The park was deserted enough that we rode Ghost Rider three times without getting off, the Halloween version of the log ride twice and Excellerator and still had time to use our meal plans. The log ride is decked out for Halloween. It looks great with the additional monsters and a new soundtrack sung by Krazy Kirk and the Hill Billies. They kicked us out about 5:30. We went around the main gates and they let us back in about a half hour later. We were right at the front of the rope drop and could see the monsters gathering in the fog in Ghost Town. It was pretty crazy when the rope dropped and the monsters attacked the crowd.

The mazes were top quality and extremely detailed. There were lots of monsters in them that would follow you and make sounds in your ears. The girls always when first so the monsters attacked them and not me. They would clutch each other in fear and sometimes roll up into a ball on the floor. They then would run to the next scene. It was great!

The best maze of the night was the Depths in which some miners fought against fish monsters. The maze had some great effects like waste level lasers and fog to make it look like your walking though water. The monsters would popup from below the "water" line. The pirate ship had uneven walk ways and would tilt. The giant AA octopus at the end was fantastic. Everything was better than Disney quality. The other new maze was a space alien adventure where your trapped on a space ship with alien mutants attacking the crew. Great fun and some great AA characters and lasers. We did all the mazes and a few coasters in the dark. There is nothing like riding Silver Bullet in the dark at 1am. The scare zones where fun. The Carnevil clowns would talk to you and play jokes on you. One clown even chased my daughter all the way across the scare zone. So much fun. Make sure to bring you soda refill cups so they can refill them all night long. We saw the Hanging. It was pretty toned down this year due to recent politics. My daughter got every joke and totally agreed with who they hung. This year they had a fight between Knott's Hang Time coaster and Disney's Incrediblecoaster. Hang Time beat the Incredible coaster in a spray of blood. "Hacks" was the other show. It was an improve show like the old Who's line is it anyway. Good show and pretty clean.

All in all the mazes at Knotts where some of the best I've seen. The shows were not as raunchy as usual and more family friendly since Elvira was gone. We left exhausted and happy.

 

[Rich T]

I went to Knotts Scary Farm last Friday with my daughter and her friend. This was their first time. Since we have Knotts passes we went after school. The park was deserted enough that we rode Ghost Rider three times without getting off, the Halloween version of the log ride twice and Excellerator and still had time to use our meal plans. The log ride is decked out for Halloween. It looks great with the additional monsters and a new soundtrack sung by Krazy Kirk and the Hill Billies. They kicked us out about 5:30. We went around the main gates and they let us back in about a half hour later. We were right at the front of the rope drop and could see the monsters gathering in the fog in Ghost Town. It was pretty crazy when the rope dropped and the monsters attacked the crowd.

The mazes were top quality and extremely detailed. There were lots of monsters in them that would follow you and make sounds in your ears. The girls always when first so the monsters attacked them and not me. They would clutch each other in fear and sometimes roll up into a ball on the floor. They then would run to the next scene. It was great!

The best maze of the night was the Depths in which some miners fought against fish monsters. The maze had some great effects like waste level lasers and fog to make it look like your walking though water. The monsters would popup from below the "water" line. The pirate ship had uneven walk ways and would tilt. The giant AA octopus at the end was fantastic. Everything was better than Disney quality. The other new maze was a space alien adventure where your trapped on a space ship with alien mutants attacking the crew. Great fun and some great AA characters and lasers. We did all the mazes and a few coasters in the dark. There is nothing like riding Silver Bullet in the dark at 1am. The scare zones where fun. The Carnevil clowns would talk to you and play jokes on you. One clown even chased my daughter all the way across the scare zone. So much fun. Make sure to bring you soda refill cups so they can refill them all night long. We saw the Hanging. It was pretty toned down this year due to recent politics. My daughter got every joke and totally agreed with who they hung. This year they had a fight between Knott's Hang Time coaster and Disney's Incrediblecoaster. Hang Time beat the Incredible coaster in a spray of blood. "Hacks" was the other show. It was an improve show like the old Who's line is it anyway. Good show and pretty clean.

All in all the mazes at Knotts where some of the best I've seen. The shows were not as raunchy as usual and more family friendly since Elvira was gone. We left exhausted and happy.

Horror nights aren't my thing, but it all sounds super imaginative and well done! It also has me wondering: How come parks will never again build a real year-round walk-through fun house for fear someone might twist an ankle on a tilting floor and sue (and we get baby-bumpered versions of Tom Sawyer Island), but park managers (and the insurance companies) are okay with guests running through the dark (even if just briefly) being chased through a crowd, the unpredictability of live actors jumping out aggresively at guests, etc. ???

That's the one bit I just don't get. It's just as easy to make a disclaimer/warning sign for a fun house (or a TS Island) as it is to make one for a haunt.

 

[Phroobar]

My sister and I did Universal Horror Nights at USH. The place was packed. We got there at 2pm and waited an hour for the regular tram. It was fun to see the Hollywood Harrys maze setup next to the crashed airplane. It looked like fun. By the time we got off the tram it was time to go to the mazes. We went to the mazes on the backlot. Universal always uses movie IPs for their mazes. This year the lower lot had The Purge, Poltergeist and Blumhouse movies. All of these were not very good. Blumhouse was a scene or two from three movies and didn't make much sense. Typically the way Universal mazes work is you get a highly detailed scene with a pop out monster. Then you go though blackness where you get another pop out monster. Then it's another scene followed by blackness. You repeat this over and over again. There is very little sense of story telling. It's similar to a movie trailer. These three mazes where half black undetailed areas with a popup monster. Poltergeist was the best of the the three but could have done better.

The terror tram was magically because you are taken down to the backlot and get to walk around the War of the Worlds set and the Psycho house. We spent some time getting a picture with Norman Bates and the crowd had thinned off enough that we had the crash set to ourselves and 100 insane clowns. We ran through the gauntlet of chainsaws and other weapons. Pretty cool.

On the upper lot there was the Halloween maze. It also was pretty week because it was nothing but Michael Myers popping up at you. It was good advertisement for the upcoming movie however. The best maze on the upper lot was the Universal Monsters maze. It was highly detailed and had very few black areas. It really put a nice spin on the classic monsters. It even had it's own private scare zone at the end.

The true star of the night was the Stranger Things maze. We waited 90 minutes for that one. That was the longest we waited all night. This one was on the lower lot in a sound stage. The maze was huge and highly detailed. It had lots of great effects and live actors and monsters. This and the classic monsters maze is where Universal spent their money. It was fantastic and the loud 80's music in the queue was great!

We didn't bother to see the Jaborwalkey show since it's the same as last year. It was a fun night but again toned down from previous parties. There were no go-go dancers at the front of the park and the gore was lowered. The crowd was mostly 20-30 year olds so I felt a little old. Still for the money I wish Universal would better flesh out their mazes and provide more monsters in the mazes. They just felt empty and uninteresting. Knotts hit it out of the park this year while Universal scored a double.

 

[Phroobar]

Horror nights aren't my thing, but it all sounds super imaginative and well done! It also has me wondering: How come parks will never again build a real year-round walk-through fun house for fear someone might twist an ankle on a tilting floor and sue (and we get baby-bumpered versions of Tom Sawyer Island), but park managers (and the insurance companies) are okay with guests running through the dark (even if just briefly) being chased through a crowd, the unpredictability of live actors jumping out aggresively at guests, etc. ???

That's the one bit I just don't get. It's just as easy to make a disclaimer/warning sign for a fun house (or a TS Island) as it is to make one for a haunt.

Universal does have the year round Walking Dead maze. It has fun house elements in it but they keep you slowly walking through it. It's over in two minutes. The worst part is having a Chinese tour group behind you in the maze. They aren't big on personal space and will push you though the maze as the girls scream at everything. It's a tree! Yikes!

The closest Disney will ever get to themed maze is the queue for Indiana Jones.

 

[Rich T]

...The true star of the night was the Stranger Things maze. We waited 90 minutes for that one. That was the longest we waited all night. This one was on the lower lot in a sound stage. The maze was huge and highly detailed. It had lots of great effects and live actors and monsters. This and the classic monsters maze is where Universal spent their money. It was fantastic and the loud 80's music in the queue was great!
...

This is the one that I'd really like to see. Watched walk-through videos of the version on both coasts, and they look like they both did an amazing job of capturing the flow of the entire first season's story arc. The Orlando version actually looks like it would make a perfectly-paced dark ride with very few alterations!

Thanks for the trip reports!

 

[Phroobar]

This is the one that I'd really like to see. Watched walk-through videos of the version on both coasts, and they look like they both did an amazing job of capturing the flow of the entire first season's story arc. The Orlando version actually looks like it would make a perfectly-paced dark ride with very few alterations!

Thanks for the trip reports!

I agree. Stranger Things could make for a great dark ride. They could replace E.T. in Florida with this. The IP has a lot of potential and 80's nostalgia.