Even though Disney-MGM Studios opened first, rumors persist that someone at the company aped Universal Studios' plans for their then-unborn park. I'd get to the bottom of it, but I don't care enough to spend more than a minute on this. What's less debatable is that MGM has grown into the role of Disney's answer to Universal Studios, if not for a shared "movie theme," then definitely for the effort of incorporating literal thrill rides.
On one hand, you can look at each of the four big parks in Disney and see how they purposely scattered the more teen/adult-skewed rides around. But considering MGM's compact size, it's just as easy to see its more concentrated effort to MAKE YA SCREAM like a big baby. I've never been to Universal Studios in Florida, and I don't think my trip to the very vintage Universal Studios in California back in the mid '80s would provide a fair comparison. That said, all of my friends wanted to kill me for not going there during this Disney trip, because, as they say, that's where the real rides are.
It's not like MGM ain't trying, though. With a gigantic Mickey Mouse Sorcerer's Hat serving as its symbol, Disney-MGM is filled with true action rides and enough movie references to make me absolutely sick of movies at large after just five hours there. I would never fly to Disney-MGM if it was an honest standalone park without three sibling parks to boost its worth, but as an accompaniment, I rank it Sir Ketchup. In tribute to this growing den of cinephile sin, every Hot Disney Thing on this page was found in MGM.
HOT DISNEY THING #36: Honey There Is A GIANT BEE
Okay, so this thing has the longest title of any attraction ever. It's the "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids Movie Set Adventure," and for what is essentially just a beefed up throwaway playground area, this is, surprisingly, the place to be. Staged in what feels kind of like an arena you'd normally play paintball or Lazer Tag in, the large, tall structure contains around a dozen super-sized rides and sit-ons based on all of the real life creatures featured in Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. They've got the bee...the giant Oreo cookie, that poor ant who died and more. Giant cans of Play-Doh! Giant rolls of Kodak film! Because Kodak is a sponsor! Though always crowded, the playground is roomy enough to guarantee short lines. Once you're in, you can stay there for as long as you want, sitting on giant bugs and avoiding randomized water sprayings from a nearby giant Super Soaker. Even if a cast member storms in and announces that it's time for everyone to leave, you can just hide behind a giant paw and wait for the smoke to clear.
The Movie Set Adventure also seems to double as one of the more shaded rest areas in all of MGM, with just as many folks taking naps as there are kids flopping down slides. I'm with them. If you're going to catch a breather, you might as well do it under a bee the size of a house. I'd probably sit there and call a friend back home.
Me: Joe, guess what I'm doing. Joe: What? Me: I am sitting...under a giant BEE!
It plays out more awesomely in my head.
PS, remember how good that giant Oreo looked in the movie? Still does here, chief. Of course, the cookie is situated just behind the aforementioned giant ant, the cute one that perished trying to save bitchy kids from certain doom in Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. So, for every minute you spend looking at the giant Oreo and romancing its edibility, you'll have to spend another feeling like shit that this poor giant ant died to save some idiot kids who ultimately never amounted to anything. You should've run, ant! You should've run!
HOT DISNEY THING #37: Rock 'n' Roller Coaster
Official title: Rock 'n Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith. Disregard: Starring Aerosmith.
The Rock 'n' Roller Coaster is very much a real ride; the dark, all-indoors coaster blasts up, down and upside-down through a series of neon tunnels all in the name of ROCK AND ROLL! The Aerosmith branding starts outside with a gigantic electric guitar, and continues with a really, really stupid video all visitors must watch before getting into their coaster car. The story goes something like, Aerosmith refuses to leave its fans (you) behind, so they invite their fans (you) into their stretch limousine (the coaster cars) to live life just like them (apparently upside-down, and flying through neon caverns marked "Donut World"). I have nothing against Aerosmith, but with the way they've set things up, every person who rides this has to be okay with being labeled an Aerosmith fan. You've gotta deal with the blonde guy from Aerosmith calling you a fan six or seven times before they'll let you on the ride. Notwithstanding that bit of griping for the sake of griping, this is a great roller coaster.
It's one of the fastest rides in Disney World, and it's the only roller coaster in all of Disney World that goes upside-down. Though the speed, velocity and other words relating to FAST help shape the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster into a Hot Disney Thing, I think even more of it has to do with the fact that you get to ride this baby...in the dark. Counting every ride I went on during our vacation, this is the only one that got me to scream. And after all the fuss with the blonde dude calling me loyal, I promise that I was not screaming just for the sake of being in the spirit of things. I wanted to hate it, but this was a great roller coaster.
HOT DISNEY THING #38: Toy Story Pizza Planet
"Pizza Planet" is a pepperoni-stanked real-life equivalent of the awesome Toy Story restaurant of the same name. Selling small, cheap, greasy pizzas and offering everything from video games to crane machines to basketball hoops and more, Pizza Planet feels less like Disney magic and more like the Chuck E. Cheese downtown. In a good way. The complex contains two floors of hot action and a ceiling full of three-eyed alien statues, and...well, I guess I thought I would have more to say about Pizza Planet when building this list. Cool place. It has pizza.
HOT DISNEY THING #39: The Sci-Fi Dine-In
Through reading a trillion websites before booking my trip, I'd been fully directed to make dinner reservations for each of the days and each of the nights we would be in Disney, months in advance. As these sites said, the restaurants book up crazy fast and, if you don't get your name on the mile-long list early, you'll end up eating nothing but turkey legs.
I call bullshit on that, because we had no real trouble walking into anything but the most exclusive or insanely popular restaurants. We did make a few reservations beforehand though, only to find that they effectively ruined our day by forcing us to pick one park over another by merits of restaurant reservations alone, not to mention the fact that we had to revolve our day around the screwy reservation times. I only say this because, while it's good to have some semblance of a schedule before heading to Disney, it's just as good to make sure your schedule is, for the most part, breakable.
Then again, reservations can be canceled, so I take back everything I said. One restaurant we had reservations at -- merely for my deep love of its theme -- was the "Sci-Fi Dine-In," a restaurant designed to invoke feelings of going to the drive-in movie theater in the 1950s. I think it succeeded, but I wasn't alive in the '50s, and the only movie I've ever seen drive-in style was E.T., and I slept through half of it.
The Sci-Fi Dine-In is conceptually brilliant, encased in a huge darkened structure to give diners the feeling that they're at a drive-in late at night. If that doesn't work, there's a movie screen blaring old bits of bad movies, television commercials and public service videos from yesteryear. If that doesn't help you feel like you're at a drive-in theater, you also get to eat in a car.
Well, sort of. You get to sit in these table/bench contraptions made to look like cars, and for the most part, they do. Here we enter a realm of trouble for the Sci-Fi Dine-In. I had sternly vowed to not be annoyed with children throughout our stay at Disney World, because they were going to be everywhere and there was no getting around 'em. Plus, the place kind of exists for children, and it'd be really wrong of me to call every kid who bumped into my knee a motherfucker just out of sheer predisposition. All that said, it's perfectly okay to eat at the Sci-Fi Dine-In if you're a part of a party-of-four, because that means your group will get its own complete car. If you're a party-of-two, like we were, you might end up seated in a compact fake car behind...the worst child who ever lived.
Keep in mind, if you're a party-of-two sitting behind another party-of-two, you're practically eating off the other party-of-two's collective back. You're going to be kind of iffy about that no matter what, but when the other party-of-two contains the worst child who ever lived, "iffy" only describes the feeling if we can define "iffy" as a "ready to rip a child's head off and burn it feeling." The young girl, probably 7 or 8 or 9, wasted no time in letting us know what kind of dinnertime games we were in for; namely, she liked to rip her straw's paper wrapper into pieces, dunk them in soda and throw them in the air. I can't say for sure that she was aiming for my face, but that's where most of the wet, paper bits landed. Before it got to the point where I had to ask this little bitch if she wanted to step outside, she stopped throwing spitballs and began singing Disney songs aloud, in what HAD to be a purposely annoying voice, for a nonstop, brick solid fifteen minutes. Her mother, obviously winded from a lifelong battle with the worst child who ever lived, merely flashed the girl a few "oh you're so cute" faces before going back to her typical front of willful obliviousness.
Finally, she settles down. The girl had thrown wet paper, and she'd done her annoying singing bit...surely now she'd wore herself out and would resign herself to either eating what was on her plate or just sitting there quietly. I prayed that she would do one of those things, but God and I never got along. Instead, she took to turning around with full monkey mannerisms and playing peek-a-boo with us. Okay, now she wanted to annoy me to my face, not even letting me have the peace that comes with knowing that I could look down and wait for the storm to pass? Fuck that. I couldn't yell at the girl, because hey, she was 7 or 8 or 9. I couldn't yell at her mother, because her mother had obviously made a career of overcompensating for the devil child's lack of discipline by freaking the fuck out on everyone else. If I wanted this little shit to stop turning around, there was only one thing I could do: Use dirty words in casual conversation.
Write this down, because it works every time. A lot of kids are bastards, but most of them still back down from curses. I'm not saying that you have to look a kid in the eye and tell her to fuck off; it's nothing like that. All I had to do was turn to my girlfriend and audibly say, "they put fucking mayonnaise on this," and the worst child who ever lived spent the rest of her meal straightforward, silent and wondering if I was really an evil lion named Scar.
With the worst child who ever lived now removed from the festivities, I was free to soak up whatever the Sci-Fi Dine-In had to offer. So-so food and slow service, but great ambiance. It's pretty quiet and airy, well air-conditioned and, in some ways, really peaceful in there. The old videos are a treat, and if you're feeling daring, you can even buy cocktails named after planets that have lights in them...
HOT DISNEY THING #40: Drinks That Light Up & Blink
I can't remember what they called it, but it had some wackadoo name like "Jupiter Saturn Moonlite Jamboree," or something, and as a good Christian, I couldn't resist that. When I read the description, I learned that it was, in fact, a margarita with a glowing ice cube. Yeah, I was sold. Though I can only assume from taste and aftereffects that I paid 12 bucks to drink a goblet full of nonalcoholic margarita mix, the glowing blue ice cube made me feel like I was sitting at a car/table so much more important than the other car/tables at the Sci-Fi Dine-In. They even let me keep the cube!
On The Next Page: Men who eat fire, pools and gators-in-fishtanks.
