Not fifteen minutes after arriving at the Magic Kingdom on our first night out in Disney, "Mickey's PhilharMagic" shocked the world, or us, by having no wait. We would've went on anything with no wait, but considering that Mickey's PhilharMagic is touted as one of the best shows in all of Disney World, this was a heck of a way to kick off the vacation proper.
If we can call it a "ride," PhilharMagic may have very well been my favorite ride in Disney. After arriving in the lobby area and getting a loaner pair of plastic 3D glasses, you're sent into a theater to sit in amazement of a 150' wide screen custom built to make 3D technology work better than it ever has before. Not long after, the movie begins. Story in a nutshell: Donald is goofing around with Mickey's Sorcerer's Hat before a big orchestra performance, it gets lost, and the duck has to scram through cities and scenes from various Disney movies on the hunt to retrieve it. On the chase, Donald meets enough Disney characters to classify this as the largest crossover ever forged. Like, bigger than The Infinity Gauntlet, and bigger than Urkel showing up at Balki's with Cody's dead body tied to the back of Danny's corvette. From The Lion King to The Little Mermaid, it's Donald meeting character after character before a big climax that I won't spoil.
The 3D effects are incredible. I saw two other 3D shows while in Disney; Honey, I Shrunk The Audience in Epcot, and MuppetVision 3D in MGM. Neither came even close to being this nutsy good. With 3D effects so awesome that you'll fall into the theatrical trailer stereotype and actually grab at them, Mickey's PhilharMagic also makes use of smell and touch, all perfectly blended into the story onscreen. PhilharMagic was so good that it remains the only ride in Disney World that we went on, got off and immediately went on again. It didn't lose a step in Round 2.
You'll get 3D glasses like the pair shown above in just about every 3D attraction in Disney. You're supposed to give 'em back at the end of the show, but I kept mine because I'm a bad egg from the wrong side of the tracks.
HOT DISNEY THING #42: Night Swimmin'
This here's another one of my arguments for staying at an official Disney hotel, but I guess the same could possibly be said for any hotel in the area, assuming they were as lax. Disney hotels are widely regarded for having great pools; in fact, many of the hotels have two or more pools, ranging from an Olympic style original to goofy pools with plastic mountains and lightweight water slides. Though you'd imagine most resort guests would spend their days at the parks, the pools remain insanely crowded until sunset, and even then, there's plenty of people pooling around. Finally, it's 10 PM and you realize that the hotels have a loose policy regarding pool closing times. At the Polynesian, we were free to swim at 2 AM, in an empty pool that was still heated, still filtering, still lit and still just as wet as it was during peak hours.
I can't say that it works like this at every hotel, but it did here, and it did at the Grand Floridian, and it did at a few other hotels we happened upon after taking a wrong turn at the fork in the Forest Nile Adventure path. I don't need to tell you that night swimming rules, but after a long day of Disney parks and the discovery of sweat glands you never knew existed, night swimming goes so far beyond "rules" that I'm tempted to break out a really faggy phrase, like "night swimming kicks sheebopdeebeepin booty."
HOT DISNEY THING #43: The Polynesian Luau
Wellllp, I've been avoiding this for the past month, but I suppose it's time to write about the Polynesian luau. Where do I start? The beginning, I guess. Weeks before arriving in Disney World, we were reading up on all the things we could do. It was like, our thang. Who needed newspapers when people were writing books like this? Our studies taught us that the Polynesian hotel also offered an outdoor dinner show -- a luau -- called "The Sprit of Aloha." Despite nothing in our studies concretely telling us that the show was any good, we parted ways with a hundred dollar bill and prepared for an alohall-you-can-eat treat in a sea of smoking Tiki masks and drinks that came with a fruit section. Unlike normal dinner reservations, here you pay upfront, and they've got a no-backsies rule on breaking the reservations unless it's way in advance.
A long path leads you to the Spirit of Aloha "restaurant," which is simply a stage and a large series of picnic tables in various sizes under a roof in an otherwise open space. As you're eating whatever they feel like bringing you, a group of Polynesian princes and princesses put on a show that's every bit as outdated and cheesy as you'd expect. Though mostly consisting of songs and dances, the loose storyline involves a Hawaiian girl returning home after many years in the continental (!!!) U.S., where she was a well-dressed business woman, hair-in-a-bun and all. Her aunt -- a crazy old spider lady that I was determined to take home with me -- and the businessy girl's old comrades help her reestablish a bond with the fancy homeland, and by the end of it all, you're going to see these folks perform "Rock-a-hula" under a sea of disco lights.
It is not worth 50 dollars.
The food was decent; decent in a "I'm going to make myself like this because if I don't like this, everything will be ruined" kind of way. Actually, I just have this terrible thing about bugs landing on my food, thanks largely to my 7th grade biology teacher who told us what flies actually do on food, over and over again, every day for an entire school year. Since you're eating outside, there's no way to avoid the march of flies who've spent an entire evolutionary process growing accustomed to there always being sweet, syrupy foods at the Spirit of Aloha Stupid Dinner Show. This is mostly my fault, I know. Most people can deal with just flicking away a fly and continuing on with the eating. I can't. And it's not even just as simple as tearing off the piece of food a fly lands on and throwing it away. Let's take a waffle. If I see a fly on a waffle, on any part of the waffle, that whole waffle is getting Frisbee-chucked into Polynesian Pete, which is dangerous because Polynesian Pete is in the middle of his special fire dance. I wish I could see land crabs crawl out of my chicken breast and be okay with it, but I am what I am.
I kind of liked the show, because it'd obviously been scripted in the late 1600s and left that way forever since. The people onstage seemed to be having a good time, and only a few people in the audience were heard to remark, "get off the stage." Interestingly enough, it's the kids who seemed to hate the luau the most. I guess I understand. If you're six, and you know there's a place with Space Mountain and cotton candy just a train stop away, you'd be pretty impatient watching a lady in a hula skirt call her next dance "#4 of 12." Still, when Fire Dude came onstage, everyone in the audience was on the same page.
Fire Dude is the black sheep of the Spirit of Aloha family. Instead of trying to woo us with rhymes and steps, Fire Dude sets a bunch of batons on fire and juggles them. He juggles them around his head, behind his back, through his eyes and in one ear. Saves the show, Fire Dude does. Up until Fire Dude, the only way you can justify paying all that money for the luau is by drinking enough complimentary bottles of lukewarm Coors Light to connect its volume with 2 15.00 12-packs back home.
There's also something to be said for sitting through this fire dance and wondering if this is gonna be the show where something finally goes wrong and someone goes up in flames. My rabbit's foot brought no such luck.
Near the end of the show, there's this big announcement about a super special mega dessert about to be unveiled. Sure enough, the announcement is followed by all the hosts and hostesses carting out these big, smoking volcanoes. So, of course, you're sitting there expecting someone to bring you a smoking volcano cake. Instead, I got whatever that stuff up above is. I'm not sure what happened between points A and B, but I really wanted my dessert to be smoking.
The Spirit of Aloha Luau dinner show isn't worth 50 bucks, and it's probably not worth trekking to the Polynesian for if you're not actually staying there. Still, when faced with the decision between making this a Hot Disney Thing and making astronaut ice cream with a picture of Stitch on the package a Hot Disney Thing, I gotta go with the one that has more stuff relating to fire.
By the end of a long Disney vacation, you'll be ready to go home. Still, going home sucks. You're sitting in the airport, and even after a week of practicing being able to put all of life's troubles out of your mind, it's all creeping back in now. You've got work to do, things to fix, bills to pay and people to avoid. And, when your flight gets delayed for a few hours due to storms, like ours did, going home sucks twice as much donkey cock.
HOT DISNEY THING #44: Air Gator
My saving grace: Located at the entrance to one of the many newspaper/magazine/whatever shops in the airport, there were these small tanks containing baby alligators. It seemed no more legal than me stealing the PhilharMagic's 3D glasses, but God damn, it was nice to see baby alligators in the middle of an airport for no good reason.
Well, maybe it wasn't an alligator. Maybe it was a crocodile, or a caiman. Just sounds a little less cool to say "I saw baby caimans in the airport," y'know?
HOT DISNEY THING #45: Stupid Souvenirs
When we got home, Disney World didn't seem like a distant memory, but it was getting there. Everything came rushing back once we opened our suitcase, because as fate would have it, we bought at least one souvenir at every gift shop in all of Disney! Go us!
Hey, look, I'm with you -- nobody needs this junk, and it's overpriced. I think a person can know and agree with these things and still want the souvenirs, though. Especially when it's such cool stuff. We got everything from an Ewok doll to a rubber Pirates of the Caribbean skull to 3' licorice strands marked "Goofy." Sure, I won't be able to gas up the car for a while, but who needs to leave the house when they've got an almost life-sized plush goat marionette right at home?
And...that's it. The Top 45 Hot Disney Things list in complete; now I can return to that full-sized cardboard coffin I bought last October and pretend I'm moody and poetic. I hope you've enjoyed this feature, because it almost killed me and I pretty much hate Disney World now. If you're thinking about going but remain on the fence, it's important to note that I've missed some of the best rides and sights. Like, if you're a regular reader of X-E, you could probably spend a weekend trudging through Disney's Pop Century resort and be happy with just that. There's a lot to do and a lot to see here, and no matter how many complaints I've lobbied to make for more easily written articles, we had an absolute blast in Disney World. We went on Splash Mountain, we saw Fire Dude, we took boat rides and we ate ice cream shaped like Mickey Mouse. Could a person ask for more? Only if he or she was a big dick. Here's some more random pictures...
