Disney Lies

Here’s a bit of Olympic/Disney trivia for you: Did you know that the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing actually cost more to produce than it originally cost to build Disney’s California Adventure? It’s true!

Epcot’s China pavilion was overrun on Friday night by tourists hoping to catch the Olympic opening ceremonies. “Sometimes we forget just how like the real China our pavilion is,” said supposed Walt Disney World cultural ambassador Princess Fuzzbucket. “It’s only natural that some people would think that the Olympics are being hosted here, but we weren’t prepared for more than 15,000 guests showing up.”

“I’d just rather go here than off to some country with all different time zones and bathrooms and weird food and some gibberish for language and an alphabet,” said Ed Xenophobe, a Disney World guest from Isolation, Kansas. “Each Epcot pavilion is technically part of the host country — or is that embassies? — but anyway it’s as real as the real place and Disney should have done a better job of having the Olympics here, that’s all I’m saying.”

This isn’t the first time that guests have had trouble distinguishing Epcot pavilions from actual countries. For example:

• It is common to find guests in the U.K. pavilion wandering about looking for the entrance to the “chunnel” to the France pavilion.
• In 1989 a group of protesters smuggled sledgehammers into the park and attempted to bring down a wall in Germany.
• Guests occasionally comment that Norway is “a bigger country than they imagined it would be.”
• Cast members in the American Adventure occasionally have to be disciplined when they forget themselves and attempt to hire day laborers from the Mexico pavilion.

After sneaking into Disneyland more than an hour before opening (it’s amazing what you can do when you’re disguised as a planter), our Official DisneyLies Photographer managed to snap a picture of an Imagineering test of the new Antimatterhorn.

This Matterhorn overlay — accomplished in minutes thanks to billions of carefully installed, computer-controlled black-light LEDs — is intended for use during this year’s Halloween festivities. Rumor has it that, when the Matterhorn is in “evil” mode, the mountain will not only look evil, but the cars will also be fitted with super-bumpy wheels and the Yeti will have a really, really bad haircut (sort of an “abominable mullet,” according to an Imagineer).

As a massive storm prepares to do extensive damage to Texas and Mexico, Disney marketing is rethinking their decision to promote WALL*E’s love of “Hello, Dolly!” by having a hurricane named after the film’s title character. “We probably should have thought it through a little more,” said recently fired director of Disney weather marketing Stormy Klutz. “But the weather bureau called at the last minute and we had to make a snap decision. It was just one of those things.”

Only time will tell if this will become a fiasco on the scale of Bambi’s pro-NRA ads or premiering High School Musical 3 at Columbine High School.

Our good friends at Edison Square are now performing a new song about everyone’s favorite environmentally conscious robot, WALL*E, and they were good enough to provide us with a copy of the lyrics even before they appear on the Edison Square Web site.

The song, sung to the tune of “Hello, Dolly!” (what else?) goes a little something like this:

Hello, WALL*E!

WALL*E
Hello, Slinky
Well, Hello Twinkie
You’re so nice when I go home you’ll come along.
This is a swell, tea cup
These are a D cup
This one’s glowin’, this fan’s blowin’
They’ll all come along.
I am a bit lonely
And I wish only
That I had a friend who wasn’t just a roach.
So, crush that trash, WALL*E
Cannibalize some parts, WALL*E
WALL*E’ll never have a friend again.

EVE
Hello WALL*E!
Well, hello WALL*E!
I enjoyed when you put on that ancient song.
Hey what is that, WALL*E?
It’s a plant, WALL*E,
It’s still growin’, so I’m goin’
I must move along.
No more time for playin’
‘Cause I’m not stayin’
My directive says I must go home again, so

WALL*E
None of that, EVE
I’m gonna come along, EVE

Eve
I promise you’ll never be alone again

WALL*E
I flew away clinging on to a space ship
And through the atmosphere’s haze
I followed EVE through the maze of the space ship
Together we’ll show Captain the good old days

Humans
Those good old days
Hello, Well Hello WALL*E
Well hello, like my chair, WALL*E?

WALL*E
It’s sure nice but do you like my girlfriend’s gun?

Humans
Girlfriend’s gun

WALL*E
Please understand, Captiain
Can you stand, Captain?
AUTO’s gone insane, is over wrought, and glares like HAL

Humans
We can’t get thinner
If we drink dinner
So we must turn this ship Earthward once again
So…

WALL*E
This is grand, people
EVE finally held my hand, people

Humans
WALL*E’ll never be alone again

Those WDW guests who have suffered through having to set their alarm and get on the phone promptly at 7 a.m., 180 days before their vacation to try and snag a hard-to-come-by Tomorrowland Terrace Noodle Station reservation will be pleased to know that Disney is moving away from the call-in-only system. Beginning in October, guests will be able to log onto the Disney World Web site promptly at 7 a.m., 180 days before their vacation and make dining priority seating requests from the comfort of their own computer without having to deal with a friendly, helpful Disney cast member.

Not only will guests be able to decide what restaurant they will want to eat at in six months, they will also be encouraged to pre-order specific meals, schedule drink refills, and fill out surveys indicating how pleased they expect to be with service and how much of a tip they will leave. Guests who expect that they will encounter difficulty with a server may arrange to meet with a lead cast member at a specified time after their meal.

In January, Disney’s Hollywood Studios will cut performances from five night a week to only two. We asked supposed DHS representative Francis “Fran” Tasia for an explanation of the cutback and she said, “There are a number of important safety, performance, and cost vectors at work here. First and most importantly is that Mr. Mickey Mouse is growing fatigued after so many years of performance. It is quite difficult, as you might imagine, to spend so many hours with your face frozen into the same happy smile day in and day out, and the ’shooting delightful magical sparks from his hands’ meme has left him with what can only be described as something akin to the early stages of shell shock. An additional factor is the desire to close DHS — that’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios, not Disney Homekingdom Security, which is an entirely disjoint matter, bless their hearts — early on multiple evenings. This left many possibilities, and it was judged that it was not practicable to continue performing Fantasmic! on evenings after the park had closed early and there were no guests to view it. Additionally, having Fantasmic! dark five nights a week was a potential cost/energy savings but it was decided that safety concerns precluded performances without lights on. Not performing but leaving lights on was the only remaining viable option that was legal in the state of Florida.”

As an adjunct to yesterday’s list of the best things at Disneyland (and to maintain editorial balance), we now list the 10 Best Things at Disney’s California Adventure (also mercilessly stolen from the Web site we mentioned yesterday and then rewritten beyond recognizability).

1. Being the first to run to “a bug’s land” and see if Francis’ Ladybug Boogie is actually working.
2. Riding The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror with an open bucket of popcorn.
3. Running wind sprints through the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail and then visiting Brother Bear’s cave and telling everyone that your totem animal is “a sweat hog.”
4. Activating Toy Story Midway Mania’s devistating “atomic bomb” secret target for a million points.
5. Eating a gigantic lunch and then endlessly riding one of the moving cars on the Sun Wheel.
6. Sitting in Playhouse Disney — Live on Stage! and pretending that you have the mind of a four-year-old.
7. Visiting the Mission Tortilla Factory and asking why the tortillas have to be so flat and lifeless when the bread across the street at the Boudin Bakery is so nice and fluffy.
8. Seasons of the Vine — possibly the most entertaining and instructional interactive edutainment on any Disney property; a true classic that will surely stand the test of time and be heralded as a delight to young and old alike (now closed).
9. Using the computer in Disney Animation’s Sorcerer’s Workshop to see what Disney character is most like Hitler.
10. $1.2 billion in upcoming improvements.

About.com recently posted a list of what it considers to be the 10 best attractions at Disneyland. In the interest of saving you from all the extra clicking that would be involved in you checking out the list on their Web site, we are reproducing it here (with occasional editorial adjustments for space or to completely change the meaning).

So, without further ado, we present the 10 Best Attractions at Disneyland!

1. Singing along with “Welcome to the Jungle” on the Jungle Cruise.
2. Standing near the entrance to Critter Country and watching the Splash Mountain flume to see if anyone lifts their shirt for the camera.
3. Trying to catch people disposing of loved ones on the Haunted Mansion.
4. Riding Pirates of the Caribbean and noting all the things that were better they way they used to be.
5. Mercilessly heckling tourists who call the Matterhorn “Magic Mountain.”
6. Buying chicken at the Stage Door Cafe, eating it in the Enchanted Tiki Room, and hoping the birds don’t notice.
7. The free emotional counseling after you get stuck on “it’s a small world.”
8. Wandering around Tomorrowland, speculating about what the Peoplemover track might be good for some day.
9. Swimming out to Tom Sawyer Island and wondering what diseases you may have caught.
10. Getting Mom to shell out for a churro and then whacking your little sister with it.

P.S. We’ll send a free copy of Liar’s Guide to Disneyland to the first reader who posts a comment listing all of the attractions that the experts at About.com named incorrectly on their site. Just post your comment and drop us a line (through the contact form) with your address so we can send you your book!

An actual-size animatronic of Remy, the title character of Pixar’s Ratatouille, has been making surprise visits to Disneyland Hotel’s California Grill over the last week or so. The animatronic character scurries back and forth to the kitchen and occasionally squeeks at guests, presumably under the control of a hidden Imagineer.

Some guests were so convinced that the figure was real that they insist it count not have been a robot, and their feelings were somewhat justified when it was learned that the figure’s final appearance coincided with a visit from Ajax Exterminators.