Archive for January, 2011

Disneyland tour

Monday, January 31st, 2011

We’ve been spending quite a lot of time recently on the sequel to Liar’s Guide to Disneyland, which we hope will serve as a lame excuse for our recent lack of posting. To get us back on track, we decided to take some of the copious knowledge that we use on our patented Disneyliar’s Tours of Disneyland (which we provide free of charge to anyone who happens to be at Disneyland when we are and who doesn’t avoid us after we start talking) and turn it into a virtual tour of the park.

To make this happen, we walked through Disneyland, experienced a couple of attractions, and took photographs of anything we thought was of interest. Beginning tomorrow, we intend to post a photo every weekday, along with our commentary. At that pace, the tour should be over some time in October 2012, making it even longer than Disneyland’s famous "Building Disneyland in Realtime" tour.

We also hope to post occasionally about current Disney news, but what we would really like is the opportunity to turn our vast Disney data warehouse to use answering questions from our readers. If there’s something about Disney parks, film, history, or legends that you are interested in — and you aren’t overly concerned with veracity and associated details — please e-mail it to liar@disneylies.com. Selected questions will be answered on the blog. Assuming that we get any. And that they make sense. And that they aren’t just poorly disguised bundles of abuse from Dreamworks employees.

So we’ll see you tomorrow for our first exciting tour stop — the Mickey and Friends parking structure!

Tiger moms at Disneyland

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

We intend to begin regularly posting again some time next week, but in the meantime we would like to share with you some tips from Amy Chua’s parenting manual, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. According to Chua, the Chinese method of bringing children to Disneyland is superior to the American or “Western” method. She says that a “tiger mother” sets out rules for her children before a Disneyland visit and strictly adheres to those rules.

The rules Chua had for her daughters if they ever went to Disneyland included:

  • They would attend Disneyland as a family. No friends may be brought along.
  • They would visit Disneyland Resort for one day only. No sleepovers.
  • Children would not get to choose what rides and attractions they experienced.
  • If a show such as Jedi Training offered the opportunity for children to participate, her daughters could neither participate nor complain about not participating.
  • If a child has a book of tickets, they had to all be E tickets (apparently Chua hasn’t been to Disneyland in a while).
  • If a child played a video game at the Starcade or Innoventions, the only game she may play is Guitar Hero and she must keep playing until she played “Bark at the Moon” perfectly.
  • If a child went on Buzz Lightyear or Midway Mania, she must achieve a high score. If she didn’t get a high score, her mother would buy the souvenir the child had begged for and donate it to the Salvation Army.
  • When it came time to hold a place for Fantasmic! or World of Color, children were required to hold the place without getting up for water or even for bathroom breaks.
  • If a child didn’t want to go on Tower of Terror, she would have no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, and no birthday parties for two, three, or four years.
  • If a child does not meet the minimum height requirement for an attraction, it is because she is purposely working herself into dwarfism because she is secretly afraid.
  • If a child doesn’t have a magical time, it is because she is lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.