In their official statement, the MPAA said that that their published guidance for the film would read: “It is recommended that parents exercise discretion. This film has received a PG rating for feminist violence, male cross dressing, weird accents, and brief, gratuitous haggis.”

When contacted for an official statement, the MPAA appeared to believe that Scotland was an imaginary place created by Disney for the purposes of this film. Said their representative, “Children are naturally going to find scenes and images of children defying parental authority upsetting enough without having to set the whole thing in a place where standard laws of normal society are turned on their head and everyone talks like Scrooge McDuck. The film might have garnered a G rating had it taken place somewhere normal like Europe.”

At press time, official reaction from the Scottish ambassador to the United Nations was an unprintable insult followed by a vague threat of invasion.

• The Avengers is projected to have larger total gross ticket sales than any previous film (according to Barks Brothers, an almost unbelievable one multiplujillion, nine obsquatumatillion, six hundred twenty-three dollars and sixty-one cents).
• According to an accountant we met who was wearing Mickey Mouse ears, the opening-weekend earnings for The Avengers came as no surprise to Disney. As he puts it, “The opening weekend for The Avengers was approximately equal to the total of the opening weekends of The Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, which is exactly what you’d expect.”
• Although there will not be any Avengers-related theme-park attractions at Walt Disney World (Universal Studios owns the rights to all Marvel properties in the state of Florida, which is why an alternate version of The Avengers is showing in that state), Disney California Adventure is revamping a currently unused building to rush the opening of a new “Who Wants to be an Avenger?” game show.
• For the British release of the film, Natasha Romanoff was renamed Emma Peel.
• Captain America is the oldest of the Avengers, but he was made to look young through the use of CGI.
• Hawkeye’s character’s name is a nod to director Joss Whedon’s love for the old M*A*S*H television show.
• Tom Hiddleston revealed that his performance as Loki was in part inspired by his earlier performance as Mr. John Plumptre in Miss Austen Regrets.
• The Hulk’s roar is an audio combination of the roars of Lou Ferrigno and Thurl Ravenscroft.
• Samuel L. Jackson — who played Nick Fury — came up with the idea of having “giant mother-effing alien robot snakes invade this mother-effing plane of existence.”
• In a scene that ended up on the cutting-room floor, Thor is seen casually dressed in an MC Hammer t-shirt (in the same way that Captain America is seen in the film wearing a Jimmy Buffett shirt).
• As of Wednesday, the Iron Man theme song (“Iron Man, Iron Man, does whatever an iron can”) is the #1 download on iTunes.
• Iron Man’s computer JEEVES is voiced by Stephen Fry.
• The character Black Widow has been directly responsible for more divorces, breakups, and truncated dates than any other character in film history.
• In a post-credits scene, comic-book legend Stan Lee has a cameo as Thanos.
• The success of the film has ensured that there will be a sequel. The Avengers Down Under will be released in 2015.

In the early days of the park, simple, non-buoyant balloons attached to sticks were available. Hot-air balloons were tested, but found to be impractical and short-lived. These paved the way for hydrogen-filled balloons, the horrible, tragic, fiery result of which needs not be described here (but led to the park’s restrictive smoking policies and the sudden elimination of Tomorrowland’s Wonders of Tissue Paper exhibit).

The next innovation — also doomed to failure — was the transparent balloon. In these innocent times, it was thought that there was nothing wrong with rendering balloons transparent by fitting them with small, tube-powered x-ray emitters. This had the added bonus of making guests with balloons look like glowing skeletons when on any of Fantasyland’s dark rides. Although many guests discovered hidden cancers and self-diagnosed serious injuries using these amusing toys, they were eventually banned by federal law.

The famous “Mickey Mouse” balloons have been a staple of the park for decades. Other shapes have been tested over the years (including the popular Baloo balloons in the 1960s).

Balloons at Disneyland are currently $7 apiece, $14 for two, $21 for three, etc., with the volume discount continuing in this manner up to a maximum of 60 balloons (the maximum number a cast member can carry at one time without legally being classified as a flotation device).

One strange balloon-related practice — “Carling” — arose (no pun intended) after the release of Pixar’s film Up. Someone who wants to Carl approaches a castmember selling balloons and purchases their entire stock. The balloons are then released en masse, with the results often filmed and posted on YouTube or other social networking sites. Because of the high cost of purchasing an entire lot of balloons, several Disney fans have crowd-funded their Carling projects on Kickstarter, sending videos of the hilarity (including crowd reactions) to those who donated.

The related practice of buying a large number of balloons and attaching them to the belt of a very annoying small child is impolite, frowned upon, and a felony.

An interesting aside: the Up-inspired idea of buying a bunch of balloons and giving them away to nobody is where the phrase “giving up” came from.

Coming up next: Picnic area

On the left is a photo of the Matterhorn from two years ago. On the right, a photo of the Matterhorn taken over this past weekend. The difference is striking, isn’t it? The snow levels on the Matterhorn have never been this low.

“It’s global warming,” says fictional Disneyland spokescastmember April Frost. “You can see the effects all over the park. Water levels are down, rain levels are down, and over Christmas what little snow we got on Main Street was so anemic it clumped together like soap suds. Why, did you know that in Florida’s Magic Kingdom a few years ago the submarine attraction evaporated all together? We’re doing our best to avoid a similar tragedy in California, and it makes us feel mighty guilty for using pure, black, unfiltered coal to run the Disneyland Railroad, Mark Twain, and Autopia for so many years.”

That was a lot more convenient than visiting Disneyland and running around PLOTSI infinitely, now wasn’t it? Let us know in the comments what you enjoyed most seeing on your tour!

Although we have no problem with Disneyland changing with the times, we will be sad to see Carnation Plaza go. But even when it has been replaced, we will still treasure our memories of the amazing times we had there. Who could forget:

• Passing through on the way to Frontierland.
• Sitting in a chair because our feet hurt.
• Accidentally following a path there when we thought we were heading for the side entrance to Fantasyland.
• Imagining that something was happening on the stage.

Admittedly, there are those who are more upset about this change than we are. A group of swing dancers who enjoy visiting Carnation Plaza when swinging swing bands are there playing swing music has been vocally protesting the situation, claiming that, “Carnation Plaza just won’t be the same after it’s changed.” Even though Disneyland insists that the regularly scheduled swing-dancing parties will continue (after a brief period during which, due to construction, they will be held in the picnic area outside the main entrance), not everyone is convinced.

Rumor has it that a mass protest is scheduled for April 29th, on which passively resistant swing dancers will fasten themselves to chairs and candy-striped awnings by the chains dangling from their zoot suits. We attempted to find out more about this protest, but our Google searches for “swingers,” “looking for swingers,” “interested in swinging,” and “swingers chaining themselves to things” were less than helpful (and, frankly, rather disturbing).

That aside, if you are planning to be at Disneyland this Sunday, let us know so that we can take your picture by the secret bathroom in CPG (as all Disneyphiles call it) for potential posting on this site. If you are not able to make it, send us your secret CPG bathroom photos, which we will be collecting for a loving tribute.

Near the end of Main Street is a handy display board on which Disneyland displays the wait times management has scheduled for selected popular attractions around the park. When attendance levels are high, wait times are increased to help pull guests out of busy walkways and into attractions, reducing park congestion.

Note that this photo was taken during Disneyland’s experiment with a “Breakfast with Buzz” breakfast-bar buffet in the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters attraction. The event was canceled after just two days due to the mess, inconvenience, complaints about being rushed to finish eating before the end of the ride, indigestion, plate breakage, an unusually high toy-related lead content in the eggs, and poor tipping.

Coming up next: Balloons

All of the photos for the DisneyLies.com Disneyland Tour were taken on the same day for the sake of historical accuracy and the convenience of our readers. But little did we know when we took the photos that before the project’s projected end date (which will be reached when we come to the photo of Disneyland’s exit on March 12, 2046) Disneyland would go and change things, making some of our photos more nostalgic than informative.

Such is the case with the Plaza Pavilion. At the time this photo was taken, this location was used for the processing of Disneyland annual passes and the taking of photos for said passes, but today they not only don’t do that here, they no longer put photos on passes at all (due to new rules created as part of Disney’s pixel-conservation program).

This former restaurant isn’t even a former restaurant anymore, as it has (if rumors are to be believed) been refurbished into some kind of eatery with a theme based on some Disney film or another. We don’t know what film it is, and frankly we don’t care because they’ve completely ruined the staccato flow of our Disneyland photo tour, and so far as we were concerned the Plaza Pavilion annual-pass processing center was practically perfect in every way.

Making our failure complete, the last we checked the couple in the photo wasn’t standing outside the building anymore either.

Sigh.

Coming up next: Wait times