A Message to all Orange County Theme Park Guests: I don’t know how you do things where you come from, but here in OC, saving spots in line is considered rude. It’s considered cutting in line and if the signs at Knott’s Berry Farm are to be believed, it’s also considered illegal.

Yes I know it’s one thing to save someone’s place in line because they have been waiting to ride The Submarine Voyage for the last three hours and that person makes a point of telling you they have a bathroom need and will be right back. However saving a place in line for your family of six while they run off and ride The Matterhorn and get corn-dogs is another thing altogether.

Jeebus people, how hard is it to gather your entire party, walk to the entrance of the queue and get in line and wait like a normal human being? Here is a no brainer: If you’re separated from your party, advise them to let people in the queue pass them until you catch up. There is nothing people hate more than watching you jump the line and use the excuse of shared DNA to justify your douchey actions.

Do people really have that hard of a time understanding the subtle nuances of queue etiquette? Or is the selfish overexcitement about being at their favorite theme park enough to cause a social brain fart? I can’t be the only one annoyed by this. What do you think?

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Well the secret is finally out. It’s probably the worst kept secret in town. But in case you somehow missed the LA Times’ coverage or the most recent photo update from our friends at Mice Age - The Sleeping Beauty Castle Walk Though is going to be opening again - and sooner than you may think.

[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia]

The Mouse is all about synergy and the all new super exciting Blu-Ray edition of Sleeping Beauty will be coming out on Oct 7th 2008. If I were a betting man, and I am, I would be betting all my quatloos that Guests will be walking through the innards of Sleepy Beauty Castle before Halloween. The old attraction, while quaint, was really showing its age when it went down for permanent “rehab” in 2001. This new version is supposed to be goosed and poked and spruced to give Guests a few surprises.

This is all well and good but I am going to take this opportunity (as I do with all my Land posts) to wonder aloud why they don’t…

BRING BACK THE G-DAMN PEOPLE MOVER!

Kay? Thanks. Bye.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a falling limb of any sort creating quite this much buzz.

Go check out Mark & Steve’s intrepid firsthand account on the whole “OMG! A tree branch fell in Disneyland!”

6. Thou shalt embrace Disneyland in all of its glory!

Hooray! Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room Room turned 45 this week! Betcha didn’t know that did you? The event was celebrated with a special merchandise release and the artists were on hand to sign their work. My wife waited out in the sweltering heat and hot hot sun for hours on Sunday to purchase the charming and lovely Rongo Bowl [above] and have it signed by the artist. Very cool (pun intended - thank you folks I’m here all week). This particular piece has a limited run of 500 and we just adore it. It’s nice and tiki-ified without screaming HI, I’M A DISNEYANA FREAK! Try not to let your jealousy of my Rongo Bowl get the best of you.

7. Thou shalt reserve the right to endlessly bitch and moan about Disneyland in spite of commandment number six.

All the (much deserved) hype surrounding Toy Story Midway Mania prompted us to head over to Disneyland and take a spin on Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters, which if you haven’t ridden it, can best be described as Midway Mania 1.0. Much to our chagrin the ride was in incredible disrepair. Several animatronics were broken, oodles of light-up-targets were dead in the water and the ride vehicles themselves were peeling, damaged and dirty. The picture above doesn’t do the public shaming of The Mouse proper justice. Bad show! It’s time to bring this attraction down for a much need refurbishment - the sooner the better.

Greetings my friends. Behold the 10 Commandments of Orange County!

1. Thou shalt never ever ever ever take public transportation. Never. Ever.
2. Thou shalt wear fake eyelashes, get fake boobs and sport fake tans - “fake” is the new “real”.
3. Thou shalt always refer to our baseball team as the Anaheim Angeles no matter what their retarded brain dead owner renames them.
4. Thou shalt knock down old strip malls and replace them with new and less exciting strip malls - for no apparent reason.
5. Thou shalt always drive thy Hummer to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Mother’s Market.
6. Thou shalt embrace Disneyland in all of its glory!
7. Thou shalt reserve the right to endlessly bitch and moan about Disneyland in spite of commandment number six. It’s our park and it’s a love/hate relationship.
8. Thou shalt deny the existence of The Real Housewives of Orange County as something that actually exists in the universe. You can’t make me watch it… you can’t you can’t you can’t!!!
9. Thou shalt not lie cheat and steal - unless it’s for a really good reason, like getting better grades.

And last but not least…

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s McMasnion.

The idea for this post was ripped off, er, I mean inspired by, a similar post over at the LA Metroblog

Don’t like the commandments I came up with? Want to add your own? Feel free to leave them in the comments.

If you were in the area of Anaheim looking toward the heavens Tuesday afternoon, you may have seen this! I was going to embed the video right into the page - but alas it seems our shiny new web site disagrees with YouTube’s embeding code. *sigh*

That’s right, those are Green Army Men parachuting into the toilet bowl blue waters at Paradise Pier inside Disney’s California Adventure. All of this was in celebration of the grand opening of Toy Story Midway Mania at the resort. The Mouse really put his best foot forward with this presentation, there was even a special video message sent from Buzz Lightyear and his fellow human astronauts from the International Space Station. That’s right, they are even promoting the opening of this new attraction in friggin’ outer space! So take that Pony Express/X2/Simpsons!

What’s old is new again. Sometimes, what’s new was already old before it even debuted. Ah yes, following the trends can be a hard thing to keep up with. After all, Anaheim (and The Mouse by proxy) eliminated all the fantastic Googie, space-age and coffee-shop elements from its resort district just before it started to become cool again. It takes real guts to tear down neon and replace it with cheap plastic and fluorescent lights and then pronounce it to be a tasteful improvement.

Anywho, the New York Times just ran an interesting article about the “identity crisis” facing nostalgia due to the modernization of classic characters from our childhood. A very small teeny tiny almost unnoticeable portion of the article dealt with Disneyland’s desire to update “Toontown, the section of Disneyland that Mickey calls home. One plan features an old-fashioned trolley, but Mr. Iger is not sure that is a smart idea. Will modern children know what an old-fashioned trolley is?”

The Toon Town gentrification rumor has been circulating for a little while. Of course the most notable comment I have heard is “they wouldn’t have to update the place if they hadn’t closed all the A-ticket attractions in Toon Town to begin with”. But I digress. My personal feelings are pretty clear. First I gaze out over Tomorrowland, seeing the aging decrepit People Mover track rotting in the California sun. Then I think about the Toon Town project (which is unofficial by the way) and I wonder to myself: Haven’t they got bigger fish to fry?

So I ask you this:

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Care to elaborate? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.

Well, it looks like the ARTIC plan for Anaheim may be getting it’s main attraction: a MagLev train.President Bush (Just counting the days…) just approved 45 million dollars to study the feasiblity of the first leg of a MagLev train that would shoot from Las Vegas, NV to Anaheim, CA.With the City of Anaheim currently undergoing a bulding boom with the Platnium Triangle, the City’s plan to have a major transportation hub, ala Waterloo or Guard De Nord, may come to a reality. I’m personally surprised by the passage of the bill. Harry Reid, the majority leader, is fully backing the project and Mayor Curt Pringle may finally see Anaheim make it as a more metropolitan city. So the next time you end up having to pay 50$ to fill your Toyota or Honda, just think, you could be going 300 mph, suspended over magnets, and jet from the “Mouse House” to the craps tables in less then two hours.  

In 1998 a new Tomorrowland debuted at Disneyland. It featured an empty Submarine lagoon, an old rickety Space Mountain, a transplanted attraction from Florida and an ill-advised and ill-fated new attraction called the Rocket Rods. The later would close before the turn of the century and the transplant, Innoventions, would eventually become a mere shadow of its Florida predecessor.

These days Tomorrowland is fresher and sharper than the “new” version unleashed in 1998. Space Mountain is a sparkling gem, Buzz Lightyear has taken up residence in the Circlevision Theater, a gleaming new fleet of monorails are on the tracks and the Submarines are once again cruising through the icy blue waters of the lagoon. But what of Innoventions? Is it still the attraction that time forgot? The answer is a resounding “no”.

The bottom floor of the old Carousel Theater, the current home of Innoventions, is under major construction. The Mayor of Tomorrowland (that’s Tom Morrow for you layman) got his eviction notice and the Innoventions Dream House is moving in. The sprawling interactive, live action, free form exhibit will span the entire bottom floor including the rotating outer ring. It’s real technology on display that you can touch and feel. You don’t have to settle for watching Cast Members demonstrate how the technology works, you will have the ability to walk right into the modern abode and put it to use yourself – no restrictions.

The exhibit features every technological marvel they could cram in and a character family that wanders through the house interacting with guests and living out the daily dramas of being a modern family in a modern home. It’s like nothing you’ve encountered in any Disney Park around the world. So keep your balls peeled to see how the new concept works. Will the openly accessible techno-toys prove to be too troublesome to manage and maintain? Only time will tell.

What I can tell you is, the new Dream House is finally living up to what Innoventions has been promising all along: new technology in everyday application. Are you sure this doesn’t belong in Fantasyland? [smirk] All joking aside, it’s a smart and welcome addition to the new new Tomorrowland. Now if only they would bring back the People Mover.

Are you ready to get in a really really really long line? The construction walls are just about to come down over at Disney’s California Adventure in the Paradise Pier district and Toy Story Midway Mania is almost ready for the public’s prying eyes. The attraction with the overly wordy title is in its final test and adjust phase as I type this.

Long Story Short: You get in a vehicle, pop on some 3-D glasses and play several different, interactive computer generated midway style games. On your journey you’ll shoot darts, hoops, suctions cups and pies from your own personal “gun” and score points. When you’re done, you’ll get a score. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds.

Good: The technology on display here is staggering. One of the simplest and most dazzling effects is how the projectiles that splat, soar and careen their way onto the 3-D targets actually appear as if they are coming from the “gun” mounted to the front of your vehicle. Other 4-D effects serve to enhance the experience, like puffs of air when you pop a balloon or a light splash of water when you hit a wet target. It’s great fun and immensely entertaining.

Bad: There is no story here. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. The very best Disneyland attractions are the ones that place you in the middle of a story in progress or at the least a highly themed environment. Beloved attractions tell a story. Also-rans do not. On Midway Mania you get in, you play the games and you get off – it’s like Buzz Light Year’s Astro Blasters on steroids without a plot. It’s all whiz and no bang.

Ugly: The ride vehicles are technically superior but strange in shape and size. Also there’s no clever disguise of a mine car, bobsled or jeep. It’s just a big weird behemothey thing you sit in to facilitate the game play.

Odd: It was noted among quite a few male riders exiting the attraction that firing the “gun” (an unusual device that requires you to yank repeatedly on a cord every time you want to fire) bears a resemblance to **ahem** a certain type of gratification. Females may not get it but the guys on board spotted the similarities immediately. One fellow even claimed to be blind after riding. You may want to steer clear of unsupervised packs of teenage boys.

So there you have it. Toy Story Midway Mania is spectacular display of a superior technology hindered only by it’s lack of story. It really doesn’t matter what I think anyway because people are going to love this attraction! It’s the type of family friendly fair that plays directly to the Disneyland faithful and the Pixar devoted. In other words everyone on the planet is going to be scrambling to ride it over and over again.