Riding off into the weekend with Mr. Toad

An opening day attraction in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, only the smaller California version still exists. But, thanks to the interwebs, where people have time on their hands, you can still ride it, not via somebody's shaky handheld VHS video, but via...some software or other.

As far as we know at Grinwout's, this is the only Disney attraction ever to send its guests to hell. Except, perhaps, for "it's a small world," but we refuse to have that discussion.


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The depths of ventriloquism

Automatonophobes of the world, unite! You are not alone. Coulrophobia gets all the press these days, but let's face it: clowns aren't half as scary as ventriloquists' dummies. It's due to the old uncanny valley: the more something that isn't human approaches humanness, the weirder it gets. And what approaches humanness without actually getting there as well as a good old-fashioned dummy, especially one that's been through the mill of time and would be weird looking even if it weren't a dummy?

io9 starts the ball rolling with their Vintage ventriloquism portraits were incredibly unnerving, but then there's the link back to Flickr with more gems than the average person can bear: the one with the woman and the soldier will be keeping me up nights, I'll tell you that.

A little research into ventriloquism uncovers what you would expect, that it goes back to the ancient Greeks and had all sorts of ups and downs and connections with witches and whatnot up until the birth of popular culture, where it found its metier on the stage, and ventriloquists learned to drink water and throw their voices at the same time (except for Albert Brooks, whose dummy used to drink water while Brooks himself talked, but that's postmodernism for you). The greatest popularizer of modern ventriloquism was Edgar Bergen, who gained his popularity on the radio. Which is a poser. Think about it. A ventriloquist. On the radio. No wonder his lips moved so much when he finally made it to television.

Ventriloquism isn't seen much anymore, but automatonophobes can get their fix at places like Walt Disney World, where the automatons are animated and in many cases are even more uncanny. My vote for the one to avoid?



When the Mouse starts talking, I'm out of there.
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Riding off into the weekend

To celebrate the long weekend, and a break for Grinwout's, we'll ride the New Texas Giant at Six Flags over Texas. It has two claims to fame, the steepest drop (79 degrees) of any wooden coaster, and the steepest bank (95 degrees). It's the bank that intrigues me; there's something scientifically impossible about it to my physics-deprived mind. I guess if you go fast enough, you don't fall out, so there's nothing to worry about. Sounds like a plan.

We much prefer wooden coasters over steel here at Grinwout's HQ. Look how long this ride is! And shaky.

Happy Memorial Day. And don't try this at home: it's almost impossible to film on a roller coaster without killing yourself. Worse, the video will suck, meaning that you'll both die and leave behind a crappy video as your legacy. You deserve better than that.


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Nightmare on Main Street

I have to admit that I've always found the old Disney character costumes extremely creepy.

Granted, the characters went through various phases on the screen, and the earliest Mickey Mouse looks a lot more mousey than the present one. But from the very beginning, when Disney began merchandising, the Mickey that wasn't on the screen looked pretty much like a Dantesque rat rather than a Disneyesque hero. Something about the translation from screen to three dimensions, I guess. Donald Duck, in his earliest screen incarnations, was a lot more weaselly than he became over time, but still, the merchandise was always even more weaselly. Weasel seems to be the coin of the realm in real-life character design.

Disney costumed characters go back to the 30s, long before the parks were invented. Disneyland opened in 1955, and by then, the screen characters were all the round, classic, big-eyed folks we immediately think of. But walking around the park, it was weasels, weasels, weasels. Nowadays, the latest characters are on the verge of adding yet another dimension, with articulated faces and full speaking voices, which if you ask me starts edging close to the uncanny valley, which is a whole different kind of weaselly.

io9 has a great gallery of some of these old costumes at Vintage Disneyland character costumes were the fabric of nightmares, with some links to other pages of similarly bizarre images. The whole Nightmare on Main Street aspect will definitely haunt you for a while, and make you think twice about your next trip to the creepiest happiest place on earth.
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Fantasmic

Fantasmic is a live show that first played at Disneyland before cloning out to other Disney parks. There was no theater. You stood across from Tom Sawyer island and watched this amazing thing unfold, with all sorts of pyrotechnics and images projected on screens of mist and boatloads of Disney characters and, of course, a fire-breathing dragon. The story is something about Mickey Mouse having a dream and the power of good winning out over the power of evil, and what better representative of the power of evil than Malificent, the witch in Sleeping Beauty who transforms herself into said dragon?

Kevin Kidney was an imagineer who worked on the original Fantasmic and the creation of the original dragon (which ultimately ended up being a dragon head on a stick, lately replaced by a full-blooded [?] audioanimatron). One of the things he did back in the day was create a home-brew stop-motion of the potential show-stopper, using an original model that had been designed for the show. If you're a Fantasmic fan or Disney historian, you have to see this. It's Designing a Fantasmic Dragon. And it's fascinating.
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Dick Tracy E-ticket attraction at Disney MGM Studios

Dick Tracy was going to be big. The Disney studio was going all in on this one, with star upon star in the cast, and a very hot Warren Beatty at the director's helm (and in the bright yellow trench coat of the lead character). It was a unique film, if you've ever happened to see it, especially visually. It was all about color, despite the fact that it's harder to imagine a more b&w bland character than the comic strip Dick Tracy. Whatever. One thing I always loved about the strip was the character names: B.O. Plenty, Sparkle Plenty, Pruneface, Flattop. The Sunday strips had a little box at the top designed as a couple of inch square looseleaf page called the Crimestopper's Textbook, with advice for being safe one way or the other. When I was a kid I was stymied by the idea of people actually cutting these things out and trying to make a book out of them. The fact that they were godawful dull, even to a kid, may have played into my interest. The fact that the resulting book would be beyond bizarre was also why I was so entranced by it.

Even though the Dick Tracy franchise was hardly a blockbuster in 1990, Disney expected this film to be big. BIG! It was going to be their blockbuster, and they poured a lot of money into it (which Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg famously, publicly, regretted). Before it all went down the tubes, the company saw that what was on the screen could also be on the ground, and began planning to bring Tracy into the parks, specifically at what was then Disney MGM Studios.

The 1990's press release was saying that " Guests will literally get "into the act" in this new high-tech action-adventure featuring the very latest in Audio-Animatronics, simulation, sound and special effects." And also: "Guests will join America's favorite comic-strip detective in a high-speed chase with his gangster adversaries."

That's from the Disney and More blog. They've got the whole story, and some luscious artwork. It definitely looks like an E-ticket attraction. Unfortunately, the movie's failure at the box office meant that it never got built, and we won't have to worry about running right to it at the rope drop next time we're down there.

Too bad. It looks like it would have been a good one.
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Why they invented the interwebs

One thing that has been true about the internet since the day Al Gore invented it is that it can provide a home for the narrowest of narrowcasting. The history of popular culture in the 20th Century was the development of the mass market. Radio, movies, television, books. Each one came along and, through the development of an appropriate mainstream media mechanism, found the largest possible audiences. A movie or television show wasn't a hit because a lot of people saw it; it was a hit because just about everyone saw it. Mainstream media did, indeed, become the monster (and often the idiot) many people think of it as.

The internet and attendant technologies changed that, putting the means of production into the hands of just about anyone. If you wanted to make a good-looking TV show in 1970, you had to be NBC or CBS. To do it today, you need a couple of hundred bucks and an email account. At the most base level, the web page, the internet has been available to anyone who wanted to be on it from day one, at virtually no cost whatsoever. Everyman publishing communities were one of the first thing to pop on on the internet. Suddenly anyone could have a website about anything. For collectors, for enthusiasts, for people really interested in something that not too many other people were interested in, this was the paradigm shift. Factor in searching, and there you were. If you were interested in hunting for killer owls in the Antarctic, you could put in a search for "hunting for killer owls in the Antarctic" and a second later you were connected to huntingforkillerowlsintheantarctic.com, where like-minded owl seekers were already posting photos of their latest darkly feathered trophy. Absolutely nothing was so small that not only could a website be built around it, but a community could develop around that website.

There's been no turning back.

Today, which is turning out to be an all-Disney day here at Grinwout's, we have discovered what has to be the narrowest subject matter to yet hit the interwebs. It is a site called DSR - Disneyland's Secret Restroom, devoted to one very special (?) restroom in the Happiest Place on Earth.

This website is a loving tribute to the Secret Restroom, filled with photographs, comments, details, and even secrets about the secrets! We hope you'll enjoy it, and that you'll share your photos and remembrances with us.

Oh, yeah. The Disney fans are lining up (so to speak). The site has pages devoted to the door, the mirror, the towels, the vent—everything you could want to know about the DSR, lovingly presented as only the internet can. Sure, there are sites on the Haunted Mansion and POTC, but those are so...broad. So popular. So obvious. Everyone knows that the real Disney fan's interest lies elsewhere. Disneyland's Secret Restroom: check it out. (If you're going to be there for a while, bring a magazine in with you.)

[Via BoingBoing]
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Main Street Electrical Parade

Speaking of Disney, how about your own, personal lighted parade down Main Street? I love when people decide to build something like this; it makes me wish I had the time and dedication (or, well, at least the time), not that I'd necessarily do it, but I'd like to think I could.

Beautifully mechanised miniature Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade.
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Please keep your hands inside the vehicle at all time

It's quiet out there. Too quiet.



If you ask me, the first climb is the scariest part. Details at The Coaster Critic. I love how they warn you not to try filming like this yourself. As if. My eyes would be filled with tears and my hands folded in prayer: who's got time for a camera?

I love films like this. All of the thrills and none of the sheer terror of actually doing it. I've been collecting a bunch, but felt like throwing this one up as a teaser.
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Coney Island

In its golden age, Coney Island was a vast dream world comprising a number of parks, a magnet for New Yorkers seeking otherworldly entertainment. It was something of a permanent world's fair, with rides and curiosities from around the globe, including a small incubator baby farm for premies. Honky tonk eventually took over for one reason or another, and nothing much was left of the place but Nathan's and the Cyclone, both of which have the virtue of being, in their own ways, best of breed (although riding the Cyclone in a car alone will leave you bruised for weeks, while eating a Nathan's hot dog alone will probably cause no detectable physical damage). Talk came and went of rebuilding, of tearing down, of anything to bring it back. Lately it has been brought back a bit, with some new rides and a bit of cleaning up. Disneyland it isn't, but it's getting close to being Coney Island again.

Watching this video will make you want to go. Part of its magic is the juxtaposition of the unlikely music, which proves how important music can be in setting a mood. Even when the visuals are the diametric opposite of Debussy, it feels way more like Debussy than Luna Park: Coney Island Love Letter.

[Via Coudal.com]
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Full-scale version of the Starship Enterprise

Imagine a real life-sized version of the Enterprise. Where would you put it? Las Vegas, of course. Farfetched? Not at all. It almost happened.

The “big idea” was building the ship itself at full-scale. That was the main attraction. That being said, we also knew we would have to have some kind of “show” on board. So, conceptually, it was to be a “tour” of the ship, with all of the key rooms, chambers, decks, and corridors that we knew from the movie. There was to be the dining area for the ship’s crew (where you could dine in Star Fleet comfort), and other special features. There were also one or two interesting ride elements that we were considering including a high-speed travelator that would whisk you from deck to deck.

I had no idea that this was ever in the works. The Goddard Group designs all sorts of amusement attractions around the world. Rides, parades, museums, casinos, the whole gamut. Gary Goddard, the founder, previously worked at Landmark Entertainment Group, where he was responsible for Star Trek: The Experience, among others. He's responsible for the quote above. Get the whole story at the Goddard blog.

Via BoingBoing.

Make your own amusement park rides!

This being the Saturday before Easter, right now Walt Disney World is not crowded. Not at all. What it is is CROWDED!!! For the people who are there waiting in line, this would be the perfect time to catch up on old Grinwout's entries. For the rest of us, this might be good time to design some new rides, so that these people won't have to wait in line for so long.

Yeah, right. I'm sure the Disney folks are just dying to hear from us.

It was only a generation or so ago when the idea of inventing amusement park rides might not seem so farfetched. America was a country of inventors and engineers. We could make anything we needed when we needed it. We had toys for kids who were the inventors of tomorrow (erector sets and chemistry sets) and we had magazines for the grownup inventors of the day (Popular Science and Popular Mechanics). To some extent these were probably inventor porn, just laying out all the things we could invent if in fact we invented anything but we never did, but then again, this was a golden age of electronic kits so that people could build their own stereos or radios or whatever. (Steve Wozniak was one of these build-it-yourselfers; the original Apple was entirely aimed at this market.) Maybe there really were a lot of DIY amusement park rides.

The June 1945 issue of Mechanix Illustrated (you've gotta love that futuristic x in Mechanix) explained how your inner inventor could make a fortune designing carnival rides. Because they were portable, every traveling carny in the country would want to buy one, as compared to the stodgier permanent parks. As a matter of fact, the "ride men" were apparently just waiting at their mailboxes for you to send in your designs, provided your designs were what the industry needed.

Safety, of course, is a prime consideration no matter what type of ride you create. All amusement riding devices are perfectly safe and no new ride will be considered unless it is safe not only for adults but for small children; a big slice of riding device income comes from small kids, and a ride operator doesn’t want to kill off his customers! It is possible, however, to make even the most violent ride perfectly safe. But you’d be surprised how many would-be inventors never give this vital factor a thought.

Even back in 1945, killing off your patrons was frowned on. Very sharp thinking on the part of the ride men!

There's jpgs of the original article, plus the transcribed text, at WANTED – A MILLION-DOLLAR RIDE (Jun, 1945).

Via Boing Boing.