May 16 - Muppet*Vision 3D

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On this day, in 1991, the Muppet*Vision 3D attraction opened for mayhem at the Disney MGM Studios in Walt Disney World. Starting in 1989, Jim Henson began to negotiate a merger between his entertainment empire and the Walt Disney Company. As part of those negotiations, several shows and attractions were planned to capitalize on the new partnership. Only three ever came to fruition and two of them didn’t last very long. What happened to all that potential, all the youngins might ask? We don’t like to talk about it, but Jim developed pneumonia, didn’t get medical help in time and suddenly died from toxic shock syndrome on May 16, 1990, late in the production of Muppet*Vision and exactly one year before it opened. His unexpected demise threw every Muppet-filled plan out the window except the ones that were already nearing completion and brought negotiations to a grinding halt.

Image courtesy muppet.fandom.com

Just nine days after Jim’s passing, on May 25, 1990, the first Muppet show opened in a little theater in the Animation Courtyard area of the Disney-MGM Studios. Called Here Come the Muppets, the show utilized life-sized versions of the characters rather than the puppet sized ones you might be used to. This show was kind of thrown together to give the Muppets a presence in the park until Muppet*Vision was ready to open, but you wouldn’t have known it was supposed to be temporary looking at it. Here Come the Muppets actually ran for four months beyond the opening of its sister attraction, closing in September 1991 to make way for Voyage of the Little Mermaid, although savvy observers can still claim to see a small piece of it running on a daily basis. The mechanism that moves the rock Ariel sits on to sing Part of Your World is the same one that made a monorail crash the stage of Muppets (if you squint just right, you can almost see it happening).

Image courtesy muppet.fandom.com

Two weeks after Here Come the Muppets closed, a second live show opened. Muppets on Location: The Days of Swine and Roses (could they have possibly come up with a longer title?) once again used the life-sized versions of the Muppets, but this time in an outdoor setting that was much more interactive with the audience. This Muppet show ran for three years before it too closed to be replaced by an Ace Ventura show of all things (What can I say, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, they can’t all be good folks).

Image courtesy guide2wdw.com

Which leaves us with the one Muppet attraction from that era that still runs today, Muppet*Vision 3D. A version of the attraction did also run (somewhat intermittently) in the theater that currently shows Mickey's Philharmagic on the West Coast in Disney's California Adventure between 2001 and 2014. It’s the last project that Jim ever worked on and one of the last that Richard Hunt, another beloved Muppet performer, was a part of (Richard died in January 1992). Putting that tragic history aside, it’s easy to see what could have been had the merger continued when you see Muppet*Vision. All the classic Henson humor is there, coupled with what was then cutting-edge technology. A combination of puppets, computer graphics, live characters, animatronics and special effects that culminate in a glorious three hour finale (just kidding, it’s only ninety seconds) is enough for any Muppet fan to go weak in the knees. The bittersweetness of hearing Kermit’s original voice is mitigated by the delightfulness of the whole presentation (and for those of you saying what does he mean Kermit’s original voice? When did it change? you can find your own way out, thank you very much).

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Of course in the end, we aren’t left with just Muppet*Vision 3D. Fourteen years after the first deal fell apart, Disney finally did acquire all the characters from The Muppets and Bear in the Big Blue House. A live stage show featuring Bear ran for two years around the turn of the 21^st century and guests can currently see a full on puppet show every day in Liberty Square at the Magic Kingdom, The Muppets Present… Great Moments in American History (again with the paragraph masquerading as a title). The current show is Muppet mayhem at its finest and enjoyed the input of several classic Muppet performers during its development, including Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire (before he was abruptly fired). So there is hope that we will continue to get new doses of the Muppets from time to time and I think that is something that most of us can agree that the world sorely needs right now.

February 8 - Disney's California Adventure

On this day, in 2001, Disney's California Adventure Park opened in Anaheim, California. While it is the second theme park to be built in California, DCA is not the first second park to be proposed (I'll give you a moment to wrap your brain around that sentence). A decade earlier, plans had been announced for WestCot, basically a replica of EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World, except with an even bigger Spaceship Earth and a somehow less weird name (though it kind of makes one want to lay down and take a nap), a park that was to be built in Disneyland's parking lot. The slow start to Disneyland Paris and local residents being squeamish about the increase in light pollution, of all things, killed WestCot before anything about it officially began. Then CEO Michael Eisner retreated to Colorado for a spa-filled weekend with 30 of his top executives to brainstorm a new park idea, because they already announced one was coming and by god one was going to. The plan that emerged was to build a paean to all things Californian. In retrospect, that was a terrible idea since that homage was going to be in the middle of the real thing, but I get ahead of myself.

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Problems started right from the beginning. The President of the Disneyland Resort, Paul Pressler, wanted a park aimed at adults, similar to Epcot. Since dining and shopping experiences were seen as the core part of the second Florida park, Paul decided that it would be best to rely on his retail and marketing teams to design the new park instead of Imagineers. Because why would you want any input from creative types when building an entertainment venue? The result was spectacularly disastrous.

Construction began in January 1988 and was mostly done by the end of 2000, mainly because most of the attractions were prefabs. As cast members geared up for opening day, there were a handful of soft opening, sneak preview days in January 2001. The reviews coming out of those days were awful. Chief among the complaints was that there wasn't anything to do. The amount of stores and restaurants seemed to far outnumber the amount of attractions. And the attractions that did exist literally included a tour of how sourdough bread was made. I love sourdough bread (especially Boudin's, the San Franciscan brand featured in the park) and I thought getting a glimpse into Boudin's process was interesting when I visited during that first year. But I also know that I'm in the minority on that. Most people (and definitely people with kids) don't want to pay a bunch of money to visit a bread factory. And then pay more money for lunch. And then more for a t-shirt with the bread factory's logo on it. And then realize that the bread factory is the most interesting thing to do.

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As if those less than stellar reviews getting out weren't enough, Disney proceeded to hang itself more thoroughly by warning potential guests that there was probably going to be mad crushes of people attending DCA in its first several months, so be prepared to be turned away when it reaches capacity. Reality turned out to be the exact opposite. Attendance averaged around 7,500 on weekdays and maybe twice that on weekends (the park's capacity is 33,000). DCA only pulled in around 5 million guests that first year, which sounds good until you know that Disneyland, literally right next door, had over 12.3 million during the same time period. To make matter worse, guest surveys struggled to find 20% of that 5 million who were actually satisfied with their experience. Of course with one of the major attractions being a little gem called Superstar Limo, arguably the worst attraction Disney has ever made (yes, it really was just horrific, but I'm still satisfied that I get to say I'm one of the few who got to ride it), that's not surprising. Drastic measures were needed.

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By the end of 2001, several of the original attractions were gone (including Superstar Limo) and that Disney stalwart, The Main Street Electrical Parade (which had a name change to just Disney's Electrical Parade since it would no longer be going down Main Street USA), was brought in. Joining the parade was a new Who Wants to Be a Millionaire attraction and a new nighttime show, Disney's LuminAria. Flik's Fun Fair, an area for younger children, opened in 2002 and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror opened in 2004, but it wasn't enough. By 2007, it was painfully obvious that a faux Californian experience in the middle of California wasn't working. If it had been built in, say, Europe, maybe things would have turned out differently (but probably not). If someone wanted to experience California culture they didn't need to go to Disney to do it. They could go anywhere else in the state.

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It was briefly considered at this point to just combine the two Anaheim parks into one but since that would cost just as much as redoing DCA, that wasn't feasible. A $1.1 billion remodel was announced in October 2007, which was huge since the park only cost $600 million in the first place. The theme of experience all that California had to currently offer was changed to experiencing specific eras of Californian history. Toy Story Midway Mania replaced several shops on Paradise Pier. A Little Mermaid ride moved in. The front of the park became Los Angeles in the 1920s. Cars Land was built. By the summer of 2012, DCA had undergone such major renovations that it was actually closed for a day and rededicated on June 15 that year. Finally, Disney California Adventure Park (notice the slight name change with the dropping of the 's? That's okay, neither did anyone else) was a destination worth going to (and it turned out that you did need Imagineers involved to achieve that, who knew?). Over 7.7 million guests stopped by in 2012, an increase of 23% over the previous year. And the numbers keep growing. I haven't been back to Anaheim since the summer of 2001, but I look forward to going one day, seeing the complete transformation of DCA and having some Boudin's sourdough. The bread making tour is still there. It's just not the most interesting attraction anymore and that's okay.