While I am informed that we should have caught Muppets 4D, I am glad to say that I feel no regrets about what we did next: The Indian Jones Stunt Extravaganza. The conceit of this particular show was that they were filming scenes from Raiders of the Lost arc with Harrison Ford's stunt double. While this sort of meta-setup got middling results for the Great Movie Ride it worked well here because it was used to allow for audience participation and complex set changes without breaking the suspension of disbelief, and gave the cast and crew something to talk about in the down time. The three scenes in this version were a booby-trap filled temple raid, a battle in the streets of Cairo with a delightful chase up and around a castle a la Parkour, and finally a more traditional restaging of the airfield bomber/boxing sequence involving some crowd-pleasing explosions. The extras from the crowd participated in the latter two scenes and seemed to have a lot of fun, although they also demonstrated that being a good extra takes a bit of acting talent. All and all, the rapport of the cast was terrific and they could probably use some of those techniques for the Great Movie Ride.
We used the remaining sunlight to walk over to the east side of the park, which aims for a period Los Angeles style. To our delight, this included trolley lines and a streetcar themed food cart. I suspect that they made it in part as a tributes to 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' which featured the old Red Car trolley system. I'd done the Tower of Terror before and neither my mother or wife were excited by the process. Two of us were pondering the Aerosmith Rock-and-Rollercoaster but the line was fairly long and we'd failed to grab a fast pass earlier in the day. Later on, we would make good use of the fast passes, but we had yet to learn of their great practicality
After checking out a villainous sweet shop, we went to the well-reviewed Little Mermaid show. The setting was an indoor theater, as compared to the arena seating for Indy. Another difference was that the show was a straight revue: a quick summary of the plot accompanied by three musical numbers. The fun part is that the sea life, with the exception of the titular heroine, is portrayed using puppets. The various characters are all well handled and the use of ultraviolet light both makes the creatures stand out and obscures the puppeteers. Mom had a bit of trouble hearing Sebastian, who had a rather deep voice, but otherwise the vocals were excellent. As is standard with the Disney shows, they also found ways to incorporate a multitude of senses with a watery mist that functioned as a medium for a supporting laser show work.
After the show, we did one last trip around the park before the 7 pm closing time. That observation leads to one other consumer advisory: in addition to watching for what parks and rides are closed in the off-season, if you aren't doing park hopping it's a good idea to check out how late the parks are open. It varies from day to day and from park to park. I'd really like if the Smithsonian would experiment more with a system like that. They have at times in the past and it seems like a great way to have at least one museum open after 5 pm without dramatically raising the staffing costs.
Photographs by Greg Sanders and family and are available under a creative commons license.
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