Yes, That *Was* The Sound of My Jaw Dropping...

In the "I'm way behind the times" category, last night I watched for the first time a video file of an Epcot attraction that I've got to see: "Food Rocks". (Yes, it *has* been 15 years since I've been to WDW.) And my immediate impression: Oh. My. God.

"The Peach Boys"? "Pita Gabriel" singing "I wanna be - your high fiber!" What were they thinking (or smoking) when they came up with this? And it looked and sounded like they spent serious bucks on music licensing, etc. Yikes. I mean, the kids in the audience won't get who the parodies are (The Police? Peter Gabriel? Chubby Checker? Does anyone under 40 know who they are?), adults will be bored / insulted by the nutrition sermon, and any fans of the original music will feel nauseous and/or angry. So, who exactly was supposed to like this thing?

What it really reminds me of is the cheesy show in the Produce department at our local supermarket. They have a low-budget animatronic grocer in a barnyard surrounded by robot fruits and vegetables, and they sing kid's songs like "Old McDonald". (One of my friend's child is scared crapless by all this, and it's now known to us as "The Scary Vegetables".) Anyway, with "Food Rocks", it's like Disney was trying to do the same kind of show, but decided to do it with great production values and sparing no expense putting the thing together. Underneath all the animatronics, flashly lighting and fully-orchestrated high-fidelity stereo score, it's a lame little elementary school play. (At least when the school children miss their lines it's amusing.)

This actually brings me to Steinberg's First Law of Disney Attraction Longevity: These days, if a Disney attraction can't even last 15 years, it's got to be pretty bad. I mean, "Mission to Mars" lasted 18 years at Disney World until 1993 (and 17 years at Disneyland), and it was outdated by 1980. The first "Journey into Your Imagination" redo in 1999 was universally hated, and yet it still took 2 years for them to close and slightly fix that one. And the creaky "Carousel of Progress" is on its last legs (and ninth life) and yet it's still running after 40 years! I mean, for Disney to close an attraction in the Eisner era, its has to be either too expensive to maintain or driving-away-business, paying-customers-demanding-refunds-at-City-Hall bad (cases in point: "Light Magic" or "Superstar Limo", some really odorific attractions). So much for Walt's philosophy of improving things just because you can create better or more entertaining experience for the guests...