Normal people visit Hawaii for fun. I go there to work. My first three
trips to Hawaii were part of a project for CINCPACFLT at Pearl Harbor during
my AI days. (Nice work if you
can get it.) I managed to do some touring while I was there, in
contrast to my colleagues who worked round the clock. Here we see the
Iolani Palace, which is a lot smaller than it appeared in the
Hawaii Five-O credits.
I've traveled in a lot of different contraptions, but
this was a first: a submarine ride off Waikiki beach. The unfortunate
thing is that there isn't a lot to see down there, aside from bits
that the sub company has planted themselves. But wandering around a
hundred feet below the surface has its rewards anyway, including the
weird things that happen to color the deeper you go.
To most people, Orlando means one thing: Disney. Which I guess makes
me part of most people. When I had to go there recently to visit our
sales office, my first thought was that I'd take a day for amusement
parking. Having been to Disneyland and Universal Studios in
California, I decided to opt for Disney-MGM Studios. Here you can see
the Hollywood Tower Hotel, which is part of a Twilight Zone
ride. Although the sky looks calm now, it didn't take long for it to
start threatening some serious rain. Which held off just long enough
for me to get through the major stuff at the park. (The Jessica Rabbit
picture on my mysteries page was a souvenir
of this visit.)
After that I repaired to the nearest outlet mall to do some serious
damage to my credit rating.
I've been a Muppet fan almost as
long as there have been Muppets. (Anybody else remember the Land of
Gorch from the first
season of NBC's Saturday Night? Which couldn't be called Saturday
Night Live because Howard Cosell used the name for his variety show!)
And I have a particular fondness for Fozzie Bear. Fozzie and I have a
lot in common: a desperate need to entertain and to make people laugh;
a sense of our own abilities that's somewhat in excess of other's
sense of our abilities; and a determination to persevere even when the
audience wishes we wouldn't, sometimes expressed loudly and
unequivocally. The Muppetvision show at Disney-MGM is the best thing
there, reminding me of just how much I miss Jim Henson and the gang
and their weekly half hour from that tacky little theatre in
London.
Disney's simulation of reality takes on a subtly different form at
the Studios. At the Magic Kingdom the intent is to make everything
believable and seamless; but at the Studios the idea is to create a
movie form of realism. Case in point: the Imperial Walker in the
forests of Endor at the entrance to the Star Tours attraction. (Never
refer to something at a Disney park as a ride. It upsets them.) If
we were in the Magic Kingdom (as in Disneyland in Anaheim), the
illusion would be perfect. But because we're in a movie studio, where
the illusion never needs to go further than the camera sees (and where
extending the illusion beyond the camera's range is unnecessary
expense), the Walker and the trees are all backless. So by being less
realistic they're actually more realistic. Obvious, isn't it?
Most everything at Disney World is larger than life. Each of the
hotels has a theme. I chose the Wilderness Lodge, in part because the
presence of a Rocky Mountain lodge in the flat center of Florida
seemed so improbable. But the illusion holds up pretty well, down to
the phony frost on the windows. (What kind of people, I wonder, stay
at the Contemporary Hotel? And what's its theme supposed to be:
charmless apartment block out of George Orwell?) And you have to
admire the way Disney turned Sleeping Beauty's Castle into a monster
of a birthday cake for the park's anniversary. Although you
think they'd know that you're supposed to light the
candles, not the cake...
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