The West Side of the Kingdom
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Let’s talk about the new Lincoln show for a moment. I’ve seen it. I made a special stealth trip to Disneyland a few weeks ago to see it (and to say goodbye to Marc’s bears). I think it’s a joke. If you haven’t seen the show and want to know nothing about it, skip down a few paragraphs.

There’s enough to talk about to fill a whole monthly column when it comes to Lincoln. I will try to present to you my "cliff notes" version. I think The Walt Disney Story has been destroyed. Let alone the fact that they packed up one of the two recreations of Walt’s offices to cart off to Orlando for the big 100 Years of Magic bash there; the great film with footage of Walt working the Audio-Animatronic bird is gone and now there is a replacement video where the True Life Adventures area was. The video at best is weak. It attempts to give viewers a history of Walt Disney and his vision for Disneyland, but is too short to really convey a real sense of dignity and legacy.

The video about Walt Disney features Bruce Gordon of Walt Disney Imagineering and Dave Smith, the company’s "Archivist" out of Burbank. How about using people that actually did know Walt? Where’s John Hench in the video? How about Alice Davis? What about Dick Nunis or even Marty Sklar, both owing their lengthy Disney careers to Walt? That would give the video much more credibility in my mind. Instead, it’s thrown away.

The purpose here isn’t to challenge anyone’s knowledge of Walt or of the company he founded. I’m just pointing out that there are individuals out there that would have likely been more than happy to discuss Disney in this video. I believe that the portion shown at Disneyland is from a much larger project that does feature people that knew Walt. If this is, indeed, the case, I feel that the powers that be certainly chose the wrong people to convey the message in this Disneyland portion.

Nit-picking about the pre-show aside, let’s get down to the real meat here. The new Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln show is all about the 3-D sound. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. It’s not about Abraham Lincoln; it’s about how many stupid gags they can put in your ears with this technology. How many people can whisper in your ear in 15 minutes? How about making a bug buzz around your head at the White House (gee - that’s reverent and awe-inspiring)? How about making Lincoln’s voice actually come from the stage in front of you instead of all around you? A classic example of Disney showing off a technology and then dropping the ball completely in the final play. And the choice of using the Gettysburg Address? Personally, I think it’s 10 of the most bland sentences in history. There is no emotion and certainly the feeling we all got watching the original Lincoln show’s speech is long gone.

3-D sound being married to Abraham Lincoln is like bringing a simulator platform together with Hall of Presidents. They are not meant to be together. 3-D sound belongs in Alien Encounter. There, guests can laugh, scream and make noises all they want as something is stalking them in the darkness. But hearing people laugh, scream and comment out loud while you’re supposedly being spoken directly to by Lincoln; there is something terribly wrong and disrespectful about that.

If Disney was so hot to show off this technology at Disneyland, why not incorporate it into the Doom Buggies in the Haunted Mansion? Imagine how cool that could have been without destroying the show. This type of gimmick should be used to enhance shows where possible; entire shows shouldn’t be built around it, in my opinion.

Most people don't realize that to hear the new show, you have to wear individual headsets.  Now, this has been done for several years at Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World; it still strikes me as a bit nasty.  Disneyland on average gets about 65,000 visitors per day during the summer.  You've got to figure that some of them have to have odd things creeping through their hair or don't keep their ears as clean as you and me.  Several of my readers have commented to me that they think this is really icky, which is what got me thinking about it even before I saw the show myself.  Wearing a full headset is a bit more personal than slipping on a pair of 3-D glasses.  I'm sure that Disney takes this all into consideration and keeps these headphones as sanitary as possible.  Perhaps I am in the minority here, but it still freaks me out a bit.

Hygiene issues aside, the first time I saw the show, I had to put on four different headsets before finding one that was working. The show is brand new; if the equipment is already temperamental just a few weeks into the show’s lifespan, I fear this might be Disneyland’s newest headache.

Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln is a huge disappointment to me. Even with attractions of all types and AA figures doing everything but running around these days, when the lights dimmed and Paul Frees introduced Lincoln and the curtains parted, seeing Lincoln sitting there was pure Disney magic. When the figure stood, it always was one of the biggest "wows" of my visit to the Park. Show quality is what was missed this time around. Disney attractions are much more than excuses to use technology. Imagineers are first and foremost, story tellers. Any good company figurehead will tell you that. Unfortunately, the showmanship is so muddied and cut-back these days that what we’re left with is an expensive gimmick, be it Lincoln, Rocket Rods or Soarin’ Over California.

You can’t buy success. It’s something that comes from somewhere deep within each of us. Some sing, others write. Many paint with a brush, while a few perform magic with blueprints. Just because you buy something, doesn’t mean it’s automatically going to work for you because you threw money at it. Disneyland and Walt Disney Imagineering work because they were created by visionaries out of dreams and a lot of hard work. Fox Family, AT&T Broadband or the latest fad of the month may work just fine for Disney; they may also fail and prove to be huge mistakes and financial losses that you and I cannot even comprehend down the line. And Disney does make costly mistakes. Just whisper the word "Ovitz" to any shareholder and see what kind of reaction you get.

I personally would love to see Disney spend $3 billion on its theme parks and existing facilities rather than invest in yet another outside company that’s already financially crippled. You can have all the "strategic positioning" you want, folks; it won’t do a bit of good if the core of your company dies due to a cancer such as greed or over-enthusiasm to position it strategically in every market known to man, or all of your best people have left because they are tired of the way you run the ship these days.

If you ask me, while Disney is out on its corporate spending spree these days, they should buy some common sense.

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-- Rick West

-- Posted August 15, 2001
©2001 Theme Park Adventure Magazine and LaughingPlace.com. All rights reserved.