E "Eddy" Edwards, et al
E "Eddy" Edwards
OK, they don't, but condo developers sure seems to. Parks lost to condos include:
• Whalon Park, Lunenburg, MA
• Freedomland U.S.A., The Bronx, NY
• Astroworld, Houston, TX (condo-fication pending)
• Six Flags Magic Mountain, Valencia, CA (on hold . . . for now)
And many more, more than likely (but digging through the list of dead parks on Wikipedia is, like, way bumming me out.
In all unearned fairness to condo developers, it's not, really, that they set out to destroy amusement parks for the same of a place to build layer upon layer of 30 year mortgage apartments, but, like with the still-more vulnerable landed ozoners — drive-in theatres — amusement parks tend to be great tracks of freeway-close land more valuable for stacked housing development than their current lowly (i.e. "entertainment") uses can pay.
Sic transit gloria places to go to have fun, drink over-priced fountain drinks, `n perhaps cop a feel come a Saturday night. (More . . .)
When the moon is shinin' bright?"
E "Eddy" Edwards
Sure, you survived all the back-stabbing in the shake-ups at Aerospace and that's good. The Mercury project turned out to be a winner for you guys and that was good, too. Of course, the last of the Mercury shots went up in May and that was bad. But that means that Gemini is right on schedule and the Titan II — your baby! — is right there in the spotlight! Unfortunately, you got you got squeezed off Titan in the shake-up and that's a big bad. But, you're new baby is the Dyna-Soar — a real space plane, junior, and not just "SPAM in the can" stuff! — and you just know that's gonna be the future, man, and you are gonna stay handcuffed to that baby for years and years and years to come! That's the New Frontier written big across the heavens, man!
A satirical revue premiering at the COMEDY WAREHOUSE, Pleasure Island, Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida, on or about May 1, 1989
by "Anonymous by request . . ."
Editor's Note: "R.I.P. Pleasure Island, we hardly knew ye," and all that "it's September 28th, and I'm outta a job!" jazz. Closing along with everything esle: The Comedy Warehouse, the home of improv on P.I.(well, except for The Advenuture's Club and any one of the P.I. gin mills where a desperate out-of-towner can be found attempting to get lucky with some other desperate out-of-towner: "'Jack Mack and the Heart Attack?' Man, I was into them before they got all commercial, too! Small world, hunh? So, uh, you staying on property?"). But before there was no script in The House, there was . . .
Yes, what follows really is the script that was really written at the behest of Michael "Don't Let the Mouse Hit ya In The Ass On Yer Way Outta Here!" Eisner and was really produced and — Yipes! — performed, in public, for what passed for paying guests, in a Disney O & O venue. Damn, I miss the '80's.
PREFACE
Michael Eisner gave Walt Disney Imagineering this assignment: "Create a show for the Comedy Warehouse. It should be funny, light, satirical; the first Disney review that pokes fun at the Disney Guest Experience. Be bold! Use this as your measure: create a show that, if someone else did it, we'd sue 'em."
This is the script of that show.
THE SHOW
The audience is seated. Since this is a "COMEDY WAREHOUSE," strange-looking warehouse employees hurry about, getting ready for the show.
JACK WAGNER'S VOICE IS HEARD. The employees scatter. SHOW TIME!
The Enchanted Tiki Room
as told to E "Eddy" Edwards
"I'm wearing a 1930's tux my girlfriend is in a 1950's prom dress, we just graduated high school, so we're gonna do Grad Nite at Disneyland. Cool. Your average mid-70's high school graduate sweetheart dorks.
Except that we had both been doing lots of speed — lots — and we'd both been awake for at least 5 days. When we got there, we did the whole Grad Nite thing: pictures, stuffed Mickey with a diploma, and all that. Everything seemed OK until about 4:30 in the morning. Only about an hour left before we were supposed to get back on the bus. We're wiped out, but we can't really head out too early because we figure that people's think we were crashing from a massive speed overload, or so our massive speed overloaded brains were telling us. (More)
Design and Development:
Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776-1810): Ultraviolet and ultra cool
E "Eddy" Edwards
Aw, romantic Chojnów! The Stockton, the Kearney, the East McKeesport of south-west Poland! A bustling metropolis just a stones through from the thoroughly-modern A4 highway, the "road of undiscovered dreams," by those in the know. But this idyllic off-center center of Gmina Chojnów, wasn't always the place it is today. In the early 1800s, Chojnów could be a very lonely place, especially for a young man by the name of Johann Wilhelm Ritter (December 16, 1776 - January 23, 1810). With an inquiring mind and an eye toward what was beyond human ability to see, he searched his heart and the horizon for what was "beyond the blue." In time, his existential déjà vu would in time become the very empiric rationalist jamais vu for the "beyond the blue" end of the spectrum and therein lies our tale.In short, we can all thank "Johnny" Ritter, physicist, chemist, psoriasis-sufferer (un confirmed) for discovering ultraviolet radiation, better known as "ultraviolet light," still better known as "black light" making it possible for the later development of dark rides and for teenagers around the world to finally cop a feel in the semi-dark and nearly get away with it . . . (More)
E Eddy Edwards
Casey Jr. Railroad Train is the best, most perfect theme park attraction in the world. This single attraction is a careful combination of most of the vital elements that, working together, define a complete themed attraction experience.Wait! Say wha'? Can it be that the Casey Jr. Circus Train in Disneyland, all 3 minutes, 30 seconds of it, is the best, most perfect attraction in the world?
Sure, what the hell. I mean . . . why not?
The "why not" list could be lengthy, so let put this selection in perspective . . .
(More . . .)
E "Eddy" Edwards
Greetings DeScopers! Sometime in the late 1990s — or last week, I dunno. Time is so relative, you know? — I posed to you, the discriminated readers of DeScope -- A Cranky Journal of Themed Entertainment Design and Development, what, in your oh, so sensitively- attuned- to- way- gnarly- bitchin'- themed- stuff minds, was THE top theme park attraction now or ever. I also asked to name your favorite illicit theme park thrill. And where is the best hotdog-on-a-stick location.
Not surprising, the response was unanimous on the most important question, mainly because I am the only one of you slackers who responded . . . (More . . .)
E "Eddy" Edwards It has come to my attention that some other online / bloggy / Journal-eque publication, the name of which escapes me, ran a poll, nay, a tournament to find the best ride in America.
Theme Park and amusement park rides, I suppose that means (but feel free to insert your own smutty joke here).
And the winner, with a full 50% of the over-all votes was . . . Tower of Terror?
(More . . .)
Dark Rides on my Brain: In Praise of Day-Glo Thrills
and Paper-Mâché Glories
E "Eddy" Edwards
Well, another seemingly seasonable season is soon to be a fevered memory, the official end of the Summer preparing already to leap upon us like a bi-polar hop-head monkey on a six-week corn dog, funnel cake, and Sno-Cone binge, dropping down onto our unprotected shoulders as if from some hidden trap door in the ceiling of the Santa Cruz Giant Dipper entry ramp, emitting as it plummets an eerily-mechanical scream, clawing at our necks with a full set of Lee Press-On Nails®, trying to get at the candy necklace we purchased moments before in front of the deep-fried artichoke heart and mushroom stand.And I think I speak for all of us in the themed amusement racket when I say: "Not a moment too soon." About the "end of Summer" thing, that is. The bit about the monkey we could have done without and will certainly have us in therapy for years yet to come. And who would sell Lee Press-On Nails® to a monkey anyway? (More . . .)
E "Eddy" Edwards
PlayAn Event should mirror the joys, discoveries, physical, sensory, and emotional expressions of play and should be emotionally engaging to a child on their most basic emotional and schematic level. Children process new situations and information through play. When they are properly designed, Events allow them become a first person part of the story being presented, bringing them into the "make believe" of the situation, and in doing so create for themselves a bound with the content being presented . . . (More . . .)
The evolving process (as in, a process that is allowed to evolve to meet changing design and project needs as the design is developed in a natural fashion as needed) that brings together diverse sets of factors — personal schema, physical needs, external story or context budget, footprint constraints, personalities of the designers and those for who the design is being executed, the need to mention the client's name early and often, etc. — with the specific intention of presenting opportunities for immersive, first-person (including groups of "first-persons" having individual experiences in a group) multisensory, multischemic experiences. (More . . .)
Live themed out-of-home entertainment event? Nay, SUPER live themed out-of-home entertainment event! Thirty five years before a passel of light bulbs wowed `em in Anaheim, Lee Tracy, that man among men set the standard for all that would follow . . .
"I hope we never lose some of the things of the past." - Walt DisneyIt's mid-July, 1955, and there you sit in transfixed. Hotter `n hell outside, but here in the living room your face is cooled by the bluish glow of the giant 21 inch cathode ray tube in your family's RCA Victor RotoMatic TV set. It's late afternoon, maybe it's early evening.
Outside, it's your yard, your neighborhood, your village / town / city. But sitting there right . . . NOW, you are miles away from mundane everyday foo-foo-rah because you're tuned to your local ABC affiliate to watch . . .
"Disneyland!"
(More . . .)
The Lazarus Effect . . .
. . . is a sub-set of themed entertainment design and development named after paleontologic concept of " Lazarus Taxa," a term that describes the phenomenon of a species of plants or animals that seemed to have become extinct at sometime or another only to appear again later either in the fossil record or happily moving about unaware that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. The Lazarus Effect in design and development is the rediscovery (or reuse or repurposing) of a supposedly extinct entertainment or exhibition technique to engage and communicate with a modern audience.
"Lazaruses" in this context can be just about anything from earlier times . . . (More . . .)
Themed Entertainment Design and Development!
Aw! 2008! A year of rebirth and renewal, a year of "becoming" (usually a good thing) and, more significantly, of "not becoming" Polar opposites? Nay! As the aging hipster-wanna-bes still (alas) say, "It's all goooood."
Becoming:
DCA actually becoming a theme park!Not Becoming:
Six Flags not becoming America's foremost supplier of land for condos (at least in So-Cal, at least for now) . . . (More . . .)
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