Magical Construction

Yesterday, @touringplans posted a photo of the Magic Kingdom hub construction, and I was a little bit heartbroken.

It hit me like that because we have a plan to get hotdogs from Casey's Corner the night we arrive. Now, that plan still stands, and I don't think a nearby construction wall invalidates it. Hell, we fell in love with Animal Kingdom while a massive construction wall engulfed what seemed like half of Harambe. We fell in love with the Tangled Toilets under the shadow of the Seven Dwarfs Scafolding.
But still, I was a little heartbroken.

So how do we excuse their pixie dust?
As someone who has now admitted to them self that Disney World is going to be a place I visit regularly, I have to find my peace with it - I mean, I want the parks to live and grow and have new things for me to see, but it must be hard for Disney as a company to accept that for some people, all they'll see is the pixie dust. Maybe that will compel them to come back? Maybe pixie dust has, as they put it in my line of work, a conversion rate?

On tone and Once Upon a Time

Last time I was in the World, the busses had adverts for Once Upon a Time Season 3. There's something about the pop culture hypereality of WDW that makes the media you encounter while there, the songs, shows, trailers and fads of that visit, seem extra special, extra shiny and appealing.

New episodes of Once Upon a Time appeared on Netflix yesterday, just in time for the countdown to our next Disney vacation. A discussion about the (IMHO of course) artistic failure of the Hobbit movies being due to Jackson's, or someone's, or a group of someones' decision to doggedly stick to the tone of the LOTR movies for the Hobbit, led to me considering how much I like the tone of Once Upon a Time.

For as much as initially OUaT was a late Buffy reaction from ABC, and for as much as it appeared to directly be informed by that ghost wife Anna Friel vehicle of around the same time (itself tonally borrowing from Burton's Big Fish), contemporary Once... Has found a tone really unique to itself, as a sort of Buffy for young mums to watch with their tween daughters. Gilmore Girls the adventure serial, if you will.

Which reminds me, I must start work on that Amy Sherman Paladino Silver Surfer pitch I have in my head.