The remaining three quarters of the most bizarre moments came from a television special celebrating the tenth anniversary of Walt Disney World. Feeling curious, and rather disappointed that no such special was made for WDW's fortieth, I watched "Kraft Salutes Walt Disney World's Tenth Anniversary", kindly uploaded by the good folks at Progress City.
By the gods old and new, I didn't know I was about to watch the Disney equivalent of the "Star Wars Holiday Special"!
Okay. Let us ignore for the moment the elements of this special that are most obvious and that everyone who has watched it on YouTube has already pointed out and commented upon: the uncomfortable-as-heck-in-hindsight presence of Dana Plato, the surreal presence of Michael Keaton, the overall very 1981-ishness of the whole shebang, the fact that the action takes place inside the Magic Kingdom exactly twice -TWICE!- in this special allegedly about the tenth anniversary of Walt Disney World, and the fact that nobody is wearing seatbelts in their backwards station wagon seats in the opening number. My favorite parts are:
* - Rick Shroeder's character, who is what people in the media thought us smart kids growing up in the early 80's with them newfangled video games and home computers and (horrors!) pocket calculators would actually behave like. My God, he'd be the type specimen Nerd Of The Time if only he wore big glasses and a pocket protector. Alas.
* - Crazy Auntie and the little boy she has... adopted? I would have assumed that, but there's a line about how Annyong (yeah, let's call him Annyong) misses his family after Crazy Auntie brought him to Fort Wilderness to get him to smile, so the conclusions I'm drawing are a little unsettling.
* - The assurance, from this special, that you will be greeted by Mickey Donald and Goofy (and Michael Keaton if he is available) the minute you approach the entrance to the Contemporary Resort.
* - The moment with the country band in Fort Wilderness where it appears as though Annyong ain't having none of this sh*t, and makes everyone time-travel with his mind.
* - The "Meaningful Talk" between Rick and his dad. Which is, in actuality, Rick being Emo at his dad and his dad singing a song at him instead of listening. The song in question is, of course, about how parents should listen to their children. Honestly, this part might be my favorite WTF moment in an hour of television full of them.
* - Shopping montage! Like you do! In Walt Disney World! Don't you wish you could say that this was the first early Walt Disney World special you saw this week that halted the action to watch all the wimminfolk go shopping? Me too.
* - The slow realization that all of the Magic Kingdom establishing shots look a little stock-footagey.
* - When we finally get into the Magic Kingdom, it's to hear Bo Duke sing a douchey song.
* - And the scene with Bo Duke immediately thereafter. Wow.
* - The endless, pointless dance flashback. Yeah, I was waiting for Bea Arthur to show up too.
* - Though now that I mention it, at least Michael Keaton is nice enough to fill the Harvey Korman niche.
* - The last segment. All of it. Everything about it. As you may have noticed it contains the one Disney song in the entire special.
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Sketch of the Day!
I hoped to bring this to finish for a contest over at DeviantArt. Ah well.
There's a reason why I didn't have time to finish her though, and we'll get to that in the next series of posts, which will be ready to start next week (I hope).
Until then, the Onion AV Club TV Club has been knocking it out of the park with their Christmas Special Advent Calendar (their latest at the time of writing includes the phrase "Old Testament Santa", which is a thing of beauty given the context) and enjoy this amazing Comics Alliance review of a very strange Disney Christmas comic.
