Never Mind Sandy, here's "The Halloween Tree"!

The good news is that my neighborhood didn't get hit too hard by the hurricane yesterday.  The bad news is that it looks like New York City and the New Jersey shore took the worst of what Sandy had to offer.  I hope everyone there is safe and staying warm and dry.

It's time to get back in the holiday spirit, so here's a rarity.  It's the 1993 animated film based off Ray Bradbury's spooky novel The Halloween Tree.  It isn't the best quality, but even so the music and Bradbury's narration will get you in the mood for Halloween.  The film is remarkably faithful to the source material (one of the only major changes is switching the gender of a major character and personally I have no problem with that).  It's best enjoyed with something pumpkin spice flavored to drink and a small just taking three at a time leaving enough for the kids I promise selection of candy. 



Next post, we finally, finally reconnect with that old friend I promised.  Have a wonderful Halloween, everyone!

Breaking: "An Essential Field Guide to North American Earthquake Beasts" has Published!

A few months ago, History of Geology author David Bressan asked me to create illustrations to accompany his upcoming article about legendary creatures said to cause earthquakes.  That article has just been published, so go and enjoy!  I want to thank David again for this terrific opportunity, and I will share some of the progress sketches and paintings soon.

An Essential Field Guide to North American Earthquake Beasts

Random 90's Animation: "Balto" (1995)

As stated during Random 90's Animation Month, there were a significant number of unusual and interesting animated films from the 1990's that were not yet available through Netflix during the actual movie marathon.  Whenever they do become available, either through Netflix itself or other means, I'll be reviewing them as they pop up.  "Balto" was just recently on Comcast OnDemand (managed to catch it on the night they took it off, as it happens), and so here's our first such review.

It took me a couple of nights to fully digest "Balto".  There are a lot of things to like in it, and it is easily the best of the three theatrical Amblimation films.  But there are also a lot of things that keep me from loving it.

I don't remember being particularly enthralled with "Balto" as a kid.  Revisiting the film as an adult, I think I understand why, and this probably helps explain why you don't see much nostalgia for "Balto" and also why the film wasn't terribly popular in it's initial release:

"Balto" is essentially like many other animated features where cute animal characters do cute, fun animal character things and their leader saves the day just through bravery and by being himself.  Except this time, all those cute animals are doing their cute animal thing against the backdrop of little children in agonizing, excruciating pain dying horribly as a Diphtheria epidemic rips right through their little village.

As you might imagine, the juxtaposition of cute animals and little kids dying horribly makes this film pretty rough going for it's intended young audience.  Hell, before the climax of "Balto", we get to see a madcap (and very "Les Poissons"-ish) scene where the goofy goose character gets chased around a butcher shop and a scene where one of the dogs happens upon the village carpenter, who had previously gifted a little girl with a handmade sled of her very own, building a set of small coffins.  Look, you know I'll stand by dark animated films.  But -and I will admit it is hard to quantify exactly why- somehow it feels like a bit much when you're presenting a very real threat that is slowly killing a little human kid just like you...

The reality subtext, which is hard to ignore when you watch the film as an adult, doesn't help things.  You see, "Balto" here is in the same somewhat unenviable boat as the better-known "Pocahontas" and "Anastasia".  It is an animated feature film that is somewhat... kind of... a little bit... if you squint and tilt your head sideways... not really... inspired by an actual true historical event.  (Long, long pause.)  Well, a couple of the characters in the movie have the same names as the people involved in that actual thing that really happened, so there.   At any rate, it's hard to watch "Balto" without wondering how many of those adorable little sick kids survived in reality.

But let's try (real hard) to ignore all that for now.  How's the movie itself?  Well, as I said, it is very definitely the best theatrical Amblimation film.  It is also the least interesting Amblimation film to discuss, given how "An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West" and "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" were so fascinatingly bad.  "Balto" is merely inept, since the things it gets wrong aren't all that unusual.

You've got bored-sounding, miscast live-action actors working against professional voice actors.  You've got some surprisingly sloppy, almost unprofessional animation.  Indeed, the film looks like it might have been rushed to finish.  You've got some very generic looking character designs right next to very stylized characters who appear to be from a different movie entirely.  In particular, while I love the design and animation of the two otherwise irritating bears animated by Nicolas Marlet, they really look like they wandered in from an alternate universe.  The music isn't very interesting, the pacing is a little strange (the film is overall fast-paced, but the second half feels very rushed), and I don't even know what the filmmakers thought the live-action bookends were contributing to the experience.  They just make the opening and closing of the movie feel like a bad Christmas special.

"Balto" wound up being the last theatrical feature released by Amblimation.  Steven Spielberg essentially abandoned the studio to focus on the then-forming Dreamworks S.K.G. studio, and it looks as though many of the people who worked on "Balto" followed him there.  Meanwhile, as Universal animation was want to do at the time, the film was followed by a mercifully brief series of increasingly strange sequels.

For more in this series, click this link or the "Random 90's Animation Month" tag below.

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Sketch of the Day

It's my 500'th post!  Have some colorful dinosaurs!

"You cold-farted itch!" - Thoughts on "Food Fight!"

(NOTE: This isn't the "old friend" I said we'd be catching up with last week.  That was just delivered a few days ago, but a few other more immediate things popped up and I will get to it next week, I promise.)

It feels like ages ago when I found that lonely book-that-makes-sounds adaptation of the troubled animated film "Food Fight", doesn't it?  (And oh dear, the format of this blog during it's first year.)  Since then, it felt as though "Food Fight" was going to end up being one of those strange pieces of animation lost to history that I'd never get to see.  Then again, this was a film that was explicitly a feature-length commercial with various advertising mascots as the characters.  With visions of a movie-length version of the astonishing ill-conceived mall scene in "Eight Crazy Nights" in my head, I wasn't too heartbroken over missing out.

Well, turns out somebody out there in the vast seas of the internet acquired a copy of "Food Fight".  That kind soul decided, for reasons that are unclear, to stream the thing on an ongoing 24-hour loop.  And out of morbid curiosity, plus the fact that OCD is a hell of a psychological problem and I have to tie up loose ends whenever I can, I watched the whole damned thing from the beginning.

Welp.

I'm always kind of grudgingly impressed when I already know that a movie is going to be a worthless piece of crap just based off its reputation, but then that movie actually turns out to be even more horrible in every imaginable way.  Furthermore, "Food Fight" is horrible for many reasons that nobody could ever imagine.  Yes, we've got ourselves a fascinatingly bad movie here.  I'd go so far as to call it the "Manos: the Hands of Fate" of animation.  It's that inept and insane.  (And speaking of classic "Mystery Science Theater 3,000" episodes, nobody has learned from the "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" episode never to allude to good movies in their terrible movies.  Hell, "Food Fight" goes ahead and makes a lot of weird references to "Casablanca".  Yeah.)

So first off, obviously the fact that there are real life advertising mascots in this movie that was probably going to itself be marketed towards young children (even though it is really not appropriate for anyone) is disgusting.  But the thing is, here are far fewer advertising mascots than I had been led to anticipate from all the reports of "Food Fight" over at Cartoon Brew (which also have some incredible war stories from people who worked on the film in the comments).  None of the mascots who do show up are the "stars" of the movie.  In fact, most of them only show up as very brief sight gags.  And furthermore, and most puzzling, they're all advertising mascots that were either already kind of obscure in 2005 (the California Raisins show up for Pete's sake), or who represent products that kids tend to not be all that emotionally invested in (ie, syrup and floor cleaner).  If this was meant to be the ultimate product placement movie, then it's remarkably bad at achieving even that dubious honor. 

The name-brand products in "Food Fight" are therefore mostly fictional.  At any rate, they're at war with their nefarious off-brand generic equivalents.  The vilification of generic brands is genuinely despicable and, honestly, making it through this film made me want to support every strange generic off-brand product I see.

So already the movie is morally repugnant, but I kind of figured that already.  What I never could have anticipated was how incredibly incompetent and ugly "Food Fight" is, given all the companies that were supposedly supporting it and all the stars in the cast.  As far as the latter is concerned, I would not dare spoil the fun by naming anyone here.  But your brain will probably crap itself during the voice cast list.  And I'm guessing that the reason why certain mascots who were supposed to show up in the movie didn't is because their owners sat down, watched the movie, and bailed as soon as possible.

"Food Fight" is easily the worst-looking CGI animated feature I've ever seen.  The whole thing looks like the dirt-cheap dollar-bin cash-in of itself.  It's hard to even describe it, because I have never seen anything this inept before.  It looks like it's only the second or maybe third pass after the wireframe stage.  The more I think about it, the more I'm trying to convince myself that there is no way in hell that the version of the movie I watched was the final version.  Nobody in their right mind would sign off on a feature-length piece of animation where everything looks very literally like sh*t.

The animation is so terrible, it's actually hard to tell what the hell is supposed to be happening at any given moment.  Nothing moves -nothing even looks- like anything anyone has ever observed in this universe.  It's unreal how the most basic principles of sequential art and animated art are ignored or even violated in every scene.  I'm talking about things you'd learn the first week of drawing class, like how drapery looks and how it works, or the fact that different substances look different and move in different ways, or how gravity affects objects in a space, or how people have skeletons with joints in specific places and muscles that visibly change shape when they move.  There is one character in particular -an annoying comedy relief weasel-thing- who does not move or behave like any healthy living thing in the history of ever.

And that brings us to the characters.  Now, we've seen a lot of movies with eye-bleeding character designs before (what's up, "We're Back"?), but somehow the herky-jerk nature of cheap CGI makes everything look even more terrible than it already is.  The character's faces are so stiff and expressionless, they end up having to flay their arms around to express whatever is on their minds.  Imagine Ralph Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings" and you have the idea, except everyone looks unflexible, mechanical, and totally unaffected by normal physics.

A couple of things make the characters more awkward and awful than they already are.  First off, do you miss all those uncomfortable stereotypes from the early 80's?  Because if you do, you will find some here.  The "jokes" in the movie on a whole would make Piers Anthony proud as they are a discordant mix of childish puns and inappropriate sleazy gross humor anyway, but the mind-blowing sight of old offensive stereotypes stood out (WTF forever at the gay panic vampire bat thing) and I don't even want to know what they're doing in a feature film made in Twenty-Anything.  I also don't ever want to meet the person who approved of that horrifying Catgirl thing who never even looks at anyone she's supposed to be interacting with. She's named Sunshine Goodness, by the way, because this is the kind of movie that is stupid enough to name a character something as impossibly awkward as Sunshine Goodness.  I am guessing that the only reason she is even a Catgirl is because she was originally a human but they figured it'd be weird to have her marry Dogtective (and this is the kind of movie that is stupid enough to name a character something like Dogtective), so they stuck cat ears on her and called it a day.

I do have one positive thing to say about "Food Fight": it is, like so many of the very worst animated films, mercifully short.  And it's kind of heartwarming that a film so shameless and soulless in concept got as far as it did and never got a theatrical release; hell most people have never even heard of it.  You may be lucky (if that's even the word) enough to still catch it as its pretty easy to search for.  Meanwhile, everyone involved in the movie should take a moment and just sit and think about what they've brought into this world.

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Sketch of the Day!

From Up On Hacker's Hill - Part Two

More watercolor studies of the views from Hacker's Hill - and some of the wildlife too!







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Make sure you tune into TCM this Sunday night for some rarely seen early animation goodies!

And next week, I will hopefully be writing one lengthy post, since I am waiting on something very interesting to be delivered. If all goes well, we'll be catching up with an old friend...

From Up On Hacker's Hill - Part One

The last run of posts have been very wordy, haven't they?  So this week, let's chill out a bit.  I'm going to share some watercolor sketches from a trip to see the incredible views from Hacker's Hill, one of the best-kept secrets of the Sebago Lakes region.  You get a fantastic view of the entire Lakes Region as well as, on a clear day, the White Mountains. 

I was a little overwhelmed by the views but I gave it my best shot. This run of paintings was a little abstract, just to get comfortable:

Hills, Buses, and Pirates - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 4

Apologies for the blurry picture (there was no getting closer to this sign as it was directly over the surface of the pool - where such a warning would be too late come to think of it) but such are the ways in which Disney recognizes Roger Rabbit now.

Our day in Halifax was not at all as relaxing as our day in St. John. You could call it a whirlwind tour, in fact, though maybe a rapidly-up-and-downhill tour would be more accurate. The "Halifax Highlights from Land and Sea" tour we took was highly recommended.  I personally didn't like it all that much, especially since the bus never stopped anywhere so we could get out and walk around/explore/take pictures/use the restrooms.  The boat just went up and down the harbor (nothing we couldn't see from the boardwalk) and the guide told almost exactly the same stories as the bus' guide. When all was said and done, we only had about an hour and a half to explore Halifax on our own!

The tour bus guide did tell us something very useful, and that was the fact that Halifax has a wonderful boardwalk with many nice little attractions along the way, and that the pathway would take us right back to the ship. So let's focus on the positive here. For example, Beavertails!



Oh my actual God, Beavertails are incredible. I like fried dough, but sadly it doesn't like me. This was different. To call this wonderful treat "fried dough" is an insult. It's hard to describe; imagine a Krispy Kreme doughnut glazed with maple sugar but better. Tragically, the only places in the United States they appear to be available are all in Colorado for some reason. But if you are ever lucky enough to have the opportunity to try one, do it.



Subtle, but this is another reason why Halifax is nice. Hell, even the Starling were nicer!



Now when we got back on the boat, it was Pirate Night. What that meant, it turned out, was that piratey activities were going on all night, building up to the big epic deck party. As I mentioned before, this was a little less than as impressive than we'd been led to expect, but it did end with these cool fireworks shot off the boat:



Now, as I was explaining the pirate deck party to a friend afterwards, she misheard me when I mentioned the part where Mickey ziplines down from one end of the boat to another and they shoot fireworks off the boat. After a bit of confused conversation, it turned out she was imagining something closer to this:



And perhaps this wondrous mental image, that had me on the floor, is as good a note to end on. Bon Voyage, Mickey, and may you and your beautiful boat have fair winds and following seas and King Triton being in a friendly type mood and all that.

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Seascape of the Day!

Here's an impressionistic, and almost psychedelic, sunset:

Fog and Poutine - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 3

^^ Just my humble opinion, but if you need to be told this, maybe you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a boat...  (EDIT: Just noticed the hilarious ..."Please..."  As in, "Please don't climb over this giant barrier and fall off the boat and kill yourself!  It would make all of us very upset, you know!")

Today, I'm going to discuss the first of our two ports of call, St. John, New Brunswick.  According to the official Disney Cruise Line description, "Infused with a profound history, Saint John is Canada's oldest incorporated city. Having welcomed immigrants from Eastern Europe and the UK onto its shores for centuries, it claims the country's oldest museum and farmer's market, as well as a critical role in the events leading up to World War II. Because it's seated on the Bay of Fundy and divided by the St. John River, the city is home to a unique, sometimes treacherous phenomenon called Reversing Waterfalls. During high tide, the prevailing river current reverses itself against the normal flow of water, creating rapids or falls.

"Compared to inland locations, the climate of Saint John is moderate, with plenty of romantic fog billowing into the city throughout the year. Take a walk along the waterfront to enjoy the cloud kiss (EDIT: A-HA-hahahaha!!!  Oh, Disney.) as the salt air revives your senses. Later visit one of the many museums dedicated to the city's heritage, shop in the boutiques and art galleries, and savor a lunch of fresh seafood. Saint John offers a relaxing day that sweeps you back in time and refreshes your spirit."

So... about that "romantic fog:"



This was our very first view of St. John pulling in.  I think I can see land in all that fog, maybe, if I squint?

In each port-of-call, we had eight hours total in port.  We had about six hours to explore each city.  When you are dropped off at a city and given only six hours to explore, sadly, you do not have a lot of time to find things to do there that you wouldn't be able to do at home.  After all is said and done, my family absolutely wants to return to the Canadian Maritime Provinces and spend more time there. Everyone was genuinely nice and friendly to us silly tourists.  At St, John we were greeted at the terminal by folks handing out little gifts like pins and roses.

From what I understand, the most beautiful parts of New Brunswick are quite a ways away from St. John, and there was simply no time to visit the Hopewell Rocks or undersea (usually) caves.  But the short bus tour of the city we took (called "St. John Highlights") brought us to one fantastic natural phenomenon: the Reversing Waterfalls.



The tides are indeed crazy in New Brunswick, and this particular stretch of river is prone to especially violent tides.



A speedboat tour of the 'falls. I'd imagine this would be fun for about a minute and a half.



Cormorants resting after surfing the rapids.

After the waterfalls, we headed up to the Carleton Martello Tower, a historic sight that, having been built on the top of a hill, gives you a lovely view of the enrite city and harbor.

On a sunny day, that is. As for the day we visited, well...



Yeah.

Now, to be fair, this wasn't anyone's fault and it wasn't anything anyone could have helped. Still, I am a New Englander, and therefore I am defined as an animal that complains about the weather.

After the tour bus dropped up off near the ship, we walked up to a very nice pub run by very friendly people and tried some of this stuff:



This here, next to the relatively mundane fried fish, is Poutine, something we couldn't leave Canada without trying and I'm glad we took the opportunity to do so when we did. It's french fries, gravy, and cheese curds. It is, to say the least, different.

After this, we headed to the big indoor market and explored that for a while (I got a bunch of Christmas shopping done).  Then we leisurely walked back to the ship. I got to take a short nap before heading up to see what the schedule called the "Rockin' Deck Party" or something and do a few watercolor sketches.

The people at the St. John cruise terminal made a bigger deal of our departure than Disney did. The deck party was just a gang of entertainment staff dancing to the theme music from Disney Channel series; once again, all the focus was directed in and away from the far more interesting things happening around the boat itself.  Because meanwhile, the cruise terminal people saw us off by waving giant Mickey hands and with bagpipers and a general feeling of being honored that Disney Cruise Lines visited their city.

Overall, I really loved our relaxing day at St. John. Top it off with the best live show of the entire trip ("Villains Tonight"), a good dinner at Lumier's, and a 3D screening of "The Avengers" and you have my favorite day of the whole voyage.

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Sketch of the Day!

My impression of the Reversing Waterfalls:

"Princesses and Genies, Candlesticks and Kings!" - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 2

In today's post, I'll be talking about the food and entertainment we experienced during our Disney Cruise.

First, a brief explanation of how dinners work on Disney Cruises.  When you get your Key to the World Card (room key/on-board charge card/thing that gets you back on the boat/tiny but vitally important item that an OCD sufferer must check over and over to make sure it's on their person), it will have one of three codes that explain your dining schedule.  We had the coveted APLAP, which meant we were eating at Animator's Palate the first night, Parrot Cay the second night, and Lumier's the third night, then cycling through Animator's and Parrot again for the last two nights.  Since the last two nights each had unique menus, we had an entirely different experience for each dinner during the voyage.

All that said, you will always be eating with the same group of people at your table and you will always have the same wait staff.  This is a terrific idea that actually works out, as your wait staff gets to know you during the voyage.  They are extra sympathetic to any special dietary needs you may have (for example, they reviewed the next night's menu with one of our dining companions to discuss what would be safe for her to eat), and will input such information to a profile accessible by all food areas by inputting your room number.  Our wait staff and dining companions were all very nice.

Now the food Disney serves you on the cruise is... decent.  In general, they focus on dinner, and the food during our other meals was pretty lackluster.  We liked all the appetizers, and all the deserts were very nice.  The main courses were, again, decent.  Nothing especially stands out, but I should note that the seafood was just frightening.



We only had one "signature cocktail" since the one from the first day (a pina colada/daiquiri combination I dubbed Brain Freeze in a Souvenir Glass) was so blah.  We never even invested in what dad and I excitedly referred to before the cruise as the "every hour is happy hour" mug since the beer on tap selection was so abysmal. The smartest thing we did was opt to pack out own wine, which Disney is remarkably lenient about.

Without question, the best gastronomic experiences on the boat were the Art of Entertaining cooking classes, which came with a free sample of the demonstrated dish and an accompanying wine, and a wine tasting we bought $15.00 tickets for on a whim.  It ended with a glass of the sparkling wine pictured above, which is normally only available at Disney theme parks, etc. to the tune of $15.00 a glass!



Now as far as the individual restaurants go, Animator's Palate is by a wide margin the most fascinating, but not for the food.  Here, you get dinner and a show.  And up until the very finale, it turns out the show is more subtly presented than I ever would have expected given what I'd heard.  It's one of many aspects of the Disney Magic I wish I'd been less cryptic about, because nobody else at my table noticed what was happening until I told them to stop chatting and pay attention for half a minute.  Heck, the only people in the entire restaurant who seemed to be keyed into what was happening around them was a group of small children at the table next to ours who absolutely lost their minds over it -- much to the annoyance of their parents who wanted them to just sit down and shut up and eat.

So here's the concept of Animator's Palate.  You enter a restaurant that is almost entirely monochrome aside from giant "magical paintbrushes". The walls are covered in line art of various Disney characters, ranging from the famous to the obscure to the "I can't believe they're even acknowledging them!?"



The ambient music is all instrumental versions of signature songs from Disney Animated Canon films. As each song plays, the artwork of the characters from the film starts to change through a pretty impressive special effect, and, in the words of one of the excited children from the neighboring table, the paintings "REALLY b'come REEEEEEAAL!!!"



(The effect is more impressive in person, I promise. Also, obligatory: animation does not work that way!  Though I suppose CAP Technician's Palate or Animator's Tombow Mono Pencil doesn't have the same ring to it.)

So this is really cool and it sucks that most of the people in the middle of it are just there to eat and don't give a crap about the changing scenery.  It feels as though this restaurant would be much happier in one of the theme parks, where the show would be the main attraction.

The finale happens right before dessert and consists of a montage of mood-whiplashy clips from almost every film in the Canon shown on screens throughout the now-darkened restaurant.  It's then that most of the diners realized anything special was going on.  After the montage, this happens:



This is as good a time to mention, since I don't think I have already, that anytime Mickey Mouse showed up in person (?), everyone completely lost their sh*t.  Which doesn't sound too weird given that it was a Disney ship.  But I don't think I have emphasized the demographics of our cruise enough: this was a school week and there were by FAR more parties consisting only of adults than there were parties of families with young children on this cruise.  Hmm...  Also, most of the people on the boat had taken several cruises on this same boat (we met a person who'd cruised on the Magic eighteen times before), and had presumably seen all this before.  I knew Disney fans could get frighteningly loyal but...?

Costumed characters were the main attraction for most of the deck parties, so let's segway into those.  The most surprising thing for me was, given that some deck parties were built up as major events, they were all really short!  The characters only put in a few minutes appearance in each party from my reckoning, and once they left there was no real incentive to stick around.  I'm guessing this has to do with the fact that these ships, and their traditional scheduled events, started in much hotter climates.  They never bothered to modify them for the cold north Atlantic.



Hell, it's even still Pirates IN The Caribbean even though... they aren't.  Now on the ship this was one of two much-hyped shows, so we were expecting something huge and elaborate and unforgettable.  What we got was less impressive, and not really even all that fun.  Extenuating circumstances are partially to blame here; we'd literally just eaten a big huge dinner, we'd had a hectic day of racing through hilly uneven terrain in Halifax, and I was exhausted.  This was the only time I wasn't happy with our wait staff; I felt as though they were pressuring me into dancing and partying during our dinner and it really felt like everyone was giving me a hard time since I wasn't as into it as I would have been if I wasn't about to puke and/or flat-out snow crash any second.  I'm guessing this event usually happens on a sea day when there's a lot less going on, and therefore plays very differently.

Anyway, the deck party itself is another twenty minutes of random costumed characters dancing around to very not-piratey music.  We arrived just in time to not miss the highlights of the show: Mickey ziplines down from one of the ship's funnels to school all the other pirates and starts a fireworks show at sea.  The fireworks are launched right off one side of the boat, apparently, and are pretty cool to see - if you happen to be standing in exactly the right place when they go off.  They aren't the most elaborate pyrotechnics Disney has ever done, but they are awesome because you are on a boat.



And frankly, the "it's awesome because we're doing it on a boat" assessment can go for most of the live stage shows as well.  The Walt Disney Theater is an impressive piece of work, to be sure, with trap doors and moving sets and other, crazier stuff.  We lucked out and saw each night's performance.  "Adventures Away" was at once informative and hopelessly cheesy.  It has to be seen to be believed, but it was a good introduction to our entertainment staff and some of the performers.  I missed the beginning of "Twice Charmed" but saw enough to come to the slow realization that -and I am not even kidding here- I was basically seeing a stage show version of "Cinderella 3".  One night was given over to a premier of "Finding Nemo" in 3D.

The most hyped of all the shows, the one that everyone assured us was the best of the lot, the one that had won multiple awards we were told, was "Disney Dreams", the final live show of the cruise.  It's the show pictured above.

Now, call it a lack of whimsy on my part, but I'm not sure what the big deal was here.  I am not even sure how to describe it.  We open on what can only be described as a 21-year-old preteen girl sitting in her room full of Disney toys.  She wishes on a star for "Princesses and Genies, Candlesticks and Kings!"  (Yeah, I don't know either.)  In flies Peter Pan to bring her on a magical adventure so that she won't grow up into a skeptical adult and will forever stay a faithful child with a wonderful imagination!  (*sigh...*)  And what does this wonderful imagination dream about?  Why, random Disney characters wandering in, singing songs from their films, and leaving!  Of course! 

Needless to say, given what we've seen Disney do with limited space and resources in the park shows, we were less than impressed.  There were a lot of technical problems during our show (the houselights right above us kept fading in and out in random scenes, and certain on-stage effects just flat-out failed to work), and that did not help our opinion one bit.

But then...

Oh, but then...

In the middle of the week, in the middle of all the other sappy saccharine stage shows, they had an unheralded, underhyped show with the title "Villains Tonight!"  We expected absolutely nothing at all from this show and, go figure, it turned out to be the best of the lot!  Heck, it might be my favorite experience on the ship as a whole!  I think it's because the villains are the only "face" characters who are allowed -and even encouraged- to be (gently) rude and sarcastic.  This resulted in a screamingly funny show!  It's seriously one of the most surprising and unexpectedly un-Disneyish things I've ever sen Disney do, and all the other live shows couldn't help but look hopelessly square after this one.

Man, reliving this magical voyage is exhausting.  Next week, I'll talk about our port adventures.

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Seascape of the Day!

My Little Cruise Ship: Canada is Magic! - My Very First Disney Cruise Part 1

The Disney Magic is the oldest ship in the Disney Cruise Line fleet.  Built in 1998, she's been sailing the seas since 2000.  This past summer, she made her way to New York City.  As my family are Disney Vacation Club members, we received a special email offer for Disney's first excursions up to the Canadian Maritimes from New York City.

Since we've always been curious about Disney Cruise Lines, this was too good an offer to pass up.  We opted for the September 12-17 cruise, which happened to be the final date for this particular itinerary before the ship sailed down to Texas for her winter schedule.

What follows is an honest assessment of the cruise as experienced by me and my family (but mostly me; it's my blog after all).  Overall, we were all very happy to finally satisfy our curiosity about cruising with Disney after so many years.  We met a lot of very nice and interesting people and had a lot of unique experiences.  I'll assure my Canadian readers right away that we loved St. John and Halifax and dearly wish we'd had more time to explore them further (though you'll have to wait until next week for specifics).  And we did have fun.  We did!

But overall, our reaction to our first Disney Cruise ever was and is... mixed. Over the years, the Disney Cruise Line has essentially been built up in such a way that we essentially expected the Magic to be a Disney Theme Park at sea. The Magic is very definitely not that, but she isn't a conventional cruise either.

Now, if you've been reading my blog practically from the beginning, your prize is that you've made me very happy.  You have no idea.  But more immediately relevantly, you recall that I went on a cruise on the Norwegian Spirit some years ago.  As it happens, that is the only other cruise I've ever been on. 

And reading my trip report again, I feel as though I did it a disservice.  Because given the choice between taking another cruise on the Spirit or another cruise on the Magic, I will opt for the Spirit, hands down, no contest, no second thoughts.  And since I know some of you are blown away by this because you've never been on a Disney cruise and have heard just how incredible and breathtaking and incredibly awesome they are all these years, let me tell you why.

In two words: time and space.



Upon entering the terminal before boarding the Disney ship, you are given a schedule of the day's events.  When you look at the schedule, it will appear as though you will have loads of free time.  Well, simply put, and especially if this is your first cruise with Disney and you don't want to miss anything important, you won't.  It sounds unbelievable from here, but it's true.  As the song goes, there is always something happening and it's usually quite loud.  You won't have any quiet time for yourself unless you actively seek it out.  Hell, I only got about forty minutes of pool time!

See, events are scheduled every fifteen minutes rather than, say, on the hour.  This means the schedule is crammed with activities every waking moment and that you will have to make some tough decisions.  (Or, to be honest, not so tough.  For example, "Brave" in Disney-approved 3D easily beats the crap out of Songs Your Mom Likes Dance Party and Publicly Out Yourself As a Huge Disney Nerd Trivia Night.  Anyway, I already attended the latter.  Three times.  And won twice.  My prize is a nifty pin lanyard and also that I am a grown-ass adult who watches a ton of Disney movies.  Eh, at least I was among my people for five days.)

As I said, since this was our first cruise with Disney, we felt obligated to see all the major shows and attend all the special events.  As it turns out, most people attend the deck/atrium parties and stage shows anyway.  Deck parties never run against the stage shows, and the stage shows are each performed twice a night.

Now here comes the biggest wrench in the system.  As I said, my only other cruise experience was on Norwegian and they've got a signature system called Freestyle Dining.  You get to eat on the ship wherever you want and whenever you want.  Nearly every other cruise company does not do allow you to do this.  I am willing to bet that this kind of system works much better on ships where dinner is your only big scheduled commitment every night.

Disney schedules you at a different restaurant every night, and for every night of your trip, you will either be eating at around six or around eight and watching the main stage show at around six or around eight.  Given that we were three adults who had a hard time adjusting to such a schedule (eat that much food at eight and all you will want to do afterwards is sit up and digest for a while and then sleep), I can't even imagine how families with small children handle this.

The good thing is that there are a ton of child-only events.  We saw very few children at all during this voyage since they were busy having fun on their own -- but also because this was a school week and there were only maybe ten-fifteen families with children on the boat.  In any case, the children's programs might be the single most outstanding feature of Disney Cruise Lines.



On to the issue of space.  This is the "Grand Atrium" of the Disney Magic.  The photographer I randomly caught here gives you a sense of scale.  From here. it looks pretty big and roomy, doesn't it?  Well... 



Here's the same atrium, full of people.  I naturally focused on the grand gathering of characters here, but the crowd of people in the corners hopefully gives you an idea of just how congested this area could get.

As an aside, character greetings were especially badly thought-out.  The major ones took place in the atrium, in front of the stairs leading to the entrance to Lumier's, one of the three major restaurants (see the doors Goofy is standing in front of there), and the line snaked down a very thin-feeling major corridor.

Overall, the Dream felt very "small", which sounds absurd in writing, given that she's actually longer (though perhaps skinnier) than the Spirit.  In any case, the atrium, the corridors, our stateroom, and even the pool deck felt really claustrophobic at times.

As far as our stateroom, we got a veranda on deck eight and I thank the gods old and new that we did since this is apparently the largest standard room available.  The good news is that the room has two smaller bathrooms instead of one large one; one contains a toilet and sink and the other contains a shower and sink.  It also has thick curtains to separate the room in half, allowing -ehhh- *some* privacy.  The bad news is that the room is small.  Like the boat as a whole it feels long but not wide.  There's barely enough room to maneuver around the large main bed.  Pure hell when two people are trying to retrieve things from the same end of the room.  Supposedly this room could sleep five grown adults but I cannot even imagine how this would be possible without nightly fistfights breaking out, as space is even more at a premium in the rooms I saw where all five beds were deployed.

As for the pool deck, well, mentioning it brings up one of my big issues with the Magic, and the most likely reason why it was so large but felt so small.  Have a look:



Note the "cages" around the entire pool area, the giant television screen, and especially the position of the deck chairs.  All of the attention on this boat, ALL of it, is centered inward, away from the ocean.  Disney basically wants you to forget you are on a ship at all.

This is my strangest and most lasting memory of the entire cruise.  For me, looking out at the endless sky and deep sea is part of the appeal of being on a cruise, and my father and I can stare out at the water for hours.  We loved how the Spirit had many quiet places where you could sit indoors out of the wind, yet still have an almost uninterrupted panoramic view of the whole ocean.  The Disney Magic had nothing like that.  It isn't like there weren't any windows at all, but they were all either small, blocked by bars and fences, or filthy.  All three pool decks were almost entirely encased in plexiglass and thick metal bars.  I get the safety issue on a boat that usually has lots of children on it, but it felt really excessive.



My favorite moment that exemplified this issue happened on the morning we pulled into Halifax.  Mom was enchanted by the lighthouses and islands, so when we headed to Lumier's for breakfast, I asked if we could sit at one of the many empty tables by the (small and filthy as seen above) windows.  I had to request this of three servers before we finally met one who got it, and we did get our window seat.  But not before we were asked, "Wouldn't you rather sit where you can see the Princesses?"

On that note, I'm going to pause.  Next post, I'll discuss the food and entertainment on board the Magic.

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Seascape of the Day!

If I learned anything from the two cruises I've ever taken, it's that I love doing seascapes more than landscapes.  No idea why, but here's the first one I managed to squeeze in time for.