Saturday, November 15, 2014

Stitch's Great Escape: Ten Years









Something You Ate, Sir?










Keep Circulating the Tapes












You're the Top - But Not For Long











Wanted posters appeared all over Magic Kingdom - find Experiment 626.






Ten Years On: Stitch's Great Escape










Not Made Up!





"Chairman Clench doesn't believe in emergency power."



Today's Emergency is Over


















Harry Thornton said...

Wow, you've done a fantastic job here Foxxfur. You covered not just the ride, but the film the ride was based on, Disney's over-saturation of Stitch in the early-mid 00s, Alien Encounter, and the Disney theme park community in general. Great job! Hope you can do more of these kinds of articles in the future!

Chris F. said...

What I find even stranger, is how that SAME animatronic was used so much better over in the Aloha E Komo Mai Tiki Room overlay. It's a hilarious show....if strange, what with the Hawaii narrow-focus.

Kurt Miller said...

Stilted? I always thought they nailed the smarmyness of XS Tech in Encounter. Favorite line: "profit is simply a biproduct we've learned to live with"

mbs said...

Can't say that i agree with this (i actually like both versions of the attraction, for different reasons) but it was well written and had some interesting points.

FigmentJedi said...

Very nice summary of what I've always called the "Poochie-fication" of Stitch.


V. Anton Spraul said...

Kurt, I agree, that's my favorite as well. The holding room video is a pitch-perfect send-up of "industrials." The problem, I think, is that its intentionally dry tone caused viewers to tune out.

On the whole, I think Alien Encounter had some great ideas but the main show never quite gelled. It took me many viewings to understand that the alien was supposed to be flying around the room, which still made no sense giving the room's relatively small size. Then there was hearing the creature sneak up behind you, even though there was no room for him in the aisles (and even if you were in the back room, against the wall). It felt like they had a grab bag of desired effects they wanted to use and then wrote a flimsy story to connect them.

But though I liked AE, the tone never really matched the Magic Kingdom. I remember expecting Stitch to be an improvement in that regard, only to discover that the attraction cast the audience as off-the-street recruit prison guards, effectively doubling down on AE's lapses in tone and logic.

Tom said...

Hi, I think your analysis is great but you don't describe the most disturbing part of Alien Encounter to those who never saw it. Skippy the Alien, sold as you say in plush form as the mascot of the ride, was horribly mangled in a cruel fashion during the pre-show. Although Jeffrey Jones played the villain campily in the initial video - he did everything but twirl his moustache - the tone set by the industrial robot host of the inner pre-show still felt way off to me, and I've spoken with others who felt the same. The pre-show was a disaster, setting a tone of animal cruelty, not theme park style, yet terrifying, fun. To then see them selling that plush in the gift shop let you know how far off the mark the Imagineers (and George Lucas, who originally had his name all over this misfire) were on this one.

Reality Check said...

Another thing about the abrupt scrapping of Alien Encounter was that the park felt an immediate need to distance themselves from Jeffrey Jones after his arrest in 2003. They had two options, really: either just re-shoot the entire cinematic element of the show with a different actor, or replace Alien Encounter with something else entirely.

How Bowers said...

Let's not forget that Alien Encounter itself was retooled. The first version of the show ended with Chairman Clench trapped in the teleporter tube, banging on the walls and demanding to be let out.

Jessica Krinke said...

The single best Disney blog I've ever encountered. Thank you for making me feel less alone in my obsession with the workings of this company.

ErikS said...

Thanks for the awesome research! This actually sent me down the rabbit hole to find out more about George Lucas' involvement and the original development of the ride. (I'd love to see your take on the new Test Track and its similarities to Tron.)

Mark said...

Very interesting read...

Can help feel history is beginning to repeat itself with Frozen...

Griffin Calhoun said...

I certainly think that "Frozen-mania" is going to go the way of "Stitch-mania", nothing in the modern day can last in the cultural memory for very long given how rapid fire modern culture is, when today's little girls grow up to be tomorrows teenagers and become obsessed with whatever tomorrow's version of Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift ism Frozen will be regulated to the dustbin of Disney history, "let it go" indeed.

Melissa said...

I still miss Mission to Mars, but then again I'm older than dirt.

I love the idea of replacing both SGE and MILF with a new ride that spans the walkway either under or above ground. (The popular MILF could be moved to DHS, where it's a better fit and more non-E-ticket attractions are desperately needed).

Maybe a re-imagining of something like Adventures Thru Inner Space, using the latest technology? Or something along the lines of Journey to the Center of the Earth from Tokyo DisneySea? Or maybe even an original science or sci-fi adventure!

Nick M said...

Great article! Though I'm sensing conflict in what you've written, since on the one hand you applaud the concepts that the rides (Alien Encounter, Stitch, even Mission to Mars to a lesser extent) in the particular space have used, and yet you say that they should be taken down and replaced with "Fantasyland rides." I personally think Magic Kingdom has enough of the seated car rides, and part of what makes Tomorrowland appeal is that it either takes the concept to it bare logical extreme (People Mover), or does away with it entirely and gives us some damn good attractions (Space Mountain certainly, though Carousel of Progress has charm, and Buzz Lightyear's shoot-em-up is fun as well). Even if Stitch has to go, I think the way the attraction space is currently structured would be better retained than scrapped.

Anonymous said...

A great, great post, Foxxfur. Filled to the brim with detail, information and your singular insights about WDW. This is a prime example why your blog is one of the best out there.

Joe N said...

Great stuff, lots to think about.

I'm definitely intrigued by the concept of the older crew at corporate not quite understanding how to get something with genuine pop culture appeal to work in the modern media landscape, as well as in the theme parks. What's popular today will be old news by this time next year, and committing untold millions to shoehorning them into the parks has enormous backfire potential.

Disney used to avoid this pretty well; the classic Fantasyland rides kind of fit into the mold you describe with Swiss Family Treehouse, where you got the basics (e.g. "Peter Pan can fly and he fights pirates", "There's a scary witch in Snow White", etc.) and then have an experience in that context. More modern rides, and what a lot of us Maelstrom fans dread with the coming Frozen ride, wind up being "Book Report Rides", where you can't get anything out of it without more intimate knowledge of specific aspects of the film the attraction is based on. Great for people who want to see Jack Sparrow in 2008, or Stitch in 2005, or Frozen in 2014...not so great 5-10 years later.

Concerning Alien Encounter, I agree about its flaws, and also agree that its ambition was still noteworthy. I do remember being a kid and being somewhat taken aback by how tense and unnerving the preshow room with the mini-teleporter and the Tim Curry-voiced robot was (but I was also about 10 and had an overactive imagination that kept me from enjoying horror stuff for a long time), though I know that in the original version the robot was voiced by Phil Hartman and was decidedly lighter in tone. Must've been part of that urban legend about Eisner demanding to make it scarier.

Also, love the suggestion for putting a decent ride in the front spaces of Tomorrowland, but I wonder how much we have to consider that so much of this space has been shaped in the years around the Great Recession. For example, would Stitch have survived this long if 2008-2009 hadn't happened, and Disney felt more compelled to spend more in that timeframe? Lots to mull over.

Cory Gross said...

It's interesting to read the background controversies behind attractions that I experienced more or less tabula rasa. With my first visit to WDW having been this past September, I never got to see Alien Encounter or the ride that predated this or the ride that was replaced by that.

My honest opinion, experiencing it without historical context, is that Stitch's Great Escape wasn't THAT bad. Yes, it is a "seen it once" type of attraction, but I don't think it was the worst attraction at Magic Kingdom, let alone all of WDW. If we're talking physical discomfort, Space Mountain beats it hands down. I was more disappointed in Peter Pan's Flight and Pirates of the Caribbean, just because I have the ones in Anaheim and Paris to compare them to, respectively. It wasn't as bad as Dinosaur, which was awful, or Journey Into Your Imagination. Experiencing it for what it is, it was alright. Not the best, but not the worst either.

Steve the Pocket said...

Personally I think the best thing would be if Disney sold the equipment and the idea rights to Universal to turn into an actual Alien- or possibly even Men in Black-themed attraction, combining the original scary tone with the logistical improvements of the Stitch version. But Disney would probably sooner let one of their ideas burn than let somebody else have it, no matter how much they want to get rid of it and no matter how much money is involved.

I particularly liked the part about moving the teleportation stuff to the pre-show. I've always said that the way Valve designs their video games is similar to the way theme parks design their rides (I plan to write an article about it one of these days), and that change is very similar to the kinds of tweaks they've talked about making during development.

Kevin H said...

How about a minor rework to have this take place after the events of the Lilo & Stitch movie. X-S creates a new technology to find and retrieve fugitives. Stitch gets separated from his new family and they work to get him back.

kjames427 said...

Great article!

Like everyone said, very in-depth and thoughtful article on the entire "Stitch culture" so to say. Just discovered this blog and cannot wait to read more!

KC said...

This was an incredibly well-written article to read. It not only goes over all the flaws and strengths of both ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter and Stitch's Great Escape!, but also covers a bit about why the Lilo & Stitch franchise fell from grace in the United States. Not only the over-promotion of its protagonist, but also the wrong aspects of him and the other characters.

As much as I don't like Frozen or how over-exposed it is (it's December 2016 as of this writing and of course that franchise's still doing well despite that overrated Maelstrom replacement), Disney is promoting it correctly, believe it or not. They're emphasising the love that Anna and Elsa have for each other as well as their snowman friend Olaf. They never properly did that with Stitch over here in the States in the years after the original film. Instead of focusing on Stitch's goodness and his love for his 'ohana (whether it be towards Lilo, Nani, Jumba, Pleakley or his experiment "cousins"), they focused too much on the weird, nasty, and mischievous aspects of him. Those were not the true reasons why Lilo & Stitch fans fell in love with him.

Oddly enough, Stitch Encounter/Stitch Live! over at all the non-American parks actually get the good aspects down for the most part. I've seen a YouTube video of that show once, and it is way more enjoyable than either Stitch's Great Escape! or Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor. Stitch is his funny, adorable, good-hearted self in that show. Although he makes a few jabs at some of the audience members, they're always lighthearted and never out of ill-will or malicious intent. He acts like the friend you've always wanted. Sadly, that show will never come here because of both SGE! (which has now been reduced to "seasonal" operation) and the fact that we already have two "interactive digital puppetry" shows in America. (The aforementioned Laugh Floor and Turtle Talk with Crush. Also, I will say that did enjoy Laugh Floor the first time, but after repeated showings that I've been to since then, the jokes got old and repetitive fast. My family and I actually skipped Laugh Floor and went on SGE! the last time I've visited Walt Disney World earlier this year because we've all become unflattered by Laugh Floor ever since, even though we also knew exactly what to expect from SGE!.)

Regardless, Stitch is now Japan's bitch. Ugh, that anime...

By the way, rumor has it that SGE! will be replaced by a Wreck-It Ralph virtual reality attraction, which I think is a foolish idea. Not because of the idea of a Wreck-It Ralph VR experience itself, but rather that Disney wants to do this for an attraction in the day and age where VR is becoming mainstream thanks to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. Why do I need to go a theme park to experience virtual reality when I can get a good experience at home? I don't want to go on an expensive vacation to enjoy VR just once (or as many times as I can got the ride). I'd rather buy a good PC (or make one myself), get a headset, and I'll be set for VR entertainment years. They'll still be expensive, but it will be a much better investment in the long run. (Also remember that Disney left the video game industry earlier this year, so don't expect them to make a home version of this possible ride to make up for it.)