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Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Disney World: The "Train Wreck" of Anthropology
My girlfriend came to Tampa to visit me this weekend and among other things, we ventured over to Orlando for my very first Disney World experience (her fourth). We decided to start at the Epcot park because it had alot of the “nerd stuff” that she thought I would enjoy. Everything was open by 10am and by then roughly two thirds of the United States had descended upon Walt Disney World. Part of Epcot is divided into representations of different countries of the world, including Italy, Canada, Switzerland, England, etc. We ate lunch in Morocco at a really neat restaurant complete with live music and a belly dancer. It was straight out of a James Bond film. The centerpiece of the Mexico section was a laughable Aztec temple which you could go inside where there was, you guessed it, a gift shop selling oversized sombreros (among other things). They did have a floating ride that gave the “history” of Mexico that seemed generally accurate but somewhat dramatized for obvious reasons. My favorite “ride” was called Spaceship Earth, which was essentially a 20-minute train ride through human history as told by animatronics with really bad lip-synching capabilities. It was still pretty amazing and if you squinted your eyes and tilted your head just so you almost felt like you were actually there at various milestones in human history. I shook my head in despair at the “caveman” portion of the ride, where the robotic cave dweller literally said something along the lines of “umm bulla bulla.” At least they didn’t show him beating a dinosaur with a huge bone.
We also visited the MGM Studios park and finally the Magic Kingdom (the one with Tinkerbell’s castle). At the latter park my favorite ride was Pirates of the Caribbean, which had over-the-top animatronics and special effects. Not so much a thrill ride, we simply floated through various pirate scenes. Overall a great experience and worth my 35% Florida resident discount (I would never pay full price to see a robotic caveman chant unintelligible utterances over a fake fire).
I leave you with (sadly) the most memorable spot in Disney World, the Fez House located in Morocco.
Posted by Will at November 15, 2005 12:38 AM in Personal Reflections