Experts view of EPCOT : Skip the Golfball !!!

 I was having a bizarre dream during the early hours of Saturday morning about a demon that had somehow possessed my parents house in England.  I cunningly tricked the hellish beast into manifesting himself in human form so that I could kill him (clever huh ?) when the annoyingly shrill sound of my alarm clock woke me from my slumber.  I had a really bad headache, my nose was running and I felt close to death and yet whilst it was still dark on a Sunday morning my wife had decided to have an early start.  This could mean only one thing :  We were going to go to Disney for the day !

Living in Gainesville we’re able to pop down to Orlando pretty frequently since it’s only a 2 hour drive or $37 dollars worth of gas in today’s terms.  As Florida residents we have “seasonal passes” which basically cost a couple of hundred dollars each and allow you to go to any Disney park all year long with the exception of certain blackout dates. (Christmas week, Easter and mid summer)    Since I am a fairly rational human being I have no desire to ever be at Disney on say 4th July with a million sun burnt and sweaty yanks and Englishmen waiting in 4 hour lines for “It’s a small world” and complaining about the humidity so the blackout dates suit me down to the ground.  This Sunday was our last day chance to go before the summer blackout commenced and we decided to spend the day at the least (?) popular park, EPCOT.

I actually like EPCOT because it’s a bit more laid back than the other 3 parks.  During the “Food and Wine Festival” in October you can buy cheap Czech beer and of course Carlsberg which is “probably the best lager in the world.”  Other selling points include a gift shop that sells “Mr Men” books and an awesome restaurant that revolves whilst you eat.  I had read about a similar restaurant in North Korea and was trying to negotiate my way to Pyongyang when I heard that the “Garden Grill” had the same capability and not only that but rather than eating lunch with evil dictator Kim Jung Il you get to eat alongside Goofy and the chipmunks !!!

Most newcomers to EPCOT are drawn towards the giant golf ball as they enter the park and that is where a little Disney know how comes in handy.  Whilst the naive fools are waiting in a long line for the first ride they see I head to “Test Track” and get a few quick rides in before anyone else has even finished learning about Michelangelo and cavemen on “Spaceship Earth.”  If you wait until after about 10am then you can expect to wait for a good hour at the major attractions but the smart people (that’s me) get a few early rides in AND then get “fast passes” to come back later.  I love strolling past the newbies in their long line with my “Fast Pass” but in truth if they actually opened their eyes they could do the exact same thing.  For some reason many people feel like they are cheating or something if they use fast passes but to me it is a no brainer.  Recently we were at the Magic Kingdom and it was 4pm.  The wait time for the ride was 1 hour and you could get a fast pass that allowed you to return at 5pm !  OK so I could either stand here for the next hour and go on the ride or get a fast pass, go away and have fun elsewhere for an hour before coming back here and walking straight onto the ride ?!!!  Oddly enough about 4000 people decided to wait in line whilst I went on another ride and got an ice cream before rejoining them on the ride at 5pm.

One ride I dislike at EPCOT is “Soarin” and that is because it is bloody scary !  I suffer from vertigo and somehow I can’t get my brain to realise that it is just a fake hang glider in front of a giant TV screen.  The ride sways a little and they have fake wind blowing you around as you pass over California but the stupid thing is that when we seem to be high over the mountains I feel really nervous and when we seem to be nearer to the ground I relax.  In truth the fake glider is at the same height all along but somehow even though I know this I still freak out that I might plummet to my death or be eaten by a grizzly if I survive the fall ! 

For people who want something more mellow you can ride on “El Rio del Tiempo” or as I call it “The Mexican ride”.  The ride takes you inside a pyramid and features sites and sounds of the country that rednecks most fear: Mexico.  The ride has been updated recently to feature video footage of Donald Duck and a couple of other birds that at one time featured in some kind of b-movie Disney flop that I’ve never heard of.  I used to like the old version of this ride because it was so dated.  There used to be video screens showing you what vacations where like in Cancun and they featured sleazy men from the seventies with huge sideburns and bouffants of curly hair slithering their way to swim up bars where a bevvy of blonde’s who made Charlies Angels look unkempt waited impatiently for their over size cocktail glasses to be filled by a man who looked like Manuel from “Fawlty Towers”.  There also was a video montage from the seventies of some weird people doing an Aztec ceremony which used to seem nice enough until I saw “Apocalypto” since when I am glad it has gone because I can barely look at a pyramid these days without picturing either a headless body or Mel Gibson and I am not sure which is worse but either way that video has been replaced by a cartoon now.

The day at EPCOT is never complete without a ride on “Mission Space” which is the most intense ride in Orlando.  Gary Sinise gives the same speech each time before you board the flight to Mars and no matter how many times you ride it the G-force never gets any easier to deal with.  I always liked Gary Sinise even if he is best known as “that bloke who always has a role in Tom Hanks films” and if I were ever going to leave the planet Earth he is the kind of guy who I would trust to train me for life in space.  My daughter seemed to think we actually went to Mars and I jokingly praised her for helping us avoid the asteroid field we had encountered on the way.  She admitted to having been worried we’d crash but the she explained that “Astronauts never give up.”  I didn’t even know she knew what an astronaut was but evidently at age 5 she has already decided upon starting a career at NASA.  I guess at least that will allow her to make regular visits to Disney 20 years from now !

The Best Kids TV Shows Ever !!!!!

 

1. “Boy from Space” - “Look and Read” :  This was a popular TV show in the 80’s that kids would watch at about 11 am each day as a break from class.  The host Wordey was a legless red faced little man who would fly around chanting “Magic Magic E”.  Nobody realised at the time that he was a pioneering drug pusher getting ready for the era of raves.  “Boy From Space” was one of the stories featured in the show and it revolved around a couple of alien kids who looked like the children of the damned but with blue suits that appeared to be made from tissue paper and a language that only the teacher from Charlie Brown could imitate.  The actual episodes were all of 5 minutes long at the end of each “Look and read” segment and sci-fi obsessed kids all over Britain waited with baited breath each week for the latest fun installment.  The “Dark Towers” story was also a classic but the little lad from the stars was the pick of the bunch.

2.”Newsround”: with John Craven:  It may seem odd to highlight a kids news show as being a cult TV classic but the sad reality is that Craven and his sidekicks produced a 10 minute show containing more real news items than you’d see after a year of watching Fox and or MSNBC today.  I particularly liked the endless reports on giant Panda’s and space shuttle launches. 

 3.”The Flumps”:  Long before that northern bloke was winning Oscars for dull films about Wallace and his dog the BBC had set the standard for animation with “The Flumps”  This was easily the best show of its genre and one of the all time classic moments of television was when Grandpa flump got stuck in his Flumpaphone.

4.”Mr Benn” :  This guy was the ultimate master of disguise.  Every week he went to some kind of fancy dress shop and disappeared through the dressing room into many weird and wonderful places.  He tried his hand at being everything from a cowboy to a clown but his real brilliance was in his ability to persuade the shopkeeper to let him keep trying on costumes all the time without ever buying a single item from the store. 

5.”The A-Team”:  In this era of cheesy remakes I am surprised that no one has decided to make a big screen version of the greatest US TV show of all time : The A-Team.  I bet George Clooney would like a stint as Hannibal alongside Jim Carey as Murdoch and perhaps Di Caprio as Face.  BA would be harder to cast but perhaps DMX would be the man for the job and it would be the kind of thing that could lead to at least 3 or 4 sequels which is right up Clooneys alley. 

6. “Tim Tyler “(aka Timm Thaler) :  This was a German classic about a kid whose laugh was stolen by an evil Baron in 1970’s Berlin (?)  The show was great because the worst sound editors in the history of television hired some drunk B movie actors to dub it into English and during the whole series not one word was uttered by a character in English at the same time his mouth was in motion.  Aside from the cheap production this show was also memorable for the flairs and hippie hairstyles that defined an otherwise forgettable era.

7. “Degrassi Junior High” :  This was Canada’s answer to Grange Hill and was so terrible that it was actually  good for its utter patheticness.  I remember that one episode caused a stir as it featured the revelation that one of the teachers was a lesbian before the old BBC watershed.  Oddly enough the BBC didn’t buy a lot of shows from the land where people say “aye” after the ratings for this one were compiled but I still have a soft spot for it.

8.”Silas”: The people who dubbed this Polish gem into English did a marginally better job than their counterparts had done with Tim Tyler but the real issue was the fact that phrases that take about two syllables to say in English take 5 minutes to say in Polish and vice versa.  I remember that Silas was harrased by an nefarious harridan who was known simply as “The Old Shrew”.  I can’t remember the plot of the show but basically it involved around a kid riding around on a horse and every  week it had the same cliffhanger ending as he crossed paths with his nemesis and he exclaimed “the shrew”  Brilliant !

9. “Airwolf”: Some people may remember Ernest Borgnine as the Roman soldier at the foot of the cross or as the cop who married a hooker in “The Poseidon Adventure” but I remember him most fondly as the pilot of the best helicopter ever built, Airwolf.  This show had a simple message:  Criminals beware of copters loaded to the brim with machine guns because no matter where you run Ernie will blow your head off.  This was much better than anything you’ll see on CSI, eat your heart out David Caruso.

10. “Neighbours”: Not technically a kids show but try telling that to anyone who grew up in the UK in the late eighties.  So many kids were skipping school to watch this Aussie classic that the BBC moved it to the 5.30 spot after “Blue Peter” which had usually been reserved for shows like “Doctor Who” or “Friday film: The Glitterball.”  I was skiving off school in 1987 when the first episode was broadcast and after I saw Max Ramsey lose his temper, Des fall for stripper Daphne and Shane introduce the southern hemisphere to the mullet there was no looking back.

“Lost” : Cath -22

I had always wondered why the writers of “Lost” seemed to think that Scottish people called everybody “Brother.”  Last night that mystery was solved as we discovered that between stints as a runaway groom good old Desmond was actually a “Brother.”  Des has had quite an up and down life really from Celtic fan to fiancee to monk to drunk to fiancee again to crappy interviewer loser to jogger to yachstman to button pusher and finally to psychic.  When all of this is said and done he is going to be one of those nutty drunks who bores people at pubs in Glasgow with fantastical tales that nobody believes. 

I was surprised when Charlie was killed inside the first 3 minutes since it was so unLost-ish to have something happen within the first 53 minutes of an episode.  Never fear when a psychic is near and it turned out to be a harmless vision.  Well relatively harmless although for a while there it did seem as if Dessie was intent on being the only Brit with a funny accent on the show as he lead the hobbit perlilously close to death.  Frankly I am ready for the hobit to go.  We all know his numbers is up the only question is which number is his ?  4, 8, 15, 16, 23 or perhaps 42 ? 

Another fellow who I was beginning to think had kicked the bucket was Bernard but last night Sawyer indicated that the old romantic was still alive and kicking.  Talking of which I wonder how the two pointless red herring characters that got buried alive are doing ?  I am hoping they come back at some point just because I hate to think the producers dragged us through their whole boring back story for absolutely no reason other than to pass a re-cap episode past us without anyone noticing.  Ohh well I guess we’ll see but with 4 episodes left I am hoping there is time for someone with some sense (which basically means it has to be Jin or Sun) will knock off the blond other and her unshaven pig headed boyfriend Jack.  Fingers crossed but I fear it may be another 23 episodes before Charlie even  croaks !

Lost : “One of us”

It came as a huge surprise to me last night to discover that the blonde chick who has been an integral part of “The Others” since the start is oddly enough still one of “The Others.”  I don’t know which is worse, Jacks incredible stupidity or Matthew Fox’s acting.  Every time Fox speaks he goes through a 5 minute routine of rapid breathing, face twitching and sarcastic smiles before blurting out a series of monosyllabic breathy statements before raising his eyebrows and of course his voice.  I can only assume that after years of filming in the jungle Fox has developed some form of allergy related asthma.  Lousy actor in a lousy role.  The writers intentionally or not have turned Jack into a complete idiot who is either suffering from Stockholm syndrome or amnesia.   The Others are bad Jack.  They kill plane survivors, kidnap children and they are ruled by the guy who played the serial killer Hinks on “The Pratcise”.  I would have killed Hinks the minute he showed up with his crack pot story about being a black guy in a hot air balloon !  “The Practise” was on prior to “Lost” so you would have thought that someone like Bernard (What the hell ever happened to him anyway ?) would have said “Hey that bug eyed midget is Hinks from The Practise! ” the minute he appeared on the beach.

I really hate that fat guy Tom from the Capital One commercials as well.  I don’t know how Saed manages to get captured and disarmed every time he has an opportunity to kill him and I can’t see how Sawyer ever swindled anyone since he is little more than a slapstick clown figure who can’t walk more than a few yards without incurring some kind of painful bodily injury in mildly amusing fashion.  Kate is another one who annoys me.  Supposedly she is a cold blooded killer and fugitive but other than having a girly catfight with Mrs Liar last week she isn’t exactly living up to her past reputation as a hellion.  It is about time the survivors got their act together and massacred the others.  No questions asked, no snooping around, no plans involving either Locke’s brain or Jack’s diplomacy but rather a good old fashioned shoot ‘em up.   Sadly the only bug eyed midget likely to be killed off this year is our favourite hobit Charlie.