Disney Hollywood Studios 2025

Our final day of the music department trip had us visiting Disney Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. We rode buses to the park and walked right in.

Park entrance

Most of the park is set up like a backlot of a movie studio, with fake neighborhood streets reminiscent of a city.

...that city being Hollywood!

Portal to another area

The big attraction here (for me, at least) is Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. It's a neighborhood that has two main rides and a lot of flavor. The main ride is Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. It had a long line. When I got on, an older couple was behind me and a large red-shirted family (though their shirts had a "HP" with a lightening bolt underneath, so Harry Potter fans). Another red shirt showed up with a little girl (also in a red shirt) and they hopped in line with the rest of their group. The fellow in the elderly couple made a comment about line-cutting and his wife asked him to be quiet rather forcefully. He responded with, "Is that how we are going to start the day?" She made a rude comment and asked him to shut up. He said he didn't like attitude. She made another biting comment. Then she asked him to shut up again. He said, "Why are you trying to emasculate me?" They had a few more words and then there was silence. After I few minutes, I looked back and saw they were gone. I mentioned it to the dad in the red shirt and he said, "I guess they don't like us." I said, "I don't think they like each other." It was the most awkward part of the trip.

Anyway, back to the ride. There was not "single rider" shortcut here so I had to wait over an hour. Then we were loaded onto a transport to go get rebel/resistance training. The transport was captured by a star destroyer and we were forced into the bay where we were divided up for interrogation. 

Flavor decoration on the line

BB-88 giving some advice

Last bit of flavor before the ride

Interrogation transport

No way to escape the bay

A nifty Tie Fighter

On the way to interrogation

I don't want to spoil all the secrets and fun of the ride. It was amazing and well worth the wait. Back outside at the end I saw another X-Wing.

Let me ride!

The area has lots of shops and places to eat, along with characters for photo ops. The line of the Mandalorian was too long, so I took a picture with some other people in it.

I hope they don't mind!

Further in is the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride, with a life-size Falcon! This ride does have a single-rider line, so I was able to get on in less than ten minutes (which included the long Disney line hidden inside the building). 

You came here in that?

Let me ride!

The ride puts a group of five or six people in the cockpit of the Falcon on a smuggling run. The crew is two pilots, two gunners, and one or two engineers. Since I was single, I was paired up with a group of four and put in the engineer task. All I did was push buttons when lights started flashing. And I pushed a button to shoot the harpoon to grab the contraband. It was a relatively boring job. It looked like the pilots and gunners had more fun. The pilot used the main control panel with its steering mechanism and the levers to go into hyperspace. That looked like more fun. We wound up getting two pieces of contraband and fighting our way through an asteroid field.

Since the line was so short for singles, I went again...and wound up as an engineer again! This run was less successful, with only one bit of contraband snatched. The pilots and gunners were less skillful, so we did not do as much. It was still fun.

Wait, is that a companion cube?

Disappointed I couldn't take the ladder to exit

I walked around outside some more, taking in the amazing Star Wars atmosphere. 

Authentic to the (fake) world of Star Wars

Further in, I discovered a show in progress where a First Order lieutenant was trying to get information out of the crowd about the Resistance. She was unsuccessful. Kylo Renn showed up to make more trouble.

Trying to get troopers to do their job

Bad news when the boss shows up

Walking the streets looking for trouble

I decided to ride the Star Tours attraction (which was here when I visited over twenty years ago). On the way I saw a Coke stand.

I bet they were serving Coke Classic from a long time ago

Star Tours entrance

The ride was very much as I remembered it, a fun motion simulator and story. I was hungry for lunch and near the Muppets section, so I went to the PizzeRizzo.

Finally, a slice of pizza!

Like the other park, I had a voucher for a full meal, so I got a pepperoni and sausage pizza, a caesar salad, a cannoli, and a lemonade. The family in front of me in line had a six-year old boy who, when asked what he wanted to drink, said, "beer!" We all had a laugh at that.

A full meal

After lunch, I went to the Muppet*Vision 3D show across the street. It was a lot of fun.

Exit from the show, not the way to go in!

One of the doors...or is it?

The waiting room/backstage area

The only other priority for me was to ride the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror on the other side of the park. I walked through a lot of interesting areas along the way. 

Grauman's Chinese Theater

Another California-style street?

The tower was set up as an old Hollywood hotel that is now haunted, or at least its elevator is. The ride had a lot more than I was expecting, so I was very satisfied.

Hotel lobby

Advertising dancing

Nearby is the Rock 'n' Rollercoaster which I would have ridden if there was time but the line was too long. A virtual geocache was based in the area, so I gathered some information and claimed the find.

Picture is not a spoiler for the geocache

A picture with the Tower of Terror

The park has a lot of golden statues of famous animated characters. 

The hero we needed on a 85 degree day!

My last attraction was the Mickey and Minnie original animated cartoon which was very entertaining (and in an air-conditioned theater!).

Before the show started

By that point, it was time to rendezvous with the buses out in the parking lot. The only thing I didn't do that I would have liked to is the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. The timing did not work out. I'm sure I will be back again someday!

Book Review: The Twilight Zone: Deaths-Head Revisited

The Twilight Zone: Deaths-Head Revisited original screenplay by Rod Serling, adapted by Mark Kneece and illustrated by Chris Lie

At the end of World War II, Nazi officer Lutze escapes from Dachau by shooting a prisoner and taking his clothing. Decades later, he returns to the town with a new identity and makes a visit to the place where he committed many atrocities. He arrives at the camp late in the afternoon and wanders around alone. Soon the memories begin to haunt him. He sees prisoners he remembers. They accuse him of the terrible crimes that happened to them. Lutze rehearses the Nuremberg defense ("I was only following orders") which is chilling given the horrors depicted (which just scratch the surface). In one scene, people come back out of the ovens to accuse him for their deaths. His memories finally drive him mad. He is discovered wailing uncontrollably on the grounds of the death camp by the attendant.

This story is very powerful and haunting. The episode was made in 1961 during Adolf Eichmann's trial for his part in the Nazi's Final Solution. This graphic novel captures the horror of a man without a conscience as he finally succumbs to his own humanity. Well worth reading.

Book Review: The Twlight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street by R. Serling et al.

The Twlight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street adapted by Mark Kneece from Rod Serling's original screenplay, illustrated by Rich Ellis

Having read a previous adaptation of a Twilight Zone episode, I picked up this volume at the library anticipating another well-retold story. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is a famous episode from the show. In it, a suburban street is subject to a power outage after what seems to be a meteor comes crashing overhead. Not only is the power out, but cars won't start and portable radios don't pick up any stations. People start to get nervous. One guy goes to the next street to find out if they have the same problems. The other people gather and talk about how weird it is. When two guys decide to walk downtown, a boy of ten warns them not to go, because they won't come back. That's how these stories always work out in comic books and movies--people disappear one after another because the aliens from the "meteor" are starting their invasion. The boy insists that there must be a family who are really aliens sent ahead of time to get things ready. Suspicions immediately grow and good neighbors become a paranoid mob. Things go from bad to worse when cars mysteriously start and stop and only certain homes have power. The neighbors turn on one another at a truly frightening pace and with devastating consequences.

As an adaptation of the story, this volume was a bit of a let down. The story is exactly the same with no real visual flourishes or significant new material to make it better or even different in an interesting way. Having seen the episode first, this book feels redundant. It's still a great story anyway.

Comic Book Reviews: Hellboy Unweds plus Twilight Zone 1 and 2

I finally got my hands on Dark Horse Presents #32, which has the second half of the Hellboy Gets Married story. Hellboy wakes up after drinking way too much to discover he married a demon the night before. He says he wants a divorce and winds up in a big fight with her and a bunch of zombie demon conquistador-type guys. This is definitely one of the lesser Hellboy stories but it makes for an interesting explanation of why he stopped his drinking binge in Mexico. At least, I assume this will stop him from drinking too much. If I was the B-Movie Catechism guy, I'd use this as a jumping off point to say if Hellboy was Catholic, he'd have great grounds for an annulment, which is not "Catholic divorce" like a lot of people claim it is. An annulment means that the marriage contract was not validly entered into and therefore no marriage took place. In Hellboy's case, he was drunk which falls under "mental incapacity," i.e. he was unable to choose freely to marry (cf. Canon 1095 of the Code of Canon Law). Also, the demon was under a human form at the time, presumably to trick him into marrying her, which is covered by Canon 1098: "A person contracts invalidly who enters into a marriage deceived by malice, perpetrated to obtain consent, concerning some quality of the other partner which by its very nature can gravely disturb the partnership of conjugal life." Being non-human is a grave quality to be sure. I guess it's more dramatic to have a big fight at the end rather than bring on the canon lawyers.

The Twilight Zone has a new version from publisher Dynamite and writer J. Michael Straczynski (of Babylon 5 fame).  The story follows a hotshot corporate financier who wants to disappear after he's embezzled a ton of money from a company. The feds are closing in and he wants to cash out. He gets in touch with an outfit that provides new identities including a whole new body. He buys in but then discovers they are putting up someone else as him who is trying to right the wrongs he did. But why? The story is pretty interesting but unfinished just yet. I'm looking forward to how it will play out.

Look for these at your nearest comic shop!

Book Review: The Twilight Zone: The Midnight Sun

The Twilight Zone: the Midnight Sun, adapted from Rod Serling's original script by Mark Kneece

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadows, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. 

The Twilight Zone is a classic science fiction television series from the 1960s. It was produced and hosted by Rod Serling who wrote more than half of the 156 episodes. The stories are so well told that the show is still repeated and readily available today. It was also a training ground for many actors and directors, including Robert Redford, Charles Bronson, Ron Howard, and William Shatner. A series of graphic novels were developed based on script episodes. This particular book comes from the tenth episode of the third season, also called "The Midnight Sun."

The story follows a young female artist, Norma, who lives in New York City. For the past several months, the weather has gotten hotter and hotter, driving citizens from the city. Those who have remained behind are slowly going crazy. She lives in a walk-up apartment. Her building is down to two residents--her and her neighbor Mrs. Bronson. They try to keep each others spirits up, even though there's no good news from the TV or from the passersby in the street. Norma paints sweltering landscapes that mirror the bleak heat outside the building. As with many Twilight Zone stories, the ending has a nice twist that I didn't see coming the first time I saw the episode on TV.

This adaptation stays very close to the script, even including scenes from the script that weren't filmed for budgetary and time constraints. It does a great job at capturing the oppressive heat and despair in the story as well as Norma's efforts to survive her various run-ins with desperate people. The visuals open up the story. It has the more epic feel that Serling could not capture on a television budget, depicting things like Liberty Island as a dried out hill next to Manhattan.

It's nice to visit stories from old favorites and the graphic novel format suits The Twilight Zone quite well.

Great quote from the introduction by Anna Marlis Burgard:

While he had his run-ins with censorship, Serling's clever use of other worlds and veiled scenarios generally protected him. As he explained, what he couldn't have a Republican or a Democrat espouse on the show, he could have an alien profess without offending the sponsors. This approach also allowed viewers to take away whatever message best suited them; the more reflective could consider the psychological and political implications, while others might be satisfied with simply enjoying the thrill of the surface story. So much more than mere science fiction or fantasy, Serling's scripts are parables that explore the multifaceted natures of hope, fear, humanity, loneliness, and self-delusion.