Greg Maletic
Page 3 of 4
The most ballyhooed attraction at the park--the wild animal safari through a simulated "Africa"--was our next step, and given that FastPass let us skip past hundreds of other paying guests, my spirits were brightened. It's this attraction that Disney has called out more than any other, precisely because it's an update of the Adventureland standby, the Jungle Cruise. Instead of being in a boat, however, you're in an appropriately weathered safari bus, and instead of viewing fiberglass audio-animatronic animals, real, breathing, walking animals are on display.
Like the Jungle Cruise, the ride narration is supplied by a real person rather than a pre-recorded voice-over. The nature of the attraction requires it: since it can't be known ahead of time exactly which animals will be out-and-about, only a live tour guide would suffice. It's not entirely unscripted, however: at several moments during the tour, one of our pre-recorded compatriots from "home base" interrupts and tells us of poacher activity in the area. I almost forgot to mention: catching poachers is the "premise" for the ride. Looking at animals in natural surroundings wouldn't be good enough, apparently; if there isn't a chase scene and a bad guy, then evidently the ride wouldn't be able to hold anyone's attention.
Through Disney's attempt to feign authenticity, we managed to get a tour guide with an incredibly thick South African accent that was unintelligible throughout a pretty sizable portion of the ride. Regardless, the main point of the ride was to see animals, not hear a tour guide, and on that count I give the attraction generally positive marks. We saw a lot of animals: giraffes, rhinos, hippos, and hordes of other animals that I hadn't seen before (nor seen since.) I didn't really feel the illusion that I was in Africa, mainly because the vistas are relatively small in scale. Instead of gazing across a huge plain populated by hundreds of animals, I typically saw just a few animals at close range, and behind them by a few feet were some artificial hills, presumably there to hide the attraction's "internals." The feeling was more of driving around a cage-less zoo rather than the Dark Continent. Not bad, but not particularly revolutionary, either.
Where the attraction failed for me was its fundamental concept that seeing animals wasn't enough; a storyline had to be artificially constructed around them to keep us, the audience, engaged. A particularly notable moment happened at the end of the safari that crystallized a lot of my feelings toward the park. We received another pre-recorded radio alert from "home base" telling us that the poachers we were tracking were in fact just around the bend. The tour guide called us to action, and the bus lurched forward after its prey. As we were rounding the corner, however, a small group of warthogs became visible, which caused our tour guide to launch into an unbelievably quick spiel ("...and-here-on-the-left-you-see-a-herd-of-African-warthogs...") concerning the small pack of animals to our vehicle's left. Before the spiel even ended, our safari truck had left the animals in the dust, us now well on our way to catching the poacher. The net effect was a feeling that I'd been shortchanged on seeing the real animals in favor of catching our fake poacher. In all, a disappointment...but more on this later.
That anyone, let alone Disney, could combine the incredible ride vehicles from Indiana Jones with dinosaurs and come up with a tedious ride is mind-boggling. Yet somehow that happened with Dinosaur (called Countdown to Extinction when I was visiting the park), a dark, confusing mess of a thrill ride. In the world of movies--where Disney's theme park rides draw both their theoretical and thematic foundations--there's something called the "establishing shot." The establishing shot is the wide-angle image that is used to set the time and place for the movie. The same principle applies to attractions as well: Disneyland's Indiana Jones has it in the brief moments while your jeep "bounces" down the faux-temple stairs and you see its mammoth interior: the swinging rope bridge, the pool of lava, the enormous, fire-breathing stone carving of the god Mara. One glimpse of this sight and you know where you are--right in the middle of the Indiana Jones adventure of your dreams--and even though you'd never thought about it before, it's just like you imagined it would be. Dinosaur--like Universal's Jurassic Park boat ride--lacks this sense of place, and it never recovers. As a result, I felt like I was riding around in a warehouse filled with mechanical dinosaurs. To be sure, that's what I was doing, but Disney's best rides let me push that thought to the back of my mind. Dinosaur never let me forget it.
The attraction reaches when it shouldn't--the difficult effect of having proto-birds flying over the ride vehicle look simply like plaster casts attached to moving sticks--and the places where it should excel, like making the prime antagonist of the piece--a carnosaur --seem truly alive, fall flat. It shakes a lot, but never seems real.
The ride has its moments: the time travel effect with its lasers is neat; the final lunge of the dinosaur toward your vehicle at the end of the ride is thrilling; yet when it was over, I really didn't care if I rode on it again or not. That I was bathed in complete darkness with absolutely nothing happening for over a third of the ride didn't help, either.