Well, the plan this morning was that I would be bringing you video and some still photos of Disneyland's renovated Fantasmic! show, complete with the new high-tech Maleficent dragon animatronic that Disney's been promising all summer.
Disney was supposed to debut Maleficent earlier this summer, at the "Summer Nightastic" press event, but the dragon went "101" (Disneyspeak for "not working") and has remained inoperable since.
Until Friday, when I got a breathless e-mail from Disney's PR rep, inviting me (and many others, I am sure) to a pre-dawn "dress rehearsal" of Fantasmic! this morning, complete with the new dragon. I RSVP'd with a "Heck, yes!" and hauled myself out of bed at 3 o'clock this morning for the drive down to Anaheim.
You can see where this is going, can't you?
"Murphy," as many folks inside and out of the company have taken to calling the dragon ("whatever can go wrong, will"), still ain't working, as I discovered when I arrived and the PR reps informed us that the event was off.
So Disneyland's dragon joins Universal Studios Florida's Rip Ride Rockit coaster as the most recalcitrant theme park attractions of the summer. Of course, Rip Ride Rockit eventually did open. And, I suppose, at some point Murphy Maleficent will appear as well. Until then, though, Disneyland seems well on its way toward setting the record for most press events hyping an attraction that no one in the press has yet seen.
Two, and counting.
(I'm going back to sleep.)
Update: Disney's sent hand-out art and video of the dragon from a run-through when it did work:
But yeah, the bigger story is that they dragged Robert Niles out of bed. I am more curious of why it seems that the Dragon at DL never works, but I have never seen DHS's dragon go down. Bigger? Better maintained, better secure
The DHS dragon, from what I am told, is the old model, and nowhere near as advanced as the new dragon.
Though, at this point, I am beginning to see the upside of the really old-school approach of sending someone out there in an enormous rubber suit....
That dragon is cool! No wonder you got up so early! I want DHS to have it! How could they not have it! If DL can do it, then DHS can!
This summer's biggest flop was not Land of the Lost.
Do you have any idea how they do it?
It's a shame they can't get either of them working right.
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Like, y'know, a certain mummy.