Mouse Extra

I prefer the San Angel Inn to all the World Showcase restaurants. To start with, the atmosphere is, for my money, the best in all of Walt Disney World. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the major goals I had when Mouse Extra began was to develop a good resource of information for folks going to Disney World, either for their first trip or the latest of many.  For this reason, we are constantly working on restaurant, resort, and attraction reviews for our readers to use to hopefully help make their trips more enjoyable.

Today we begin a new segment called the Gems of Disney World.  These are the little treasures, some hidden some not so hidden, that make a trip to the Mouse so much more enjoyable then just standing  in line for a gatebuster attraction.  These are things you may miss, or that may not get their own ad campaign to promote them, but they are the stuff that really can enhance a vacation.  For our first entry, I am choosing my favorite gem, Off Kilter…

Disney World is full of great music.  You’ll find live shows and catchy ambient tunes, but nothing surpasses the great ensembles one can find at Epcot’s World Showcase.  Of all the terrific offerings, the first one that usually comes to the mind of the Disney addict is Off Kilter.  They are fun, engaging, and very, very loud.

From all over the World Showcase Lagoon, you can hear the sounds of bagpipes and rock n’ roll coming from the Canadian Pavilion.  It seems a strange mix, but this band makes it happen.  The bagpipes are a traditional instrument to be sure, and many often associate them with parades or funerals, but Off Kilter makes them as much a rock instrument as the Fender Stratocaster.  Piper Jamie Holton has a way of using the pipes to riff much the same as a great guitarist, but never leaving the fabric of Celtic music behind.

Off Kilter’s repertoire includes a sampling of traditional Celtic songs and instrumentals, including Scottish, Irish, and Canadian folk songs.  These pieces are always creative, but never esoteric.  They combine them with more modern rock songs and original compositions for a sound that many have never heard before.  Often times this combination is made during the same tune, and usually in a very light-hearted manner.  But their overwhelming talent makes what may seem a bit goofy onat first an interesting thrill to listen to.

Always smiling, and always appearing to have a great time, Off Kilter is comprised of pipes, guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums.  Even though they perform at the Canada Pavilion, I don’t believe any of them are actually Canadian.  But thankfully management saw through this detail and gave us a great band to listen to.  One mark of something good is that if you go and see them more than once in a day, you’ll notice many faces that were there at a previous show.  You can’t see this band only once.

For those more familiar with Irish folk music, stick around until you hear bassist Mark Weldon sings “The Fields of Athenry”.  It’s a different, yet sincere and beautiful take on a classic tune.

Scott Powers of the Orlando Sentinel has an article this morning that officially confirms a lengthy delay in the opening of the new Monsters, Inc. The Laugh Floor Comedy Club in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom.  In the article he points out that the passholder previews are also going to be delayed… Read the rest of this entry »

My family has made the broadcast of Christmas Day Parade from Walt Disney World a Christmas morning tradition.  For the past few years, I have looked forward to it, but to be honest, we were passive viewers at best.  The gifts and breakfast normally made the broadcast nothing more than a background, sort of a Mouse-flavored Yule Log.  This year, however, I decided to record it and watch it later…I wish I hadn’t!

From the very start, it became painfully obvious that this was a pre-recorded event and not the “Christmas Day Parade”.  Most of us knew that going in, so that is not in itself a problem.  But it was so heavily scripted that it made the whole thing appear forced to the point of distraction.  There was absolutely no spontaneity at all, and that killed the flow and overall quality of the program.  It’s one thing to be scripted and pre-recorded, but to be so obviously scripted and pre-recorded is something entirely different. 

From start to finish this was an advertisement, and not a good one at that.  The copy the hosts were reading was so dreadful that they sounded like a public relations firm that needs to be fired for lack of creativity.  Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa are cheesy to begin with, we expect that.  But when they pulled out the plastic pirate garb and sang a chorus of “Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho a Pirate’s Life for Me” I was actually embarrassed for them.  These two were so bad, they made Samantha Brown (brought in from the Travel Channel to do a 5 minute ad…umm…I mean segment, about the Disney Vacation Club) appear low-key.  I didn’t think that was even possible.

There was real potential here, and perhaps that is the most disappointing aspect.  There are terrific parades for the holidays all over Disney World.  All would make great subjects.  Instead we got one float here and one there, and all were quick shots intermixed with poorly staged shots of happy clapping audience members wearing as much Disney merchandise as one can possibly fit into a close-up.  The actual parade footage was quick and meaningless and appeared to be more of an advertisement for the parade then actual coverage of it.

I know enough about Walt Disney World and Disneyland to know that a live broadcast of the parade would be a logistical nightmare.   But can we at least pretend a little?  Can we at least make the parade appear to be the focus, even if the focus really is to make a two-hour infomercial? 

Take the performance by Daniel Powter, for an example.  Now, I am not very familiar with him, but he seems popular enough for his segment to merit a little more production creativity then cutting and pasting some canned archive commercial footage all over it.  You want to have him in front of the castle and not in the actual parade?  Fine.  You want to show endless amounts of people singing along with mouse-ears on?  I’m good with that.  You want to show a minimal amount of the actual performance and instead riddle it full of promotional material?  To a certain extent, I can even tolerate that idea.  Let’s be serious, I’m a Disney World addict.  I want to see as much as I can of it.  But can you at least show a small shred of creativity and not give me the same tired old promo material?

So I don’t sound like I’m doing nothing but whining, this was not a total loss.  There was a painfully short, yet interesting, segment about the suites in Cinderella’s Castle and the Disneyland Hotel, as well as a nice sneak peak into the Nemo subs going into Disneyland.  They also actually made time for some of the magnificent performers they have at Disney World with a terrific performance by the folks at Festival of the Lion King.  Oddly enough, I can’t think of another of the many live shows that got a chance to shine during the parade.  Even when it was good, it could have been much, much better.

Perhaps I just wasn’t paying close enough attention to it in years past, but can someone tell me if this broadcast has always been this bad?  The fact is that we are Disney addicts here.  We want to see the Magic Kingdom on Christmas morning.  It’s a treat for me and the family.  But did it have to be some blatantly phony?  And at what point do you think the director may have thought, “Okay, I think we mentioned “A Year of a Million Dreams enough”?

When I first heard Lou and Nathan on the Mousetunes Podcast offer up the idea for the Seven Wonders of Walt Disney World the first thing to pop into my head was Spaceship Earth.   As I sat down to define what “wonder” should mean for these purposes I thought of Spaceship Earth.  On every list I made while formulating my ideas, Spaceship Earth was always the first.   It is without doubt the most “grand and miraculous” of wonders. Read the rest of this entry »

For our final installment of the 12 Days of Christmas, let’s show you a parade you won’t hear alot about on the television today.  From the Disney MGM Studios…