Alice In Wonderland's New Safety Railings Rock!

Just kidding. Disneyland's Alice in Wonderland dark ride has been in operation since 1958 (with an extended closure for remodeling in the early '80s) and--as far as I know--no one's ever fallen off the outdoor section of track. But recently, as most fans know by now, a visiting OSHA inspector mentioned in passing that the elevated track could pose a problem, and Disney voluntarily shut the ride for a quick safety fix.

A few days ago, the constructions tarps came down, and...good grief.



Okay, that image used to link to a very funny video of various reactions to the new look. It has since been removed by the auteur.

My favorite comment came from the Hatter: "You have lice. Alice spells A-LICE, so we're fumigating your ride!"

Awesome.

Alice in Wonderland is one of my all time favorite Disneyland rides. And a lot of that was due to how incredibly cool and whimsical the outside of the ride used to look. And, as a child, I loved the thrill of the way the caterpillars used to go a bit over the edge of the leaf path just before they turned, giving the illusion of danger. Now...well...


Video by Hydrotrippin

I love that the background music in the above video is Dee and Dum's How'd Ye Do song.

Okay, in all fairness, it could have been much, much worse. So I'd like to point out a few things I actually like about the safety rails:

1) They're temporary. The plan, apparently, is to close the ride in the near future for a much more involved permanent solution which will, hopefully, look a lot better.

2) They tried. Really, at least they made an effort to add some appropriately themed decor to the thing.

3) The darker loading area adds a bit of mystery.

4) As seen in the second video, I do like the darker exit from the ride building. That works. That bit of the ride has always been a sort of dead area. It's not until the vehicles reach the new safety flooring that things start to look gross.

5) It doesn't hurt the ride's interior one tiny bit.

6) It's temporary.

7) At least the ride's open.

8) It's temporary.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that the permanent solution will be creative, surprising, and...just maybe...be an opportunity to improve the ride's outdoor descent.

I vote for a big drop and a loop.

Alice in Wonderland

Few would deny that Disney’s Alice in Wonderland fails on a lot of levels: It lacks emotion, it’s episodic, the story has no goal…

And yet…

It’s my favorite Disney film. It haunted my dreams way back in my sixties childhood when Disney animation was a rare treat (I think small children can relate to Alice’s fear of being lost in Tulgey Wood, and that—if you experience this film at a young age—the movie retains a deep-rooted sense of peril that’s lost on those who initially view it as an adult.) Time has been kind to this movie: Watching it today, all the narrative problems still exist, but the film amazes, dazzles and completely succeeds at conjuring a cohesive, unforgettable world unlike anything else in the history of cinema.

Visually, it’s a masterpiece that looks fresher and more daring with each passing decade. It playfully weaves nearly two dozen songs—many of them mere fragments—into its colorful soundtrack. It’s not sappy or preachy. It actually sticks fairly close to the book’s storyline. It substitutes visual puns for Lewis Carroll’s wordplay, and mostly succeeds. And, after all the criticism fired at the movie when it debuted in the fifties, no other studio has created a more successful adaptation. I rather liked the TV movie a few years back featuring Martin Short, Christopher Lloyd, Gene Wilder and Peter Ustinov (it’s on iTunes), but it had its own share of pacing problems and took just as many liberties with the book. We’ll see how Tim Burton fares next year—I’m looking forward to it.

Let’s look at the negatives of Disney’s version: The ever-annoyed Alice often seems bratty and arrogant, and she learns nothing from the adventure. The journey has no compelling goal. The fragmented plot is episodic to a ridiculous extreme: Whole sequences can be removed without making any noticeable difference. The music, while generally terrific, frequently becomes brash and intrusive, particularly when it’s used to emphasize gags.

So, what does the movie offer to make it worthwhile? Sheer, incredible visual wonderment. Fantastic backgrounds and amazing use of light and color from the minds of Mary Blair and Claude Coats. Memorable character designs. Terrific animation.

Plus, it contains The Awesome Sequence: One long, perfect chain of scenes—The Cheshire Cat, The Tea Party and Tulgey Wood—that I’d rate as one of the most brilliant twenty minutes of film in Disney’s history: Genius designs, great dialogue and pacing, big laughs, craziest moments and—for once—Alice displays some genuine concern about being lost in Weirdsville. During the song Very Good Advice, I love the fact that the forest animals don’t help Alice; They simply sob themselves into non-existence. Unexpected and unique. If only the whole film clicked on the level of these scenes…

The Cheshire Cat, of course, is this movie’s big gift to pop culture. Creepy, funny, mysterious and odd, he turns out to be a hilarious S.O.B. who sets Alice up for disaster for his own amusement—thus joining Wendy-hating Tinkerbell as a beloved Disney character who tries to arrange the heroine’s execution!

And, on a completely different note, this movie inspired one of the best dark rides in any Disney park. But that’s another post.

So here’s a toast to Alice in Wonderland, the problem movie that continues to delight. Flaws and all, it deserves to be called a classic.