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Techtite's Shows & Parks Reviews! |
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The Enchanted Tiki Room : Under New Management!(Disney World's Magic Kingdom)A Techtite Review Nobody wants to "improve" the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney theme parks. Ditto for The Haunted Mansion, Peter Pan, It's a Small World, and on and on. Sure, you can add a new scene, animatronic character, or the like, though nobody wants a classic ride changed! Apparently, folks in charge of the Enchanted Tiki Room were not told this fact of vacation resort etiquette. The result is a "new and improved" ride...though what about the old one? Anyone who was a child in the '60s, '70s, '80s, or even most of the '90s, will remember the Enchanted Tiki Room, where dozens of animated electronic birds, flowers, and Tikis themselves would break into song. Hosted by Jose the parrot, and his friends Miguel, Pierre, and Fritz, it was a cute musical interlude, and a nice way to keep the kiddies entertained for an extended period of time, while being entertaining to the parents as well; a classic! Enter the "new management." Modern bird characters, Iago (Aladdin) and Zazu (The Lion King) have become the Tiki Room's new owners! Their decision is to jazz up the 1960's tunes of the "old" show with some more "modern" music. With rudeness at first (Iago) then courtesy (Zazu), the new owners cause major Tiki Room havoc, in a cliché good bird/bad bird shtick. As cute as this idea might be --update the '60s tunes with new ones-- there's a few errors in the final result. For one, regardless of Zazu, there are no reprises of the music from The Lion King; big mistake. As for Iago, he makes a complete mockery of the "Friend Like Me" song from Aladdin, and that's it. What happened to the idea that Iago/Zazu were "modernizing" the show, hmmm? Most of the "new" songs are actually quite old. With the omission of Oscar winning songs from Aladdin/Lion King, this is an even more glaring faux pas. The show is also much shorter. What was once a grand show of songs done by the male parrots, the female cockatoos, the enchanted flowers, the tikis, and on and on, is now basically just a quickie animated comic strip. See Iago insult the Tiki Room Birds. See him then insult the power of the Tikis. See the Tiki Goddess appear, totally annoyed at Iago (she and I, both!). Then see him zapped away. He returns later with bandages on his beak...ha-ha, I guess. Soon after that, the whole show's over. More modern animatronic FX enhance the experience, I admit. When the tiki goddess appears, it is a fully animated character with glowing eyes, that almost rivals the lifelike Wizard of Oz witch, in MGM Studios' Great Movie Ride. Light effects are cute, including disco lighting, a starry effect, and so on. It will also amuse kids and adults alike to see animatronic versions of Iago and Zazu, even though someone has inexplicably made them several sizes larger than the other birds in the show. Oh, well; I guess when it comes to editing a classic Disney attraction, building characters "to scale" is irrelevant. The final verdict is simple; you can't improve a classic. Sure, people go to see the modernized, direct-to-video versions of classic Disney animation films, and yet this doesn't put them in league with the originals. Anyone who remembers the original Tiki Room ride can't help themselves when feeling Disney World lost a part of itself when replacing a classic attraction with...this. On the other hand, my four-year-old nephew loved every minute of it, and even wanted to go on a second time. Older kids seemed to fidget in their seats. It's perhaps just a matter of taste.
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