Moana: Go See It. Now.

I've been looking forward to Moana since it was announced. The setting and basic plot, the daughter of a Polynesian chieftain rediscovering her people's lost seafaring skills to go on a quest to save her people, had "Jeffrey's gonna love this" written all over them. How could a Lapu Lapu-loving, Polyneasian Village Resort-dreaming, tiki head collecting guy who dreamt all his life of living by the sea NOT be excited for this?

We saw Moana on opening night, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, in the local theater. I could have waited to go to the more "modern" theater in Wilmington and catch the film in 3-D with all the best sound and projection tech, but I couldn't wait. I think now that was a good choice. It let me get enveloped in the story, and for all it's beauty and all the spectacular music, that was my favorite part. I'm sure Moana in 3-D would blow me away, and I hope to see it again in that format. The music is perfect. I bought the deluxe edition soundtrack so I'd have all the little instrumental bits. It really couldn't be any better in my opinion. But the star of this film is the story, and the storytelling, and that is exactly how it should be.

The story is both original and classic. This isn't based upon any Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen story. It's based loosely upon both Polynesian legend and fact, as all the best stories are because the two aren't mutually exclusive. Moana, the not-a-princess heroine, is entirely a Disney construct while Maui, the demi-god sidekick, is inspired by Polynesian myth. The fact is, the Polynesian people were some of history's greatest seafaring navigators, traveling thousands of miles between tiny islands in sailing canoes, and then they stopped. No one, including them, knows why. That's the basis of this tale. The story seems familiar enough to our Western tastes to be very accessible and easy to follow while maintaining a flavor of the exotic that makes it interesting and fun.

As good as the story itself is, the storytelling is even more impressive. Disney doesn't rush it, doesn't force anything at all. We get a good half hour before even meeting Maui. That time is spent getting to know Moana and her people and it makes the rest of the story, the adventure part, that much more fun because we're invested deeply in both Moana personally and her culture as well. I can't remember a Disney film, or really any other animated feature, that spends this much time building this kind of base. It's a great thing that Disney trusts its audience, even its youngest audience, to leave the immediate gratification expectations behind. And I think it'll work because it was done so well, bringing in music and visuals that captivate and amaze. By the time Moana sets msail on her adventure, we are 100% with her.

The adventure itself is everything one could wish. Maui is more than worth the wait and he's voiced with passion and heart by Dwayne Johnson, who really is larger than life. But he never steals the show from Moana. She is the star and the heroine, not because she's some super-duper brilliant genius, magically-enhanced, over the top super girl, but because its her story. Disney has given us perhaps its first Heroine rather than Princess. Moana does have a bit f a superpower in that the sea likes her and helps her out, but she's not in control of it, she's as amazed and confused by the help as we are. What she does have, her real superpower, is her tenacity will power. She doesn't know how to sail, but off she goes anyway. She's a "I'll figure it out as I go" kinda girl, and I love that. The lesson that teaches, one of risk-taking and trust in oneself, is invaluable for all children, but particularly little girls.

This is a movie for anyone who's ever felt the tug of the sea, for anyone who loves adventure and comedy (the chicken and the coconut pirates still have me smiling), for anyone who appreciates music, for anyone who's onged for the South Seas, for anyone with a child or a parent or a grandmom. Disney has given us a gift here, go unwrap it as soon as you can!

34 Days: Non-Magical Day on Disney Roads

Photo Credit: WDW Today

An SUV crashed into a support and brought a big sign down across World Drive a few days ago. It snarled traffic quite a bit, apparently, and I'm hoping everyone involved is ok.

But it also made me think about how happy I am to let the driving to Disney when I'm inside "the bubble" of Walt Disney World.

I drive a lot for work, sometimes as much as close to 1,000 miles in a five-day week. I don't dislike driving, but being able to put the car keys away for an entire week is pretty magical for me. I don't mind waiting in a bus line at the beginning or end of a day one tiny bit. I figure you'd spend that time trudging out to find your car in the acres of parking lot anyhow, and then have to drive it back to your resort and find a place to park there. No thanks.

Not only do I not mind taking Disney Transportation, I truly enjoy it. I love all the variety, from buses (both regular and the newer, super-cool bendy ones) to monorails to boats, I love them all! We've actually taken a bus to Hollywood Studios just so we could take the boat from there to Epcot's World Showcase gate because we'd not experienced that particular boat ride before. And it was a good choice, as our boat had a broken horn so the captain and mate had to use one of those canned air horns like you see (and hear) at football games. They were having a blast tooting it at the other boats, and the other boats knew ours had no horn so were mocking us on the way by. It was great fun :-)

Anyhow, that's just one more escape for me on a  Disney trip. Mickey is welcome to take the wheel.

40 Days: Moana, Halloween and "Cultural Appropriation"

First off, if you ever say the words "cultural appropriation" without sufficient sarcasm in your voice or making those little quote things with your fingers in the air, we need to have a long, long talk, my friend. I think if you Google "Psuedo-Intellectualism" the first link is a YouTube video of a poorly dressed college professor giving a room full of rich white liberal kids a lecture on "Cultural Appropriation."

So what's got my anthropology geek dander up you ask? This completely moronic article on the i09 website complaining about a Maui (the demi-god sidekick to Moana, the title character in the upcoming Disney animated feature) Halloween costume being not only an example of the dreaded "cultural appropriation," but also.....gasp....tantamount to "brown-face." You get it, right? They refer to the old Vaudeville and minstrel show trope of the white guy in exaggerated make-up known as black-face. Only Maui isn't black, he's Polynesian. Hence, "Brown-face".

This is black face. If you send little Johnny out as Maui, i09 thinks you're doing the Pacific Islander version of this

Only it's not the face that's brown in Disney's costume. The fine, sensitive folks at i09 assume parents will take care of that part themselves. No, what Disney did with it's Maui costume is make it look like, well, Maui in the movie. It's a body suit colored like a Polynesian with Maui's tattoos all over and an attached grass skirt. And that's the problem, well one of them, these morons have. It's, oh the horror, colored in a non-white skin tone! This is racist, you see. Don't ask me to explain, I'd lose brain cells trying.

Meanwhile, on Planet Earth, what Disney is doing is teaching about and paying tribute to the rich Polynesian culture in an entertaining and, my guess is, very popular manner. The film Moana is based upon one of the great cultural mysteries. Polynesians once roamed the Pacific Ocean in small sailboats, traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles of trackless sea with no compass, no chart, no astronomical book, no chronograph. They didn't get lost. They used tide and current and wind and weather and who knows what else to guide themselves. But then, for over a thousand years, they simply stopped. All of a sudden. No one knows why. Myths sprung up among the people of the South Pacific islands to explain the mystery, and this film is based upon a hodgepodge of those stories. Is it a stricly academic study of Pacific Island culture? No, it's a Disney movie with a pretty young girl as heroine and a big, strong, funny guy, demi-god played by  Dwayne Johnson as her sidekick. There is music and magic and anthropomorphic critters. But what it is NOT is making fun of or belittleing in any way whatsoever the people of the South Pacific.

Disney once was criticized, and probably rightly so, for all it's "Princesses" being white Europeans. Lately the company has been making a concerted effort to be more inclusive of other cultures, which is good and makes perfect sense. All peoples of this Earth have stories and myths and legends, and Walt would be proud that today's movie makers are exporing new things and letting curiosity lead them down new paths. And it has a positive effect on audiences. Quite the opposite of the complaints.

No 8-year-old in suburban America was dressing as a Hawaiian demi-god last year. This year, I'm thinking quite a few will, and it will be because Disney ignited that spark in them and led them to open their little minds to a culture they would otherwise be unfamiliar with. How that can be a bad thing is a compete mystery to me.

45 Days: Wordless Wednesday, Disney Transportation

49 Days: Boats. Lots and Lots of Boats

So weekends are iffy for the blog-a-day thing. I'm catching up again this morning. John and I spent the day at the First Annual Wilmington Boat Show yesterday, so when we got home we were both pretty worn out, and the best kind of worn out. It was an incredible day.

Ever since Wilmington's new convention center opened a couple years ago I've been waiting for a boat show. I mean, why else even build a convention center, right? Well, the wait was worth it. This was a bigger deal than I would have ever dreamt. John and I were able to park on our side of the river at the USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial with our $10 admission including a water taxi to the main show over at the city marina. Of course we checked out Twiggy, the Waterskiing Squirrel before we crossed the Cape Fear. Twiggy was cool, her handler was a bit odd.

Twiggy, in all her glory

There wasn't much aside from the waterskiing squirrel to see or do on the Brunswick County side of the river, so we water taxi-ed it over the the marina. The taxi was advertised to be running every 20 minutes, but it seemed the two boats in service were picking up every 10 or 15. Oh, and the boat we rode back at the end of the day had a bar open. Yes, I had a rum punch on a boat to top off my day at the boat show. It's the little things, really. :-)

And what a day it was. The taxi let us off at Pier 33, which is sort of a part of the adjacent  city marina but not technically. The boat displays began there, running around the pier and to three sets of docks full of everything from small flats skiffs to two million dollar yachts, all of which we were welcome to climb aboard. Boat shows have for me always been about dreaming, and those yachts offered some BIG dreams. It was fun watching the eyes of fellow show patrons bug out as they took in the staterooms and flying bridges of these ships. Normal people just don't get a chance to actually sit and walk around on these things.

View from the Top o' the Yacht

Grills on the flying bridge are a ting apparently. They all had them.

It wasn't all out of reach, though. There was a guy outside the indoor portion in the convention center selling a catamaran with inflatable pontoons that came in one 98 lbs duffle bag for just around six grand. Inside, a fella was hawking these small round boats that could be plopped in your pick up bed. Fit out with a seat or two and an electric trolling mot0r the entire package was $2800. John is totally sold on this. Me? I'm sold on the mahogany  sailboat made by Cape Fear Community College's boat building class. They build boats (of course) every semester and then sell them for about the cost of the materials. I fell head over heels for this little sailboat, and with a $2000 asking price, this dream is well within reach.

Yeah. So. I need this.

The college also had its research vessel open for tours, during which we found one of John's friends who is in the CFCC Marine Science program in the pilot house. There were something like 200 vendors set up both inside the convention center and around the marina. We found a guy selling waterproof, floating Bluetooth speakers and I ended up buying one, as it turns out, for half the going price.

Everyone, from vendors to patrons to show staff to the captains of the water taxis, was as nice and friendly and happy as could be. It was full of people, but I hesitate to say crowded as it never seemed the huge number of fellow patrons slowed anything down or made it difficult to do anything we wanted when we wanted to do it.

As an example, there was a sailing school offering rides on their 27 foot sailboat. John saw the sign saying the next ride left in an hour and we stopped to ask if we could sign up. It was completely free with nothing but the softest sales job for the sailing school and sail boat club. We not only were able to sign up, but ended up as the only two on the trip. We sailed up and down the Cape Fear for almost an hour with two try really cool guys and had an absolute blast. It was a great way to top off the day.

I have to say it was a good day

This show could not have been handled better. It's the kind of thing that's going to become a destination. There simply aren't boat shows like this everywhere. My hat goes off to these people for completely doing it right and for giving John and I a day we won't soon forget.

Disney Memories

Walt Disney World's marketing slogan this year is something along the lines of "Memories Are Made Here." Wait, it's for Disney Parks in general and it's "Unforgettable Happens Here" (I just Googled it). It's tough to quibble with that. My mind is full of Disney moments. I remember River Country vividly, along with 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, the Skyway and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. That last one, Mr. Toad, came up the other day on a car ride home from Durham after seeing The Lion King musical (which was unbelievable, by the way.) We were talking about past trips, about what were some of our best times, and Lisa and I went back to this one night in 1993 that will be hard to beat for Disney Magic.

The trip was pretty great all around. It was a graduation gift to Lisa and I from my parents. We stayed in Fort Wilderness in a cabin with Lisa and I, my mom and dad, and my sister, then about 13. We spent a lot of time together all five of us, but sometimes Lisa and I struck out on our own. This night we'd stayed in the Magic Kingdom after the rest of my family left and we planned to "close out" the park. Boy did we.

I don't remember the entire evening vividly, but the incredible part began during the later of the two runnings of the Main Street Electrical Parade (or maybe it was SpectroMagic then, but I think it was MSEP). We hadn't planned to watch the parade, instead using the opportunity presented by everyone else watching the parade to ride Splash Mountain with very little wait. We were happily surprised to find that we had a great view of the parade from the higher portions of Splash Mountain! It looked incredible from that vantage point, and wonderfully new and different from the usual ground-level viewing. We hadn't planned our ride to coincide with the parade passing through Frontierland - I don't know if we could have - but it worked out that way and it was magic.

Well, that had us on a high. We cruised around Frontierland congratulating ourselves on how awesome we were to have such a great experience. Truth be told, Lisa and I do A LOT of congratulating ourselves on our awesomeness. Is that wrong? Anyhow, as the park closing time neared we found ourselves in Fantasyland, willfully as far from the entrance as we could get. We were in no hurry and wanted to be in the Magic Kingdom as long as we could, if I remember our thinking correctly. Attractions began closing off lines and we figured we might have one shot at one more ride, so we headed to Mr. Toad, because it was one of my favorites and Lisa loves me.

We squeezed into line as some of the last passengers and as the cars came around......Wait, let me stop here and explain a few things. I loved Mr. Toad because it was kind of hokey. It was a glorious, unapologetic, in-your-face kind of hokey. Part of the fun was that the cars were named for characters from the Wind in the Willows stories. It was fun waiting to see, and counting cars and people in front of you as you neared the front of the queue, which character's car you'd get. The crown jewel of course was Mr. Toad's car. It seemed harder to get. Maybe there was only one named for Mr. Toad? I don't know. But anyhow, there we were nearing the loading place and I was counting people and looking at the cars emerge ready to load and.....and....there it was. Mr. Toad. And we got it.

I of coarse, being the cool-as-a-cucumber person I am, let out with an exuberant and very loud, "IT'S MR. TOAD!!!!" Lisa was charmed. The cast member loading cars, who's likely been at her post for many hours and was quite ready to go home, was completely confused and a bit shocked at my outburst. Lisa gave her a "it's ok, he's just like that" look and off we went for what would turn out to be our very last ride through Toad Hall. Hated to see Mr. Toad's Wild Ride go, but what a way to end it.

So, after riding Mr. Toad's very own motor car through the very gates of Hell themselves (what, you didn't think Satan made an appearance in Disney World?), we followed the last of the stragglers down Main Street USA and out of the Magic Kingdom. More self-congratulating was happening. We were on such a high there was no way we were ready for this night to end. So instead of hopping on a boat for Fort Wilderness, we got on the monorail headed to the Polynesian and the Kona Cafe in search of ice cream sundaes.

Sundaes were acquired and eaten. Magic was re-lived. Much laughing and talking happened. Then it occurred to us that as magical as Walt Disney World was, it was unlikely they'd run boats from the Poly to Fort Wilderness 24 hours a day. We headed down to the docks and caught what turned out to be the last launch back to the Fort. Turns out that night they ran until 2 am. It WAS 2 am. This deposited us at the front of Fort Wilderness where we were lucky enough to find one of the internal buses waiting. We were the only passengers on the very last bus of the night. The driver, looking as tired as the Mr. Toad attendant, asked us what site were staying at and took us straight there, right to the door of our cabin, rather than to the bus stop near-by. Disney cast members are the best, even at zero dark freakin' thirty in August.

The family was sound asleep, as one might expect at 2:30 am, and we snuck in and bedded down without waking anyone up. Being only 22 years old and crazy in love and happy, we were up and at 'em with bounces in our steps early the next morning for breakfast with the whole crew.

Best. Night. Ever.

So far :-)

The Just Us, No Parks, No Schedule 20th Anniversary 2015 Disney World Trip

This trip was just for us. For my sweety and me. Go ahead, gag, It's ok. She's my sweety though and I'm happy to say so. After 20 years of marriage, we are still very much in love, still enjoy each other's company over others', still giggle over stupid stuff, still love simply being around each other. And where better to be around each other than Walt Disney World?

Spoiler Alert! I got my mug

We even enjoy the car ride. It's a chance to talk :-)

This trip came about in classic Lisa and Jeffrey fashion. I was seeing photos from the newly opened Trader Sam's Grog Grotto and they included a souvenir mug shaped like the Nautilus. I HAD TO have one. We had some friends heading down to Disney World in November so I asked them to try to pick one up for me. But when I told Lisa, she was all like, "Hey, why don't WE go down for our anniversary and get one for you?" The boy told us since it was our anniversary trip, we should go without him. And so the Just Us, No Parks, No Schedule Disney Anniversary Weekend 2015 was born.

We always leave the driving to Disney

Lisa and I grew up in Pennsylvania, so the novelty of being able to leave home at breakfast time and eat dinner in Disney World has never worn off. And probably it won't ever, to be honest. We packed up, took the boy to the bus stop (it was raining) and left the island by 7:00. After a new-GPS-inspired detour to the Kissimmee DMV office, we found Pop Century Resort and were walking in the front doors by about 5:00. We had a plan to do the monorail bar tour Friday night, bum around the pool Saturday morning then hit the brand spanking new Jack Lindsey's Hanger Bar for lunch and cocktails, then have a look around Wilderness Lodge before our 7:30 Artist's Point ADRs and hopefully catching the electrical water pageant from the Wilderness Lodge beach. That was the extent of our plans. They included no parks and only one dining reservation, and that only because we wanted to make sure of a table at a nice place for a sort of anniversary celebration dinner. And this all
worked out PERFECTLY!

Having the window seat meant Lisa was on photo duty

We're on a boat!!!!!!

In the coming days and weeks I'll be blogging about all the different aspects of our trip. For now the short version is this--we completed the monorail bar tour including drinking with a retired Imagineer and experiencing Trader Sam's complete with Nautilus mug, we chilled at the pool reading books, we explored the new Hanger Bar, we loved Wilderness Lodge and Artist Point, we saw both the fireworks and water parade from the beach, and we got some very relaxed shopping time in at Downtown Disney before leaving in time to arrive home by 10:00 pm Sunday night.

We spent about 20 hours driving and pretty much exactly 46 on Disney property. There are those who

Jock Lindsey's Hanger Bar is PERFECT

would think that nuts. But for us it was a dream. We relaxed and unwound after a crazy summer, we enjoyed each other's company talking and laughing our way from doorstep to doorstep, we took a ton of photos, we people watched, we ate and drank without worrying about a DD, we rode the monorail and several different boats, we tried out a new resort and quite a few new bars and restaurants. We simply had a ball doing what WE wanted to do when we wanted to do it.....together.

People can decide to celebrate a big milestone anniversary many ways.

We chose wisely.

Goodbye, HMS Bounty

This is the Captain's cabin on the HMS Bounty and it's off limits to visitors. Just so happened the crew member watching the entrance wandered off. It took about half a second for Misty and I to decide to slip under the rope and enjoy the good life of Captains of the Ship.

This morning the HMS Bounty, a replica of the famous "Mutiny on the" ship, sank off the North Carolina coast while trying to sail around Hurricane Sandy. She carried 16 crew, 14 of whom are safe ashore as I write this. One crew member, Claudine Christian, died and her body was recovered. The ship's captain, Robin Walbridge, remains missing as of Monday night. I pray for the safety of Captain Walbridge and for the family and friends and memory of Claudine Christian. CNN has a good story with a bit of video that is the most up to date info I could find as I write this.

I understand the human tragedy here and I guess some would think this terribly missing that point, but I'm going to write about losing the ship. If that bothers you, stop here, or bear with me and maybe you'll see where I'm going with this. The Bounty wasn't a person, she had no soul (in the religious sense) and no family (in the genetic sense) and she shouldn't be mourned as if she was a person. But it's not wrong to mourn her, I think, not wrong to feel a real sadness that she rests now at the bottom of the Atlantic, never to sail again. I do feel that sadness, a sense of loss. I think that woman next to me in the picture, our friend Misty, feels it too, and without assuming to speak for her, I'm going to try to explain why we do.

There's a reason ships are called "she" and not "it." Ships, especially sailing ships, evoke emotion in sailors and would be sailors. They represent much more than wood and hemp and canvas. They represent freedom. They represent escape. Or maybe it's more to the point to say that they represent......possibilities. That's the crux of it for me, I think. I already feel very free and I have nothing to escape from, my life being pretty damned good, and yet I'm drawn to a ship like the Bounty on a very basic level. Misty is as well. We HAD to go see her, and we HAD to go see her together. We did the same thing when the US Coast Guard's Eagle came to town. We walked around these ships not saying much but both thinking the same thing, "What if....?" What if I had her for my own? Where could I go? What could I do? How would it be to wake up in the morning to the sound of water running against a wooden hull and know I had the whole of the ocean open to me? We joked about stowing away, but neither of us wanted that and soon it turned to imaginings of flat out piracy. We didn't want to just be on the ship, we wanted to have the ship, to be a part of her and her of us and to go where we pleased. When I was on the Bounty, I could feel all of that inside of me. Possibility, pure, unadulterated possibility, seemed closer. Just being aboard her did it.

And now she's gone and I'm sad.