Word: disneyized
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...Disney-MGM is the costume jewel, the golden Mousketeer cap on the head of chairman Michael Eisner. Five years ago, Disney was an ailing movie midget coasting on revenue from its theme parks in Florida, Japan and Anaheim, Calif. Now it reigns as box-office champ. It also produces hit series like Golden Girls, boasts 9,000 rooms in its Florida hotels and plans to open Euro Disneyland outside Paris in 1992. And still Eisner eyes more robust expansion. Typhoon Lagoon, a 50-acre water theme park, premieres next month, followed shortly by a PG-rated night-life district called...
...Universal's Florida movieland is just a script. Disney's is a tangible fantasy -- real tinsel draped artfully over Hollywood's phony tinsel, an art industry glammed up as an elegant Deco dream. There is a sanitizing genius to the Disney parks, with their canny nostalgia for an America that may have existed only in the lace-valentine heart of a young Walt Disney. And the tactic works best when applying a cartoonist's paintbrush to a world that is fiction, on- and offscreen. Disney-MGM Studios marries movies to theme parks with the astuteness of Hollywood's hottest studio...
...fantasy begins as you enter the gate and step onto Hollywood Boulevard. No teen hookers or creepy vibes here. That's just reality. On Disney-MGM's main street, the billboard proclaims HOLLYWOODLAND, BEDROOM COMMUNITY OF THE INNOCENT PAST. The corner gas station dispenses "service with a smile," and Mickey's of Hollywood peddles nothing racier than T shirts with a mouse emblem. Even the local sanitation man (one of many character types crowding the street like Preston Sturges comedy characters) has refined tastes. "I collect only the garbage of the stars," he proclaims with delicious snoot. Hollywaste. Tinsel trash...
Genuine celebs will mingle with the fans of Hollywood Boulevard each day (Cyd Charisse this week). But the basic idea of Disney-MGM is that the visitor is the star. Bobby-soxed employees clamor for your autograph, demand to be photographed with your family of four (who have paid about $110 for a day at the park). In the SuperStar Television show, you guest-star in ingeniously integrated scenes from I Love Lucy, Today, The Ed Sullivan Show or General Hospital. On the 90-min. Studio Tour you don a yellow slicker and become skipper of the good ship Miss...
...Disney wants you to discover the intricate craft of moviemaking without losing the moviegoer's fond suspension of disbelief. In its most elaborate attraction, The Great Movie Ride, spectators enter a reproduction of Hollywood's secular cathedral, the Chinese theater, where the Casablanca piano and Dorothy's ruby slippers repose under glass. Computerized mannequins portray such stars as James Cagney, Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford. An Alien monster lurches and drools. For all its bustle, the ride refuses to enthrall. Even a beguiling stop in Munchkinland reminds the passengers that, however the technology of Disney rides has improved, the scope...