The traditional folk wisdom about brides and weddings (“something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”) applies in a weird way to the two newest offerings at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: PizzeRizzo and “Jingle Bell Jingle BAM!” fireworks and projections. In other words, both offer newness, but also a kind of sameness. It’s progress and evolution, but nothing to write home about.
Jingle Bell, Jingle BAM! has the distinction of having one of the worst names I can remember in Disney show history. I get the emotion they’re going for (it’s Christmas themed! There are explosions!) but the juxtaposition simply grates for me, especially when applied to a Christmas song. It feels like early 2000s DCA trying to be hip and edgy, and hiring all the wrong people to write the copy. I would like it more if they just called it Jingle BAM!, which is how I’ll refer to it simply to stop having to type the whole thing out every time.
It’s a fireworks, projection, flames, and lasers show. The combination sounds fun, and most of what makes Fantasmic work so well. The lighting, snow, and effects that encircle you at Center Stage are pretty effective. The flames are fine. The use of the side buildings to create a wide-angle canvas for the projections works as well here as it did during the Star Wars fireworks. And the lasers may be the best of all this time, bright and used to good effect. Even the fireworks have some excitement, with a genuine finale at the end. So that’s something new.
So how is this something old? Because the show has a rehashed feel to me. Emotionally it didn’t seem to break new ground, and in fact I would have said even moments after it was over that it just sort of meandered around.The technology isn’t “old” per se, but neither was there something ground-breaking here to witness. All the “pieces,” so to speak, had already been here before.
Something borrowed: frankly, the technology is borrowed. We’ve seen it at the Magic Kingdom castle and even right here for the Star Wars fireworks. There wasn’t, that I could tell, any one single “brand new” type of technology on display here.
And finally for these fireworks: something blue. I hate to say it, but the thing that was “blue” was my mood. Because I didn’t find that the story line made much sense, and the majority of that has to do with the characters chosen as the main heroes of this show: Prep and Landing. If you’re now scratching your head wondering who that is, you’re not alone. I recognized the names, all right, but I didn’t have an immediate reference for them. Some direct-to-DVD movie, maybe? A sequel no one watched? A Disney Channel thing? A cartoon short? To this very minute as I write this, I have intentionally avoided looking it up, because I wanted to provide an honest review of what I saw and what I thought.
And what I saw and thought was that this pair of elves rank pretty far up there in the “obscure” ranking of Disney characters. Do people know what they stand for? I didn’t. They were used in this show to infiltrate a castle (or some such thing), but without prior reference it seemed kind of hard to follow. And I consider myself a fairly well-informed Disney fan (caveat: certainly not the superfan! There will be those who know Prep and Landing!!)
The show also features Disney characters–I seem to remember the snowball-hucking Beast and several Donald Duck appearances–and there’s a highlight with Nightmare Before Christmas. But overall, the tenor and emotion of the show suffered (for me) because I didn’t know Prep and Landing.
On to PizzeRizzo. The weird spelling aside, the new venue will enchant most visitors. It’s all new and refreshed. It felt very Disney, and yet since it was new ground for us, it felt like those moments when you visit an overseas Disney restaurant for the first time. In other words, both old (familiar) and new (foreign) at the same time. There are new sets everywhere–loads of them! There are lots of little jokes, too, and inclusion of Muppets. Also, they “filled in” the big ceilings, so there is more space upstairs. Plus a bonus room that is honest-to-goodness geared for weddings. There is even an actual wooden dance floor. I think they are imagining real weddings here, not just theming for its own sake.
That’s something new. What’s something old? Alas, it’s the pizza itself. As far as I can determine, the pizza has literally not changed (in size, in scope, in flavor) from the Pizza Planet days. If you thought that pizza was amazing, you’re in heaven. If you thought it was boring theme park food, you’re left unimpressed.
Something borrowed? That’s easy. The subway sign from the Big City sets of Streets of America lives on! It is mounted on the upstairs wall, and the W for Walt and D for Disney are as hard to ignore now as they were when they were downstairs in the Big City sets. (Also, scroll back up to the PizzeRizzo sign for a reference to Pizza Planet, the former name of this location).
And finally, for something blue, I give you: blue, white, and red. Specifically, this tribute to the Spice Girls that will leave you mouthing all the “original” titles (I dare you to not make it true!)
And finally, even though it doesn’t fit the pattern, something “nice.” There used to be a turkey leg stand on Sunset Blvd, named Toluca Legs (a play on the tony city of “Toluca Lake”, where Roy Disney’s family lived). With the departure of turkey legs, the name made less sense, so it went to Sunshine Day Cafe. Does the logo look familiar at all to you?
I’m the freak who said: “wait, that looks familiar to me.” I further ruminated about it long enough to go home and look it up. Yes, I was right. This is the sun from Toontown as seen in the 1989 movie “Roger Rabbit”.
This sort of discovery is the two-part experience of feeling “YES I WAS RIGHT” and “wow, they really went to that level of detail…someone was paying serious attention.” Of course, it’s even nicer that this park was heavily tilted toward Roger Rabbit when it opened in 1989, as that was the recent movie. Some of those little touches and references are gone now, so it’s nice to see a new one.
So yeah… something nice. It makes you feel like the Disney universe is aligned just correctly right now.
Kevin is the prolific author of nearly two dozen books (mostly Disney related). You can find most of them on AMAZON HERE.
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