I've
inspired myself! It happens sometimes—spend enough time spitballing
ideas, and one of them is bound to stick to the wall. While writing
last week's post, I liked my sketchy idea for a dark ride based on
The Princess and the Frog so
much that I decided to develop it in more detail. It's a pity I was
sick a few weeks ago and had to do a filler post, or this would have
come out just in time for Mardi Gras, but we all have to play the
hand we're dealt.
Premise
Dr.
Facilier has turned us into frogs because...reasons! We must escape
his shadow-minions through the Louisiana bayou and return to New
Orleans before midnight on Mardi Gras because...also reasons!
Obviously,
this ride concept references the plot of The
Princess and the Frog
in only the broadest of strokes. I keep saying that the best rides
are those that focus on the guests rather than making them passive
observers to a narrative, and I stand by that. We're not here for
Tiana and Naveen. We're here for us.
You'll
see what I mean when I get to the details of the ride itself.
Location
Where
else? I could not reasonably put this ride anywhere but in New
Orleans Square. The
Princess and the Frog
was made
for New Orleans Square.* But! I hear you cry. Where is there room
in New Orleans Square to add a dark ride? Surely you're not proposing
to rip out one of the two absolutely sacrosanct rides already there!
Of
course I'm not. What do you take me for? Let's pretend for the time
being that we inhabit a friendlier universe—one where, among other
differences, New Orleans Square is twice as large as it is in our
universe, and thus there is plenty of room to install a wonderful
dark ride without either encroaching on the territory you** rightly
deem sacrosanct or cutting into Management's precious retail and
pandering-to-rich-people space.
Okay?
Okay.
Queue
and Load Area
The
great thing about this movie being tailor-made for an existing land
is that theming the queue is practically effortless. The overflow can
simply continue through the streets of New Orleans Square—which,
remember, is hypothetically twice as large. The dedicated queue space
takes the form of side alleys which grow slightly grimmer and more
ramshackle as we approach the ride entrance.
The
indoor queue/load area is made to look like the little courtyard
space where Dr. Facilier's storefront is located in the movie:
That
barren tree has interactive functions; touching it causes shadows to
shift across its surface (due to an interior lighting effect) and
hidden speakers play the keening calls of Dr. Facilier's
shadow-minions.
And
let's not forget about music! As is standard for dark rides, the
interior queue/load area has its own music loop, a short (less than
ten minutes) mix of music from the film, mainly an instrumental
version of “Friends on the Other Side” and score pieces from Dr.
Facilier's big scenes.
This
is as good a place as any to also describe the ride system and
vehicles, since this is our first glimpse of them. These days the
amateur Imagineers seem to be all about the trackless, so sure—I'll
use the same system as Pooh's Hunny Hunt in Tokyo, only instead of
hunny pots, the vehicles are water lilies with seating for two. They
can spin, bob (“frog-hop,” if you will), and react to obstacles.
Hop
aboard!***
The
Ride
The
ride begins with us cruising through Dr. Facilier's front door into
his Voodoo Emporium. This appears pretty much as it does in the
movie—
—and
an animatronic figure of the “doctor” himself beckons toward a
curtained archway. “Right this way! I see green
in your future!” The curtain is drawn aside...not by Facilier, but
by his independent shadow, which tugs on the shadow of the curtain
cord via the magic of projection effects.
I've
come down on projection effects before, but this
sort of thing is what they were born for.
We
veer into the adjacent room, which is dark and features several
floating faux-tribal masks representing the Friends on the Other
Side. They, along with a Facilier voice-over, basically perform the
end of their namesake song, glowing voodoo sigils zip about the
walls, and then the masks start growing
while we watch—they are basically elastic screens built on
expanding frames with interior projection mapping to produce their
features and colors. “You got what you wanted, but you lost what
you had!” they taunt us, and our vehicles slide down a mild slope
in the floor to the next scene.
We
“land” with a splashing sound and find ourselves in the bayou.
Green lights inside the vehicles have turned on, casting a tint on
our skin: We've been transformed into frogs! There is a screeching
sound from overhead, and a spotlight lands on a colossal animatronic
stork. We spend some time ping-ponging around this room, dodging
snakes, alligators, and other predators all rendered giant-size, for
as frogs we are very small. Finally, we hear Facilier's voice—“Oh
no you don't! I need those frogs alive...for now!”—and images of
his shadow-minions spring up on the trees. The lighting on the
carnivores shuts off, as if the shadows have overwhelmed them. For a
moment it seems as though the shadows will overwhelm us too, but then
Ray the firefly appears, glowing fiercely. The shadows wail and fade,
and Ray says “Mama Odie will know what to do! We'll take you to
her!”
A
swarm of fireflies highlights the exit from this room, and we pass
through into a corridor with more bayou scenery but mostly chock-full
of fireflies—some animated projections on the walls, some simple
lightbulbs, and a few full figures. Our vehicles bounce in time to
the tune of “Gonna Take You There” (you might think of it as
“Goin' Down the Bayou”).
The
next scene is Mama Odie's treehouse...houseboat...treehouseboat, and
is brightly lit. Strong lamps mimic sunlight streaming in through the
windows, and colored glass bottles hanging from the ceiling throw
various hues everywhere. (We, of course, are still green.) Flocks of
roseate spoonbills sing “Dig a Little Deeper” and Mama Odie
herself—on a raised platform so that she towers over us even though
the figure is not huge like the predators in the bayou—stirs her
cauldron of gumbo and says “You got to get to the city graveyard in
N'Awlins before midnight on Mardi Gras in order to break the spell!”
This
scene is followed by a transition corridor which is decorated to look
like the lower deck of a paddlewheeler as it heads downriver toward
the city.
We
enter another large space, dressed as a New Orleans Street during the
Mardi Gras parade. There are buildings, floats, lampposts draped with
beads, and partygoers. We careen around the scene, but everywhere we
go, Dr. Facilier or his shadow-minions pop up ahead of us, forcing a
retreat. Eventually we cruise around a corner and into the city
graveyard, where Facilier is waiting for us. Suddenly, the clock
strikes midnight! The sculpted heads on the gravestones come to life,
taking on the colors of the Friends masks (more interior projection
mapping). They begin to chant and float out from the stones, and the
shadow-minions rise up around Facilier, who screams “You tricked me
into coming here!” and folds in on himself in terror before the
ground swallows him up.
With
the sorcerer defeated, the spell no longer has any momentum. The
green lights inside the vehicle turn off, indicating that we have
returned to human form. We exit the graveyard into a daylight scene
of the city with cheering citizens and a refrain of “Dreams do come
true in New Orleans!” before continuing to Unload.
Afterthoughts
As
presented, this ride does not make sense. It hits some of the major
beats as the movie, The
Princess and the Frog,
without having any connection to the reasons
those events were in the movie. This is intentional—this is not
Tiana and Naveen's story, but ours. What does Dr. Facilier want with
us? It's certainly not to steal our identities as royal gadabouts on
the prowl for a marriage of convenience. So all the stuff about
kissing princesses isn't going to work either. You have to fill in
your own justifications for this stuff to be happening in the
ride...or else not worry about it and just go along with the visuals
and excitement. My purpose in designing it was to create a throwback
to the classic era of dark rides, when impressionism, not doomed
attempts at narrative, was the order of the day.
The
core aesthetic here—the foundation of the impressionism—is light
vs. darkness. This was of course one of the major visual themes in
the film, and I've tried to recreate it by having wholly positive
scenes brightly lit or heavily featuring warm light, while negative
or tense scenes are dark, sometimes highlighted by lurid splashes of
unnatural color.
The
music of the film also plays a role, but not as large a one as I had
expected when I first started thinking about a potential dark ride
based on The
Princess and the Frog.
The problem with using song sequences in a traditional dark ride is
that they are sequences,
while a classic dark ride consists primarily of brief moments.
Only rarely does a song sequence function as the extension of such a
moment (though when it does, as on Peter Pan's Flight, the results
can be stunning).
So
there you have it, and only a week late. What do you think?
*
I am reasonably certain that this is literally the case.
**
That is, I, putting words in your mouth.
***
No, you shut up.
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