Saturday, May 29, 2010

Star Tours 2

Let me sum up:
Photos taken after I read a Wil Wheaton tweet indicating Star Tours will soon be replaced with a freakin' pod race.







Let me splain:
I grew up as a theatre geek in the OC. That means I spent a crap ton of time at Disneyland--as a geeky annual passholder and later as an employee. Pretty much every date I've ever been on took place at Disneyland. My geeky husband's earliest attempt to express romantic interest in me was to buy an annual pass--a move which easily quintupled the amount of time we spent together. I have a complicated emotional history with this joint, and a whole lot of love and tenderness for it. I don't have much love and tenderness for the Star Wars prequels.

I should say that I went into the prequels with high hopes. Even after being fairly dissapointed with Phanom Menace and Attack of the Clones, I held out hope that Revenge of the Sith might bring it home for me. The husband and I camped out for Episode III two weeks before our wedding--we had meetings with both our DJ and the priest who married us in the Star Wars tent camp. After all was said and done, I ended up somewhere near Patton Oswalt in my opinion of the prequels (he likens detailing Darth Vader's origins to offering Jon Voight's glistening ball sack to an Angelina Jolie fan). The sad thing is--I'm a huge fan of villain origin stories. Pondering the childhood harms endured by the likes of Captain Hook was a favourite pass time as a teenager, and one of the reasons I chose to become a psychologist. If anyone was poised to love the prequels, it was me. But ultimately they made it clear that Lucas does a lot better with shiny things than actors.

I had just turned 6 when Star Tours hit Disneyland. Old enough to remember the ride it replaced, Adventure Thru Inner Space (being terrified I'd never return to my original size, or that I'd fall off that one really steep ledge). I loved Star Tours growing up. I loved the stewardess with the zany hair. I loved the wacky Paul Reubens robot. I loved the way it induced playful giddiness in my fairly stoic husband--he hollers and flops around like his life depends on it while on this ride. And I was always excited by the ubiquitous rumor that new adventures would someday be incorporated into Star Tours. Somehow I've managed to maintain this childlike excitement for the past two decades while blocking out the fact that after the release of Phantom Menace, any such update would clearly be driven by the prequels.

My husband and I are currently at grad. school in Iowa. We realized in January that 2009 was the first year in recent memory we didn't make it to Disneyland. We're heading to California in June and had been debating whether we'd have time for a Disney trip. The emotional kicker for me was the fact that when we get back from California I'm moving two hours away from our current Iowa home. My husband is not. I'm starting up the internship year that is required to complete my degree. I'll be getting an apartment and commuting home on the weekends. Paying for two homes while taking a pay cut is a bit of a bummer, but I'm really happy I got an internship at all, and a fairly close one at that. However, the prospect of 4-5 nights a week spent somewhere other than an awesome cuddle-pile with my husband is starting to hit me pretty hard.

So when I heard that Star Tours 2 is coming, that it is prequel based, and that Star Tours is closing at Disneyland in July, it was a scosh too much change for me. I went into the office where my husband was playing WOW, took a deep breath, and said "I really want to try to make it to Disneyland in June. Because they're turning Star Tours into..." and so the sob-splosion began.

~Geek out

1 comment:

  1. I'll admit to not having seen Star Wars yet. But your enthusiasm for Disney reminded me it's okay to love it as much as I do. I've been to Disney World twice and I still want to go again. It is always a wonderful place. On top of that, it is so refreshing to know someone who isn't afraid to cry.

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