The End of an Era

Well, folks, it's official: Jaws at Universal Studios Orlando has been demolished. Amity Village is no more to the tourists who want to face a shark with adorably cheesy skippers.

Jaws and its themed land has gone the way of the dodo... and Back to the Future: The Ride, Kongfrontation, Earthquake: The Big One, and The Funtastic World of Hanna Barbara. It seems like now all of the original attractions are closed down. The oldest attraction left is T2: Battle Across Time, and that's starting to show its age, but man, I love that show, and it would be an absolute shame to demolish that. Also, E.T. Adventure, but that ride, well, you've got to love it. It's so original, and my favorite family dark ride. Disney doesn't make it believable; I can't believe talking fish, but I can believe that I'm flying over NYC 15 feet above them, that strange looking aliens are glad that we somehow saved them from certain doom, and that I'm about to be hit by a semi-truck. Thank God Spielberg has protected this ride from destruction. I could only imagine Barney 4D, or PBS Kids: The Ride.

Anyways, Jaws wasn't the most exhilarating ride, it wasn't the scariest, and it wasn't the best acted. It was cheesy. You knew the shark wouldn't eat you. You knew it was a robot. You knew that next time you went on, everything would act the same, and the fire would stop before you crossed it. But it still had the Spielberg charm from the first film (we don't talk about the sequels here). I would ride the ride again; I was immersed into the film with other people; that was Universal's mission from the beginning! But now instead of "Rid[ing] the Movies!" we "Jump Into the Action." Since Jaws wasn't as exciting as Disaster! or RipRideRockit! or The Simpsons Ride, it must be closed. Forget riding the movies, we need action. We may be a partial movie studio, but people come and spend money, but we need to do better than Disney, and this, that, and the other.

Marketing schemes can be a pain in the keister, but I don't think that's what bugs me most about the departure. I think it's its replacement.

Amity Harbor is shut down forever, the Jaws pool is drained, and the remains of the ride go who-knows-where. So something "state-of-the-art" must be replacing it. Well, if "s-o-t-a" is something that brings the tweenies in, I guess you're right. And we ain't talking about The Hunger Games, people. No, we're talking about...

Harry Potter Part Two

That's right, folks, a classic attraction based off a classic movie has been slewed by adolescent wizards in their second incarnation at Universal Studios Resort. That's right: Numero Dos! Allegedly, leaked plans by Theme Park Insider show that Amity will be replaced by a recreation of Diagon Alley from the popular series, including a unique attraction that drives you through Gringotts Bank ending with a possible final battle with Governor Voldemort.

So, let's analyze this for a moment. Should we keep an attraction that guests love (don't we all love almost getting eaten by a robot shark? Me!) and cherish, or replace it with another Harry Potter land because that's what teenyboppers want and we need more money? Universal seems to have chosen the latter; I choose the former. But that's just it: former. Everything Universal started with is former: Back to the Future was formerly a money-grabber; Alfred Hitchcock and the magic of movies was formerly what folks wanted to see; Terminator was formerly a good franchise. I'm all for updating, but guests' favorites come before. Kongfrontatation still lives on somewhat at Universal Hollywood, but I don't feel like going to the West Coast, and neither do people want to see a 4-D showdown shot by Peter Jackson (unless you like that kind of thing).

I love the Harry Potter series overall as much as the next guy and I have the full movie/book series. But The Wizarding World was enough. I don't need an expansion that's supposed to connect the two (which I feel is going to cost so many ticket frenzies-- either raising our price or leads to some empty-handed stealing). Just get rid of the Lost Continent at Islands of Adventure; Potter wiped out the signature attractions, just finished what you began. While Harry Potter is a money-grabber, it won't always be with Dickens and Twain; it's going to fall soon, and it's a shame that Universal is using so much Warner Bros. property.

But that's my case. Leave your opinions in the comments below.

R.I.P. Opening Era: 1990-2012

The Chain Gang: A Critique

Here is a story about a poor girl who had no friends.... ..... OMGosh this is so freaky--it actually works- EMAIL THIS TO 35 FRIENDS AND U WILL MEET THE LOVE OF YUR LIVE IN 14 DAYS IT WILL BE THE BEST DAY EVER TRUST ME THIS WORKS! BUT LIKE UHUHUHUH.....IF YOU DON'T DO IT IN FIVE HOURS YOU'll DIE IN 4 DAYS! TRUST ME THIS WORKS! AHHH!.....



Hallelujah, you're finished. If my remaining readers (most of you probably think I was involved in the above with my hiatus) haven't noticed, I have a bit of a peeve with forward messages for a few reasons: 1) They're so cliched-- How many times am I going to die in four days? When will I meet the love of my life? F37 only makes my computer implode. 2) They take up good comment space on YouTube-- I want to hear people's opinions, not you going on about how I'll see death last week. 3) They waste your texting minutes for heaven's sake! If your charged by the text, don't waste on some idiotic scheme to waste people's precious minutes of life.

Now granted I wasn't always this despicable towards FWDs (as they usually say on my phone.... one after the other after the other after the other after the other, et al, et al, etc, etc, &c, &c......). Back when I actually went on Neopets, I was involved in "NeoMail." Stupid as I was, I "befriend- ed" my cousin's friend, and long story short, I don't see any in my sent mail box anymore. Aside from the utterly despicable ones that you probably see every time you go on a popular YouTube video, some of them get more... religious.


So you have the regular, cliched love-or-death messages-- but doesn't love conquer all?-- and then you have the uplifting, please-forward messages. I'm fine with the latter; those are actually nice to get once in a while. But what can I say, I'm a sucker for uplifting messages with pictures of cute little kitty cats. And these messages suggest to forward with no ailments later on. I can forward if I want and not have to "worry" about death meeting me two Fridays from next Saturday at 27 past 2. But then there's that wretched median in between the two-- the combination of religious and sacrilegious: The... well, I'll just tell you.

What prompted me to return to blogging after a bit of a hiatus is a message I recently received. A several-times forwarded message that said that God knows I've been going through something. (Can identify that in Bible: Check) It went on to say that a blessing is coming your way and in order to receive that blessing I must forward it to 14 friends in 10 minutes. ("It's not that hard.") Now I admit that I'm not a preacher, but if I'm not mistaken, God gives blessings to those who deserve it or if they do things in his name, not perform a time trial forward chain. Now I realize the message said it was a test, but this seems a bit, well, far-fetched. I expect God will do things in his will, not use Forward messages. The message comes not as a blessing, but as a sick-minded scheme. It's a shame to see that the message has gone along for almost 6 times.

Sorry, but I'm breaking every chain you try to send me. "MY chains are gone-- I've been set free. My God, My Savior, has RANSOMED me." And personally, I don't want to be in the chain gang.

I Need Your Help!

I need your help! I've finished planning the skeleton of a new story. However, what I need a lot of, I don't know too much about. What I need you to do is come up with some vampires, new and old, and say who they are, what they're from, and if they're the antagonist (bad guy) or protagonist (good guy) in their movie/book in the comments box. For example, the "good guys" would be New Age Vamps, such as Edward (Twilight) and Darren Shan (The Vampire's Assistant) and the bad guys would be like Dracula (Dracula) and Count Orlek (Nosferatu). However, for the hugeness of the story, I can't use four vampires if there's going to be a huge "war" between the New Age Vamps and Dracula's Army. In case you're wondering what this is for, here's the poster:

So use your knowledge. And in advance, thank you for your help.

TV Movie Review: A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!

Last night, Nickelodeon released a direct-to-TV movie based off its hit series The Fairly OddParents, A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner! The movie features teen favorites Drake Bell and Daniella Monet along with adult favorites Jason Alexander and Cheryl Hines in cameo roles.

The story is about Timmy Turner, the young pink-clothed character from the TV show, as an adult, still in the 5th grade, still living with his parents, and still has his fairy godparents. His parents desperate to get him out of the house so they can retire and head fairy Jorgen wanting him to grow up, Timmy does all he can to act like a child to still have his beloved godparents... and their Poof. However, when Tootie, an ugly girl from his child-childhood, returns to Dimmsdale as a, according to the story, beautiful woman, Timmy begins falls in love, much to the dismay of Cosmo and Wanda, his fairy godparents. Meanwhile, Mr. Crocker, Timmy's teacher, joins forces with Hugh J. Magnate, Jr., an anti-nature guy who wants to destroy Dimmsdale Park to build a hotel/oil well, to capture Wanda and Cosmo to make their evil wishes come true.

While the show sometimes gave me a headache, the movie actually pleased me. The movie replaces most of the show's crass humor with a theme and perfect plot structure. The show shows a young boy who gets fairies and uses them to wish for rather selfish things, hardly for anyone's benefit, and all is fun except for antagonists.

The movie has the following pros:

• Nostalgia: It's refreshing to see that the creators of the movie haven't lost gags from the original series such as Crocker's fairy-spams and brings back old characters, such as the Mayor of Dimmsdale and Chompy the Goat, AJ, and Chester.
• Dimensional Villain: You can't have a good movie without a villain with a purpose other than world domination. Magnate is a man who wants the things that his "daddy" never gave him or let him do such as play in a ball pit, go in a playground, and have friends.
• Good Conflict and Resolution
• Good Theme: Selfish to Selfless
• Acting: Drake Bell does a good job as Timmy Turner and David Lewis brings back the craziness of Crocker.
  

All in all, I think that Grow Up, Timmy Turner! is the best thing that's happened to the OddParents series since the Wishology trilogy.

School Project: Hobbit Trailer

This is my favorite school project thus far. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy The Hobbit fan-made trailer! Here is the link.

(I'm starting to really dislike Blogger's video embedding options and formatting!)

A Visit to Hobbiton

I think that this'll be my most acclaimed fan-fiction yet on this blog. I'm not going to go into much Kingdom Hearts lore and will try to merge the two together like it was a normal level in the video games. I plan to include several of Tolkien's characters. I expect comments from Hobbit fans. Enjoy this first chapter, based on the first two chapters of the novel. I'll try to put something together. I wanted to post this earlier, but conflicts arose. Well, here it is! "Hey Sora, look! A new world," cried Donald from the cockpit of the Gummi Ship. "Gawrsh," said Goofy. "It looks like there's something going on down there." And indeed there was. Only very few times were they able to see consequences from outside worlds, but they saw fire spurting from this world, which looked like a mountain plain and forests from the heroes' view. They decided to land in this world, Hobbiton, to solve the problem down there. After they hid the Gummi Ship behind some trees they found, they left the trees and saw something they had never seen before: tiny, fat, hairy people walking in and out of houses in a hill! One of them walked by them. Not too far behind the pudgy man came a taller but short, bearded man- a dwarf! But they realized it wasn't just one dwarf; there were two- no,three-four-five-six-there were twelve! "Well, this sure beats Snow White!" exclaimed Sora. Trailing behind was a Man with a magic stick. "Hey, sir," said Sora to the wizard. The wizard turned towards them in response. "What's going on around here?" the Keyblade Master asked. The wizard replied, "This is The Hill in the Shire in Hobbiton. I am Gandalf the Grey, a very well-known wizard, especially to Mr. Baggins. Twelve dwarfs and I and Mr Baggins are going to reclaim the dwarf's treasure. Don't worry; He invited me to tea, so I thought I bring a few friends with me. (He's got enough room in that hole of his, anyway.) Would you like to join?" "Sure," Sora answered. "I'm Sora, and this is Donald and Goofy. Who are the," Sora struggled for words to refer to the Hobbits in the proper manner without insulting them. "The hairy men?" he went with. "Oh, them," Gandalf said. "They are hobbits, fat because they eat six meals a day, but are kind peace-loving creatures. They like to party, but they dislike machines. Notice their bright clothing and hairy feet; their feet are like the soles on your shoes. They live here. Now to Mr Baggins' house." And so they followed Gandalf and the dwarves. The dwarves sang songs on their way to the hobbit's house which Sora, Donald, and Goofy couldn't help but try to sing along to.

March! March! March! March!

To the burglar's house.

March! March! March!

To get our treasure back!

The evil dragon Smaug

Killed the dwarfs in fog!

So we will go and kill him and get our treasure back!

March! March! March!

With the wizard Gandalf.

March! March! March!

So we'll be happy once again.

Some dwarfs got excited and ran to the hole in the Hill once they saw it. Sora, Gandalf, the iconic Disney characters, and a rather proud dwarf and three others. Then at last they came to the Hobbit's door. "Yes, this is the one," Gandalf assured himself. He knocked with his magic stick. Gandalf noticed Sora, Donald, and Goofy's rather bad posture before entering a hobbit's home. "Look sharp!" Gandalf scolded them.

The three stood straight like soldiers and stayed rigid even after the hobbit opened the door. The dwarfs got impatient and tried to squeeze past the Animals and the Men, but Gandalf tried to keep them back while trying to push the three heroes forward, knocking the three of balance, which Gandalf repeated, and the dwarfs went flying from Gandalf incidentally kicking them; this made a rather big mess on Mr Baggins' front door. The dwarfs got up, rather grumpy, and passed the Animals and the Men. "This is why we don't like Animals," and "Men can't get shown the door," the dwarfs mumbled after they introduced themselves before the hobbit.

"Gandalf!" the hobbit cried.

"Well, you did invite me for tea, and we've got some things to plan out," Gandalf answered.

"Well, at least you brought dinner," Mr. Baggins said, looking at Donald. Donald jumped in fright onto Sora's head. "Ah! It talks!" the hobbit cried. The hobbit ran away, obviously distraught. After the unexpected party had some drink and some food, Gandalf announced why they were meeting here at The Hill. They were to journey from the Shire, go through the Misty Mountains due to their being a shortcut to get to the dragon Smaug. A dwarf named Thorin explained the sad story of how the dwarfs once thrived with treasure, and were attacked by Smaug who destroyed everyone and everything in the town, except for the dwarfs' treasure which was kept in the dragon's cave. Thorin's ancestors saw the entire scene before their eyes outside the village. "And in the midst of this mission, some of his may not return, some may not live, or we all shall live or perish," Thorin stated gravely. At this statement, the hobbit fainted.

After a few minutes of recuperating, the Hobbit came and was ready for the mission. He sent everyone out for an early morning. The next day, Sora waited with the dwarfs at a local tavern for the Hobbit. "Gawrsh, don't you think it's been a while?" Goofy asked.

"Usually he dusts his mantelpiece. He must not have found our note this morning. I'll go grab Bilbo," answered Gandalf. Not too long after, they were off on magnificent horses and ponies to the Misty Mountains. As they trotted along, civilization seemed to decrease. Shadows began to emerge, turning into awful beasts with menacing, yellow eyes that showed no expression. "Great toadstools!" exclaimed Gandalf. Bilbo yelped in fright. "Protect Bilbo, dwarfs. That's an order! The Animals, the boy, and I will take care of the creatures of Shadow!"

"Heartless," muttered Sora. He slashed at the closest one by him with his Keyblade sending it back a little. It began to swim towards him with increasing speed until it jumped at him. Sora thrust his Keyblade up, causing the beast to dissipate. He turned to see Gandalf and Donald throwing magic spells at the Heartless and Goofy defending the dwarfs from the oncoming swarm. Sora threw his Keyblade at a horde of the shadows. Gandalf, upon realizing the coming of the darkness of the night, conjured up a powerful spell, making light from his wand spread for miles upon miles, clearing any sight of the Heartless.

"Make haste!" ordered Gandalf. They finally came upon a resting place during a torrent of rain, making everyone gloomy.

"Hey, where's Gandalf?" asked one of the dwarfs.

"That darned wizard deserted us!" Thorin cried, followed by a couple of curses.

"Hey!" cried Bilbo. "What's that over there?" He pointed towards a fire in a forest.

"A fire in this weather is beyond me," mumbled a fat dwarf. "Hey, burglar! Go check it out."

Bilbo gulped. What have I gotten myself into? he thought. He ran off to see the fire because arguing was futile. Time passed. The rain was getting harder and harder and didn't seem to stop. Sora sneaked off to help Bilbo, followed by Donald and Goofy, and eleven dwarfs. Thorin said, after they ran off, "I don't care about the hobbit. If he's killed, what do I care? What about your people, Thorin? Well, uh, well,.... And if the hobbit dies, then the mission is failed and the treasure shall never be achieved and Smaug will continue to bathe in it. Oh, all right!" And off Thorin ran, carefully and stealthily.

Sora turned the corner to see Bilbo being tossed around by some trolls. "I've never had burrahobbit before. I wonder how they taste," One of them said.

"Well, you're not gonna know!" Sora said, jumping out from the trees and kicking one of the trolls into the fire. It screamed in pain and punched Sora, who became trapped in the arms of the another one of the trolls. Goofy managed to bash one in the head with his shield, knocking it down, but became trapped himself in a sack with Sora right behind him. Donald tried fighting back with a flurry of spells, which the trolls brushed off.

"Perhaps we can eat this duck instead?" one of the trolls suggested. Donald quacked in fear and shot a fireball in that troll's face, an icicle in another's face, and sending lightning down on the last.

"Never mind. He burns my tongue," the duck's captive said.

"He's too cold," cried the second.

"Shocking," said the last. The trolls stuffed the three in a sack. They expected more intruders and grabbed several sacks, and captured the dwarfs, even Thorin, who threw a good fight.

"So I say kill the duck (he's overcooked, that temper of his), and eat the rest," said one of the trolls.

"I say kill them all," said a voice that sounded awfully like one of the troll's.

"Why would we do that, you idiot?" replied one of the trolls.

"You said it!" another replied.

"Or we could eat them all!" rang in the voice.

"Not the duck! Not the duck!" yelled another. And the trolls kept arguing like this on and on and on.

"And now, trolls, Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!" Gandalf cried. And with that, the sun came and the trolls turned to stone. Donald managed to finally burn his sack open, and Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Gandalf freed all the dwarfs, who were once again, rather grumpy.

"Search the trolls' hideout!" Gandalf suggested. And they found different items such as swords and food that would indeed help them later on.

"Follow me to Rivendell. I know someone there who can help us," said Gandalf.

Redemption for Kingdom Hearts?

As I was playing Kingdom Hearts Re:coded, I started thinking about fan responses to the extra titles of the series. Re:coded, the lowest critically rated title in the series, 358/2 Days, and Birth by Sleep are the extracurricular titles that Square Enix has released. Now SE has the mainstream Final Fantasy series where its games have virtually no connection to each other, and spinoffs and other non-numbered titles. Why do we love the extra Final Fantasies, and get antsy about Kingdom Hearts non-numbered games? Today, I began to think that Tetsuya Nomura has gone a little giddy about bonus games. In fact, he didn't want to make a midquel between Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2 at first! Then he decided to make a story about Roxas which was generally well-recieved, a prequel to the series, which was praised for its innovative gameplay, and a true sequel to the second game, which fell below expectations. And even now we have not received the extremely-asked-for Kingdom Hearts III. However, he may have a purpose.

Kingdom Hearts started out as a little experiment: Will a video game combining family Disney and teen-to-adult Squaresoft be a success? It was and a sequel was inevitable. Two came, one receiving mixed reaction and the other being praised. Due to unanswered mysteries in the last game, Square Enix decided to make a game about the prologue's character ( the latter which was overly well-loved). 358/2 Days could, in a way, be counted as fan service as not much to the story is added-it's just a minuscule gap filler to decide what fanfiction writer was right. Then Square decided to get on the ball to reveal the true identity of the saga's main antagonist, Xehanort, to set the stage for Kingdom Hearts III and Dream Drop Distance. While it is a gap of time in the canon, it gets players excited of what's to come. Now Square could cut right into Kingdom Hearts III, right? A small question could be answered in the very beginning to make Kingdom Hearts III a direct sequel. Wrong. Instead of explaining plot holes in a conventional book or short film or interview, Square decided to make an episodic video game for phones that virtually no one used, then re-release it on the Nintendo DS (which, come to think of it, could have been less frustrating and had better plot presentation and execution). Now that one question was answered in 24 hours (a considerably short time to beat a video game, compared to the previous installments lengths of around 40-60 hours), we finally have what we have today.

Now with the semi-annoying voice acting of Bret Iwan voicing the greatest cartoon character on earth, and coming to the finish line with a lackluster entry, Square Enix has one last chance to prove whether their bonus entries should be played anymore with Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance on the new Nintendo 3DS portable console. From gameplay videos seen in January, there's so much potential for the 3D game. However, potential doesn't automatically equal great game as seen with Nintendo's 3D Steel Diver. In order for people to stop whining about Kingdom Hearts III, Square Enix needs to make 3D have a killer story and lovable characters along with making it lengthy enough to keep people occupied. Right now, the concept is great and it seems like its going to be equal to, if not better, than Birth by Sleep. While old foes will return, as confirmed by the trailer, hopefully Square Enix will learn from their Re:coded mistakes and not Re:do them again with this new portable installment.

As for Kingdom Hearts III, since it will close a saga in the series, it will be a grand finale. At first, when they announce a new installment in this series that's not a redo, I imagine the boss battles and how epic they are going to be. But then I realized, even if you have epic bosses (speaking of which, I was initially excited about replaying bosses in the DS installments, but after Re:coded, I wish the game was better), you need a epic closer. Kingdom Hearts II did a rather fine job of potentially ending the series, but a breath still remained. Kingdom Hearts III should have great graphics. As a former PS2 lover and a Wii devotee, I originally wished that an installment for the Wii, but after seeing some of the mediocre Wii graphics, Kingdom Hearts III needs to be on the PS3. The voice acting in Re:coded bored me when watching the video replay, so Square Enix needs to be sure to have passionate voicing. Kingdom Hearts III has a weak skeleton right now as 3D hasn't been released yet, but what Square Enix should keep in mind is to have bone-tingling dialogue and heart-warming characters and an epic finale story. If they don't accomplish the latter, they'll have to bring back Xehanort for another battle and that would be pointless.

Well, that's my opinion. If any of you have anything to object or add or want to say anything, tell me and everyone else who reads this blog, put it in the comments box below!