Disneyland Official App Review

        Disneyland has finally released its own app! I haven't gotten the chance to use it in the park yet, but after messing around with it for a few days I've got a ton of thoughts about it, so let's jump right in!

Positives:

• Finally an official app to check wait times from anywhere in the parks! I've used some of the unofficial apps before and, frankly, they just weren't that reliable. As previously stated, I haven't used the app in the park yet, so I'm not sure how this one is, but I'll certainly feel more comfortable trusting it than I do with the others.
• Character meet information! While I'm not sure if it's real time, it's great that this app gives guests knowledge about where their favorite characters might be. I and other frequent guests may know where to find Cinderella and Genie, but for people going for the first time or the first time in forever, it'll probably be loads of help!
• Dining prices! Of course, the app doesn't give full menu information (more on that later) but it does allow people to have an idea of how expensive each location is. It does so by giving a rating ($, $$, or $$$) for how much an average meal for an adult costs. Again, for first timers and more casual Disney fans, that feature will probably help out a lot.
• As someone who always forgets to grab a time guide upon entrance, this next feature is particularly exciting: show and parade times! Gone are the days of needing a time guide and having to dig it out of your bag to double check! Seriously, I can not tell you how happy this makes me! I feel like the times for Mickey and the Magical Map are constantly changing and I've heard more than one inaccurate announcement about it on the train, so I'm quite pleased that I'll have those times in my pocket from now on.
• Easier access to information about guest services is another great feature of the app. I personally have found it kind of difficult to read the park maps in regards to these things and so I really love that they've got their own category in the app.     

Negatives:

       

• I love the wait times, but I don't love that you can't sort by land. Of course you can just look at one land on the map, but that gets messy. I'd really like it if in the list mode you could organize according to land instead of just alphabetically.
• You don't have access to restaurant menus. On Disneyland's website you have access to the full menus of most restaurants and I think it'd be great to add that to the app, or at least have links to them. They do tell you the cuisine type of each restaurant but I know that for me a full menu would be of much better use.
• On top of that, there's no way of looking at just one style of cuisine. I wish that you could sort the restaurants by cuisine type, because if you're in the mood for Italian it'd be nice to just look at the places that serve that type of food.
• Not really a true negative but I do find it odd that a major promotion point of this app is that pass holders can use it to enter the park when you can't use it for Fastpass and discount services. I guess it's nice to not have to retrieve your pass in order to park hop but it still seems silly that there's not much use for having your pass on your phone.

        Overall, I'm really excited about this app and I'm really looking forward to all of the things Disney can do with it through updates. I can't wait to use it on my next trip to the parks!

Disney Descendants Review!

        So let's just start this off with a warning: I did not like this movie and I will be spoiling it in all sorts of ways below. If you don't want to hear negativity or spoilers, stop reading now!

        I've been skeptical of Descendants ever since it was announced. To me, the idea of any movie linking together all of these different Disney stories and providing information on what "happily ever after" had in store for many of my favorite characters is horrific. The fact that it was a Disney Channel movie doing so made me dread it even more. That being said, I tried to watch this movie with an open mind, I really did. But I just couldn't like it, no matter how hard I tried.
        When I know that I want to review a movie I try to take notes during it. Usually I fail at doing that, because I just get lost in the story and want to dive into the film wholeheartedly. This time, however, I never stopped taking notes until the last five minutes of the movie. Some of those notes include:

• Why did they make the castle look like Cinderella's if it's the Beast's?
• Why the comment about Mrs. Potts that's awful.
• OMG Beast has his beast face on his crown, WHAT?
• Why are they slut shaming Evie?
• Jay seems much more like Aladdin's son than Jafar's.
• Kristin Chenoweth can do better than this.
• Why do Maleficent's henchmen look like rejected lost boys?
• How would Doug of all people not know all of the dwarfs' names?
• Why would the Fairy Godmother give up her wand to a museum?
• Why do they all wear heals all the time?
• This is the worst thing I've ever seen.
• "I'm not hideous" because even cool, seemingly confident and proud girls have to be self conscious about their appearances.
• "I hope you like bikes." THAT IS A SCOOTER.
• "We get to choose who we're gonna be" finally something good thank God.
• Wow a bad montage sequence with footage we just saw, great.
• Be Our Guest is the worst thing they could have done I am personally offended.
• Why is Snow White a news anchor?
• Let's just completely reinforce how important it is to be beautiful according to conventional standards, fantastic.

        And again, that's just some of my comments (some of which were edited for comprehension and to take out not-so-Disney-Channel-safe language).

        I strongly believe that this movie could have been a cute and campy musical full of fun, if not kind of stupid, references to the Disney classics that we all love, but there were many aspects that kept if from reaching that potential. For example, the musical numbers seemed very forced. It felt like they were merely a way to showcase Dove Cameron's voice, with a couple by Mitchell Hope thrown in to make it slightly less obvious. The dance routines were rather weak also, failing to pick up the slack of the less than impressive songs, two things which I never thought would happen in a Kenny Ortega movie. Mal, while at times a relatable and interesting character, also annoyed me because she seemed to have sudden moments of doubt for no reason when she had just been extremely sure of her status as either "rotten to the core" or better than what people assume of her.

        My main problem with this movie, however, was that it sent such awful messages toward its viewers, young girls--its target audience--especially. Throughout the film we're bombarded with stereotypes of girls. The idea that physical beauty, as defined by society, is of the upmost importance for girls is repeated tirelessly. Mal's transformations of everyone's hair being the way for her to gain popularity and Jane's unhappiness with her appearance driving her to act horribly both contirbute greatly to this exceptionally problematic idea. The portrayal of Evie is especially upsetting to me, as she is constantly judged for her interactions with boys and with the assumption being shown that she is stupid because she is beautiful. While she does come to find and embrace her intelligence, that is shown to be some giant surprise to everyone, including herself. It's as if no one could believe she had a brain to start with, let alone a bright one. Also upsetting are the ways that the Isle of the Lost and Auradon differ. The "good" people of Auradon are shown to be conventionally beautiful and rich, while the evil inhabitants of the Isle of the Lost have unique styles and appearances and outdated, broken electronics. These portrayals only reinforce the ridiculous and harmful notion that rich, pretty people are good and poor, ugly ones are bad.

        The central theme of the movie, that everyone can decide for themselves whether they are good or bad, is a wonderful message. It's a shame, though, that it is delivered in the midsts of awful stereotypes and misconceptions.

        (Also let's never forget the disaster that was that Be Our Guest remix. I wouldn't be surprised if Alan Menken leaves Disney forever and Howard Ashman rises from the grave just to slap Kenny Ortega across the face.)

Inside Out // (A Very Late) Review

This post contains spoilers, be warned!

        I've been very excited for Inside Out ever since I first heard about it. It was a concept that I could get behind. I've always found emotions interesting and seeing them interact within someone's head sounded like the most intriguing thing to come to film in years. Pete Docter being named director also piqued my interest, given that he has directed two of my top three Pixar movies. Take that level of interest and add in superb reviews that heralded Inside Out as the best thing to ever come from Pixar and I had very high expectations for this movie. In retrospect, maybe too high.
       For me, the film was incredibly smart and original, however it failed on some basic story aspects, pace being a big one of those. The story seemed to drag at the start, as so much needed to be explained and built up for the story to even make sense. I'm not sure what Pixar could have done to fix this, but I'm sure that there's something. That particular problem continued for me throughout the rest of the movie as well, after Joy and Sadness embark on their journey. The slow pace made me just want to get moving, which probably hurt my sympathy for the characters, who I ended up not caring about as much as I should have. The only characters I really felt for were Sadness and Riley. From the start I was annoyed at Joy. Bing Bong, meanwhile, struck me as a villain. I've read that the animators wanted him to appear suspicious at first, to throw the audience off, and that may have worked too well for me. I was so suspicious of him that I never developed any positive feelings for Bing Bong, and so his sacrifice did not have as big of an impact on me as I'm sure it was supposed to.
        My major problem with the film is that I felt like they went in the direction of having Riley become depressed, but didn't actually commit to it. She went into feeling nothing only for a moment, and they never actually named depression as what that was. Of course it would have been difficult to deal with the topic of depression while keeping the film family friendly and entertaining for young children, but as someone who's struggled with that illness it felt cheap of Pixar to glance at it and have it serve as a plot point but only have minimal screen-time and mention. I was also left wondering if everyone goes through that sort of experience in order to feel complex emotions, or were Riley's emotions just not aware of how they were meant to function? Clearly they had guide books, and they had read them all, so surely if that information were included there they would have already known that. That is a question that will bug me for a very long time.
        All of that being said, the film was still fantastic. The concept is brilliant, as expected from Pixar, and all of the settings inside of Riley's head are beautiful and so, so smart. My favorite parts of the film were definitely whenever the various emotions were gathered and interacting. I was excited every time that we went back to check in with Anger, Disgust, and Fear and absolutely loved watching them attempt to keep Riley going. (Although I did feel that Disgust wasn't necessarily strictly disgust, as the social aspect seemed more like something that Fear should have dealt with.) I also really loved the interactions of Riley and her parents. Their family dynamic was fantastic, and that's something I wish we saw more of in film. Sadness was by far my favorite character. She was so complex and so well done, and the voice acting of Phyllis Smith was absolutely phenomenal.
         My absolute favorite scene, however, was when Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong enter Riley's abstract thoughts. It was a very brave thing for Pixar to veer so far away from the overall look of the film for that sequence, but the use of different art and animation styles was executed perfectly and created what I believe is one of the most original and daring scenes in animation.
        Clearly my emotions are mixed in regards to this film. There were many things that irritated me and still bother me when I think about them. I'm left wondering if maybe Pixar bit off more than they could chew this time around, picking a concept that perhaps needed a longer amount of screen time and a more mature target audience to excel. However, I'm also in awe of how creative and beautiful this film was. The story was still very touching and had very funny moments throughout. Overall, Inside Out was an A- when I expected an A+.