Captain EO, a Quick Review

I was at Disneyland on Sunday and saw the return of Captain EO. This was the first day with full weekend crowds since it opened (as Saturday was rainy, the park was likely not as busy as it would normally be on a Saturday). I was there around 10:30 in the morning and the wait was about the same as I'd read about during the week on MiceChat's forums: I had to wait a few minutes in the queue, pretty much right under the new sign. We were then let in to the main queue area, and I was able to find a spot to stand at the bottom of the steps near the theater door.

There was a several minute wait for the pre-show video to start. Some of it seemed familiar. It was nice, and the Kodak ad wasn't nearly as drawn out as it was for Honey, I Shrunk the Audience!

When we were let into the theater, several announcements were made reminding people to move all the way to the end of the row as the auditorium was going to be full. I was seated a few rows back, near the exit side of the row.

The show itself was great. I did see some ghosting in the 3D picture, but it might have just been me as I was noticing the picture didn't seem quite right for MuppetVision 3D and It's Tough to be a Bug that afternoon as well. I was too young to remember the starfield effect, but having had it pointed out in advance, I did miss the lasers when EO's ship is under attack in space, since there's no visual effect to go with the sound. It seems like of the three missing original effects (the third being smoke), the lasers would have been the easiest to reinstall in the theater. This might be heretical to say, but if they're not going to reinstall the lasers, I wonder if the visual effect should be added to the film itself.

The motion floor was interesting. I don't know if it can move at an angle or just uniform up and down; if so it would have been nice to angle the floor to synchronize with the movements of the ship before it lands, to give the audience the feeling of turning as well. The movement of the floor during the musical numbers sometimes worked and seem to fit but sometimes felt unnecessary, like it was added just because they could.

Got a cheer from the audience when EO first comes on screen -- before we even saw his face.

At the end of the show, the cast member referred to our 3D glasses as "safety goggles", which is what they were referred to as for HISTA. The signs at the receptacle bins also referred to them that way. The glasses are HISTA yellow; the original EO glasses were purple. MuppetVision glasses are purple, it seems like it would be simple enough to swap the EO and MuppetVision glasses for the extra bit of authenticity at EO, but the color of the glasses is a pretty minor thing.

Here's hoping that, at least in Anaheim, Wayne Szalinski has shrunk his last audience.