Disney Goes Ghetto

It happened this past Saturday. I went to the saddest place on earth. Hands down, THE saddest.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that mind you. It was supposed to be a happy occasion filled with dimples, sunshine, and rollercoaster’s. But noooooo.
This weekend my buddy George, his Chinese girlfriend, and I headed out of town 3 hours east to the city of Weifang. Had the song 'Everybody Wang Chung Tonight' drumming throughout my head for the entire ride...that’s how good it was supposed to be. And then the next day it happened...
With a solid mix of a hangover and spunk, we taxied our way to the biggest Chinese amusement park in the province...and amused we were. At first it was a lot of poo and giggles. We rode the main rollercoaster with not one, but two (rusty and squeaky) loopty loops. I must admit, it put the rides at Dollywood to shame. We hit up the bumper cars (which they called 'dodge cars' as if the point was to avoid collisions) and splashed our way down the log flume (ie: keep mouth closed on the way down to avoid an inadvertent drink of girardia). A few things were the same as a right of amusement park passage...overpriced/foul food, whiney kids, and statues of Greek men with the largest man-boobs I've ever seen.
Then we found the worst ride...ever. It was a spaceship that sat 12 people inside, sat on a maze of hydraulics, and at the front was a screen to simulate an authentic flight to the moon. About as authentic as a Chinese Mexican burrito. When the doors shut and the audio kicked on, your senses were supposed to be tricked into believing that you really were taking off, flying, and then crashing into the moon. Right. This normally has somewhat of an effect when there aren't holes allowing sunbeams in, the hydraulics don't make farting noises, and the video showing your flight adventure wasn't made in 1967. If you squinted your eyes you could almost NOT see the strings holding the planets up. Then we realized that the audio we were listening to (along with the "spaceship" full of Chinese people) wasn't even in Chinese...it was in English. Good job Astronaut Bill. Worst ride ever.
This is when we made our way towards the exit...and the saddest/funniest experience I've had in China yet (both involving tears).
From a distance it looked like a normal amusement park scene. A handful of colorfully dressed, oversized, animation characters bouncing around inspiring smiles and camera ops.
Getting closer we realized that it was more a gang of mangy, dirty, mopey, low-level, b-grade, animal costumed hobos inspiring depression, handsoap, and a handful of Prozac.
The bright colors of their costumes were marred with dirt streaks (god help me if it wasn’t dirt) while they shuffled around, dragging their feet, smacking kids on the head who got within arm/wing/tail/horn reach. ‘Yea kids, come get a picture and a thumping.’
The beaver seemed to have the most pep (they always do), jumping around, waving his arms, and pretending to bore holes in children’s heads that came just a tad to close. The gorillas face was mangled to the point that the 'actor' within was looking out of one of the eye holes and one of the nostrils. The cow’s suspenders were sagging so much that the waist was somewhere around the person's knees. However they were accurate in their roll casting...you knew the cow was a girl. Her hair was streaming down the backside of her costume.
Tuck it in, you're confusing the poor kids!
Then there was this big yellow thing running around that wasn’t quite identifiable. Its head was an egg, had some pretty big feet and sported a tail. Our guess was a dragon…with its head still in its shell. Who knows?
The “Biggest Mope” award went to the tiger. She was so low on the totem pole that they didn’t even supply the poor girl with a mask. She just slunk around, noticeably ostracized from all the other figures of funk.。Following the tiger came the birds…a hawk and a chicken worthy of the slaughter house. They only had upper bodies that were supported by a nice pair of khaki pants and dress shoes. Yes kids, birds wear pants just like you and I. This explained the confused look on many of the chitlins faces.
Then to make the situation even more abnormal, the wave of attention shifted from these creatures of slop to the two whitest Americans this park had seen in the better part of two generations….George and I. Gawking strangers coming up to us, asking if they could take their pictures with us, and poking us to see just how real we were. Mothers were coming up throwing their babies into our arms for photo ops with the Americans. Upon this occurrence, I learned a new cultural difference. All Chinese baby pants have a large slit in the bottom to make for easy squatting when tinkle time comes. Haven’t had cold, chapped, baby butt stuck against my arm for some time. Hell. Even the big brown hawk got into the action, removing his head, busting out his camera and snapped photos of us.
“He removed his head!” George shouted. “He broke the fourth wall! He removed his head! The magic is gone!”
The cherry on top of all of this were the 6 members of the bad Chinese mariachi band trying to play an American song…then fading off midway through. A sour tease of bad western music.
Needless to say the experience was like most of the black market goods here….I didn’t think it was possible to bootleg Disney World, but they pulled it off nicely.
I’ve seen what will happen if Donald Duck and Goofy go on welfare. Please don’t let this happen.

--D. T Willy