*IMPORTANT* Ironically for a blog subtitled 'Frontwards', I managed to do this blog backwards. That means that you have to read it from the bottom up. Don't, I repeat don't, read it like you would normal, sensibly structured blogs. Thank you. *IMPORTANT*
And so, the Disneyland holiday came to an end. I had learnt many important lessons during the course of the trip, such as that Chris goes to bed at 9pm without fail, supposedly locked doors on the Aerosmith ride can be pushed open and that Disney (not including Pixar) have produced approximately nothing of worth in the last decade or so. Thanks for reading this photoblog. And thanks to me for making it, considering it has literally swallowed days of my life. What with the photos taking forever to load. And then more often than not failing at the last minute. SEE YA!
The last picture of this holiday blog. But hold back the tears because it is of the real star of our Disneyland excursion. No, not Ed. Namco's 1993 (?) arcade classic 'Race On!' Me and Ed were initally attracted to it by its exciting promise to 'take a picture of your face.' It does so, and you are then instantly plunged into the action. Your face hovering above your chosen generic arcade vehicle, so begins a 3 lap race through early '90s low-res polygonal hell. The exciting on track racing is perfectly complemented by a commentary still unsurpassed in video games to this day. Basically there is a straight guy, and the funny guy. The straight guy would say something like 'what do you think of this race Graham?' to which the other would reply with various howls possibly derived from recieving sexual pleasure. The comedy is only intensified by the omnipresent faces, constantly hovering above each others cars. I think by the end of the ferry crossing 'Race On!' had taken a deserved £6 pounds from me and Ed combined. Oh, and for the record, Ed is officially the reigning 'Race On!' master, winning 2 races to my feeble 1. Next time though...
It's the gang! On the ferry back! Ignoring the antics on the back row there, you will notice that I, me, Marcus, makes his first, and only, appearance in front of the camera! And in the process demonstrates instantly why he is better off behind the camera in the first place!
"Water Tower!" Geddit? "What a tower!/Water tower!" Well, waterever, it's your reward for getting past all those pics of the gay parade.
This is Pinnochio's Dad right? Two things to say about this picture. Firstly, it was funny how he danced, and how the weirdos dressed up like clockwork soliders around him danced. Secondly, on the bus back home Dean made a phone call. His greeting was "Is that Dad?" It was semi-funny at the time.
The Lion King float. I had taken pictures of the drivers of the floats but these had to be deleted to make more space for pictures of parades (rolly-eye smiley here). They looked so funny, squashed into the front of these rolling freak shows, their faces visibly regretting their chosen career path.
Smee (?) It sort of looks like he's watching me out of the corner of his eye, like the Mona Lisa. *Highbrow*
As yet more obscure Disney minor characters were wheeled out my attention wandered towards the hot totty positioned just to my left.
This is the 'loveable' Chicken Little.
Ah, now this is quite a cool float. There's Woody, who of course I've actually met!
And back to the bloody parades. This is Tinkerbell. Because we were in Disney Studios the theme of the parade was filming movies, so all the characters were pretending they were being filmed. I think that was the general idea.
"Got no money (Pokes, Pokes, Pokes)" The anthem of our holiday. Oh, and enjoy this pic because all but two of the remaining photos are from yet another parade. Whoop. Or something.
OK, here's that cross-dressing chipmunk thing I was talking about earlier. It struck this pose just for me (I think).
Us in Planet Hollywood. I got to see the Danni California video for the first time. Oh dear. At least the vid matches the quality of the song. Ed bought a Planet Hollywood cap. And check out my Mr Incredible Pez dispenser at the bottom centre of the picture. I think all the Pez had been consumed by this point.
Mr Incredible dancing for the assembled crowds. I wanted a souviner of the holiday but, almost without exception everything sucked (so much so that I almost spent 20 euros on that cuddly red car). So my sole reminder of the holiday is a Mr Incredible Pez dispenser. The Pez was eaten within 5 minutes.
Inexplicable. Notice the slight wetness of the ground on Chris' right. We qued for a fair while for the adrenaline thrill rush that is Aladdin's flying carpets, got to literally the front of the line and then there was massive amounts of rain and the carpets got closed. Meaning that was half of Disney Studio's rides out of action ;-)
"You wouldn't steal a TV. You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a Morinov..." ARGH shuttup I bought the damn DVD, if you don't get rid of these stupid unskippble propaganda shorts before everything I'll just buy the pirate DVD instead, so I don't have to watch them. Happy now!?
Except I couldn't get that picture to load for some reason. So here's a photo of some "fire?" instead.
A chipmunk thing. Forgotten what they are called. Adventurers? His 'wife', i.e. yet another example of Disney endorsed cross dressing, is above.
Ladies and gentlemen...the King of the Dwarfs! Pretty cool henchman too.
(8)'Cos Pearl HarboUr ROCKED!!!(8) I've actually seen this movie. Well, by "seen" I mean switched off in disgust after half-an-hour. But it's by the director of Armaggedon, so Chris lurves it.
Right, this stunt-car show was pretty cool. It ended up with a guy riding a motorbike through a !!!WALL OF FIRE!!! And he got set on fire and then walked around abit before, as Thurston Moore in all his bizarre colour filter glory would say, "the firefighters hosed him down."
Pump.
"Buzz!?" Nah, it's Woody.
"Philip!?" (In the foreground...) It's Jessie in the background folks! And her pardner Woody is oop there ^
It's out now! Don't all rush at once. Also go to www.sonypictures.com/movies/littleman where you can 'design your own Little Man poster'. Aweshome!
Twirly. Loads of small children were running around with these, and because they are really short you can just see these lights out of the bottom of your eye and I kept thinking the kids had lighters.
A giant Cars poster. There's even some real humans in the bottom left corner so you can see it to scale. No hidden racist messages here though. Unless the absence of a yellow car can be considered racist. Which I think it can.
And this KKK themed restaurant.
Apparently, Henry refused to join us on our Disneyland excursion because Disney is an 'evil corporation.' How we laughed. At least we did until we began to notice the racist subliminal messages scattered throughout the park. Such as this swastika...
Another thumbs up. This time for Nicholas Cage.
*Weak laughter*
More music memoribillia. The sign says Radiohead in case you can't see it. There was some signed Pearl Jam stuff as well. No pictures were taken.
Some R.E.M. tour poster. Got to see alot of this during the 10 (!?) times we qeued for the Aerosmith ride.
More novelty headgear modelling.
In my eagerness for further buggy goodness I attempted to take more pics. But then Dean obscured everything with his face.
OMG...Is that...is that THE Armaggedon buggy!? Why yes it is.
I thought this was a really arty picture. But apparently it's 'crap'.
H4rdcore.
Our home for the next twelve hours.
Mickey walking towards ME. While on holiday I invented my own joke. Q: "What is Mickey Mouse's favouite human body part?" Dean replied 'cock' but the actual punchline was 'knee.' As in 'Dis-knee.' Hilarious.
Where'd Ed and Chris go? I can only see Indiana Jones...(x2)
I look at this ride, and think 'I want an hour of my life back and I want it now.'
With the parade out of the way it's onto the next day, which was spent primarily in Disney Studios. Here's Chris giving a heartfelt thumbs-up to Armageddon, genuinely one of his favourite movies ever.
FINISHED!
Gawd this is dull. Er, it's the Little Mermaid. Don't worry, even when the pics of this parade ends I've got even more of the Studios parade!!! COOL.
The main man up close. I'm sure if other individuals were writing this blog they would incorporate the obvious word into an 'amusing' caption, but that would be far, far too immature for me.
The big players Mickey and Minnie riding the Steamboat Willie. In the night parade, on the back of the last float was a mouse, supposedly Minnie. However, eagle-eyed Disney geeks noted that her bow was missing...thereby exposing 'her' as a cross-dressing Mickey.
Hohum. What are these freaks from?
Draw your own conclusions to the mystery from this picture.Now this is a damn cool pic. It's my new desktop wallpaper :-) Check the dwarf being led away by security in the background. *Mystery* What crime could he have committed?? *Mystery* EDIT: This picture is at the very top of the blog ^ For some reason that I can't be bothered to even attempt rectifying.
Is this Cinderella? By the time you've seen your 58th princess jiving on a float they all kinda merge into one.
And they just keep on coming.
If the excitement of these pics is proving too much for you, I'll just warn ya: there's hundreds more where these came from.
Booooooooooring. There was a similar float themed around the Beauty and the Beast which led to accusations of beastiality later on, along with some graphic descriptions.
Pluto discovers Millencolin have split up.
Snow White. The night parade was probably better but my camera took really bad quality pics of it, and then ran out of batteries. Chris was swearing and moaning in the midst of a sea of children and their mothers, while a spectacular float dedicated to Stevo stopped before us for a good 10 minutes.
The man. The legend. Goofy entertains the crowds.
Yeah, it's at this point that this dull blog gets even more boring. For some reason I took millions of pictures of the sucky "Princess' Parade". Actually, it was quite good, but that still doesen't justify how many photos there are of it.
"Schtar Warzzz!!!" X-Wing y'all.
Hmm...these pics have gone abit out of chronological order. This is us having lunch at Pizza Planet. Yes, the star of Toy Story!!! The reason Ed and Chris are posing like this is because I wanted to get everyone into the photo. It didn't quite work though. There was alot of hate for Pizza Planet's fine cuisine from certain people. Bizarrely, when we went for dinner at 'Casey's', which served exactly the same food, said persons loved it.
Some more tea-cup drama, but this is of the entirely innocent variety. Riggerz enjoying the spinning action. On a related note I remember once going on a tea-cup ride where it was inside, and was like a disco, with the lights and ball and stuff. I think it was Drayton Manor, although it might have been Alton Towers. In any case it whups Disneyland's tea-cups.
And another pic of him, clearly loving it. Obviously I found it really funny.
Words cannot do justice to the insane level of photography skills required to capture these moments. The tea-cups were crazy man, you had no idea where our children loving friend was going to spin to next, making good quality photos of him a tall order. I'm satisfied with the results.
Now this was hilarious. A man alone in a pink tea-cup, surronded by (to quote) 'gyrating children' whips out his camera and films himself some hot action.
There are times when a caption is not required. This is one such occaison.
What a boring picture. The submarine from 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This was taken on the route to Space Mountain (Mission 2 y'all) for the third time. Just before this we had gone on the Cars ride. Basically, you can accelerate, and steer (to a degree) a car that travels on rails. Ed's car was in front of me, Chris behind. Ed stopped. I stopped. And so, Chris' car pushed us both around half of the ride, until a Disney employee sprinted over and seperated us, warning that the cars should not come into contact with each other. Apparently, straight after she said this Ed raced around a corner and slammed into the back of a stationary Dean's car, nearly breaking his neck..
Just some more touring of the land of fun. From this point on the tone of the blog may get abit more aggresive, mainly because I've already done the next few photographs but lost it when my trusty PC went haywire the other night. So from now on this is my second run through of this part of the damn blog :-(
Here's Pooh Bear hitting the mean streets of Disneyland. He was just one of many celebrities we met on our holiday, others include Sean Bean, the frontman of Father and Jeremy Irons.
Check the Peter Pan ride on the left. We got a Fastpass for it...coolio. You sit in a flying pirate ship that moves around veeery slowly. Every so often it stops 'cos a kid somewhere on the ride has fallen out of their boat or whatever. We stopped in a good place and for the next five minutes enjoyed the sight of Captain Hook having his crotch devoured by a crocodile.
And this equally delicious woman.
Our reward for navigating a fiendish maze was this delicious castle.
C3PO, while waiting for Star Tours. I don't think words can do justice to how funny this ride was. A 'you had to be there moment.' Basically, it's just a simulator and you watch a video of your ship slowly following the other ships along the clearly marked main route, when for no reason whatsoever your driver performs a near hairpin left turn and proceeds to drive through some No Entry doors. A 'wild ride' then ensues. Ending with you landing on completely the wrong planet, about which no-one seems to notice, nor care.
The King. Big Thunder Mountain. When me and Ed qeued for this some Germans in front of us did something funny but I can't remember what. I'll maybe edit this later.
Check out the poor guys on the right of the pic, queing for the sucky steamer! Why would you do that!? You spend half of your day in Disneyland sailing at walking pace around a toxic chemical infested lake watching people have fun on rides, and y'know, enjoy themselves. While you're stuck on some stupid tin can.
Chris wears his love for Mickey on his sleeve. Or, rather, on his EYE!
One of the few disapointing rides of the holiday: Indiana Jones. On the scale of boringness it was up there with Aerosmith for the 10th time. But more on that later.
'Caption Competition: What's Dean saying to Ed?'
My best effort= "Beats Castle Park." HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
To quote Chris: "The mystical symbol of a magical land where your dreams always come true. Sleeping Beauty's Castle..."
Some more general map readage. No idea why it required two photos to demonstrate this. Chris is eagerly plotting the quickest route to the Armaggedon ride. Damn that sucked.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHH!!! We are officially inside Disneyland now! And we are reading maps! WOAH.
WOW! Check out our luxury hotel apartment. Shame Chris had to pose in such a porn star manner for this photo. Ah well. Oh, and there IS a gap between my bed and Ed's. Everyday though, the cleaners would push them together again. Hint, hint methinks.
And here is the gang on said ferry. Liana appears to be being brutally strangled. Ed looks like this is the last place on Earth he wants to be. Chris is loving it.
The bus next to us suggests that this pic was taken while waiting for the ferry in Dover. However, as usual, Dean is fixated on Mario.
A mysterious stowaway soon finds his way onto an unconsious Dean's crotch. He would spend the rest of the holiday watching Chris sleep.
If you knew the details of what Riggerz was writing here you would violently vomit. Needless to say, the storyline of this novel shall forever remain the dark secret of the Dis-Knee crew. And possibly my Mum as well, for when she inevitably finds it in my bedroom.
The lengthy journey, Return To Oz ("a chicken!") and the absence of Bruno dispensed 'services' meant matters soon took an aggressive turn on the bus.
From right to left: Chris Riggerz, Liana's hair and Bran Flake get ready for the trip of a lifetime!1!1!
