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ToxicRisk
02-11-2003, 12:05 PM
Has anybody else noticed or been nauseated by the recent proliferation of spanish language messages being heard around the park? First it was the Matterhorn safety spiel which was mocked on No Doubt's album "Tragic Kingdom." Shortly thereafter, it began to creep into other areas of the park. The Haunted Mansion for one has lost all atmosphere now as right after boarding the carriages you have to listen to some guy reciting the spiel in Spanish. The train that circles the park is now interupted four times each trip with a foreign Spanish speaking safety message as well. The last straw came when visiting DCA. The bumpercars in the new Flik's area actually use Spanish first in the safety spiel and English is heard as the second message, almost as if it was an afterthought. This state has become a cesspool of immigration and the park is beginning to resemble what lurks outside the gates. Disney needs to work on preserving the character, atmosphere and feeling of the park, not on advancing it's demise and turning it into a tower of Babel. Otherwise, they should rename Tom Sawyer's Island, Ellis Island.

cstephens
02-11-2003, 12:28 PM
Wow.

blusilva
02-11-2003, 02:34 PM
I agree that the longer safety speil messages are interrupting the atmosphere of some of the attractions: the Matterhorn before its rehab was the one I felt was most noticeable (it lasted all the way up the lift) and Holiday Haunted Mansion was particularly bad, as the actual ride narration didn't start until the doombuggy was facing Zero in the endless hallway.

I'm not going to comment on the specific languages used, but I will state that the powers that be should really consider moving the longer safety speils to the queues in order to maintain the integrity of the actual attractions.

But, then again, these are the same folk that put big bright EXIT signs in dark rides and yellow safety tape around a medieval themed drinking fountain. So, there ya go.

MonorailMan
02-11-2003, 02:45 PM
I totally agree, the one that really makes me want to Hurl, is the BTMR. "Wilderness" is said so wrong!

LIMANDL4EVA
02-11-2003, 02:55 PM
Originally posted by MonorailMan
I totally agree, the one that really makes me want to Hurl, is the BTMR. "Wilderness" is said so wrong!
The old BTM spiel, along with the matterhorn "Remain Seated" spiel, in my mind are CLASSIC, I quiver whenever I think about the new BTM spiel, ITS AWFUL, I swear, if they change the matterhorn "Remain Seated" speil, I'll petition...ok, maybe not.

And don't even get me started on the Screamin and Maliboomer spiels, I mean honestly, does ANY Californian you have ever met talk like that?

thank you:D

TecTalker2K
02-11-2003, 04:20 PM
First off, The other Disney parks also use foreign languages. I believe France and Japan both include English. They have much toghter immigration laws.

What is the best of all worlds is to have a sign that says use your common sense and leave out the warnings in the park. We know that this will never happen.

Thomas
02-11-2003, 04:48 PM
BTM???? BTMR???? I am drawing a complete blank on those abreviations.

Thomas
02-11-2003, 04:52 PM
Originally posted by Thomas
BTM???? BTMR???? I am drawing a complete blank on those abreviations.

Ok, I just figured it out......Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

I am awake now.

tod
02-11-2003, 04:55 PM
Originally posted by ToxicRisk
Has anybody else noticed or been nauseated by the recent proliferation of spanish language messages being heard around the park?... This state has become a cesspool of immigration and the park is beginning to resemble what lurks outside the gates.

This isn't about the spiels, is it?

--T

YellowMan
02-11-2003, 05:12 PM
While I dislike the speils in other languages, I think it is something that can be overlooked a bit. It interrupts the ride for a few seconds and usually it is the first few seconds of the ride when you have barely been seated and started moving (such as in the Haunted Mansion). The Haunted Mansion speil to me is the best one out there because the voice is at least a "scary" ghostly style voice, as opposed to just a plain voice. The speil that really gets to me is at the end of the Haunted Mansion as you are exiting onto the moving platform, a regular female voice tells you to "Please exit to your left." They don't even attempt to mix that voice with the theme, as it just interrupts the soundtrack and is not even the slightest bit "ghostly".

The safety tape on steps is what really gets me. There is tape on the steps up to the Main Street Train Station. Do they honestly believe that somebody wouldn't notice that there are steps to get from ground level to about 10-15 higher up to the station area?

AVP
02-11-2003, 07:34 PM
Originally posted by tod
This isn't about the spiels, is it?

--T

Such a smart guy. No wonder you won WWTBAM-PI. :D

Did anyone notice that they re-recorded the spiels on "it's a small world?" They took out the German "Pizza-Hutten" spiel, and Tony says that the French spiel is different too.

AVP

cemeinke
02-11-2003, 07:45 PM
Originally posted by AVP
Did anyone notice that they re-recorded the spiels on "it's a small world?" They took out the German "Pizza-Hutten" spiel, and Tony says that the French spiel is different too.

AVP

Not sure if it's different, but I'm pretty sure they still admonish you to "Bitte bleiben Sie im Boot sitzen"

innerSpaceman
02-11-2003, 08:58 PM
I wonder if those are really new Small World spiels or if, like the rest of the attraction inside and out, they are old 1960's spiels.

Back on track for a moment, I cringe at all those Spanish safety spiels. They should find some way to make it less interruptive of the show.

While I appreciate the "ghostly" qualilty of the Haunted Mansion Spanish Spiel, I hate that one most of all. While it comes at the beginning of the vehicle transport, it is in the freaking middle of the attraction experience. They deleted some of Paul Free's classic, absolutely keep-yer-paws-off-of-it narration and pretend like it's ok to have some "guest ghost" interrupt your host momentarily.

This whole thing is appalling. I'm not against bilinqualism in the park. Have signs in 12 languages for all I care. But once on the attractions, don't distract from them. I know lawyers, and I know they can do better than this.

Tigertail777
02-11-2003, 09:10 PM
While its true other parks outside US have english, and other languages, they don't cater to a specific language outside their own the way we do. We bend over backwards to the point of ridiculousness to cater to spanish, my sister's husband is mexican and even he is sick of how much we are doing it in all businesses these days. As he said: "my father said he was proud to learn english, and english customs and to be able to keep his own language and customs as well, he wanted to be part of America, and keep the best of Mexico with him."
It's not all Mexicans that expect this catering, only the lazy ones who seem to think the world owes them for something.

Golly gee what happens when someone from another country visits Disneyland who doesn't have warnings in their language.. how will they ever cope? guess they will immediately get into some heinous accident on the spot because no one warned them.:rolleyes:

There is a big difference between catering to a specific category or demographic of people, and merely having a few warnings . Hey were starting to get a lot of Japanese people we need to immediately change all warnings to have Japanese too.:rolleyes:

Hey we are starting to get a lot of Mexicans here in the US so we have to radically change the school system and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and teach them in their own language at the taxpayers expense, which also will alienate them as a group from english speaking society...wouldn't that be completely ridiculous?...oh wait.......:eek:

Hey we had schools like that, that every taxpayer paid for when people immigrated here in the 1900's didn't we? well didn't we? We didn't? Oh gosh civilization must have crumbled without them then? It didn't? your kidding? :rolleyes:

Yeah I know, yer cup runneth over with sarchasm.:~D

Back on the topic, I don't like it no sir...it ruins a lot of the rides with needless banter and messes with both tradition and atmosphere. Wait should I have said that in spanish? What is our national language anyways? I can't remember?:confused:

Lashbear
02-11-2003, 09:11 PM
I thake it this is a result of a large amount of Spanish-speaking people living in California ?

It can't be for tourists, otherwise they would have to have french, german, Australian ("Oy, mate, get yer bloody arms and pins in the carriage, and wotch yer nippers"), and other language warnings as well.

Australia has a diverse cultural mix, but we haven't gone multi-lingual in safety warnings as yet. (except in specialist locations such as the bank of Hong Kong etc).

danyoung
02-12-2003, 03:14 AM
Originally posted by MonorailMan
I totally agree, the one that really makes me want to Hurl, is the BTMR. "Wilderness" is said so wrong!

I thought I was the only one who noticed that. I bet it gets really irritating to the cast members, much more so than the classic spiel.

danyoung
02-12-2003, 03:24 AM
I think that while there may be some value in the safety spiels, they really need to reconsider where they put them. Nowhere in the Disney empire is this more evident than at the Spaceship Earth ride in Epcot. The start of the ride is a trip thru a darkened corridor with whispering voices from the past overhead, bringing you into the concept of this ride, a trip thru the history of communication. Now, instead of these voices, you hear a safety warning about the ride vehicles turning around half way thru the ride, and to keep your seat. There is nothing jarring about this rotation, and not the slightest indication that this is the end of the ride. But some stupid person, sometime in the past, tried to get out, so now we have to endure the corruption of the ride itself to feed the lawyers' frenzy.

And to ToxicRisk, to state what others have hinted at, your opinions are incredibly bigoted, and have no place in modern society. I'm not telling you what to think, but I'm sure telling you that I and hopefully most civilized folk don't agree with you.

EandCDad
02-12-2003, 05:52 AM
Originally posted by Lashbear
I thake it this is a result of a large amount of Spanish-speaking people living in California ?


That's the primary reason, I think. At Disneyland Paris, they cater to alot of English speakers, so they have alot of the spoken information in French and English, but not, say, German. Companies need to cater to some degree to their audience and that's what is at work here.

It's not that big of a distraction for me. I'm with innerSpaceman in that I think the "please exit to your left" at the end of Haunted Mansion is far more distracting than the Spanish safety message.

I also agree with tod, the original post was not really about the safety message. Fortunately, most, although not all, of the posters recognized this.

innerSpaceman
02-12-2003, 07:00 AM
Originally posted by EandCDad
I'm with innerSpaceman in that I think the "please exit to your left" at the end of Haunted Mansion is far more distracting than the Spanish safety message.
Sorry, that was YellowMan, not me. I'm the one who hates the Spanish safety spiel above all others cause it replaces some classic Paul Frees narration. The omnimover exit spiel is nevertheless annoying because it's not themed at all. At least it's sort of at the end of the attraction (although the still-to-come Little Leota is one of the highlights of the Mansion for me and many others).

As danyoung mentioned above, the worst non-themed safety spiel in the Disney Empire has got to be the idiotic, ride-ruining announcement at the top of the Big Ball on Spaceship Earth.

Gak!

Tell ya what, since we already have to wait in long lines to enter the parks so that they can pretend to search for terrorist threats, I for one would be willing to wait three times as long so that they could require everyone to sign a written waiver.


The ironic thing is that neither a written waiver nor the attraction-destroying safety spiels provide any sort of legal protection for Disney if its guests are injured on a ride. None whatsoever.

MartyLuvsTigger
02-12-2003, 09:24 AM
Originally posted by ToxicRisk
Has anybody else noticed or been nauseated by the recent proliferation of spanish language messages being heard around the park? ......
This state has become a cesspool of immigration and the park is beginning to resemble what lurks outside the gates. ...
Otherwise, they should rename Tom Sawyer's Island, Ellis Island.

I am so offened i dont where to start...a cesspool of immigration??? wow.
I guess you are a native american from the california region, no? Guess what, my family is. They have been here (and when i say here i mean So. Cal) since this area was a part of mexico.

I understand that the spiels are annoying but if you are going to attack spanish speaking people, thats where i draw the line.

ToxicRisk
02-12-2003, 09:32 AM
The overwhelming majority of posters here agree with me that Spanish speaking safety spiels have no place in Disneyland or DCA and that they detract from the overall ambiance and magic that once was Disneyland. There we're to be expected, a couple of ill informed posters that can't see the forest for the trees and tried to turn this into a racial argument. Name-calling is a usual tactic when they can't form a plausible argument. Fortunately anybody with a shred of intelligence can see this clearly. This is not a chat board on the failures of the US government to control the borders and the fact that they're letting literally tens of millions of illegal aliens and terrorists pour into this country through our southern border. That's a discussion better served in another arena. I don't fault Disney for that and I don't expect Eisner to send troops down to Tijuana to stem the tide. This is about Spanish speaking safety spiels and their destructive effect on the Disneyland experience. I was born in Anaheim and I can assure you that I forgot more about Disneyland than any poster from Texas will ever know. I'm an annual passholder and I can tell you that Orange County has become a shell of it's former self and it's up to Disney to try to maintain the magic of the Disneyland that once was. As one poster mentioned on this board, if you're too ignorant to know that you should sit down during a ride, maybe Disneyland isn't the best place to spend your leisure dollar. I suggest Disneyland and Disney in general work to maintain the charms of the theme parks, not destroy them. Disneyland is a microcosm of the nation and it would be sad to see it suffer the same fate that seems to be befalling the rest of America. I'm sure we can all agree that it won't be quite the same in a few years when you walk into the Pirates of Caribbean and have to listen to a safety spiel in Farsi or Cantonese. Raise the bar and maintain the standards, don't lower them.

MartyLuvsTigger
02-12-2003, 09:48 AM
I dont know if i should post...since i have no shed of intellegence to stand on ...:rolleyes:

Toxic, the verbage you used in your original post was "This state has become a cesspool of immigration and the park is beginning to resemble what lurks outside the gates".

CESSPOOL, what comes to mind?...nevemind. I cant have an argument w you about immgration nor do I want to.

3894
02-12-2003, 09:55 AM
Different languages? Bring 'em on! I love, love, love it that so many different people can enjoy Disneyland. Let's make all children of all ages feel welcome.

MartyLuvsTigger
02-12-2003, 10:01 AM
Originally posted by 3894
Different languages? Bring 'em on! I love, love, love it that so many different people can enjoy Disneyland. Let's make all children of all ages feel welcome.

thanks for giving me some hope....:D

EandCDad
02-12-2003, 10:18 AM
Thought better of it.

Hey, my ignore function still works, isn't that great!