[innerSpaceman]

To answer scaeagles question ... yes, the things that bug me most would still bug me. The Davy Jones effect is 2-D flat and worthy of Not Afraid's traveling carnival. The music makes me feel like I'm supposed to be in a movie.

I had the same reaction the very first time I rode Phantom Manor in Paris. Where is the orchestra? Why is everything lushly scored? Am I supposed to be in a haunted house or in a movie about a haunted house?

All it takes is plausible deniability. In the original Haunted Mansion, there is creepy organ music which I can imagine eminating from the organ I see played later in the attraction. When things get more musical in orchestraion, it's because 25 animatronics are actually performing a musical number.

I suppose it's possible that there's a ghostly symphonic orchestra hidden somewhere between the walls of Phantom Manor. The music they play is indeed creepy and beautiful.

And I suppose there's a ghostly naval orchestra doomed to play strings and horns and bass and drums and flutes and tuba down in the waterlogged caverns of 18th Century New Orleans, and were already dead long before that so they can also be playing from their gig on the Spanish fort, with ethereal precognition of a movie score we all readily recognize as being composed in the 21st century some 400 years later!


Yes, even if I didn't know that a handful of irreplaceable vocal performances were removed, I would be bugged by the new Pirates of the Caribbean. It would still be better than a finger in the eye, but I would never have pegged it as the best theme park attraction ever created.


The mighty have fallen, and I pray it's only temporary.