I refuse to explain for the millionth time what camp is. If you don’t know, I suggest that you read Bruce LaBruce’s “Notes on Camp/Anti-Camp.” If you want to argue that something on this list isn’t actually camp, I put it on this list knowing that it isn’t camp because me calling it camp is camp. Camp. Hope that helps!
Light Magic
The Irish folk show Riverdance started as an interval act at Eurovision 1994 before being turned into a full stage production the following year. It became massively popular in the UK and US, even playing Radio City Music Hall in 1996. As we should all know by now, if Disney is anything, it’s completely shameless about cashing in on the latest trends. Thus, the company claimed that their replacement for the classic Main Street Electrical Parade would be bigger, weirder, and more Irish than anything Disneyland had ever seen. Promotional materials made Light Magic sound like it was groundbreaking to the point of transcending the lowly category of “parade.” The groundbreaking story behind their new “streetacular” is that the deviantART pixie OCs wake up, a bunch of Disney characters come out in their pajamas, and they dance together. It rains, but Tinker Bell appears and stops the rain. Some animation happens on screens that only about 15% of the audience can get a decent view of and it finishes with more group dancing to a song about dreaming on a wish made by the magic of your heart in the stars or something. Voiceover narration accompanies all of this to make it actually comprehensible. I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on, but there is a pseudo-Celtic arrangement of “Step in Time.”
The Oliver Stone of trash cans
PUSH the Talking Trash Can was a roll-around character in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom until 2014. They interacted with guests and other Disney characters in the area and developed a cult following among Disney Parks fans. There are tons of videos of them on YouTube, some of which will probably show up in later posts here. I found this video by chance in the early 2010s and have thought about it at least once a week ever since. While sheltering in the Star Traders gift shop during a rainstorm, PUSH theorizes that Pocahontas is hanging out backstage doing rain dances because she earns a commission on all the ponchos and umbrellas sold at Walt Disney World.
Here Come the Muppets
A year after Disney’s MGM Studios theme park opened to the public, Here Come the Muppets premiered in the space now occupied by Voyage of the Little Mermaid. It featured horrifying, human-proportioned Muppets doing song-and-dance numbers to rock and R&B music. The mouth articulation in the Muppet costumes varies wildly, the only constant being that nobody’s movements ever seem to sync up with the prerecorded dialogue. Kermit and Fozzie barely appear to move at all while Janice opens her mouth all the way for every syllable and Animal’s flaps around constantly regardless of whether he’s speaking. They sing “Make ‘Em Laugh” in front of a montage of silent film clips where people fall down and get pied in the face. Miss Piggy shows up in a tacky ‘80s perm and leads the Muppets in Lloyd Price’s “Personality.” The finale is “Shout!” by the Isley Brothers, performed by the Electric Mayhem behind a line of expressionless seven-foot-tall Muppets flailing around in ugly fringe jackets.
Splashtacular
This lightly reworked version of the Tokyo Disneyland 10th anniversary show It’s Magical! premiered at Epcot in front of the Fountain of Nations in 1993. In the original Japanese version, Mickey and friends are celebrating colors when Maleficent shows up, takes away all the colors, and turns herself into a dragon before being defeated. In a truly bizarre attempt to make this show fit the science-fiction elements of Future World, the Imagineers replaced Maleficent with an alien sorceress from a planet that lost all of its colors during an intergalactic war and now wants to steal it from Mickey (also I can’t confirm this but I’m pretty sure most of her dialogue is just Maleficent’s from the original put through a Gom Jabbar filter). Instead of turning into a dragon, the unnamed alien summons her “TerrorsauX,” a fire-breathing dinosaur head set atop a metal ribcage. Despite Disney being proud enough of this show to broadcast it live on Disney Channel, it closed after less than a year.
Pirates of the Caribbean on-ride photos
As part of Walt Disney World’s PhotoPass and Memory Maker services, there are a select number of attractions that capture photos of guests as they ride. According to their website, this allows you to “treasure memories that only Disney PhotoPass can deliver—with shots of your family plummeting down Splash Mountain or rounding the bend on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.” In 2017, they integrated this service into Pirates of the Caribbean at the Magic Kingdom. Instead of taking the photo somewhere that makes sense as an engaging action shot—like, say, as the boat goes down the ride’s small drop—it happens about fifty feet before the drop while nothing particularly exciting happens. Nothing says vacation memories to last a lifetime like a couple dozen people looking off to the side with blank expressions. If you’re lucky, you’ll even be able to relive the magic of the family in the front row looking at their phones.
Click here to read my newest article for MXDWN Movies revisiting Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972) on its 50th anniversary and the performance that cemented Liza Minnelli as one of the best performers of her generation.