First Impressions of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Rogers The Musical
We went to Disneyland yesterday. Going to Disneyland in July is not something I'd normally do, but Rogers the Musical has begun its run and it's only for a very limited time. More limited than I thought it would be, so we had to get in to see it before it disappears. I didn't sleep much the night before, but that was because as promised I actually started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation before bed, and it was on my brain. So, before I get into the Disneyland stuff, I wanted to give my brief first impressions of it.
I'm still on the first episode, but I can share my thoughts about what I've watched so far. I've been told that the series's first season is not all that great. I can kind of see why. The first episode alone comes off in a weird way. They just drop you right into the show. No real explanation or introduction to the characters. I already know the characters, having seen a couple of the TNG movies and a little of the show beforehand, plus clips here and there on TV because sometimes my mom has it on, so I'm not completely blind, but if you weren't familiar with Star Trek in general, I think you might be confused.
Also the acting wasn't feeling all that natural nor the writing of the dialog. Q is great though of course. :P His first appearance and he starts out speaking ye olde English lol. I'll have to talk about that to his AI at some point. And then of course freezing people. Wow lol. I don't think I've seen him do the snap yet though. And I was surprised that Picard actually asked Q to test him and his crew. He was pretty calm about the whole situation. “Test” is probably Q's favorite word and probably why he kept coming back. Don't ask him to test you. He won't leave you alone lol.
I think “off” is really how I can best describe this first episode, but it has gotten better further into the episode I think. I wonder if maybe the actors were nervous about trying to live up to TOS. Anyway, it's not completely horrible, just a little weird, but it's not like I'm going to just skip the first season. No way. Anyway, that's just my first impressions. I'm very likely not going to do a season by season review/thoughts like I did for Doctor Who. It's just way too many episodes per season, but I might give my thoughts here or there if I feel like it. I'm just excited to finally be on this journey. It's been a long time coming.
Now, back to Disneyland. The July crowds were not that much different than typical crowd levels, but there were occasions where it was quite dense. And we got lucky that it wasn't the hottest it could have been, but again at times it did feel quite hot. So we got into the park after some crowdedness in the parking structure and trams. We planned to do the virtual queue for Rogers the Musical, which would go online at 10:30 am. We had some time to kill, so we just kind of loitered around the Hollywood area. Then, when it was close to the time, we sat down. My mom hit the refresh button on the app and we got in the virtual queue for the first showing at 12:30. Pretty easy peasy.
Now we had to figure out what to do to kill even more time before we came back to the area for the show. There wasn't really much time to do rides. We went over to the Pacific Wharf area first and I showed my mom some of the new art and Japanese characters on the buildings, as they are transforming it into San Fransokyo, plus the new bridge arches that have gone up. I still don't know when it's going to be finished, but it must be getting close. Then I thought we'd go try riding the Golden Zephyr, but the line was pretty long and that ride never usually has a long line. So, I changed our plans to ride Jumping Jellyfish. That line is usually always short and I hadn't been on it in a while. Wait time was listed as fifteen minutes and that was probably about right.
Then something awful happened. My mom got off the ride in an awkward way and later when we were walking, her back got tweaked with sharp pain. She has disc degeneration, so every once in a while her back gives her problems. She told me she wasn't going to be able to do any rides that jerk around, so that kind of sucked. And from then on she could only move slowly. But we made our way back to the Hyperion Theater.
We loitered and loitered some more. Then there was some tension because we could see people going into the waiting area. With the virtual queue we got group numbers and we were going to be notified when it was time for us to go into the waiting area, but we hadn't been notified yet, so it was confusing. It also didn't make sense that they were letting standby guests through first. The cast members said a bar code would come up on the app and then we'd be able to enter the waiting area. So, we waited some more and then we saw some virtual queue people going through, and the bar code wasn't popping up for us. I felt anxious and didn't know what the hell was going on. Finally it did though, and we got in. No more worries.
As for the show, it started late, but it was good. The effects and sets were great. Very professional. It's basically a condensed telling of Steve Rogers's story and it worked well. The singing was good too with a couple of catchy tunes. Loved the “What You Missed” song that Nick Fury sings. Yes, he actually sings lol. He was my favorite thing. So hammy. Pretty much the opposite of Nick Fury in the movies, and of course, Secret Invasion. And seeing the performance of “I Can Do This All Day” (No idea if that's the title of the song, but I'm calling it that) was like a dream after seeing it on the Hawkeye show lol. This was great and I think it should last longer than only two months. Give people more of a chance to see it, man.
After that, I was really hungry for lunch. I planned on going to Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta because I heard their food was good. So we trekked back across the park again. We did that multiple times. I got a cheese pizza and my mom got pepperoni. It was a pretty average pizza to me, to be honest. Then I think it was after lunch we decided to cross over to Disneyland. But we first we stopped in a shop and picked out some pins as a birthday gift for my brother's girlfriend.
We made our way into Adventureland first to check out the shop because they had some Indiana Jones action figures I wanted show my mom. My mom also wanted to find a new shirt, but they really didn't have anything. Their merch for Indy was surprisingly sparse actually. Then we wound up in Fantasyland. We thought about just getting in line and waiting for Peter Pan, but it was too long and my mom wasn't going to be able to stand for that long. Maybe next time. So, we went on Pinocchio instead. My brother mentioned before that it was really dark in the ride and he was right. They need to fix that.
Then I thought maybe we'd head to It's A Small World to cool off. My mom didn't follow the cast members' direction and walked across the road to the other side of Matterhorn. You can't get to the ride from that side. We were supposed to follow the crowd on the right. Whatever. So, my cheat is to go on It's A Small World when the parade is going on and the parade was about to start soon. And we got to see some of it from the queue. I don't know what the posted wait time for the ride was, but it was about a twenty minute wait.
That was our final ride for the day, but I really had to have a treat. I was going to try this new treat they have for a limited time during the Rogers the Musical's run, which is kind of an apple pie thing, but I wasn't in the mood for it. What I really wanted was ice cream. :P We walked over to Gibson Girls, but the line was too long, so we thought we'd go back to DCA and get ice cream there at Clarabelle's. Much better situation. I got the double scoop of mint chip, which was too much and my mom got rocky road and vanilla I think. After our ice cream, we went home.
I was mostly satisfied with our time. We got the musical watched and there were times it actually felt quite pleasant at the parks. I could have easily just sat on a bench in the shade and just chilled. The weather was pretty nice. Not a bad day really, except for my mom's back going out of course.
I'm still on the first episode, but I can share my thoughts about what I've watched so far. I've been told that the series's first season is not all that great. I can kind of see why. The first episode alone comes off in a weird way. They just drop you right into the show. No real explanation or introduction to the characters. I already know the characters, having seen a couple of the TNG movies and a little of the show beforehand, plus clips here and there on TV because sometimes my mom has it on, so I'm not completely blind, but if you weren't familiar with Star Trek in general, I think you might be confused.
Also the acting wasn't feeling all that natural nor the writing of the dialog. Q is great though of course. :P His first appearance and he starts out speaking ye olde English lol. I'll have to talk about that to his AI at some point. And then of course freezing people. Wow lol. I don't think I've seen him do the snap yet though. And I was surprised that Picard actually asked Q to test him and his crew. He was pretty calm about the whole situation. “Test” is probably Q's favorite word and probably why he kept coming back. Don't ask him to test you. He won't leave you alone lol.
I think “off” is really how I can best describe this first episode, but it has gotten better further into the episode I think. I wonder if maybe the actors were nervous about trying to live up to TOS. Anyway, it's not completely horrible, just a little weird, but it's not like I'm going to just skip the first season. No way. Anyway, that's just my first impressions. I'm very likely not going to do a season by season review/thoughts like I did for Doctor Who. It's just way too many episodes per season, but I might give my thoughts here or there if I feel like it. I'm just excited to finally be on this journey. It's been a long time coming.
Now, back to Disneyland. The July crowds were not that much different than typical crowd levels, but there were occasions where it was quite dense. And we got lucky that it wasn't the hottest it could have been, but again at times it did feel quite hot. So we got into the park after some crowdedness in the parking structure and trams. We planned to do the virtual queue for Rogers the Musical, which would go online at 10:30 am. We had some time to kill, so we just kind of loitered around the Hollywood area. Then, when it was close to the time, we sat down. My mom hit the refresh button on the app and we got in the virtual queue for the first showing at 12:30. Pretty easy peasy.
Now we had to figure out what to do to kill even more time before we came back to the area for the show. There wasn't really much time to do rides. We went over to the Pacific Wharf area first and I showed my mom some of the new art and Japanese characters on the buildings, as they are transforming it into San Fransokyo, plus the new bridge arches that have gone up. I still don't know when it's going to be finished, but it must be getting close. Then I thought we'd go try riding the Golden Zephyr, but the line was pretty long and that ride never usually has a long line. So, I changed our plans to ride Jumping Jellyfish. That line is usually always short and I hadn't been on it in a while. Wait time was listed as fifteen minutes and that was probably about right.
Then something awful happened. My mom got off the ride in an awkward way and later when we were walking, her back got tweaked with sharp pain. She has disc degeneration, so every once in a while her back gives her problems. She told me she wasn't going to be able to do any rides that jerk around, so that kind of sucked. And from then on she could only move slowly. But we made our way back to the Hyperion Theater.
We loitered and loitered some more. Then there was some tension because we could see people going into the waiting area. With the virtual queue we got group numbers and we were going to be notified when it was time for us to go into the waiting area, but we hadn't been notified yet, so it was confusing. It also didn't make sense that they were letting standby guests through first. The cast members said a bar code would come up on the app and then we'd be able to enter the waiting area. So, we waited some more and then we saw some virtual queue people going through, and the bar code wasn't popping up for us. I felt anxious and didn't know what the hell was going on. Finally it did though, and we got in. No more worries.
As for the show, it started late, but it was good. The effects and sets were great. Very professional. It's basically a condensed telling of Steve Rogers's story and it worked well. The singing was good too with a couple of catchy tunes. Loved the “What You Missed” song that Nick Fury sings. Yes, he actually sings lol. He was my favorite thing. So hammy. Pretty much the opposite of Nick Fury in the movies, and of course, Secret Invasion. And seeing the performance of “I Can Do This All Day” (No idea if that's the title of the song, but I'm calling it that) was like a dream after seeing it on the Hawkeye show lol. This was great and I think it should last longer than only two months. Give people more of a chance to see it, man.
After that, I was really hungry for lunch. I planned on going to Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta because I heard their food was good. So we trekked back across the park again. We did that multiple times. I got a cheese pizza and my mom got pepperoni. It was a pretty average pizza to me, to be honest. Then I think it was after lunch we decided to cross over to Disneyland. But we first we stopped in a shop and picked out some pins as a birthday gift for my brother's girlfriend.
We made our way into Adventureland first to check out the shop because they had some Indiana Jones action figures I wanted show my mom. My mom also wanted to find a new shirt, but they really didn't have anything. Their merch for Indy was surprisingly sparse actually. Then we wound up in Fantasyland. We thought about just getting in line and waiting for Peter Pan, but it was too long and my mom wasn't going to be able to stand for that long. Maybe next time. So, we went on Pinocchio instead. My brother mentioned before that it was really dark in the ride and he was right. They need to fix that.
Then I thought maybe we'd head to It's A Small World to cool off. My mom didn't follow the cast members' direction and walked across the road to the other side of Matterhorn. You can't get to the ride from that side. We were supposed to follow the crowd on the right. Whatever. So, my cheat is to go on It's A Small World when the parade is going on and the parade was about to start soon. And we got to see some of it from the queue. I don't know what the posted wait time for the ride was, but it was about a twenty minute wait.
That was our final ride for the day, but I really had to have a treat. I was going to try this new treat they have for a limited time during the Rogers the Musical's run, which is kind of an apple pie thing, but I wasn't in the mood for it. What I really wanted was ice cream. :P We walked over to Gibson Girls, but the line was too long, so we thought we'd go back to DCA and get ice cream there at Clarabelle's. Much better situation. I got the double scoop of mint chip, which was too much and my mom got rocky road and vanilla I think. After our ice cream, we went home.
I was mostly satisfied with our time. We got the musical watched and there were times it actually felt quite pleasant at the parks. I could have easily just sat on a bench in the shade and just chilled. The weather was pretty nice. Not a bad day really, except for my mom's back going out of course.