Consider Yourself Rezzed

Well, ladies and gentlemen, something finally worked out in my favor this weekend. Sure, it cost me a couple hours worth of work to do it, but it was worth it in the end... I went to ElecTRONica! With a camera! And took pictures! So, in honor of the experience, the Song of the Day is, one more time (ba-dum ching!), Daft Punk:



Well, I was originally scheduled to work until pretty late on Friday, but I definitely kept feeling the drive to at least stop by and see what was going on in California Adventure sometime this past weekend. I ended up calling the Scheduling Office to find out whether or not I could switch my shift to something earlier in the day.

Disneyland's got a pretty solid scheduling department; if you have a day off and want to pick up a shift, or something happens and you want to try to rearrange a date, you can call your department's scheduling office and they'll try to help you out. If you have to call in sick or take a personal day you're not responsible for finding a cover since they take care of all of that. It's a pretty convenient system, one I wish more businesses would employ... Anyway, so all I had to do was call the day before and ask if they had an earlier shift that I could take instead of my late one. BOOM, I got to leave at 7:30. Before I knew it I was able to take this picture...


Welcome to ElecTRONica...

That's right, folks. It's the entrance to ElecTRONica, and they put on a pretty fantastic show inside. For one, there's tons of black-lighting and they use really strong blue lights to give everything a glow of its own...


We've all been rezzed!

Now, during the day the ElecTRONica area functions as the Hollywood Backlot, the area where the Disney Animation Studio attraction and Muppets 3D Theatre are, along with some other stuff. So in order to fully "take over" the area, they cast giant projections over the walls of the buildings. They're fully animated, and you can see things like lightcycles driving past you, complete with surround sound.


We don't like zombies on our lawn, but we LOVE lightcycles on our walls.


Everything in there's so gorgeous. SO GORGEOUS.

What still really gets me is how much the place looks like the concept art that they put together. I think it's amazing how one person's drawing of a place can become a full, life-sized reality in just a few years. I mean, look at the concept here:



And then look at this:



I mean, seriously. That's one giant freakin' Recognizer. And no, it doesn't move or suck people up or anything, but there's still something completely fantastic about seeing a small piece of your reality tweaked into the sci-fi dimension. After all, how often do you get to walk around and see people in glowing bodysuits dancing to techno music?


This is a picture of the guy in the costume in the middle, not the pool of sweat on the back of the guy on the left.


Blurriness is just a photo's way of describing excitement.


Even so, I could have used less blurriness here...

Even the concessions stands are all TRON'ed out. Though I couldn't get a good picture of one, they serve "Glowtinis" that have little plastic cubes in them which light up blue, making the whole drink glow...it's pretty awesome. The seating is all futuristic and lit too to keep with the design. After all, it wouldn't really make a whole lot of sense to have glowing drinks and costumes with normal chairs, would it?


So. Much. Light.


So. Much. More. Light.

One of the coolest parts of the area is Flynn's, the retro arcade I talked about a couple posts ago. There are tons of games there, and they all cost a quarter a piece to play.


None of that "Insert $1.00" crap in this arcade!


They created a "Space Paranoids" cabinet for San Diego Comic Con in 2008. 8 were created, and apparently one of them made its way to Disney...


...as did an authentic TRON cabinet! There are tons of other games there too...


...but I spent my time playing Asteroids.


:)

So, now one person's idea for a movie back in the 80s transformed into this huge entity that I can walk through and hang out with my friends in. I mean, I guess that's basically what the whole of Disneyland was at one point in time, an idea in one person's head that slowly developed into a massive powerhouse of creativity. Now thousands of people show up every day to get immersed in what used to be one man's dream. Not only that, but Disneyland is the product of the ideas, dedication, and hard work of hundreds of thousands of people over the years. So many lives have been changed for the better just as the result of this idea...

A part of me is enamored with the idea that one day some idea that I create could entertain millions of people, become a part of their reality, and in more ways than one. I mean, think about it: back when Star Trek first came out, the idea of flipping open a device and talking with someone wirelessly was nothing but a dream. Now tons of us do it on a daily basis with our cell phones and don't even give it a second thought. How many inside jokes do you have with your friends that involve a book series or a movie? How many little kids play Power Rangers out on the playground with their friends? All of these things originate from a singular idea that came from one person's head, one person with the courage and the determination to bring their dreams into reality.

Pretty amazing when you think about it.