Letters

E-Tickets (Disney Theme Parks)

How It's Used

“La Belle et la Bete, however, goes one audacious step further. The whole 1946 film, starring Jean Marais and Josette Day, is projected on a screen, with English subtitles but without its sound track. Flanked by a seven-piece band of winds and synthesizers (one played by Glass himself), Alexandra Montano (la Belle), Hallie Neill, Gregory Purnhagen (la Bete) and Zheng Zhou stand beneath the screen singing Glass's operatic setting of the script. Glass not only had to get the rights to the film, he also had to pay not to use composer Georges Auric's score; and while he secured his permissions, his act of lese-majeste has apparently upset the French, who are sensitive about their cultural icons. The Philip Glass Ensemble has not been invited to perform La Belle in France, and, what's more, not a single French critic has reviewed it elsewhere.

“Allons, enfants: this is Glass's best work in years, an exhilarating and original E-ticket ride that is a lot more stimulating than anything to be found at Euro Disney. The prolific composer, who has modified but never forsaken his adherence to the repetitive rhythms and simple harmonies of the Minimalist movement he helped found 30 years ago, continues to work at a furious pace, sometimes turning out one new opera a year, and he runs the risk of repeating himself. La Belle, though, is remarkable not only in conception but also in execution, brimming with freshets of melody and surging with Wagnerian power in conjuring up a magic kingdom.”

“Even Disneyland, while obviously not defunct, has a retro site of sorts. Cleverly titled Yesterland, it features descriptions of attractions that have been phased out at the California park over the years. It also includes a discussion of Disneyland's old coupon policy, in which a separate ticket was required for each ride or attraction, an 'A' ticket for the simplest ride to an 'E' ticket for the most elaborate or thrilling.”

“Juwan Howard–What was his free-agent reward for enduring two seasons of suffering in Denver without complaint? He escaped NBA purgatory and went straight to Orlando, the hoops equivalent to the eternal damnation of an endless E-ticket on Disney World's 'It's a Small World' ride. The Magic is shopping him, and the Nuggets' staff remains fond of him. At 6-feet-9 and $4.9 million, he is the most big man available for the buck.”

“With an ad budget seemingly bigger than the GOP's, Disney is betting heavily that the new ride will end one of its biggest headaches—the disappointing attendance at its California Adventure theme park in Anaheim. That's the poor and forlorn sister park to Disneyland that the company shoehorned into the old Disneyland parking lot three years ago, to indifferent reviews. The park, with not enough of what an earlier generation would call E- ticket rides, has drawn only about a third of the customers that Disneyland has, over the same period.”

“ABC has an interest in series that are ‘something epic in scope but also really emotional,’ network executive vice president Suzanne Patmore-Gibbs says. Characters must be at the core, she says, whether the serialized program is Lost, Grey's Anatomy or FlashForward. [David] Goyer likes mixing large and small. ‘One of the things I like to do is take a big, broad subject matter and see if you can work it through this intimate prism with characters who humanize what would normally be what some would call an E-ticket ride. I think we were able to do that with the Batman movies, and I feel that's what we're doing here.’”

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