Full House Screws Up Walt Disney World

One thing that I get annoyed with is when TV shows take liberties with established facts about existing places.  For example, MTV’s Road Rules screwed up in their first season by showing the Winnebago driving north on a highway. The problem was that each subsequent highway shot was from a section of road that was further south than the previous one.  All the editors had to do was place those highway shots in their correct order.  They were going to show those shots anyway, so at least be smart about it.  It was like insisting that the first five letters of the alphabet are “A-B-E-D-C”. 

Take the “Let’s go to Walt Disney World” story arc used in the season six two-part Full House episode.  Jesse and his band are invited to Disney World to play, and the entire Tanner clan decides to tag along for their own crazy sitcom antics.  I did find it a bit of a stretch that the Tanners would all be staying at the Grand Floridian instead of a less-expensive hotel, but they can afford to live in San Francisco, so I’ll let that slide.  And that’s where I knew the episode would have a little trouble.

• While I can suspend disbelief for the Tanners to stay at the GF, I don’t have enough imagination to believe that DJ’s boyfriend Steve can afford to check into the Grand Floridian himself.  Steve himself said that just the other day he was eating at Sizzler. Not exactly a high-priced restaurant.  Besides, isn’t he in high school?  How did he pay for the last-minute airfare, let alone reserve a hotel room?  Credit card debt must begin early for him.
• While in Fantasyland, Stephanie pointed towards Tomorrowland and said that was the way to get to Splash Mountain.  While I would write this off as Stephanie not knowing her way around the Magic Kingdom, it appears that this was just a bit of bad staging and direction, perhaps due to sunlight and the camera angles the director wanted to use to get his shot.  At the very least, change the “Splash” to “Space” so you look like you know what you’re doing.
• While in front of the Tiki Room, Michelle encounters Snow White.  Really?  Walt Disney World was designed 14-feet above ground level to allow for a series of Utilidors underneath the park.  This allows for characters and staff to walk around service areas without being seen by guests in the wrong part of the park (no cowboys walking through Tomorrowland, or spacemen in Frontierland).  I can’t even justify why Snow White is appearing in Adventureland when everyone knows that she can’t leave Fantasyland.
• The timing shown of this “typical family vacation is almost impossible.  See the timeline breakdown below.
• There are two empty rows of seats on Splash Mountain?  Some cast member must not have been doing their job to fill every log to maximum capacity. No wonder there’s a two hour wait.

The timeline is totally unbelievable:

• Michelle, DJ, Stephanie, and Kimmy get to the Magic Kingdom early (9am), and ride the carrousel at least 10 times in a row.  With Michelle’s “go to the front of every line” princess for the day benefit, that’s at least 30 minutes of riding including the load/unload.  If they have to get off the ride to get back in line, they still will only wait an additional ride cycle.  Michelle gets lost shortly thereafter, best reasonable guess for Michelle wandering off: 10:00-10:30am.  11am at the absolute latest.
• Danny and Vicky dance in Germany (can’t be any earlier than 11am, as World Showcase opens later than Future World), then they eat at the Living Seas.  It must be lunch, as dinner would be much too late for the rest of the episode.  During lunch, Danny gets a call informing him that Michelle is lost.  Even going through backstage areas to a car waiting to wisk Danny and Vicky directly to the Magic Kingdom, it’s at least 15-30 minutes before Danny can reunite with his daughters.   Regardless, just getting from Germany to the Living Seas will take some time, plus getting seated, placing an order, etc — Michelle must have been lost for at least an hour before Dad was called. 
• All this puts Danny and his daughters joining the Snow White-led teaparty reuni0n at about 1p. 
• We do get a time check when Joey finds Stephanie outside the Grand Floridian and asks why she isn’t going to watch the afternoon parade, which we all know takes place at 3p.  This means that in 2 hours, the Tanners rode on the Indianapolis Speedway, Splash Mountain, and Dumbo at the Magic Kingdom, as well as catching the 30-minute-long Indiana Jones Stunt Show at the Disney-MGM Studios (along with travel time back-and-forth between the parks).  There’s just no way that’s possible, especially since the entire family also had to change clothes to match the parade floats that they were riding on.

I expect a certain amount of creative license with my mid-80’s sitcom plotlines.  But if you’re going to screw around with what is, in essence, a travelogue for the theme park, at least get your facts straight.

The nice thing about the episode is that it showed some great shots of the 20th Anniversary Surprise Celebration Parade, and the skybuckets flying over Fantasyland.  From the perspective of showing different areas of the park, it was a much better-done Walt Disney World-related sitcom episode than was the Rosanne episode that attempted to do the same thing.  We’ll cover that episode in a future posting.

The post is part of the Fifth DisMarks.com Disney Blog Carnival;
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