Last time on the Saturday Slow-Down...
... we continued our meanderings in the Disney Animation Building in the Hollywood Backlot and spent some time talking to a sea turtle in The E.A.C. Today, we're going to continue our tour through the building and spend some time in one of our favorite areas in the building, the Sorcerer's Workshop.
The Sorcerer's Workshop is actually broken up into three separate rooms, each with its own speciality: The Magic Mirror Realm, Beast's Library, and Ursula's Grotto.
Inside the "Magic Mirror Realm", guests are treated to a whole host of animated type gadgetry on display. Drawing tables are set aside for people to explore their own drawing and animating doodles, and the room is full of all sorts of devices made for exploring frame by frame animation from many of the most popular Disney animated classics.
Should you grow weary of all that doodling, a trip into "Beast's Library" might be in order; a room designed just like, you guessed it, Beast's library from Beauty and the Beast.
This is probably our favorite room in all of the workshop. The room is filled with electronic "books" (you can see people "reading" them all around) designed to tell you which Disney character you are most like. By answering a simple selection of questions about your personality, your book will magically tell you which character (male or female) you are most like. The fun doesn't stop there, however. If you've answered the questions honestly to begin with, you've likely found out which "good" character you are like. We urge you pay attention to the last question, however, and answer it a little bit differently on subsequent readings. You just might find out what "bad" character you are most like. Then of course, answering differently as to whether you are a boy or girl opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. We've spent many an hour just playing around with different combinations. Plus, there is a camera attached to your little reading table that takes your picture as part of the whole process, which the kids seem to love almost as much as finding out what character they are for some reason.
Oh, and every so often a storm rolls through, the room gets dark, and the picture of the prince is torn to shreds like we see it in the movie. It's pretty cool stuff.
Lastly, once done with the library, a quick stroll through a dark hall will bring you into "Ursula's Grotto", a sound recording studio of sorts.
"Ursula's Grotto" is peppered all around with little alcoves people can go into, have their voices "stolen" from them (much like Ursula does to Ariel in The Little Mermaid), and used in different scenes from a few select Disney classics. Ever wanted to be Scar or Simba from The Lion King? Now's your chance. Dreamed of singing along with the Seven Dwarfs? Ursula will be only too happy to grant that wish for you. There are a few others, but we don't want to spoil the whole thing. It's easy to spend quite a bit of time in here just acting out all of the different options. There are about three different singing ones, and three different talking ones if memory serves right. And again, the kids love this one. Just don't take it too seriously and let it ruin the fun. We've learned since we began going in the Grotto that we sound nothing like Jeremy Irons or Jonathan Taylor Thomas, but we've accepted it and moved on.
The Sorcerer's Workshop is something that we actually missed out on for the longest time. We knew it was there, but whenever we'd wander into the Animation Building we would kind of just ignore it. But since the first time we went in, it's been a mainstay ever since. We never go into the Animation Building without going in anymore, and we always have a lot of fun when we do, no matter how many times we've seen it all. It comes highly recommended if you haven't already done it.
We usually spend a good half hour or so in the Workshop, so if you've followed our pattern up to this point, you've spent about an hour and 10 minutes in the building so far. Not bad! And the best part? You've been in a nice, shady, cool building and gotten to see and interact with a lot of really cool stuff!
Next week, we'll move on into the Animation Academy and do some artwork of our own. We can't promise it'll be any good, but we'll do our best.
