Disney Invades Bay State With History Theme Parks
The news this week is so full of easy targets that it’s hard to know where to start. This first item is probably old news to NPR and C-Span junkies, but it seems that President Clinton has authorized $18 million for covert operations to overthrow the government of Iran. I was hard-pressed to understand this one, since $18 million couldn’t overthrow the government of Rhode Island. As I recall the LOSER in the last California senatorial race spent more than that losing that one election. Perhaps Persian voters are less expensive.
But the big news this week is on the local employment front. In what should be a huge boost to the local economy, the Disney corporation has quietly moved into the Bay State in a big way. You may remember a year or so ago, that Disney stumbled upon the idea of ‘history theme parks’ as part of their weaselly campaign to pave over a couple of Civil War battlefields. Well, surveys revealed that history theme parks were wildly popular with the ‘little people’ that Disney is trying to reach. So, in a bold move that has taken the industry by storm, they massively infiltrated the Commonwealth and opened a series of micro historical theme parks designed to bring the joy of history to the common man.
I spent all last week touring these sites, and all I can say is “Well done!” The first stop was Route 139, at the junction of Route 3, where Disney engineers have constructed a complete replica of an early 60’s road work site right on the road itself. Like most Disney rides, this one is studded with their trademark robots, or as they call them, animatrons. Animatronic road workers sip coffee, shuffle broken slabs of asphalt, and dig aimlessly while animatronic state policemen stare severely at passing motorists. As you crawl slowly past, you can even hear the gang boss and the statie discussing when they’re going to put their boats in the water. The real genius of this micro theme park, though is its interactive nature. Visitors drive their own cars through a slalom course of orange cones, and sit in actual traffic jams while the animatrons go through the motions of an actual public works project. I liked this exhibit so much, I’ve visited it five times already.
Disney has received a lot of hysterical criticism from history nuts who fear that Disney will do for history what they did for rodents - put a happy face on a pretty nasty concept. Well fear not. The last stop on the micro theme park tour was an amazingly accurate reproduction of one of the cruellest institutions in Massachusetts history - the 1975 Nashua Street Registry of Motor Vehicles office. Located on the actual site of the original Nashua Street Registry, this is historical reproduction at its finest. No unpleasant detail is overlooked: ancient computer terminals, dusty marble floors, ratty paper signs, homeless loiterers, grotesquely overweight, donut munching security guards, confused immigrants wandering about the lobby muttering in foreign tongues, and apparent Registry employees with mysteriously unpressing duties leaning on counters gabbing with others of their ilk. The attention to detail in this reproduction is truly staggering. In the interest of accuracy, they even eliminated all public parking within a ten block radius. The only detail they missed was that they had animatronic State Police hanging around when, as we all know, in 1975 any apparently underemployed public safety official at Nashua Street would have worn the uniform of the now-defunct Registry Police, not State Police. When informed of this discrepancy Disney officials assured me that history would be re-written to eliminate all mention of the Registry Police.
Like the Rte 139 road work exhibit, this one is completely interactive. Visitors stand in line for hours while animatronic registry workers eat, gossip, wander back and forth and serve the line-jumping dealer reps and insurance runners who wander in with giant stacks of paperwork. And the historical accuracy doesn’t stop with the static exhibits, or the animatrons. Even the lines are historically accurate. Visitors who choose the Sales Tax line race through while those in the Registration line stand around unserved. In a crowning touch, at 4:45pm, one of the animatrons announces that the computer is down at which point they all get up and leave early for the day.
I visited this exhibit Thursday and Friday of last week and I have to tell you that it was so realistically inhuman that after only a couple of hours in line, many of my fellow visitors had tears in their eyes. We left there emotionally spent, our unprocessed registration renewals a poignant reminder of how far we’ve come since the dark days of big government. As a bonus, when they leave, many visitors find actual Boston parking tickets on their cars as mementoes of their trip back in time.
A Disney spokesperson assures me that, in close cooperation with the Weld and Clinton administrations, they will be developing new history theme parks at a rapid clip. Orphanages, debtors prisons, chain gangs, and gallows exhibits are all rumored to be in the works. As always, we’ll be there to report on every new development.
Until then, remember that friends don’t let friends drive in Massachusetts. And don’t forget to tune in next week when we we’ll be exploring the historical roots of the inheritance clause in the new mooring regulations.
John Rodley is a local historian who makes history the old-fashioned way, fabricating it from whole cloth, one fib at a time. His litany of offenses against local, state, national and international truth can be viewed at http://www.rodley.com