• Hazy atmosphere
• Abundant plant growth & profligate water use
• Queues
• Scale - LA vast & sprawling & (relatively)
flat
• Courtesy - formulaic?
• Queues: Amazing acceptance of rigidly engineered
people movement through 'sheepyard' style lanes.
• Only one complaint overheard & one queue-jumper
(who was then fingered by others and removed by security
staff) observed.
• Little or no overt security at Disneyland or Universal
Studios despite the vast numbers, but equally the atmosphere
was completely safe and non-threatening. Our main fear was
the kids getting separated & lost.
• Disneyland was completely artificial -even real
plants contrived to look false and managed.
• Retention of 1 and 2 cent coins seems anachronistic,
as do odd prices such as $1.87; taxes added to the displayed
price often produce these unusual prices.
• Why do the 'great individualists' (as Americans
purport to be) so willingly submit to the management and
engineering of crowd movements?
• The borrowing of icons (stereotypes) of other cultures
(as in the Small World displays). Equally puzzling is the
extent to which we recognize and participate in their use
- I wonder which came first?
• The self-reinforcing and self-aggrandizement of
Universal Studios & Disneyland begins to grate. Does
self-promotion have a limit at which it becomes self-defeating?
