If you’re a sports fan, I’m certain you’re familiar with a player or team being classified as overrated or underrated. It’s done all the time when talking sports and I find it’s also creeping more and more into everyday life. As a society, we seem to be preoccupied with ratings. We want to place a specific and objective value on everything we eat, watch, or use. We speak of five star restaurants and films that garnered an eight (out of 10) from a certain reviewer. This even comes into play at Disney’s theme parks.
A number of Disney guidebooks and websites provide ratings of resorts, restaurants and attractions. Some of these ratings represent the average of user reviews while others characterize the opinion of the author (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) If you’re like me, you accept these ratings with the proverbial grain of salt, because in the end, they’re just someone’s opinion—and aside from this column, we all know what those are worth.
I admit I enjoy these ratings. I’ve written before of my love of lists, and while ratings and “Top 10” lists are fun, I still prefer reading a subjective assessment. Someone’s review of a film, restaurant, or theme park attraction will give me a flavor of whether or not I might enjoy it—regardless of whether it was given two stars or three spatulas as a rating. It might also give me some incentive to experiment with something I might not have otherwise tried.
This whole area of ratings at Walt Disney World has me thinking about what attractions or facilities I would consider being over- or underrated. To be fair, I’m not using any specific rating source—just an assessment formed by reviewing several of the more popular guidebooks, tempered by my own perception of how the majority view attractions, restaurants, services, and resorts. Are they thought of highly or poorly… and do I believe that’s an accurate assessment?
To define the terms, I looked at Encarta and found that something overrated is generally regarded as better, more capable, or greater than, is in fact the case. When something is considered underrated, we could say that most people don’t recognize how good that thing really is.
In this first installment, I’ll restrict comments to those items found in or around the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. The next column, published here in two weeks, will deal with Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and a few services that apply across the resort. Got all that? Let’s go.
Peter Pan’s Flight
This is a nice little dark ride based on the animated film but… it seems to have a continuous 30-60 minute wait time posted—longer during the busier periods of the year. If I’m going to stand in a queue that long, I need what’s on the other end to dazzle me—or at least leave me smiling for a while. Regrettably, Peter Pan’s Flight does neither. Oh, it’s cute and I have fond memories of the film, but for Pete’s sake, it’s less than three minutes from beginning to end. “Flying” over London and Neverland is fun but it’s filled with simple, non-animatronics figures and stationary sets. I just don’t get any “wow” factor here, and for that reason, I think Peter Pan’s Flight is overrated.
Viewing Wishes from the California Grill
I intentionally left viewing Wishes from the lounge atop Bay Lake Towers off this item… but only because I haven’t seen the fireworks from that spot yet. I will admit there’s a certain “coolness” factor viewing Wishes from the comfort of your table, possibly while sipping a fine cabernet or having dessert and coffee. I’ve also watched from the exterior observation deck, which also offers a fine view.
However, in my opinion Wishes is best viewed from the front of Cinderella’s castle. You can vary several degrees left or right and still get the intended effect but, when you deviate too much, you’ve destroyed the show. Certainly, you might still “ooh and aah” over the fireworks but you’ve lost the symmetry necessary to enjoy it as the Imagineers intended. Please, don’t let me stop you from trying it, because as I said, there’s a certain “coolness” to it, but strictly as a location to view Wishes, I consider the California Grill to be overrated.
