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CapnAndy posted:If you're in it for the theming and production values, then buddy, have you been going to the wrong parks. There are literally -- literally -- bathrooms at Disney World with more themeing than most lands at Universal. It's not even close. Universal wasn't even trying to compete until they did Hogsmeade. Wow! I'm glad you and other posters are giving WDW such enthusiastic recommendations for the immersion factor! It makes me feel motivated to plan a trip to Shanghai Disney.  So, after my next paycheck I'm looking at making a visit to Beijing Universal, but with Fast Pass. 1-day admission + Fast Pass upgrade is about ¥1,378 (equivalent to a little under $200 USD) which is a hard sell for my friends/coworkers to join me, but I don't mind doing a solo trip. Fast Pass is a must for me since I pretty much loathe huge waits just for one ride and, conversely, love running in circles to ride the same ride multiple times. That leads me to my WDW-related question: is the Fast Pass equivalent for WDW worth the money? From what I've read, it seems kind of bizarre since you pay the extra money but still need to schedule a reservation for a ride hours in advance.  The Universal Studios model seems a lot straightforward by comparison.Are WDW parks/rides so insanely crowded even on weekdays that you need to schedule your place in the Fast Pass system? What do you usually do while waiting for your turn on a given WDW Fast Pass ride? Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 02:53 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 02:49
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It’s worth it at MK usually. Not the others. The 2 ways most use it are to just jump to whatever has a short wait time after you use your current reservation, or to use it to secure longer wait stuff and do short ones in regular standby in between. (There’s a power user method called stacking too, we got into that a few pages ago.)
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May 26, 2023 02:54
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it's likely a completely different system/experience/value proposition at the Shanghai park. I have no idea how they do the FP+ or Genie stuff.
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May 26, 2023 03:03
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Arquinsiel posted:One thing I did enjoy about the location outside of Diagon Alley was how subtly wrong all the signage is for London. It's close, but not 100% correct. The Hogwarts Express is the most "I queued an hour for THIS?" ride ever though. Yeah I have no idea how much of it is due to weird signage being trademarked or whatever but the ever so slightly off feeling nails how it feels having lives in the UK for the first 15 years of my life. I got to do The Express with a 20 minute wait and I think I'm set for never having to do that again. It's cute but it's not time efficient and isn't terribly interesting.
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May 26, 2023 03:31
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Yeah. Definitely never wait more than 20 minutes for the Hogwarts Express. You can walk to the other park in the same amount of time. And absolutely under no circumstances buy a park hopper just to experience it. Also just wanted to say that it's kind of fascinating to me that someone had to ask (not trying to be smug here) if the Disney parks are thematic and immersive when that's like, their entire thing. IMO it's because Disney has never been that great at marketing their parks, though obviously they don't need to be. An awful lot of people who have never been assume it's just teacups, Dumbo, and princesses.
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May 26, 2023 04:29
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^^^^ I remember being a kid and expecting exactly that, and being blown the gently caress away by Pirates, Jungle Cruise, Big Thunder Mountain etc. Just the sheer variety of stuff that existed only in the parks pretty much made me a fan for life, so maybe Disney were aware of that at one point. Having made movies out of half the rides at this point seems to have undermined that a bit though. CapnAndy posted:Yeah, I didn't do that because there's no reason to get Park Hopper except to ride the Hogwarts Express, and like gently caress I'm paying $40 for one ride. J33uk posted:Yeah I have no idea how much of it is due to weird signage being trademarked or whatever but the ever so slightly off feeling nails how it feels having lives in the UK for the first 15 years of my life. I got to do The Express with a 20 minute wait and I think I'm set for never having to do that again. It's cute but it's not time efficient and isn't terribly interesting.
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May 26, 2023 04:54
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:That leads me to my WDW-related question: is the Fast Pass equivalent for WDW worth the money? From what I've read, it seems kind of bizarre since you pay the extra money but still need to schedule a reservation for a ride hours in advance. The FastPast equivalent for WDW is, broadly, not worth the money. Let's knock out some terminology, because Disney puts all of this behind like three layers of obfuscation in what I'm pretty sure is a deliberate effort to confuse the issue. (More evidence that Chapek treated the parks as an oversized gacha game; this is right out of the mobile F2P playbook.) Genie is just the Walt Disney World app. Everyone gets that. It's free. You basically run your entire park life off of it, but for the purposes of this topic, it's meaningless. Lightning Lane is the special "line cutters go here" line that's entirely separate from the normal line, is physically shorter, and gets biased in its favor at the merge point. You've seen this at Universal, it's the FastPass lane. Same thing. What's different is how you access it. Genie+ is a $15-$35 (it varies based on crowd levels) per person service that lets you schedule a reservation to use the Lightning Lane for most rides at the park. You can only have one reservation at a time (with an exception we are not getting into because it's power user poo poo that doesn't come up all that often anyway), but as soon as you've swiped into that Lightning Lane, you're free to make your next reservation. Genie+ lasts for one day, and must be purchased seperately on each day you want to use it. However, notice that I said most rides. Disney reserves the most popular/newest ride at each park and does not include it with Genie+, with the exception of Magic Kingdom, which has two rides not included in Genie+. These rides offer Individual Lightning Lanes or ILLs for short, which is an a la carte purchase (with, again, varying prices, $12-$25 I think, and again per person) of access to make a reservation to use that ride's Lightning Lane. Anyone can make an ILL purchase, regardless of if they have Genie+ or not, and the price is the same for both groups. You can only make one ILL purchase per ride per day, which means that for every park except MK, you can only buy ILL once a day. It's a predatory, confusing system. I did warn you. Anyway! Broad consensus among basically everyone is that unless you're going at the peakiest of peak crowd times, you never need Genie+ at Epcot or Animal Kingdom. They just don't have enough rides that draw super-long lines that you're going to get any sort of value for money. If you're gonna get Genie+ at all, you get it at Hollywood Studios, which has WDW's best hit rate of really good rides compared to total rides, and Magic Kingdom, which has the most rides of the four parks and most of them are major nostalgia bombs. Now, to answer your specific questions: Yes, you schedule a specific time. When you get a Lightning Lane, you get told a time (you don't get to pick it, the app just tells you "okay, this is the return time I'm offering right now" and you either buy it or don't, and if you buy it, you hope the return time you actually get isn't later than you were promised). You have from about five minutes before that time to an hour after it to show up to the relevant Lightning Lane. Don't show up, lose your slot, too bad. Return times are indeed frequently for hours later than when you made the booking. This is indeed much less straightforward than Universal's "show up whenever and use the special lane" program. WDW parks are usually not so crowded, especially on weekdays in the off-season, that you need Genie+. They can be. poo poo gets insane on holidays and during the summer. While you're waiting for your Lightning Lane window to arrive, the idea is that you go and do whatever you want. Get in line for another ride, eat, watch a show, buy stuff. (Line skip programs exist in their ideal form because guests who are standing in line are useless; they're not spending money and they couldn't even if they wanted to, because they're standing still and driving your overall satisfaction levels down. You want to get them the hell out of the line and back to circulating throughout the park so you can get 'em to open up their wallets. Genie+/ILL is hardly the ideal form, of course.) I do not recommend Genie+ at all. My recommendation is Touring Plans. You go to these guys, you give them $18, you get access to all their planning services for a year. That gives you a calendar of predicted crowd levels for the year, charts of average wait times for rides, and most importantly, lets you create your own custom "touring plans". When you make one of those, you tell it what rides you want to ride and what shows/parades you want to see, what time you'll arrive at the park and when you'll leave, and it'll give you a schedule that minimizes wait times while attempting to get you on everything on your list. It's insanely flexible -- you can tell it when you plan to eat and where, you can tell it about Lightning Lanes you may have, you can tell it to give you a break time, you can even tell it if you want to weight the plan towards less time walking from ride to ride even if it means you may have to spend longer in line, or less time in line even if it means you're bouncing around the park like a demented pinball. It'll take all of that into account. The plans, I can tell you from personal experience, work. Note that none of this lets you skip the lines -- it'll put you in the standby line for everything -- and they have no control over the lines at all, they're not affiliated with Disney. This lets you surf the already existing currents. Get there at rope drop and follow their plans and you'll have a great time. I loved it and Disney ought to be ashamed that a rinky third party is eating their lunch down to the crumbs like this. (Genie claims it can plan a day for you based on your wants, but the actual execution is "ummmm uuuuuuh maybe go do something you don't want to do where the line is very long? Because you're close to it? Also no, I can't give you any steps beyond that, why do you ask".) CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 06:08 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 06:02
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Arquinsiel posted:The thing that really made me giggle is that the elevator for wheelchair/buggy access at the Studios end is in the queue so you can see that it doesn't have a ground floor. That's the kind of thing where Disney would have done it the way the UK does for immersion purposes. My Mum was very amused when on a corporate night out with me (HIMSS if anyone has had the pleasure) she got to explain how rotary telephones worked to a 30 year old co-worker of mine. This was thanks to one of the phone booths outside Kings Cross and they treated her like some sort of ancient witch. I really hope that the Epic Universe expansion keeps that sort of attempt at immersion and doesn't solely go for big rides and thrills.
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May 26, 2023 07:02
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm an American long-term expat that's been living in China for 6 years now. My Mandarin is fairly fluent now, though!  e: also, I guess the WDW info doesn't really apply to Shanghai Disney then? Or does it? I'll have to check if there's a mini-app for Shanghai Disney on Wechat (there is for Beijing Universal Studios). e2: finished reading the post. Thank you for this detailed explanation! I've been to a few amusement parks and theme parks when I was younger, but I had no idea you needed a strategy guide just to enjoy yourself at Disney lol. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 12:41 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 12:23
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:I had no idea you needed a strategy guide just to enjoy yourself at Disney lol. If you’re going to Disney to appreciate the environment, or to enjoy the food, a strategy guide isn’t required except for a few things (Trader Sam’s in Orlando springs to mind as requiring a bit of forethought). If you want to maximize your attraction count, then you need to be a lot more sensitive to crowds and how to bypass them.
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May 26, 2023 13:11
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To be fair, the strategy guide isn't a requirement so much as the answer is "buy premium/"individual" lightning lanes for the most popular rides if you need to see them," the strategy guide is justifying why the answer is that. For the vast majority of rides, the ideal strategy is "please un-learn yourself from FastPass and get in standby" which shouldn't be that hard. There's just a few rides with extremely high demand that have line skips you can buy at acquisition.
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May 26, 2023 15:11
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The secret for the Harry Potter train if you have to take it (Big HP fan in your party? Just to say you did? etc) is to enter the opposite park than you plan to start in and take it at like 9am.
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May 26, 2023 15:14
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I don’t like Harry Potter much but I think the whole place is neato. I liked the first two movies as a kid so it’s kinda fun for that. First time I went I wanted to revisit the movies and I did and found most of them boring lol
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May 26, 2023 15:16
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Aphrodite posted:The secret for the Harry Potter train if you have to take it (Big HP fan in your party? Just to say you did? etc) is to enter the opposite park than you plan to start in and take it at like 9am.
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May 26, 2023 15:16
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Arquinsiel posted:Is the trip back different at all? It feels like it should be but I suspect it isn't. It’s different https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgHl0vdmzfE
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May 26, 2023 15:27
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Arquinsiel posted:Is the trip back different at all? It feels like it should be but I suspect it isn't. Unless they changed something, the two directions do have slightly different experiences.
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May 26, 2023 15:28
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Called to try to book starcruiser.... recording said they arent taking any more calls. ssooooooo uh..... welp
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May 26, 2023 15:28
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BlueBayou posted:Called to try to book starcruiser.... recording said they arent taking any more calls. ssooooooo I think those only reopen tomorrow. Edit: Nope, Disney just doesn’t know what “through” means. I bet FOMO drove new demand hard.
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May 26, 2023 15:30
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:e2: finished reading the post. Thank you for this detailed explanation! I've been to a few amusement parks and theme parks when I was younger, but I had no idea you needed a strategy guide just to enjoy yourself at Disney lol. That said, you don't need it, but... WDW is very big, and very popular, and stuff routinely sells out months in advance and lines can be ridiculous. If you want to ride the most popular stuff without spending all day in line, and eat at the good restaurants (and WDW has dozens of amazing restaurants, as compared to Universal, who just... doesn't even try), and get a spot at the stuff with limited spaces like basically anything in Galaxy's Edge, you gotta go in with a plan. CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 17:47 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 17:42
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Apparently the travel agents that deal with the Starcruiser have been absolutely slammed with people who were planning to go in a couple of years but are now willing to take credit card debt to make it happen. Looks like they booked out. TY. ETA: lol, the kid at the start going "it's just a video..." and then the random girl just playing with her phone  That is in fact the essence of the experience. Arquinsiel fucked around with this message at 18:02 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 17:44
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They would be better off downplaying it being a ride and just emphasizing that it's themed transportation. I'm not sure but I believe the team members are trained to inform people that it's faster to walk to the other park if they're just trying to get there.
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May 26, 2023 18:28
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My cousin was able to get a Starcruiser reservation. He said he started calling at 7am and only just now got it booked (and not the day he wanted). He has 172 call attempts. Edit: It seems that the best availability is within 30 days. Likely because that is the cancelation window. Zero One fucked around with this message at 19:09 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 18:54
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Theres two dates left right now. Both next week Cmon Bob, extend it to the end of the year
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May 26, 2023 20:19
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BlueBayou posted:Cmon Bob, extend it to the end of the year Arquinsiel posted:They're able to roll up the full lifetime depreciation into their fiscal year, which ends on October 1st.
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May 26, 2023 20:29
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The Travel Agent reports are coming in on the Galaxy's Edge discord server and so many people just did not get a booking.
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May 26, 2023 20:55
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I wonder how their contest is going to work if all the dates are filled.
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May 26, 2023 20:55
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https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_rv9v4oISqX1r0uzl6.mp4
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May 26, 2023 21:50
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Yeah the fiscal year thing is too big Keep it open for one more quarter!
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May 26, 2023 22:09
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I did this with my wife after we went on a trip with both our families to celebrate our engagement. I thought it was funny as hell. edit: Went looking for that Disneyland2Go tweet about how getting engaged at Disney is novel and unique, and it looks like Elon's nazi shittery drove them off the website and they got replaced with some Chinese bot account  gently caress you elonhttps://twitter.com/SuiNeltwork/status/1541096513224396800?s=20 Hazo fucked around with this message at 22:35 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 22:26
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Got my role for the Disney College Program; looks like I'm going to be working quick service food & beverage at tbe festival booths in EPCOT. Pretty excited.
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May 26, 2023 23:24
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Aphrodite posted:The secret for the Harry Potter train if you have to take it (Big HP fan in your party? Just to say you did? etc) is to enter the opposite park than you plan to start in and take it at like 9am. Trying to take it any time after 4pm from US to IOA is a futile task. You're competing with hoards of people just trying to get to IOA as well as every person with a premier AP, which is a lot. Weirdly, going from IOA to US after rope dropping hagrids of velocicoaster isn't busy at all.
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May 27, 2023 02:59
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This being the catch-all Disney thread and CD not discussing it that I've seen, the Little Mermaid that just came out is surprisingly good. We took my daughter to see it this morning. The CGI wasn't as rough as it looked in the early trailers and overall, they didn't screw up this live action adaptation for once. The only gripe I had was the random Manuel-Miranda rap that came out of nowhere, but it wasn't a deal breaker. If you need something to sit through with kids or you generally like the original movie, it's a good time.
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May 27, 2023 22:49
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Doronin posted:The only gripe I had was the random Manuel-Miranda rap that came out of nowhere, but it wasn't a deal breaker. I got an extra big laugh out of Ariel shutting that down unceremoniously, though.
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May 28, 2023 00:07
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Doronin posted:This being the catch-all Disney thread and CD not discussing it that I've seen, the Little Mermaid that just came out is surprisingly good. We took my daughter to see it this morning. The CGI wasn't as rough as it looked in the early trailers and overall, they didn't screw up this live action adaptation for once. How loud is it? I'm considering going but when you have an SD you have to take him into concern, too. Like, yeah. He can wear his earmuffs the whole time. But it's still not great for him. I'd go see it at the drive-in but it's playing with GOTG3 which is apparently an animal snuff porn that I really shouldn't see, per several friends' recommendations.
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May 28, 2023 00:35
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Doronin posted:The only gripe I had was the random Manuel-Miranda rap that came out of nowhere, but it wasn't a deal breaker. I've seen this. The racist right-wing twitter is really mad about it for some reason. https://twitter.com/Lou_Bupp/status...genumber%3D1523
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May 28, 2023 01:00
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couldcareless posted:I got an extra big laugh out of Ariel shutting that down unceremoniously, though. Lol, I couldn't put my finger on it but that's probably what really put the new Ariel over with me. That was a good moment. Fluffy Bunnies posted:How loud is it? I'm considering going but when you have an SD you have to take him into concern, too. Like, yeah. He can wear his earmuffs the whole time. But it's still not great for him. My mother in law specializes in SDs, so I asked her since she was with us. She said generally its not super loud but there's a few moments she thinks he'd struggle with if its an auditory sensitivity. Since the scenes are similar from both versions (so im not spoiling), the storm near the beginning and the very end when Ursula pops off would definitely be the parts to break out the earmuffs. On GotG3, yeah, if you struggle with animals in distress, that movie is going to put you through an emotional buzz saw.
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May 28, 2023 01:02
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Hazo posted:I've seen this. The racist right-wing twitter is really mad about it for some reason. Yeah, that's literally the entire scene. It's barely 2 minutes. This also reminds me how grateful I am that I have enough to live for that a rap i didn't like in a kids movie doesn't drive me crazy. That's just sad. Racist as gently caress, but sad.
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May 28, 2023 01:11
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Fash gotta treat art they don't like as an assault on society. It's in the manual.
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May 28, 2023 01:15
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There’s nothing porn about the animal abuse in gotg 3 good lord
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May 28, 2023 02:17
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Every single shot in every single ad I've seen for Little Mermaid looks like complete dog poo poo but if someone likes the movie that's cool.
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