How Disney World's list of perks slowly disappeared
Staying overnight at the theme park also comes at a steep price - for example, a weekend at Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows in December will cost nearly $2,000 for two nights, while Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa comes to $2,600. Families forking over thousands-a-night on a hotel room certainly expect to receive VIP treatment, and Disney used to go above and beyond to ensure all hotel guests had an amazing experience. But as of late, the company has eliminated many of the things that previously made staying on-site so special. Guests are now forking over more money and getting less, and longtime park goers are not happy about it.
'It definitely doesn't feel great to be nickel and dimed during your trip,' Disney regular Shannon Albert, 50, from Fort Worth, Texas, scathed to Daily Mail. 'So many things that used to be included are now separate charges,' added the Texas-native, who has gone to Disney 'every other month' for the last 20 years. But the higher-ups at Disney have insisted that the quality of their parks still remains the gold standard.
'The number-one thing we hear from the millions of guests who visit our parks each year is how much a Disney vacation means to them,' Josh D'Amaro, chairman of Disney's Experiences division, said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal back in February. 'We intentionally offer a wide variety of ticket, hotel, and dining options to welcome as many families as possible, whatever their budget.' Even so, there's no denying that Disney has quietly cut corners by getting rid of many of the free perks it used to offer hotel guests. Take a look at all the benefits that Disney has discontinued over the years.
Disney used to offer free transportation to and from the airport - as well as a complimentary luggage delivery service
In past years, Disney would offer its hotel guests complimentary transportation from Orlando International Airport (MCO) straight to their resort - known as the Magical Express. That's right, guests would be greeted by an official Disney driver upon landing, and would board a comfortable and airconditioned motor coach that would bring them right to the magic. In addition, Disney guests didn't even have to head to baggage claim to pick up their luggage at the airport because Disney would take care of that too.
They'd grab your bags, load them into the car, and have them brought directly to your room after your arrival at the hotel. Sounds like a hassle-free and breezy experience. But now, the magical perk has vanished. The luggage service was cut in 2020, while the transportation perk was removed in 2022, which means guests now have to find their own ride to the resorts while dragging their suitcases - and taxis and Ubers are not cheap.
Disney has greatly reduced housekeeping services - leaving guests struggling to get clean towels and forced to take out their own trash
Daily housekeeping should be a norm at all hotels right? Wrong. At Disney hotels, cleaning services have been greatly reduced in recent years. Disney's website currently states that guests staying at Value or Moderate resorts will only receive housekeeping services 'every other day,' while Deluxe resort guests get it daily. However, many Disney guests have complained that wasn't the case for them, and some have alleged that housekeeping only comes if you specifically request it. One user took to Reddit last year to share their frustration after they claimed they had been at their Disney hotel for five days and a housekeeper hadn't come once. 'Bed never made, dirty towels are left all over I had to ask for towels one day because we had no more,' they scathed.
'I think you have to specifically ask for it! Ever since COVID we've had to explicitly say we wanted it or else they'd assume we didn't,' someone else shared in the comment section. 'Just came back from a three day stay at the Contemporary, and we had the same experience. Not one cleaning,' revealed another user. 'We had to take out our own trash at one point because it was getting out of hand. It sounds petty, but for the price I expected more.'
Disney's website also states that those staying in a Disney Vacation Club room won't get cleaning services unless they're staying more than eight nights, but will receive 'trash and towel service' on the fourth day of their visit. AJ Wolfe, who runs the popular Disney Food Blog, dished to the Daily Mail, 'I think for many people not having housekeeping every day at the less expensive hotels is a major difficulty. 'If their families are anything like mine, that room can become a disaster in a matter of hours and it sure is nice to have it put back in order at the end of the day. 'Also, when you're paying hundreds of dollars for a hotel room, you do expect that the cost would include daily cleaning.'
Disney resorts don't offer room service and almost all dining locations close at 11pm - leaving guests 'starving' after a long day at the parks
There's nothing like having a mid-day resort nap or taking a day to rest rather than hitting the parks. But what happens if you get hungry and don't want to get out of bed? Most people would assume you could pick up the phone and order some room service... but nope, Disney World doesn't offer room service at almost all of its hotels. During the pandemic, Disney put a stop to their room service food delivery, and after everything opened back up, the theme park quietly left this perk under the rug. Disney reported on its website that out of the 32 hotels on property, only Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa offers room service for guests. That means guests at all the other hotels will need to venture to the resort food court or restaurants to get food. But if you want to get something to eat late at night, you're out of luck again, as almost all of the eateries on Disney property close at 11pm.
This is certainly a problem since on some days the parks don't even close until 11pm, which means guests often get back to their resorts after a long day and find their stomachs growling, only to discover there's absolutely nowhere to get food. 'The last few times I have gone to Disney, I end up finding myself leaving the parks and just wanting to eat something,' one frustrated Disney attendee wrote on Reddit recently. 'However by the time we get back to the resort or once the park closes it just seems like there is no place whatsoever to eat food or get something to drink. Everything is closed and we are just left starving. 'I don't know how people feel about this but personally I am annoyed by this. We are spending thousands of dollars for our trip and the least thing is there can be more convenience when it comes to getting food at night. 'Not even the convenience stores are open to just get small items for the room at this point.'
Resort guests used to get free MagicBands mailed to them ahead of their stays, but the pre-trip ritual was eliminated... and now the accessory costs $45
Years ago, guests staying at Disney hotels would get a package in the weeks leading up to their trips that contained free MagicBands for everyone on the reservation. MagicBands are wearable, interactive accessories that enhance the Disney experience at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. They act as a digital key to unlock various features, including park entry, hotel room access, payment options, and connections to PhotoPass and other Disney experiences.
Starting in 2021, Disney cut out the free perk, which means the tradition of seeing the bands arrive to you in the mail before your vacation is now over, diminishing the pre-trip excitement. While they used to be free for Disney hotel guests, they will now cost you a whopping $35 to $45 per person.
Disney did away with its free FastPass+ system, which allowed guests to skip long lines, to instead offer its extremely expensive Lightning Lane service
Disney's FastPass+ was a highly praised system that allowed guests to book ride times in advance and skip long standby lines - all for free. Disney chucked that away in August 2021, and instead, began offering a similar service called Lighting Lane - but it comes at a hefty price. It costs between $15-$39 per person per day for the Lightning Lane Multi Pass, which allows you to book up to three ride reservations in advance, and when it's time for your reservation, you can enter a special line that has a much shorter wait time. However, certain attractions are not included, and for those, you have to buy a Lighting Lane Single Pass that can range from $10-$25 each, according to The Park Prodigy.
Even worse, The Lightning Lane Premier Pass, which provides access to all available Lightning Lane entrances without needing a reservation, can cost between $129-$449 per person, per day. For a family of four this could cost you well over a thousand dollars just to wait in shorter lines, not including the price of the park ticket. 'Having to pay for skip-the-line access when it used to be free is a hard pill to swallow,' AJ said. 'This is probably the most jarring and impactful change that Disney fans have had to accommodate. 'Spending potentially hundreds of dollars on something that used to be complimentary is a massive budgetary strain for plenty of guests.'
Early access to the parks got cut from one hour to 30 minutes and Extended Evening Hours went from being available to all hotel guests to only Deluxe resorts
Before 2020, all guests staying at Disney World hotels had the option to enter the parks an hour early every day, and stay in select parks two hours later on certain days. 'It was a big reason to stay on-site - you got more time in the parks than everyone else,' Inside the Magic reported. But Disney made some major changes to the perk after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead of the parks opening an hour early for hotel guests, it's now been cut down to only 30 minutes. And rather than all hotel guests getting to enjoy the parks after closing, that's been revamped so that only those who are staying at Deluxe resorts can participate. That means guests at a Value or Moderate hotel no longer get to enjoy the Extended Evening Hours benefit.
Other services like merchandise delivery to hotel rooms and babysitting have slowly disappeared over the years
Another big benefit of staying at a Disney hotel was the free delivery of any merchandise you bought in the parks. That meant you could go shopping and have your shirts, ears, stuffed animals, and bubble wands all delivered right to your hotel room, avoiding the hassle of lugging them around on rides or on lines. But the service was revoked in 2020, and never saw the light of day again. In addition, babysitting services - also known as the Children's Activity Centers - has been removed from all resorts. That's right, for a small fee, hotel guests used to be able to leave their children aged three to 12 in a play area in Deluxe resorts so they could enjoy some adult-only time.
But as per a post on Disney's PlanDisney website in 2023, 'They have all closed with no rumors of returning.' Daily Mail has reached out to Disney World for comment. In the end, Shannon said she 'worries' about the future of the parks amidst all the changes. 'The costs have certainly gone up, but people continue to pay which is why Disney keeps doing it,' she said. 'I worry that the addictive nature of the parks (which is why so many of us now go regularly) won't be as much now that so many perks and expenses have changed.'
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The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Knife throwing and cheeseburger spinning: the agony and ecstasy of being a viral trickshot video star
For much of the month of June 2023, David and Daniel Hulett sat in their parents' basement in Virginia throwing five-cent coins in the air. First David would flip his nickel. Then Daniel would flip his nickel. They were trying to get the coins to land on their edge, an occurrence they knew was vanishingly improbable, but not impossible. This was their work. After three or four days, doubts began to set in. 'When you've been doing it for so long, you're like: the next one has to be it!' says Daniel, 26, the elder and generally chirpier of the two. 'You get really optimistic. And then it doesn't happen and you feel like the world is ending. It's almost physically painful. You get messed up.' The pair altered their grip. They tried different spins. They concluded perhaps a table tennis table wasn't the best landing surface – too bouncy – so they tried wood, a bathroom tile, two types of granite. For David, 24, the repeated failures hit particularly hard. 'I couldn't sleep,' he says. 'I would have dreams about flipping the nickel. You end up feeling like you're in a simulation. Like, what is real any more? What even am I?' What David and Daniel are is professional trickshooters – better known to their 12.5 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook as the Hulett Brothers. They are among the most successful purveyors of an art that has long since transcended its pool hall origins to become wildly popular on short-form video platforms. Trickshots consist of people pulling off amazing, improbable, pointless feats in the disputed borderlands between luck and skill. Or, as Daniel says, 'We make up stupid games and try to beat them.' There are certain common trickshot tropes – ping-pong ball golf shots, full court basketball throws, sliding iPhones across tabletops so they nestle perfectly into chargers – but the most successful performers have their own special niches. Mike Shields, AKA That'll Work, recent winner of the inaugural Trick Shot Championship, is a master of the Wii toss, throwing discs directly into the thin mouth of a Nintendo Wii. Turkish trickshooter Gamze May, 32, AKA @gmzmy, has a nice line in oud tricks. In one she plays a little riff on the lower strings of the instrument, then launches a cigarette into her mouth from the upper strings. Very cool. Then there's Amanda Badertscher, a PE teacher from smalltown Georgia, who was recently invited on to America's Got Talent after a producer spotted her Instagram channel, @thetrickshotqueen, which mostly consists of her whacking basketballs into a net with a baseball bat from the other end of the court. And what is her singular talent, I ask her? 'If I had to narrow it down to one? I would say hitting crazy equipment with a baseball bat,' she tells me. The Hulett Brothers are the quintessential all-rounders. They have kicked soccer balls into bins from 50 metres away; they have dropped pieces of paper from stepladders into the teeth of waiting shredders; they have thrown a plunger so it lands suction cup-down on a ping-pong table, then tossed a kitchen roll so it lands about the plunger's handle; and they are perhaps the best people in the world at throwing a red plastic cup so it stacks within another red plastic cup. What is consistent is their signature celebration: maniacal jumping, wild abandon and simultaneous cries of 'LET'S GO!' This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. It was in November 2023 that they finally pulled off the nickel flip on what they estimate was the 70,000th attempt. Daniel made the winning toss. The coin flipped a couple of times, bounced, spun around and settled on its side on a piece of paper the brothers were now using as a landing surface. There is a split second of disbelief. Then scenes of primal, almost simian celebration as it dawns on them that they have finally done it. David looks like a man released from a cosmic burden. Trickshots have become a huge business. In the algorithmically segmented world of short-form video, these brief and #oddlysatisfying clips of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things are one the closest things we have to a shared culture. The best of them transcend language, religion, culture, politics. They work as both sport and absurdist commentary on the futility of all human endeavour. Their appeal lies somewhere in the ratio between the laborious hours of toil that the trickshooters put in and the instant gratification they provide the viewer. They have wasted time, and now doth time waste us, to paraphrase Shakespeare's Richard II. The unquestioned masters of the art are Dude Perfect, five frat house roommates from Texas A&M University. Their first viral video from 2009 consisted of one of their number, Tyler 'The Beard' Toney, scoring a series of nonchalant no-look basketball shots in his back yard and, crucially, not reacting – as if it were just a thing that happened every time he attempted it. Indeed, in the best of their videos, nonchalance is the salient feature, as these genial friends toss sliders on to feet, bread into toasters, keys on to hooks, as if life really were that satisfying. It's all in the editing. The troupe has now accumulated 17bn views, 60 million subscribers and enough cash to take their trickshots to insane extremes, including scoring a basket from the top of an 856-foot tower in Las Vegas. Earlier this year they announced they had received a $100m investment to create Dude Perfect World, a 'family friendly' entertainment resort complete with 330-foot trickshot tower. Their most serious rivals – the Buster Keatons to their Charlie Chaplins – are Australian troupe How Ridiculous (14bn views, 23 million subscribers). The Perth-based trio have managed a mere 540-foot basketball throw, albeit blindfolded, backwards, from the top of the Luzzone dam in Switzerland. Like Dude Perfect, they are evangelical Christians and regularly thank Jesus for their success. Their website quotes Psalm 115:1: 'Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.' Clearly, you need a lot of faith even to attempt to score a basket from the top of a dam – and nothing says thank you, Jesus, like dropping a bowling ball into some helicopter blades. As budgets increase, accusations of AI fakery and green-screen shenanigans are never too far away – indeed, trickshot debunking videos are almost a genre in themselves. Still, in the case of Dude Perfect, no credible evidence has ever emerged that the videos are faked, despite 15 years' worth of internet sleuthing. Dude Perfect and How Ridiculous take pains to emphasise just how many failed attempts they make in their numerous behind-the-scenes videos; and in any case, is it really less effort to, say, render a convincing 3D digital model of a basketball flying across a court than it is to spend an afternoon patiently tossing one? Still, the more high-budget the trickshots become, the farther they move from their back-yard roots. I find I prefer the shorter, less professional videos, the ones that retain the palpable sense of idle tomfoolery, of happenstance glory. Once when we were at uni, my friend Martin abruptly flicked a spliff at me from five metres across a room and I somehow caught it in the corner of my mouth and began smoking it in one smooth motion. Everyone immediately applauded and pronounced me king. Alas, it was not caught on camera, or I may have ended up in a different career. But we all hopefully experience one such moment in our lives. This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. 'Trickshots are just so relatable,' says Badertscher, who recently spent 16 days attempting to throw an American football over her house into an unseen basketball hoop. 'Really anyone could do them at any level. People see me in the back yard and they figure, oh, I could do that in my yard!' This, it seems to me, is the basic stuff of the trickshot, the childhood instinct to play, to fiddle, to fool. 'I started doing this kind of thing when I was really young,' says Jacob Grégoire, a 25-year-old from Quebec, who counts 1.8 million followers on Instagram as @jacob_acrobat. 'Even when I was a small kid, I would do stuff like balancing my toothbrush on my nose. Maybe it's ADHD or something. If I have something in my hand, I'll throw it and catch it.' Then there is the flash of sporting inspiration, when you notice a particular move that is pleasing to do, and ask: can I make a game out of this? In my favourite children's picture book – Russell Hoban's How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen – the young hero Tom discovers the fooling around that so irritates his Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong in fact endows him with the precise range of skills required to triumph over his intended punishers. 'Maybe that will teach you not to fool around with a boy who knows how to fool around,' Tom taunts the stricken Captain after defeating him at the made-up sports of womble, muck and sneedball. Many trickshooters have revelled in similar triumphs as they reveal to sceptical parents that their bottle-flipping and card-tossing actually brings in a decent income. Turkish trickshooter Gamze May says she got right on her parents' nerves when she first started making trickshots during the Covid lockdowns, marooned at her family apartment in Istanbul. 'I was bouncing ping-pong balls on pans and it was making an annoying sound. My mum and dad would get angry. But it was entertainment for me.' They are fully on board now – her two hours of trickshot work a day supplement her income as a digital marketer. But their initial scepticism reminded her of the sort of disdain she experienced as a girl who always wanted to play with the boys. 'I was always running or playing football, basketball, every sport. I was playing console games. I still play console games. I would drive remote-control cars. My mum would be angry. Why are you playing with the boys?' Her answer then and now is simple: 'It makes me happy. When I'm playing sport, I feel I am out of this world. It's like meditation. I have no stress. I don't think about problems. Maybe some people don't understand me, but I don't care when I'm making trickshot videos.' There is always the odd dissenter underneath the videos: a commenter calling out the trickshooter as a fraud or a fluke. Anyone could manage this if they did this for five hours and 29 minutes. As is so often the case, the commenters miss the point. For one, the trickshooters hardly lack skill. Mike 'That'll Work' Shields recently challenged 10 people with 'ordinary jobs' to best him at a series of trickshots, and prevailed in every single contest. Badertscher played college softball. May was the captain of the women's football team Bakırköyspor until she retired in January. 'Sports people can learn these things a bit easier,' she says. 'I spend lots of time practising and then I improve.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion These are, however, 'super-strange skills', as David Hulett puts it. Over the hours of practice, you do become incrementally better at, say, tossing ping-pong balls so they play a tune on a series of carefully arranged pans, or dropping paper from a stepladder into a shredder. It was David who had the crucial insight that a small crease across the paper will attenuate the curve of the parabola on its descent, resulting in a greater probability of it sailing into the waiting shredder. Just as Dick Fosbury's flop at the 1968 Olympics changed the entire discipline of high-jumping, so a trickshooter can alter the history of their sport in a single afternoon. But the real skill is the sisyphean determination, the patience, the faith that in the end, it will happen. Because it will happen. As long as you don't give up. 'We were always super competitive,' David Hulett says. 'Dan and I wanted to win whatever we were doing.' The trickshooter knows that they can make the sheer brute force of numbers crush the momentary fluctuations of skill. I am terrible at darts. But were I to throw tens of thousands of darts in the general direction of a dartboard, eventually, tearful with rage, starving, my entire family having abandoned me, I would score 180. All I would need to do is capture that one time on camera – then discard the 89,362 takes when I didn't do it. In this way, anyone can be Lionel Messi for 15 seconds. The cameraphone has democratised sport. Still, as every child knows, the thing that takes the time is not the playing – it is the tidying up. It's a simple thing to sit there, throwing playing cards at a target. It's a total pain picking up thousands of cards. And then there are the tech fails. Once, after three or four hours, Gamze May managed to throw a card across the room so that it curled into the hairline crack between two dice. Beautiful. Only when she went to retrieve the footage, she realised her phone storage was full and the video had stopped recording. This is the bane of her life, in fact. 'My phone always has storage problems. It's still full. I always need to clear it.' But these frustrations must be offset against the regular cadence of success that trickshooting provides. 'When I'm making videos – how can I describe the situation? It's like someone is whispering in my ear: you will do this. And I believe it and then it happens. I feel amazing. I feel like a bird. I'm flying. Maybe it seems silly to some people but it is like therapy for me.' Trickshot culture has started to infiltrate other forms of performance, too. Grégoire started out his career as a professional acrobat, performing with troupes including Cirque du Soleil before a series of injuries made him question whether there was really much future in it. 'I have a herniated disc and a really bad knee. Acrobats have short careers.' So Grégoire has taken his performances to social media, which offers him more autonomy and a more reliable revenue stream. He isn't sure what to call the hybrid form he purveys here. 'I started out throwing a knife into an apple. I'm now throwing a knife into an onion that's flying in the air and landing on a knife in my mouth. I've pushed it so far, I don't even know what it is any more,' he says. But although he exhibits amazing physical prowess, he still considers his videos trickshots. 'It's a combination of skill and luck. I have to do them many times.' He sees this as a creative avenue opened up by social media; you couldn't attempt this sort of thing on stage as it would take too many tries to get right and the audience would boo. On the other hand, the minuscule attention spans of TikTok and Instagram Reels force him to be more inventive than he'd have to be on stage. 'People always want more on social media. On stage, you can build up a story. People are patient. On social media it needs to be good right away. People get bored so easily. Everyone is just scrolling, scrolling, so it really pushes me to find the most attractive, best thing immediately.' It is a double-win, algorithmically, if you can not only snare someone's attention, but then get them to watch your 15-second video again. 'I think that's my strong point,' Grégoire says. 'The tricks are sometimes so complicated, people rewatch them three or four times to understand them.' Indeed, some of the greatest trickshooters embrace the form's inherent dadaist absurdity. Videos of ping-pong golf jostle for attention with images of death and devastation in Gaza and Ukraine, and maybe offer some mordant commentary on them – just as the artists of the original Cabaret Voltaire embraced surrealism, chaos and non-meaning at the height of the annihilation of the first world war. 'You know, when I open my Instagram now, it's like crimes against humanity … trickshots … crimes against humanity … trickshots!' says Michael Rayner, 62, AKA @brokenjuggler, who makes delightfully weird trickshot videos in his Los Angeles front yard. 'I'm sort of here for all of it,' he says, arguing that what you see on short-form media is in some senses a truer reflection of reality than what you see on TV. 'America is a very violent country right now. I perform in a lot of immigrant communities and everyone is terrified of being snatched away by Ice. My videos are my own therapy but I also hope they give people some diversion in a harsh world.' A professional entertainer, Rayner took to Instagram after all of his regular comedy club gigs were cancelled during the pandemic. These included routines that he has spent the best part of five decades honing: one involves him keeping a tennis racket aloft by batting it between two sticks; another involves him spinning a cheeseburger around a parasol. But he combines these with improbable trickshots. His signature move is throwing his daughter's Nicolas Cage cushion behind his head into a basketball net. The fact that he performs all this deadpan, looking very much like some 'schlubby dad on his driveway', causes a large degree of cognitive dissonance in the comments section. 'Sometimes my videos are so fantastical that people assume it is fake. They think it's AI or green screen. That's the sad thing about reality now. Reality itself is thought of as fake.' He's recently added voiceovers to his videos, framing his trickshots as a sort of religious rite. 'I was summoned by the oracle,' he intones on one. 'And to complete my mission, I had to make a Nicolas Cage basket while on a unicycle … ' In another he expresses gratitude for the fact that he gets to do this stuff for a living. 'Can you imagine? Some people have to have jobs where they sit behind a table and write on pieces of paper and hand those pieces of paper to someone else. But I am lucky. I am grateful. I am in charge.' The Hulett brothers are certainly grateful. If they were not performing trickshots, they would be working in finance. 'That's what our majors were in college, so we've both gone in the opposite direction,' David says. Their father is a banker, their elder brother an accountant and their sister a financial analyst. 'I never thought I'd be in a creative job,' Daniel says. 'And I never thought I'd get to spend so much time with my brother.' Still, this is a respectable career now. When they announced to their father that they intended to do this full-time, far from being disappointed, he asked for a business plan. 'Once we gave him the business plan and executed on it, he's always been very supportive. 'You're making money. You're happy. This is great.'' A successful video can bring in thousands of dollars a month but it's no sure thing. The nickel video, for example, bombed so badly that the brothers removed it from TikTok. This is why it's important to re-edit videos so they also work across Facebook, Instagram and YouTube – the better to hedge against algorithmic disruption – and to pursue branding deals, which they say account for 80% of their income. Their medium-term goal is to move into more lucrative longer-form YouTube content, but even now money is good enough that they can hire a warehouse and employ business managers and editors, meaning they can spend each afternoon doing what they do best: trickshooting. On a normal day they will spend five or six hours tossing a Mentos mint into a Diet Coke bottle revolving on a bicycle wheel, or rolling soccer balls across ping-pong table obstacle courses – which makes it start to seem like a respectable time investment. Can any of us really say that we spend our working lives doing something more important? Michael Rayner certainly sees it as time well spent. 'You know, I get a lot of private messages from people saying they were really sad today but then my videos did snap them out of it for a moment,' he says. 'I don't want to be grandiose but if I can bring a little bit of happiness to people suffering from mental illness, I'm happy with that.'
Telegraph
44 minutes ago
- Telegraph
1939 vs 1975: Which was the greatest year in cinema ever?
Which was the greatest year in cinema ever? Not so long ago, the answer was obvious – the films of 1939 used to rule the world. Wistful critics and tweedy academics waxed lyrical about their unrivalled artistry. Grandparents paused their afternoons when they caught Gone With the Wind, Stagecoach or The Wizard of Oz on TV, resuming them only once the credits rolled. And then, somewhere down the line, those films disappeared. Millennials consider them unbearably antiquated and irrelevant; Gen Z thinks that Greta Garbo is an exciting young winger who plays for Real Madrid and John Wayne is probably a friend of their dad's. The right-on film studies crowd savaged these pictures for their racism, sentimentality and deference to authority. They have a new cinematic annus mirabilis: 1975. That was the year of Jaws, the first modern blockbuster, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which reinvented comedy. It was when Dog Day Afternoon and Nashville tore open the range of stories that Hollywood drama could depict, and the iconoclastic One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest won the Best Picture Oscar. The musical came back from the dead too, madder than ever, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Who's Tommy. And cinema-goers could also find Barry Lyndon, Young Frankenstein, 3 Days of the Condor, and umpteen foreign-language masterpieces on the big screen. No wonder cinephiles adore it. In 2022, Sight and Sound magazine named 1975's brilliant but obscure drama Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles as the greatest film ever made, and last month ran a special issue on the movies released that year. On the face of it, they do seem more attuned to our cynical and irreverent age. The rebellious baby boomers who made them are now our cultural elders – the leader of Python's Knights Who Say 'Ni!' now really is Sir Michael Palin – and the world has followed their example in distrusting (and lampooning) authority. We still respond to the anti-establishment bite of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and relate to the alienated outsiders and weirdos in Python or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Yet the largely forgotten films of 1939 have aged much better than we think. Their endearing innocence and solidity, once dismissed as naive, is a surprising relief from modern anxieties. And they're still remarkably entertaining, almost a century after they were made. So which year is the best in cinema history? I've put their greatest films head-to-head across different categories below, and you can vote for your winners in our polls. Meanwhile, if you think that there are other golden years in cinema history beyond the two I've chosen, then you can make your case in the comments section. We'll pull out the best of your responses. One-word thrillers Stagecoach vs Jaws
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
You can visit gorgeous 'real-life Disneyland' that inspired the legendary films
These two picturesque villages in France could be straight out of a Disney animation. But, despite their distinct charm and proximity to a popular tourist spot, they remain relatively under the radar. Two picture-perfect cities rumoured to be inspiration for Disney settings have been revealed - but they won't stay under-the-radar for long. If you're keen to avoid overcrowded tourist hotspots, a trip to one of these picturesque destinations should be the next stop on your travel itinerary. French River cruise operator European Waterways has revealed two lesser-known destinations that supposedly inspired Disney animation. Located 20 minutes from the tourist hotspot Colmar, both Eguisheim and Riquewihr are worth exploring. Located in the wine-making region of Alsace, both destinations are members of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France - or The Most Beautiful Villages in France. Formed in 1982, Les Plus Beaux Villages de France is an independent body that promotes must-visit rural locations. As of 2024, it numbers 176 member villages. This comes after a warning to Brit tourists planning all-inclusive holidays to Spain. Maryanne Sparkes, French Rivercruise expert at European Waterways, explains their distinct charm. 'Eguisheim's secret lies in its unique layout — concentric circles of narrow lanes surround a central château, each lined with meticulously preserved half-timbered houses. 'This design, dating back to the 13th century, is rare in Europe and creates a magical village atmosphere, amplified by vibrant window boxes bursting with blooms in spring and summer,' she explains. The village also institutes regulations to ensure the preservation of its distinct layout. According to Maryanne: 'Local laws strictly protect the village's architectural heritage, meaning no building facade can be changed without official permission. 'This careful preservation maintains Eguisheim's medieval character, which helped it win the title of 'France's favourite village' in 2013.' Similar to Eguisheim, Riquewihr is 'frozen in time' to preserve its atmosphere and architecture. Maryanne explains: 'A slightly different, but equally beautiful Riquewihr is a medieval fortress frozen in time by local experts. Only five kilometres from Eguisheim, Riquewihr charms visitors with its intact defensive walls, cobbled alleys, and medieval watchtowers.' She says that Riquewihr's houses — some dating as far back as the 16th century — are notable for their traditional painted wooden facades decorated with geometric patterns and floral motifs. Walking through its narrow streets feels like 'entering a living museum' and is particularly magical during Christmas time when fairy lights adorn the walls. Maryanne says that despite Riquewihr and Eguisheim's proximity to the popular destination of Colmar, both towns remain 'delightfully undervisited'. 'They provide the perfect alternative for travellers wanting fairytale charm without the crowds, plus easy access to world-class Alsace wines and local gastronomy,' she says. Colmar has achieved notoriety on social media for its pastel-hued traditional homes and picture-perfect canals. With its relatively small population of 67,000, Colmar maintains a "country town" vibe, drawing visitors into its quaint atmosphere amplified by centuries of dedicated preservation. Disney fans might even mistake Colmar for Belle's hometown from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. The area's distinctive architecture, including timber-clad homes, supposedly served as the direct inspiration for the movie's fictional setting in Alsace.
