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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Cindy-Lou Who and DVD menus

I grew up watching Disney movies and was as much a princess lover as any other little girl as a child. But back in the day we had VHS tapes. You put it in the VCR and it started playing and you either waited or could fast forward to get to the good stuff if you so chose.

But in the relentless march toward betterness the DVD was born. When I first commented that I needed to "fast forward," Thing #1 (oldest child) said "you need to what?" and was appalled when I explained how tapes worked.

"You mean you couldn't skip to the chapter you wanted?!"

No darling, back in the dark ages we had to watch the whole thing or slowly fast forward to the right part (but if you had a really cool VCR and no patience you could hold the FF button down and it would go faster. I know this because the whole beautiful Swiss Alps scene at the beginning of Sound of Music was just too freaking long to be patient for. Cue Maria spinning and singing man, I am not here for the scenery!)

But then Disney realized that we were all skipping past their damn previews.

Fast Play is on some DVDs, a gift here you can either say "play everything, previews then the movie" or you can skip to the menu and select to just have the movie played. But some do not have this gift. Some, you must watch the previews and wait around for the main menu to pop up.

I know this is not an issue for the normal person, but I am not normal, I'm a mom.

It has always annoyed me as a mom, so I taught Thing #1 ASAP how to do it himself so I could wash my hands of having to wait through all the "Coming soon to Disney DVD"s ... Thing #2 will be taught ASAP as well (little early as he doesn't know about DVDs, buttons, or even his hands yet).

But then there is Thing #3 ... my sister. Now in all honesty she was around first, so she shouldn't be #3 per say, so instead we will call her Cindy-Lou Who in keeping with the Dr. Seuss theme. CLW isn't interested in only watching actual Disney movies. She loves the Plan Your Vacation DVDs you can get for free from the Disney website and the documentaries about Park history.

Welcome to the world of autistic tendencies! We hope you enjoy your stay, cuz you're gonna watch this DVD 47 times in a row! Today. That is just today. Chances are we'll do it again tomorrow.

Did I mention that these DVDs have multiple menus, and you cannot skip anything on them? You have to wait, and watch them. I challenge you to find a Disney historian who can out-fact-spew any member of my family given the number of times we have to hear these things and wait for the !#$%& menu to come up.

I know this isn't relevant to most people; most people, IF they want to watch a Plan Your Vacation DVD, do so once, maybe twice, and they enjoy it and are busily planning away. Since I can get lost driving around (and I have lived in the same place 20+ years), but can navigate Disneyland Park with my eyes closed and no map you can probably assume safely that we don't need DVDs to plan a trip to Disneyland as we have gone there a *ahem* few times. I don't watch these movies for fun. Quite the contrary.

But they make CLW extremely happy, and if she is happy the household stands a chance at being happy for the day. Happy is good. Happy keeps mommy/big sister closer to sane. Happy makes it so I can get things done ... while listening to information about the "happiest" place on earth ... over and over ... and over ... while clicking "play" over and over ... and -- well you get it.

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