Earlier this week a tweet came across my desk that got my mind humming on cylinders it doesn’t usually like to hum on. The tweet I am speaking of is attached below.
Shoutout to sir Cam W for allowing me to run off his content here. I didn’t ask him but he seems like the kind of guy who would be cool with that sort of stuff. Plus I can’t give him too much credit at the end of the day, because – while I would not be spending my saturday afternoon typing this if it were not for the aforementioned tweet – the question he posed was an obvious one. I scrolled through the replies to see if it was full of correct answers. it wasn’t. turns out, most people either never enjoyed going to theme parks as a kid, or their imaginations suck, because most of the responses were terrible.
I hope that most of you are never given a billion dollars to build a theme park based on a movie, that’s just how i feel on this matter.
I won’t get into all that cause that’s not what I’m here for, I’m here to spend MY billion dollars on a theme park based on the sequel to Robert Rodriguez’ hit family spy thriller, Spy Kids: “Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams.”
The reasons I was so confident in how I would spend my $1 billion* will make themselves abundantly clear as I move forward with my pitch, so bear with me. I won’t even talk about the merits of this film as a timeless classic because that’s its own 1,500 words for another day, I’m just out here trying to build an incredibly fun theme park for children to enjoy.
I’ve already kept you too long with this preamble, sorry, I consumed a beer or two prior to this because I was watching some guys punch each other in the head and choke each other with their legs and alright lets just get into it.
So the park starts where the film opens – Troublemaker Theme Park
(are you beginning to see how obvious this is?)
We’ve got some world-class ride concepts to work off, plus a pretty strong park mascot cowboy man to keep enthusiasm high. I understand that some of these rides aren’t perfectly translatable to the real human world (it’s a movie no shit) but have some imagination people, we’ve got a BILLION* dollars to work with! I’m sure we can figure out a way to make people feel like they’re being juggled around in the air or whipped around or whatever.
That being said. As a man with a weak stomach and a knack for relieving the contents of it, I may have to do away with the Vomiter ride. That seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Also I’m not gonna work the president’s daughter angle into all this, that’s a little much.
Next up is area 2, and if you’re watching along at home, we’re gonna follow the film sequentially here throughout.
For area 2 we’re gonna move onto the Jr. OSS headquarters. This is gonna be an area with no rides, just a bunch of little stations for kids to mess around with various gadgets and do different spy training exercises and all that. Pretty basic stuff nothing crazy but it’s the kind of place kids will happily waste an hour in.
Next we’re headed to area 3 – the Cortez compound.
Similar to the prior area but a little more lowkey, more for the older kids who are really about that spy kid shit. Lot of great gadgets to mess around with here, we’ll get a couple nice voiceovers from Danny Trejo walking the kids through various tools and tasks, it’ll be a fun time. Their treehouse was the coolest shit ever to me as a kid and I know I’d be messing around in there for hours while my parents sweated patiently outside.
(please refer to this video for OSS Jr. visuals as well)
Area 3 also includes our next ride-like attraction – RALPH – aka Juni’s little bug robot thing. This is gonna be one of those 3D live action screen things where your seat moves and all that (very hit or miss attractions in my opinion but again, we’ve got 1 billion dollars* here). Basically you travel as Ralph out of the Cortez house and on an adventure back to OSS HQ. Jumping, dropping, swinging, things of that nature. It’ll be cool.
Couldn’t find a good video of that scene so here’s the audio in case that interests you at all.
Once you leave that little theatre area off the Cortez house you’ll be led right down below their house to our next ride: the DRAGONSPY GLX.
Complete with voiceover from Cheech Marin, this is one of those rides where there are all kinds of buttons and levers that you can fiddle with that make you feel like you’re controlling the thing, but in reality you’re not doing much and your submarine is on a relatively fixed track. But you’ll navigate through some waters to the island and you’ll have a couple checkpoints where you have to choose the right path to move forward. Everyone will get there eventually but it’ll be a rewarding experience for the kids. they’re just dumb kids.
Okay so now we’re at the island and we’re really getting to the good stuff. Lot of families could spend a full day in the first couple areas and have a perfectly fun time for themselves but if you’re really looking for an adventure you’ll keep pressing forward.
First thing you’ll see when you reach the island is the VOLCANO DROP. Nothing earth shattering here, gonna be your standard freefall drop ride, you know the deal. Not for everyone but it’s a general crowdpleaser, puts asses in seats.
And that’ll lead us to the real highlight of the park, the area that’s going on all the brochures: ROMERO’S ZOO and ROMERO’S ZOO TOO.
Now, IDEALLY, we’d have Steve Buscemi working here full time, it’ll depend on what’s left of my billion* when construction’s complete. but at the very least we get a bunch of voice overs and he’ll guide the kids through his land of genetically shrunk animals, beginning with all the normal ones and then eventually we get to a second gate where you can go see the real attraction. the freaks.
You know the ones. Horsefly, Spidermonkey, Slizzard, all the hits, all the big ones. Steve gives another preamble and then they get to explore the land of all those mutant creatures as well. Big fun safari area of fake mutant animals? Steve Buscemi? what’s not to love?
Oh yeah, before I get to our big finale, I forgot to mention. I’m gonna make this place even more insufferable for parents by adding in this whole spy adventure challenge where kids have to search for clues throughout the park to figure out where the transmooker device is or whatever. idk how exactly it’ll work, I’m the big picture guy.
What? YOU’RE gonna tell the guy, with the BILLION dollar theme park*, that he has to have all the details ironed out ahead of time??? COME ON!
I say all of that to say this – there’s gonna be a bunch of dead ends and caves and random little obstacle courses and stuff throughout the island. nothing crazy but we’re gonna make these kids earn it, they want to be fucking spies after all. Once they’ve gotten all the clues and figured out where they need to go they’ll end up at 3D virtual reality type deal where they have to battle through all these skeleton pirates and stuff. Again, I don’t have all the details, I’ll pay people to have details.
So yeah, on to our grand finale. This is where I, as the owner of the park, would spend most of my days, up in a luxury sweet like Jerry Jones sipping on a bourbon and receiving compliments from my cronies. As you may be able to guess, this is the MUTANT BATTLE ARENA.
This is where we step outside of the normal sort of theme park fare we’ve been offering to this point, and present something really wild that’ll bring in customers of all ages. You can sign up to control a mutant or you can simply sit in the audience and place a wager (in non-refundable JaxBux (TM)). You pick from a huge selection of animatronic mutants, all of which have their own stats and special abilities, and then you hop into a control seat behind the scenes and battle it out with your opponents. This might have to be like a 13+ area or something cause I think I want this shit to get pretty violent, real gladiator type feel, with fatsos eating turkey legs in the stands and all that. The attraction to end all attractions.
The end. That’s my park. I made my case and if you’re not yet convinced that this would be the greatest theme park of all time idk what else to say here. So yeah, here’s that drawing I promised. I haven’t actually drawn it yet upon typing this but I imagine it’ll be crude.
(Editor’s note: I got off to a hot start but definitely ran out of steam with this drawing after the OSS building cause world series was about to start. You guys get the gist.)
*I hope we can all agree that this is a loose “billion dollars” I’m working with here, right? like nothing ever costs EXACTLY $1 billion dollars really, that’s just a figure of speech. And even if it’s not… Ya know? What are they gonna do? let me sink a BILLION dollars* into this place and then tear it all down when I tell them I actually need a couple more billions? I don’t think so personally. Worst case scenario I’ll get a substantial loan of sorts, I mean I already have a billion dollars* it shouldn’t be that hard.
P.S. This film is not on any streaming services (that I have) as of today, but you can find a solid copy on youtube if you want, not going to include the link here cause I don’t want it to get taken down (idk if that’s how it works) but the one I’ve been watching is the one with Arabic subtitles, good quality should be one of the first ones in the search results.
Worm Stuff 