The Best Ride in the World Is: The Circle of Life
Caity Weaver and Rich Juzwiak, Gawker’s chief restaurant critics, recently ate, drank, and gasped their way through every international pavilion and theme park attraction at Walt Disney World’s Epcot. This is their review.
Rich: The Circle of Life is a movie narrated by The Lion King’s Simba (with help from Timon and Pumba) about “how humans have forgotten about the great circle of life.” More than that, it is a movie about how Epcot visitors have remembered The Lion King enough to sit through a 20-minute quasi-educational quasi-sequel.
Caity: There is one and only one good thing about The Circle of Life: Its titular song is played, in full at the start of the film, at the exact volume at which you want to hear it, i.e. deafeningly loudly. Your ears, and head, and heart are flooded with the song. Not since The Lion King hit theatres in 1994 has the song been played at this perfect, blasting volume. IT’S THE CIIIIIIIIIRCLE...OF LIIIIIIIIFE! I loved it.
I refuse to say anything else about this ridiculous “attraction” which is so boring and pointless that it truly stretches the definition of that word.
Rich: At this point in our trip, I was hopeful that I still might learn something. Simba seemed like he was going to approach the topic of why dams are bad, which is something I’ve been meaning to get around to learning myself. I know I should know this, but I’m not altogether clear on why dams are so bad other than the disruption of natural water flow, and I don’t quite understand water power either. Well, The Circle of Life provided no answers; it just reinforced that yes, dams are bad.
The movie included a montage of human consumption via shots of Vegas, New York, and Geno’s Steaks in Philly (represent). Not included in this montage was Disney World, which holds 100,000 people on any given day. Convenient.
Ride Report Card
Rich: I give this movie a D for letting me be dumb and not doing a damn thing to change it.
Caity: I give The Circle of Life an F for Epcot, which means that, anywhere else in the world, it would be razed to the ground, because it is less valuable than the land it occupies.
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Contact the authors at caity@gawker.com and rich@gawker.com.
