The multi-tiered, multimedia theme park that is DisneyQuest — just about ready to celebrate its first anniversary in Chicago — is a curious, almost paradoxical phenomenon.
Designed as a Disney alternative for climes that are less hospitable to year-round, outdoor fun than those of southern California and Florida, where the original Disneyland and the still futuristic Disney World sit, DisneyQuest is the first in a planned series of 30 indoor playgrounds.
But though the keyword in DisneyQuest’s propaganda is interactive, a visit there — at least for adults — isn’t likely to result in much interaction that’s genuine or particularly pleasant.
Most of the multimedia and virtual experiences are essentially solo affairs, and in the truly interactive ones, participants mostly engage in competition.
And while there are things the Disney outdoor venues can provide that an indoor site can’t — the vast vistas, for example — there is one thing that is curiously missing from DisneyQuest and wouldn’t be at all difficult to design: Places to just hang out, like benches, tables, maybe a couch or two.
As it is, the places where visitors can just talk — can, essentially, react to the experience at hand — are the lines they stand in while waiting to play the next game or at one of DisneyQuest’s overpriced restaurants.
Not that any of this is keeping people away. And it’s not just families with packs of kids or mobs of teenage boys. There are plenty of adults at DisneyQuest, plenty of very obvious, awkward dates, especially later at night when DisneyQuest offers play at a reduced price (regular all-day passes are $34 for adults, $26 for children, and $17 for seniors, but after 9 p.m., all tickets are 50 percent off).
Still, you have to wonder why anyone would choose this place for a date. Consider the following scenarios:
1) A couple happily steps into the Buzz Lightyear Astroblaster, a slightly-but-not-too-souped-up bumper car ride. The gimmick at DisneyQuest is that as the car rolls over the field, it collects cannon balls that are then used to shoot at other cars. There aren’t any points involved, just bump and fire for the hell of it. But you do need two people with distinctly different skills: One agile enough to drive and get the balls while avoiding getting fired upon, the other to aim and strike. The happy couple we spied divided the tasks; she was driving, and he was firing. But it didn’t take too long into the all-too-brief ride before he was screaming at her, then grabbing the wheel to better scoop up the balls. Result? By the end of the ride, they were a not-so-happy couple.
2) Another couple came up with a roller-coaster-like path on the Cybermountain ride, where one gets to design one’s own ride. Theirs was a 10 on a scale of 1 to 5, a maze of loops and rapid-fire turns. In line, these two lovebirds were jiving and jostling each other like rugby mates, ready to rough it out, to outdo, out-tough each other. Result? After the — again — all-too-brief journey (which is actually kind of cool), their championship remained undecided. When the DisneyQuest folks refused to let them ride again without getting back in line first, they spent a good five minutes arguing with them, then finally walked back to the lab to make their roller coaster tracks even more virtually death-defying. “They’ll be here all night,” the DisneyQuest host at Cybermountain said, shaking her head in amusement, “and at least one of ’em will be sick.”
3) The laser sword game, which involves slashing your way through various levels of fiendish monsters, is a mostly solo journey, but it can include a collaboration with one other person (against a terrifying bird). But, for whatever reason, every single woman in our group — and one guy — had a miserable time with the visors. Every time we got involved with the sword play, we’d lose the visor head-gear and pop out of the game. Result? Everybody looked harried, like we’d just gotten out of bed and our hair was still on end and uncombed, by the time the game ended.
4) In the Replay Zone, a midway of video and even a couple of classic pinball games, the competition’s heady. There are games in which to shoot clowns, aliens, birds, flying fish, a whole menagerie of villains indeed. But sooner or later, what becomes evident is that Q-Bert, that silly game where the little squiggly guy jumps from one square to the next to change its color, soon had a long line of … women and girls. Not a guy in sight. They were off playing air hockey or daredevil motorcycling.
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5) Here’s a bit of advice: If you’re on a date, avoid “Magic Mirror” altogether. “Magic Mirror” allows you to remake yourself or your partner, in part or in a whole, by borrowing characteristics from fave animation characters. But at “Magic Mirror” the boys, regardless of age, seem to really like to ugly up themselves and their companions, while the girls appear to want to be artistic and maybe actually buy the reconfigured portraits as souvenirs of the date. … Danger, danger, danger.
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DisneyQuest is at 55 E. Ohio St. It’s open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. Call 312-222-1300 for more detailed information.