C'mon whisper what it is you want

[austin_dern]

I ran across on the Channel NewsAsia web site a mention that the ``first ever Disney-themed eatery outside of Disneyland'' has opened, naturally in Singapore, which makes it sound like someone's playing to the jokes about both organizations. The Global Brands Group -- and don't tell me that name doesn't cry out ``whimsy and cheer'' -- apparently has the rights to open Disney Restaurants worldwide and they're trying it out in Singapore first because and you can see how that all makes a compelling case.

The report mentions that the restaurant produces ``a fun way'' to ``coax children to eat their greens'', with for example ``spinach bits blended perfectly into Mickey-shaped pizza dough''. I understand there's a trend going to get children to eat healthy foods by making the healthy foods unhealthy, and I have to admit I'm starting to see the charms of spinach within carefully designated boundaries, but I think as a child I'd have rebelled against spinach-laden Mickey-head-shaped pizzas. That would probably be more because of the Mickey-head-shape to the pizzas. I've always had very strict limits to how much novelty I want in the things I eat, which amount to I don't really like novelty in the things I eat. I'd prefer it just be food.

Making me wonder a bit is that the restaurant opened up in the Anchorpoint Shopping Mall, which if I'm not mistaken is outside the big central city and heaviest concentration of tourist attractions. If I haven't got it confused with one of about four other malls named -point, this one is a couple blocks away from the MRT station and is opposite the street from the Ikea. That's a draw for the local population but not really a tourist thing. On the other hand, Snoopy Place, which was in Plaza Singapura and squarely in the tourist centers, didn't make it, but it also had a narrower range of cartoons to show on the big screen and a lesser marketing overlord behind it.

What pictures of it really brought out of me were reflections on how uncomfortable Mickey Mouse-head chairs look and how long it's been since I saw a request to ``Please Q Here''. ``Queue'' really didn't get anywhere in British English until the Great War, and it's never had any success in the United States, even though it would offer opportunities to use abbreviations until a message lost the ability of readers to follow it. Silly thing to hang on to, I know, but I do these things.

Trivia: The Fleischer cartoon studios settled in the Out Of The Inkwell cartoons on the Gillott 290 penpoint for all inking. Source: The Fleischer Story, Leslie Cabarga.

Currently Reading: The Age of Voltaire, Will and Ariel Durant.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

apparently has the rights to open Disney Restaurants worldwide and they're trying it out in Singapore first because and you can see how that all makes a compelling case

Well, it's that or Times Square, really. Times Square making almost more sense because of the amount of Broadway-produced Disney Musicals based on animated series that have taken hold. A Disney store, a Disney Eatery, and a Disney play and you're almost in Epcot.

There may well be room for an acronymized Q/Queue in Americna English, but I don't expect it to be so. First off, when the American public hears 'Q' and 'British', they think of Desmond Llewelyn...

--Chiaroscuro

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

There is some use of queue in the US, mainly when talking about call queues, but unfortunately when I see it typed in places online that aren't professional (journals, etc.) it is all too often rendered as 'cue'

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, there are call queues, maybe because the gang of people gathered for service on different phone lines is too diffuse to look like a ``line''. Still hasn't really escaped into the wild, though.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You're probably right, and Times Square would be a hard spot to resist. (Actually, I'd have guessed there would be a Disney restaurant there already. I mean, they have an ESPN Restaurant.) Although opening a Times Square restaurant does mean that if it flops, it's covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. If it flops in Anchorpoint Mall, a bit off Queenstown MRT, Singapore, then it makes Channel NewsAsia and disappears forever. It may also be they separate license operations for different continents.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Possible on several counts indeed. It might also work best in a country without an actual Disneyland, as a sort of mini-exploration of such. Though I don;t know how prevalent Disney stores are/were in Singapore.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

There's no Disney stores at all, to the best of my ability to determine, as of a year ago. However, many Disney-related pieces were for sale in toy stores and even better in the Japanese kitsch stores, where you could get things like weirdly deformed block versions of Donald Duck or mis-colored salt shakers of Lady (without the Tramp).

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

A lot of coaster enthusiasts refer to the lines at amusement parks as "queues," but this probably is influenced by its being used in Rollercoaster Tycoon, which was written by a British guy and contains various Britishisms.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Huh, that's an interesting bit of language development. I have got Rollercoaster Tycoon, but don't play it enough, and the use of queues seemed perfectly natural since I was in Singapore when I got the game.

I had little success trying to play SimCity 3000, but one neat bit about it was that in Singapore it had the cars riding on the left side of the road. And the dates were given British style, which made me initially think they were jumping one month at a time in date displays. (Then it froze up, and crashed.)