Oh no! It's a troll!

author’s note: my family, in an attempt to say the word “sucks” less, has adopted the word “unfortunate” for use in its place. And so, in this blog, if we say that something is “unfortunate”, what we mean is that “it sucks”.

The movie at the end of Maelstrom , the ride in the Norway Pavillion at EPCOT is extremely unfortunate – and it has always been unfortunate. The first time I disembarked from my Viking boat and entered the theater, I seated myself obediently and I gave it a chance – I won’t make that mistake twice.

They are sneaky , those Norwegians, and they try to make you stay for that unfortunate movie – the theater is located between your boat and the exit, with no way around it (I suppose you could fake a heart attack and they’d find some other exit for you).  Now, I never even pretend that I’m going to stay – I  just run right through the theater and out the door, trying very hard not to make eye contact with anybody in a folk costume.

The ride is a classic and I can’t get enough of it. When I climb into that boat I really think there is some kind of ancestral tug that takes hold of me – my family isn’t Scandinavian but we are from Amsterdam and Northern Island and my people once shivered staring into that cold northern sea just like the Norwegians do. I don’t know, it feels weirdly familiar and my imagination goes wild. As an icy cold wind blows through fake Disney Norway menacing trolls taunt me, “Back, back, over the falls”.

The EPCOT Explorer’s Encyclopedia  reports that the Pavillion may be in trouble. They lost their corporate funding and then government funding and now Disney is complaining that the Norway is looking a little worn out – the rumor is that they’ll have to share the pavilion with Denmark and Sweden.

If Denmark and Sweden will stop trying to make me watch that movie – I don’t see a problem.

Oh no! It's a crappy Norway movie!