Iago & Zazu's Attraction of the Week, located at http://www.emuck.com/aotw/ is a website of entertainment as well as a place the glean little-know facts about various attractions at Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California.

The concept is simple for me to understand. It grew out of the usenet newsgroup rec.arts.disney.parks Two of the most renown contributors there, Ronnie and Bruce (known as Iago and Zazu respectively) began to put together funny scripts filled with facts about Disney attractions. They presented these facts as a conversation between Iago and Zazu.

Who are Iago and Zazu?

Iago was Jafar's parrot sidekick in the movie Aladin. Zazu was the adviser to Mufasa and eventual friend to Simba in The Lion King. If you have seen these movies, you will realize that these two birds have totally opposite personalities. Iago is presented as not being all that bright, while Zazu seems to have the patience of a saint with his bird companion. These personalities are used in an engagingly humorous way to give details about various Disney attractions.

Some of the humor will not be understood by people who are not regular readers of rec.arts.disney.parks (RADP for short). There is an ongoing joke about Iago wearing a speedo (he fancies himself quite the ladies man), Aunt Polly (from Tom Sawyer fame) is constantly looking to cook the birds for lunch and gets referenced to in the scripts, and there are a few references (and thanks given) to other people who post on RADP. There is also quite a bit of cross-referencing to other attractions and characters inside Disney World and Disneyland.

Bruce and Ronnie have done a tremendous job on these scripts and they are thoroughly enjoyable. Each one of the 44 scrips currently on the website present a single attraction and sill in many little-know facts and backstory to the attraction. Did you know that the Country Bear Jamboree was originally an E-ticket attraction? (Disney used to have free admittance and a sliding scale of tickets to use on the rides. A-tickets were on the lower end of the scale while E-tickets were on the high end.) Or that the left side of Space Mountain is ten feet longer than the right?

I find these little tidbits of information intriguing. The work that went into these scripts was a labor of love and deserves to be rewarded with a peek if you get the chance!




In the spirit of the community of RADP, I am donating all of the proceeds from this Epinion to Dotti the Soap Lady (http://www.allearsnet.com/soap.htm) in December. She collects the "extra" Disney soaps & shampoos that people manage to acquire to distribute to children in hospitals.

© 2001 Patti Aliventi

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