• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Phantasialand: General Discussion

I'd be interested to see how it feels being launched in a flying position. I recently went on The Flying Dinosaur at Universal Japan, and it was one of the worst rides I've been on, incredibly rough, too forceful and didn't feel like flying, felt like my teeth were going to shaken out! I hope that this is a thrill experience but not so much that it is uncomfortable. I think that the close proximity of all the theming will make it feel much faster!
 
Just to be clear, I am well aware how awesome Tatsu looks. ;) Just responding to that specific train of thought. ;)
 
Benzin said:
When are Phantasialand going to stop putting all their black employees in the Deep in Africa area I wonder....
Click to expand...
I recalled yesterday being at an event where someone from the park was asked about this. They were pretty perplexed that anyone found it strange.

The 'defence' was essentially that if you were making a film about Africa "you'd have a lot of black people in it" and their staffing of the Africa area was no different to that.
 
The black staff in Deep in Africa feels much dodgier now than it did ten years ago. People are beginning to think differently about the legacy of colonisation and I think it makes a bit of a spectacle of people essentially just doing their job checking restraints and sweeping up. Representation of people of colour in Germany is far behind the UK and other countries. There is almost zero diversity in advertising, television and so on. I can swallow it at Phantasialand, but I wouldn't necessarily be down with it anywhere else, and understand that it feels archaic.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sam
@Plastic Person I think the people who were already thinking about the 'legacy of colonisation' are thinking about it more, I think most people remain unaware or ambivalent.
 
Rick said:
@Plastic Person I think the people who were already thinking about the 'legacy of colonisation' are thinking about it more, I think most people remain unaware or ambivalent.
Click to expand...

I disagree. I think if you look at the BBC homepage, for example, there's much more discussion than ever before about identity, heritage and so forth. It completely rules the arts, and while theme parks remain relatively apolitical, of course this discourse bleeds in. A lot of people on here think that's P.C. gone mad or whatever, and even a looney lefty like me would argue it sometimes dominates corresponding discussions to an unreasonable degree. But I reckon if you took a group of British teenagers to Phantasialand and showed them the all-black staff attending to their duties next to the little wooden mud huts and the plastic lion sitting atop a rock then most of them might say, "Hang on a second..."

Personally, I think having a show in which artists/musicians from Africa play traditional drums feels interesting and celebratory, at least as far as theme parks go, whereas having an on-ride photo booth or a gift shop staffed entirely by black people feels tacky.
 
Last edited:
@Plastic Person the BBC homepage is exactly where I would expect to find it and it has accelerated no doubt about that. Same on Twitter etc.

I agree in terms of the group of teenagers, that's hand in glove like the gender conversation we had a few weeks ago. I am not convinced it has permeated older generations in the same way outside of the bubble and statistically they are not insignificant.
 
Rick said:
@Plastic Person
I agree in terms of the group of teenagers, that's hand in glove like the gender conversation we had a few weeks ago. I am not convinced it has permeated older generations in the same way outside of the bubble and statistically they are not insignificant.
Click to expand...

I think, and I hope you'd agree, that as you get older, you have to go with the flow a bit. Phantasialand attracts a wider market than a lot of parks, but it's a theme park run by ageing Germans for the benefit and wallets of young people, so I do think there is some tension in this particular generation gap.

Anyhow, I don't really expect theme parks to be the arbiters of good taste or progress, so this isn't a hill I'm planning to die on! Saying that, I am pleased the park seemingly shelved the rumoured plans to have a team of dwarves operating Wuze Ball. Or at least it's during peak periods only.
 
Last edited:
If anything, by saying "only this type of person can work these areas", they are excluding white people. It's reverse racism! Positive discrimination gone mad!

Seriously, anyone who has a problem with casting actors who fit the roll needs to get laid.
 
speedy said:
What I don't understand, is why it's okay to cast black actors in a film or a play, but not to "play" a part in a themed area.
Click to expand...

I think the easiest way I can attempt to explain it would be; Phantasialand don't employ black people to only work in Deep in Africa, but Deep in Africa is the only area that only features black staff members. Phantasialand don't ensure that the Berlin area is staffed by natives from the Brandenburg region, nor do the Chinese or Mexican areas feature only Asian or South American workers. If you work on Mystery Castle, you are asked to wear a lab coat, you're not asked to don a prosthetic nose to resemble a wizard's assistant or whatever.

When you're a black actor in a play or a film, regardless of whether your race affects the role or not, you're performing, literally acting, for a brief period of time. When you work in Deep in Africa at Phantasialand, you are undertaking all sorts of menial, minimum-wage tasks associated with a theme park; checking restraints, cleaning up gum, measuring the heights of children disappointed to be several inches under 1.4m, then perhaps dealing with their angry parents. So you're dealing with all this crap, and all the while, people are literally seeing you as a subtle novelty, along with the thatched roofs or plastic snakes.

From what I understand, when you're black in a largely white country, you are already seen as 'different', and you feel that difference in subtle ways all of the time. This isn't always nefarious, in fact some people find it something to celebrate. When Phantasialand hire an all-black staff for their cartoonish (if not detailed!) Africa land, it lends itself to a tacky history of blackface, 'othering', etc. It just feels increasingly weird and inappropriate, to me at least.
 
Last edited:
@Plastic Person I think that's a fairly compelling argument.

I find World Showcase to be as distasteful as the Phantasialand example, although it's probably better intentioned, the caricaturing of cultures is still somewhat galling.
 
Rick said:
@Plastic Person I think that's a fairly compelling argument.

I find World Showcase to be as distasteful as the Phantasialand example, although it's probably better intentioned, the caricaturing of cultures is still somewhat galling.
Click to expand...

I think World Showcase just feels totally lame these days, although I do like the original films in Canada and France. I suppose that it doesn't feel as weird or exploitative, as Disney basically asked countries for money in order to take part, so only the more developed nations and their sponsors felt compelled to cough up. Also, it probably felt exotic and fantastical in the eighties, but the world feels like a much smaller place now, therefore World Showcase feels like an upmarket mall.

Which, to be fair, is exactly what it is.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
If anything, by saying "only this type of person can work these areas", they are excluding white people. It's reverse racism! Positive discrimination gone mad!

Seriously, anyone who has a problem with casting actors who fit the roll needs to get laid.
Click to expand...
Reverse racism lol

although Bond should be white
 
I'm glad World Showcase was brought up because I was thinking about Animal Kingdoms African area. Somehow I feel it would come off as less jarring there because the African area feels more like a place in Africa than a backdrop for a ride.

To go back to the film comparison, full ethnic casting works when treated appropriately but in the wrong setting can come off as inapropriate.
 
I've had a non-black host on Black Mamba before.

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk
 
Tim said:
I'm glad World Showcase was brought up because I was thinking about Animal Kingdoms African area. Somehow I feel it would come off as less jarring there because the African area feels more like a place in Africa than a backdrop for a ride.

To go back to the film comparison, full ethnic casting works when treated appropriately but in the wrong setting can come off as inapropriate.
Click to expand...

Having been to many of the countries AK is modeld on AK feels very authentic and captures the feel of those places well and tastefully. Having a bollywood style group in Andapur or drumming group in Harambe fits in well. On the other hand World showcase feels more like a Las Vegas mall or casino and quite tacky
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top