It’s Tough to Be Replaced

Photo of the It’s Tough to Be a Bug attraction sign by Michael Gray from Wantagh NY, USA

This weekend is the end of It’s Tough to Be a Bug, a 4D movie-type attraction that opened with Disney’s Animal Kingdom in 1998. (Before A Bug’s Life came out, memorably). It’s slated to be replaced with a similar show themed to Zootopia.

It would be hypocritical of me to throw too much of a tantrum about the loss of the show, since I haven’t taken the time to re-visit it the last several times I’ve been to Animal Kingdom. There’s a phenomenon on the internet for Disney fans to declare an attraction to be universally beloved and irreplaceable only after it’s been announced that it’s scheduled to be replaced, even if the attraction has lasted years with little interest. Twenty-seven years is a pretty good run for anything.

But it’s still a shame, because It’s Tough to Be a Bug is outstanding. I think it’s the best example of something that satisfies all the constraints of what I dismissively call “Corporate Entertainment Product” — constraints that often seem mutually exclusive with making art — and still manages to feel original, innovative, and even fearless.

As the centerpiece of Animal Kingdom, it had to carry through the overall theme of conservation, but it never feels preachy.1 It had to promote an upcoming Pixar movie, but it felt more like world-building than opportunistic advertising. It had to be educational without sacrificing any of its entertainment value. It had to push the concept of a 4D movie like Honey I Shrunk the Audience or Muppet-Vision 3D, without making the effects feel like “cheap 3D tricks.” (In the words of Kermit the Frog). And it had to be family-friendly without feeling so watered down as to be forgettable.

That last bit is the part that makes it a real stand-out. The effects in the seats are genuinely surprising and clever — the shock of getting stung in the back by a hornet, and the funnier gag of having thousands of bugs crawling out of the theater underneath you. And I might feel differently if I were an arachnophobe, but being in a dark, “bug-spray”-filled room as giant black widow spiders dropped from the ceiling was exactly the right combination of fun and scary, making good on the overall premise of the movie that feels as exciting as a thrill ride.

Even its placement was ingenious. The exact same show ran for several years at California Adventure, but it was missing the “silent storytelling” of Animal Kingdom’s queue, which felt like you were gradually shrinking down to the size of a bug, to find thousands of insects living underneath the Tree of Life, performing a non-stop revue of Broadway-style edutainment.

Since a lot of us have seen the show countless times, it’s easy to forget how perfect the performances are. Especially Dave Foley as the well-intentioned master of ceremonies balancing insect evangelism with treating the show as a house of horrors. (“That’s right… acid!”)

The 3D effects are perfectly done as well. My favorite is the sequence where the flying insects turn an ad for an exterminator into a movie screen hovering above the audience, onto which is projected scenes from B-movies about giant insects attacking and terrifying humans. The woman’s hand holding a can of bug spray leaving the movie to come off the top of the screen and then spraying the actual theater full of fog: chef’s kiss perfection.

And of course, my favorite line from the entire show, which appeals equally to my love of clever showmanship and my inner 12-year-old boy. It’s during the finale song, when the bugs are all singing about how much humans and insects rely on each other, and the dung beetles sing:

“If it weren’t for the fact that we like the taste, you’d be out there wallowing in shoulder-high waste!”

Shoulder-high waste! In my opinion, that song is easily one of the top 5 Disney attraction songs.

So I want to be sanguine about the replacement. Again, 27 years is a good run by any measure. A new Zootopia movie will likely bring a lot more traffic to the centerpiece of the park, which can be underused.2 And it’ll likely be an opportunity to bring in some updated technology, represent a wider range of animal life, and appeal more to guests outside of the US.

But it would be criminal if It’s Tough to Be a Bug were remembered only as a show that had fallen out of interest and become dated, because I think it’s near-timeless, and the perfect example of the kind of thing you can literally only do inside a Disney park.

1
Especially compared to how didactic some of the other attractions felt in the early days. ↩︎

2
Until I was working at the park (on an unrealized project), I’d never wandered through the paths around the Tree of Life, which are often empty. ↩︎

1 Especially compared to how didactic some of the other attractions felt in the early days.

2 Until I was working at the park (on an unrealized project), I’d never wandered through the paths around the Tree of Life, which are often empty.