The camera. Wow. This is by far the number one complaint online, and I think the critics have understated how bad it is. It’s one thing to design a third-person game with cameras that transition between focal points. Many games in the survival horror genre have done this, and done it very well. Epic Mickey is pitiful in these areas, frequently leaving navigable areas obscured behind walls and platforms. Unfortunately, the game also has plenty of platforming to do which requires navigating depth in the screen. This might occur in areas where the camera is fixating on something, preventing you from adjusting it to see where you’re going. Other times, the camera simply doesn’t bother to keep you in view as you pass behind walls or ledges.

While the camera is by far the biggest atrocity in Epic Mickey, I think the biggest crime is the implementation of the paint & thinner mechanic that forms the entire basis of the game. The concept is great, and the puzzles that we saw were decent. Unfortunately, the execution of this concept needs a lot of work. Many times you can be standing near something to be painted or thinned, with the reticule right on your target, and paint splatters all over the floor. Or perhaps Mickey turns around and sprays the wall behind the target. Or maybe he paints himself. I don’t know. All I can say is that unless you are in front of the target, facing it, with a stupidly clear view of the target for Mickey, there’s a decent chance he’ll paint something completely different that what you’re aiming at.

One of the biggest shocks when starting out in Epic Mickey is that the game presents itself as an open-world environment. Alas, you quickly discover that certain actions trigger the advancement of the story, moving you on to new areas, never to return to where you were. Linear games aren’t a problem (see the Uncharted series for a great example), however it’s a problem when you’re given a huge area to explore and find hidden elements in when the exit isn’t obviously “the” exit.

Getting back to the subject of platforming, why do most of the spans you have to jump in this game appear to require double-jumping? Apparently somebody thought it was a brilliant idea to make most of the spans every so slightly longer than the distance Mickey can jump. We quickly learned to always double-jump anywhere you might fall to your death. It’s just the safe thing to do. There’s also the matter of what appear to be inconsistencies in the physics – you can double jump huge chasms in some places, and short a minor jump in others.

Speaking of platforming, what’s the deal with invisible walls and gaps? I can’t count how many times we’ve watched Mickey faceplant into nothing, or slip right through what looks like solid ground.

From an interface standpoint, why is character dialog squished into two brief lines of text? There is plenty of screen real estate available to show the entire dialog at once, especially when you consider that the game action stops while character dialog is on-screen. Also, what’s up with some treasure chests requiring you to press the A button? Every other container in the game is opened by performing the spin move next to it. Likewise, why am I prompted to confirm every little action besides walking? (Enter house? Of course! Exit house? Of course!) Later you discover characters that you’ll spontaneously interact with just by being near them. Congratulations, you just made a decision affecting the outcome of the game by virtue of a bad camera angle.

Some reviewers rated Epic Mickey with passable scores on account of the storytelling throughout the game. Unfortunately for us, we were too distracted trying to play the game to experience much of the storyline. I hear it’s pretty good. Maybe we can find a speed run posted online and watch the story one of these days.

Bottom line, Epic Mickey feels like the kind of licensed crap you expect for movie tie-ins and other low-budget cash-ins. I find myself wishing someone at Disney would have playtested this game and pulled the plug. Based on the quality of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, this game should have been turned over to Square Enix to give it the quality treatment it deserves.

Mendenhall Glacier

Here we are, standing at the edge of the lake.

There she blows!

There were plenty of tails on this outing.

Did you know that whales sleep on the surface of the water? When this pair were spotted, they were motionless on the water. Eventually the boat disturbed them and they moved, but we passed by them sleeping again on the way back to the dock. The captain chimed in that during they day it’s not a big deal to avoid them (vessels are not allowed to operate too close to whales), however night-time is a different story. You can’t see them in the dark, and they’re big enough to ruin your night as a boat captain.

Sleeping whales

Two whales surfacing at once

Sea lions hanging out

This huge gathering of sea lions is called a “haul out.” We stopped and drifted in front of them for several minutes to watch them sleeping and playing on the rocks.

Huge Steller sea lion haul-out

Bald Eagles

We were running behind on our whale watching trip, but the captain and some upper-deck passengers spotted a whale behind us as we were speeding back to the docks. He would have kept going, except that the whale started slapping the water. Apparently, it is quite rare for them to spot a whale trying to stun some fish, so the captain stopped and turned us around to watch for a minute. I think he said something to the effect of “we can be late for this.”

There's monkey business afoot.

Although Juneau is an island, it is huge by land area. As you can see, a lot of it is too vertical to be usable, so the cruise docks are stretched out along the channel that passes by downtown Juneau.

This old steam powered snow plow is still operational, though it is generally used for demonstrations since the tourist season normally does not have snow on the tracks.

The railroad was built during the gold rush and was in regular service until the 1990s, when the construction of a parallel highway made it no longer cost effective compared to trucking freight to the Skagway docks. Now it runs seasonally for tourists, although it appears that the current incarnation of the WP&YR company is trying to get back in to regular service again.

Skagway in the distance as we ride up into the mountains.

This is the first stop, where a group of hikers was dropped off. The railroad has some maintenance equipment parked out here as well.

As you climb through the mountains, the vegetation changes dramatically. Down at sea level are thick forests. Here in the middle elevations, the trees start to thin out. At the top of the picture, you can see the highest parts of the forest, where the full grown trees are under four feet tall. It’s bizarre.

We disembarked in Fraser, British Columbia, which is a small town consisting of a guardhouse for the Canadian immigration and customs officials, their barracks, and maintenance buildings. Population 12, from what we heard. The entire town is hidden behind the train car in the next picture.

Our train car parked at our destination, Fraser, British Columbia.

From here, we transferred to a bus, which took us further in to Canada to the Yukon Suspension Bridge. It’s a purpose-built tourist venue, however it is a very well done facility. In addition to the views high above the Tutshi River, it has some museum displays, and a nice relief map of the entire Yukon to put everything in perspective. In these pictures, you can see the class 5 rapids of the Tutshi River as it flows under the bridge. The bridge staff say that they occasionally see a group rafting or kayaking down the river, and frequently not everyone is on-board their vessel. Usually not by choice. The deep canyon pretty much rules out assistance from above; once you’re on the river, you’re committed, and there’s only one way out.

Tutshi River, looking upstream.

Tutshi River, looking downstream

It's a beautiful day! Slightly cool, wide open skies. An anomaly in the local weather.

By way of comparison, the feel above this canyon is completely different from that of Lynn Canyon, which we saw back in Vancouver. While Lynn Canyon was peaceful, with a pleasant background of waterfalls (never mind the abundance of signs warning of extreme danger due to the falls), the Tutshi is a raging monster.

Next up, back to the United States and a study in paranoia. Fraser was a guard house. Coming back to the US, the CBP checkpoint is right on the border and is built up like a small fort. I feel so safe now!

Captain William Moore Bridge

The Klondike Highway

Broadway Street: This is Skagway, Alaska. Adjacent are a couple of residential streets, and that's it.

The entrance to this spectacular piece of Earth is from Holkham Bay.

Nearly every iceberg in the first stretch is dotted with little birds. As we get past the first turn, the bird population disappears. I assume that there is not much for them to eat further up the arm, not to mention the walls are mountains between 4,000 and 7,500 feet tall. See for yourself; if you zoom in really close in Google maps, the terrain view shows elevation lines.

Throughout Tracy Arm are gorges and waterfalls like these from the melting snow.

Almost there!

After about three hours of very slow and deliberate navigation through the fjord, the forestry service official on-board stopped our progress. Apparently there is a seal population at the base of the glacier, and ships are not permitted to get too close to avoid disturbing their nests. Fortunately, we were close enough to see around the corner to the end of the glacier, even though I coud not see the seals that were keeping us at bay.

This is the maximum zoom for our camera. All of the glaciers we saw had this same blue hue.

While we were stopped at the glacier, we saw a number a sea lions climbing around on the icebergs.

On our way back down to our room, we posed for a picture with Pluto.

This is one of the wider spots near the end of Tracy Arm. There is a sea lion on one of the icebergs.

All dressed up for dinner

Inside Passage, BC, Canada

What are you?

Inside Passage, BC, Canada

Enjoy the peaceful journey below:

Disney Wonder, stateroom 6528

Vancouver's skyline as we sail away

Floatplane threading the needle between the Carnival ship ahead of us and the Disney Wonder. Did I mention this is a busy harbor yesterday?

Modern-looking totem watching the harbor entrace on the shore of North Vancouver.

A bunny!

More views of the Vancouver from the Canada Place pier:

Japadogs: Okonomi (top), Kobe (bottom)

2010 Olympic Cauldron

As we walked around the harbor, we watched perhaps a dozen or so floatplanes take off and land from the old terminal next to the convention center. Behind the convention center is a new terminal under construction, with a number of signs along the walking path describing how this will be the newest, greenest, safest, and a few other superlatives, floatplane terminal in the world. They serve a ton of flights to and from Alaska. We saw a number of these planes later during our cruise, running the passages between the mountains to get to and from the various coastal towns. The harbor itself is a busy place, with planes buzzing around in and over the water, ships underway from the industrial ports, recreational boats, and the Seabus ferry all navigating around each other.

Speaking of the Seabus, it is a large pedestrian ferry that carries people from the Vancouver waterfront station adjacent to the convention center, across to the major transit hub in North Vancouver. We crossed and connected to the local bus that runs up to the Lynn Canyon park. It’s claim to fame is the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge, which according to most reviews and locals, is a better sight than the commercial tourist trap at the Capilano suspension bridge, crossing another canyon located a mile or two west of Lynn Canyon. As an added bonus, the Lynn Canyon park is free admission!

At the trailhead is a very nice cafe, serving real food and snacks. It also has an observation level, which we didn’t go up to. Across from the cafe is a picnic area with a big map, educational displays, and safety displays. They are very emphatic that you need to stay on the paths and behind any fences. There are several horror stories on the sign of people doing stupid things and dying because of it in this canyon. One of them was some guy that got trapped in the pool under a waterfall, and according to the sign, couldn’t be retrieved, not rescued, for several days until the flow let up. It didn’t have a picture to show what was left of the guy after churning against the rocks all that time.

Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge

The suspension bridge is modern and sturdy. Even with big crowds and kids hopping across, it’s pretty stable. The view is fabulous (see below), and everywhere in the park you can hear the sound of rushing water across the many waterfalls in the canyon.

I'm not dead!

Stream crossing

The southern end of the loop we took crossed back over the main creek on a much narrower bridge closer to the ground. While not as dramatic as the suspension bridge high in the air, the landscape here was more interesting. The water flows down into this large pool on one side of the bridge and out through more rapids on the other side.

By the time we finished wandering around Lynn Canyon and hitched a ride on the bus, seabus, and skytrain over to Chinatown, it was already in to the evening hours. Everything had closed up shop early due to the holiday, so we couldn’t see much beyond a bunch of non-English storefronts.

Outside the gelato shop, this plant was growing out of the dock on Granville Island.

Dinner was at Guu, a brief walk behind our hotel. It’s a cross between a busy diner and a Japanese restaurant — the menu is completely Asian, but the place is loud, incredibly busy, and very good. It’s also not for boring old American palates; picky eaters need not apply here. The interior of this location is a long, narrow area with an open kitchen on one side. We were seated at the kitchen bar, and had a great view of the chefs cooking up a storm. The restaurant was packed the whole time we were there, so we were able to get a good look at all the food being served. Everything looked great.