The 3 funniest things in the episode in my opinion were;
When Homer is chasing the car, and it stops, then goes, and stops, and goes.
When Homer is selent for a good 5 seconds while on the stand.
And near the end, where Homer was cheering his Mom on, and then the bus fell into the lake.
I agree, it was an okay episode. I’m just happy theres new ones.
Someone has to do it, especially with an esteemed Doper like **
Guinastasia** asking.
California Adventure, as I understand it, was meant to be an amusement park for people who didn’t want all the overbearing Disneyness of Disney Land. It’s very much a traditional theme park: midway games, a roller coaster, all that kind of stuff. I’m pretty sure there’s a Muppets 3D show there, as well.
The problem is that it’s just, well, lame. The fact that Disneyland is so over-the-top is why people like it, why it’s “the happiest place on earth.” California Adventure might play well in a theme park-deprived place, but when you’ve got Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and Magic Mountain around you, California Adventure just has nothing to offer.
As for the Simpsons episode, I liked it quite a bit, but I think next weeks’ has far more potential. (Lisa episodes have improved in quality and humor as the show has gone on.) That 19th-century woodcut joke, however, had me pissing my pants. 
I stopped watching.
I’m not tired of The Simpsons, I make sure to catch reruns all the time. I just hate the new ones. People say it’s still the best thing on TV today, I disagree. I don’t think the writers are running out of ideas, the few episodes I’ve seen last season had some ideas that, if done right, would have been pretty good.
I think I just hate the family now. I hate Homer because he’s just an asshole. He’s not just a dick because of his ignorance of other people’s feelings, he’s just a dick.
Anyway, I was thinking about watching the first few episode of this season. Looks like I made the right choice, judging by what people have said about both of them.
One thing you have to consider whenever “The Simpsons” takes a shot at Disney is that the show is on Fox. Fox is part of a gigantic multi-media conglomerate called News Corporation that’s owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch. Disney, of course, is also a huge multi-media conglomerate that often goes head-to-head with News Corp in many different areas (e.g., Disney owns ABC which competes directly with Fox). Murdoch is a bit more vindictive than the average media mogul and is thus not above using his numerous outlets in the media to get back at his rivals and foes (e.g., Michael Eisner and Disney, Ted Turner and CNN, the Clintons, Al Franken, etc.). I suspect that the Disney “California Adventure” jab (along with such earlier jokes like the time Homer and Bart passed an Atlanta city limits sign reading “home to Ted Turner’s mood swings”) was probably done to appease the top brass in return for the show’s needling of Fox News on an earlier episode.
I laughed when Homer kicked the tombstone over in frustration, and you could read the name:
Frank “Grimey” Grimes.
Grimey would have wanted it that way.
Somehow I doubt the Simpsons writers care too much about appeasing Rupert Murdoch or anyone else at Fox. As long as The Simpsons are a cash machine, they’re bulletproof.
Coincidentally (or maybe not), they’ve used the same joke before. I can’t remember what episode it was, but I had one of the syndicated episodes on earlier this week, and the idea was that the Simpson family was walking down the street moaning about how bad such-and-such a trip was. “At least it’s better than Disney’s California Adventure” was the line, which sparked agreement from the other family members.
Does anyone remember which episode it was? Like I said, it was definitely an old one, because it struck me as odd that I had just seen the same gag on this season’s premiere. The local station airs two episodes daily, so I usually have them on in the background, and they all sort of blend together after a while.
I liked the premier, though.
I’ll admit I laughed at Homer’s letter to the movie Die Hard: Dear Die Hard: You rock! It was awesome when that guy was on the roof. PS: Do you know Mad Max?
It’s actually IMHO a humorous usage of the Homer-with-subzero-IQ to imagine him writing a letter to a movie, rather than the movie star.