Cars or Planes? Movie Might Instigate a Dogfight at My Home

Disney may not have intended to instigate domestic strife with the release of the trailer for its new animated feature, Planes, but I can tell that the sparks are going to fly around my house. 

There they are, all those pretty little airplanes, soaring in time with the swelling chords of the music while cars and trucks with their anthropomorphized windshield-framed eyes remain solidly earth-bound.

My son, Sam, writes about (ho hum) cars. 

My husband Jim and middle son Sam, are auto writers, gear heads through and through. As I have complained in a previous post, neither one of them can hold a conversation outdoors without stopping mid sentence to make an observation about what's driving by. On the upside, how great is it to be surrounded by people who, when stuck in traffic, view it as an impromptu auto show? 

In Planes, the creators are surely coming from my side of the argument. Sure, in the right car, driving around can be fun. Trains are nice, boats too. But given a choice of any way to get from A to B, who in their right mind won't choose to fly? If you are reading this and silently answering, "me," welcome. Where did you wander in from? 

Flying with air show pilot John Klatt in New York

I've flown upside down. I've flown open cockpit. I've traveled in my friend David's home built AcroSport. I've flown in a coach seat so cramped even my 5 foot 5 inch frame needed to be pried out at the end of the flight and slept in Singapore's fancy lie-flat bed, a seat so comfortable an 18 hour flight wasn't long enough.  I took a shower on an Emirates A380 and have the photo to prove it. No, you can't see it.

I've occupied the jump seat on a Boeing 747 and a DC-3 and filled the left seat on quite a few flight simulators. When I worked in television in Hartford, I spent a lot of time on the station's Bell Jet Ranger and at CBS News, I had a nail-biting, brace yourself, emergency landing with fire trucks and foam on the runway to greet our charter flight. 

Lord knows I've been blessed to experience the highs and the highs because there are just no "lows" in aviation. Nothin' else compares. 

Steve Guenard at the controls of N7995

Not one word of dialogue appears in the two and a half minute trailer of Disney's 3-D movie and yet the whole thrilling, liberating, intoxicating miracle of flight is right there.  So I'm not going to argue the point at home, Disney's done it for me. 

The DC 3 Flagship Detroit at JFK

Disney's Planes Takes Flight on Disney Video