Disney Fan Ramblings

A January without posts is like...

2012-01-30T11:30:00.000-08:00

...well, like any other month, I guess. But I couldn't let it get past me.

I had a bit of a setback late last month. I fell. Broke my ankle in multiple spots. Now I have lots of metal in there. My buddy says that now I get to look forward to the body cavity searches when I fly. I hope not.

Anyway, I just wanted to say, before the month ends, that DFR has not gone dark. I have a thought or two for posts. (Though, that's about it...literally...) I was going to make some comments on the fact that there are NO Disney animated films for Oscars this year. Not even the Pixar release Cars 2. Is that fair? I suppose. Perhaps I'll get to do an entry on the topic before the Academy Awards near the end of February.

But for now I think I'll just concentrate on getting my ankle better and getting back on my feet. Again, literally...

*****

Disney Film: Experiencing TOY STORY (the first) again

2011-12-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

Last night, the Disney channel was showing Toy Story in prime time, and when I got home from work, my boys were planted in front of the TV watching intently. I sat down across from my wife at the island in the kitchen, and I noticed that she continually shifted her attention to the action on the screen.

Finally I sat down between the boys and let myself get pulled into the movie again. It is far from my first time watching it, and it is not my kids' first time either. But the film is simply entrancing. It grabs you and you can't not watch!

I came in too close to the end, really. Buzz and Woody were in Sid's room, trying to escape before he awoke. Then there is the scene where the toys break the rules, and then the frantic chase to get onto the moving truck. Finally, the happy ending and the arrival of the puppy.

If I were to relate the story to someone totally unfamiliar with the movie, they'd probably say, "well, that's a nice story" or something like that. But the movie transcends the simplicity of the tale. It becomes something so much more, even today, after seeing Pixar's digital magic worked over and over, and seeing digital special effects that blow your mind! When it came out, the technology to create such a film was new, but Pixar infused it with something more than tech savvy - they gave it heart - the same heart that we see in so many Disney releases.

*****

Disney Film: The Muppets

2011-12-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

I took my kids to see The Muppets last Friday night. I wasn't planning to go; the idea of seeing the Muppets wasn't on the top of my wishlist. I don't think of Muppets and think "Christmas must-see".

But I read the blog entry at FutureProbe, where it was given a fairly enthusiastic thumbs-up, and my kids really were pretty excited about seeing it, so we picked that one over Arthur, Hugo and Puss In Boots>.

I'm glad we saw it. It was a lot of fun. Jokes aimed high and low; I found myself laughing at stuff and my kids would look at me like, "what was funny about that?" Several times. On the other hand, they laughed hard at a few things that, well, that just brought a smile to my face, as much for their reaction as to the onscreen joke. (Don't ask me what these were. I don't remember anymore.)

It isn't high concept stuff. It was just a fun little story about trying to save the Muppets Studio from a bad guy. Reminded me a little of The Blues Brothers with the whole "we're getting the band back together", needing to raise money quick through the use of a "show". I wonder if it has anything to do with Frank Oz's involvement in the original Muppets show and with the Blues Brothers movie?

I don't put this up there with the stuff we get from Pixar routinely, or even most of the stuff we've gotten from Disney Animation, but it was a good, fun movie, and I certainly didn't feel like I wasted our money on it! (In other words, it was worth seeing in the theater.)

*****

Blog highlight from 2011...

2011-11-30T15:09:00.000-08:00

...for me, at least.

You like to know if someone is reading your entries as a blog writer, at least I do. So comments are always appreciated. When I don't get any comments, I confess I get sort of disillusioned with blogging. Or maybe "disinterested" is a better word.

So for me, the highlight of my blogging for this year came in January! In this post, titled Why Story Is King, I wrote about my new (at the time) purchase of Steve Alcorn's book titled Theme Park Design, specifically a chapter about the use of story in theme parks. And lo and behold, who should comment but Steve Alcorn!

I have to say, it made me feel really good to hear from the author, to know that he read what I wrote, and he even had a little bit of input. It's the kind of thing that keeps me interested. That keeps me writing this blog and not giving up on it.

That, for me, was the highlight of 2011, at least with respect to this blog. (Plenty of other higher-lights in other areas...) Good thing it came early in the year. Who knows what I would have done if it hadn't come? :-)

*****

Disney Vacation: How Long?

2011-11-11T10:24:00.001-08:00

A while back I read a post discussing the number of parks, or perhaps the call for a fifth gate, at WDW. It may have been at FutureProbe, or somewhere else. (But I think it was at FutureProbe.) The point was that Disney expanded with the idea of getting visitors to extend their stays from one week to maybe 10 days or two weeks, spending money at the resorts, at the parks, at Disney stores and at Disney restaurants.

If it had worked it would have put a lot of extra money in the Disney coffers. But it didn't. People didn't extend their stays. They just spent less days at a particular park in favor of another park.

But I wonder.

Does this "length of stay" statistic (which I've personally never seen but which I believe is out there somewhere) tell the whole story? I mean, the truth of it is that Americans don't vacation that way. Ten days is probably the longest we go for. Two weeks, maybe, if it's somewhere extraordinary. Perhaps Hawaii or Europe, or an African safari or whatever. But not for a domestic vacation. Probably not to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean either. Ten days is probably the max. More likely most are going to be 7 or 8 nights.

I don't know what the average is for weeks of paid vacation in the United States. I'd guess it's probably around 2 weeks. Maybe 3 weeks. Not too many of us get 5 or 6 weeks off paid each year. So, figure one of those weeks gets spent at Disney for your average Disney-phile. The question becomes then, where are they going to spend the other week? Maybe a resort on a lake. Maybe at a relative's home in Phoenix, or in the Ozarks Mountains in Missouri.

Any way to get them to spend their second week at Disney?

Well, maybe not, if there isn't much "new" to see. You've already gone on Space Mountain, Pirates, Test Track, Everest, Rock'n'Roller Coaster, Tower of Terror, Haunted Mansion, it's a small world, and Splash Mountain. Multiple times. You even got on Soarin' twice and Toy Story Mania once. So what's to go back for? If it's thrill rides you like, you can go a lot closer to home and not have to pay for lodging and air fare or travel expenses.

Maybe you suggest that people should come back just to "experience the magic". Sit in the parks, take in the ambiance. To this I say, wishful thinking. When you've only got a week or two weeks, many families will choose to do as much as they can during that time frame. Sit on a bench? Fight crowds again? There's no "magic" in the mosh pits that are also known as Disney's park concourses.

To me, the way to make people spend more of their yearly allotment of vacation time at a Disney park would be to make it a better experience. Don't keep raising fees in order to raise revenue. Don't make that steak dinner at Le Cellier two dollars more and/or give the diner less food for the price. Don't give me less services at a hotel but charge me more. Don't give me a less comfortable experience at a park, whether it be more crowds or longer wait times, and charge me more for it. Those are not the ways to win the hearts of potential Disney-philes.

Give me more for my money. Give me a dinner that rivals the best restaurants in the country. Give me more and better attractions. Make my stay at your resorts even more comfortable, more enjoyable. That's how you are going to get me to spend even more time at Disney in a given year.

To me, worrying about whether a guest stays at a resort for 7 or 8 nights, or ten or twelve nights per stay is worrying about the wrong question. The right question is "how can we get our customers to spend even more time on our property in the course of a year?" There is plenty to do in Orlando. Right now, we don't even have to patronize Disney parks or restaurants even if we stay on Disney property. Give us a reason to stay on property. Give us new experiences and enhanced old experiences.

*****

Happy 3rd Birthday to DFR!

2011-11-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

Hey, I missed it again. Seems like a yearly thing.

I've been writing this blog for 3 years and one month now. I started it on October 9, 2008, and here it is, November 9, 2011.

Lately I've fallen into a period where I don't have much Disney stuff to write about. But I'm not abandoning the blog - just waiting for Disney topics to force themselves into my conscience again. They will.

Meantime, I've been mostly interested in self-publishing. I love to write, and I've even finished a few projects - one short-ish mystery novel, several short stories and a couple longer pieces in the 10-25K range. I have about four or five other stories on the burner, started, at various lengths, and I keep working on them. Some day I hope to put up links here and other places to a place where one can purchase my fiction, at least in electronic format.

But I've been reading a lot of author blogs, mostly of the independent and self-publishing variety, which provide encouragement and advice. And writing. Just not writing this (or my Chitown Sports Ramblings) blog...

*****

Samland's book...

2011-11-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

I said before that I would post the links to purchase Sam Gennawey's book, Walt and the Promise of Progress City, but I haven't. So here they are now...

The paperback version...

The Kindle version...

Go get it!!!

*****

Time and Effort

2011-10-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

I was reading a couple of other blog entries this morning on the Disney blogs that are regular stops for me, and one of them, on The World According To Jack, talked about how he goes about doing a blog entry. I have to admit that I was amazed. It's more like journalism than what I think of as "blogging". He goes into some level of detail about the cameras he uses for his original photography, lenses, video cameras, photo editing software, and word processing software.

Another blog I read, Futureprobe, often makes an offhand comment in the course of the blog about upcoming entries that he is preparing, leading me to believe that the author of that blog puts a lot of time and research into his entries. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Disney bloggers write with this level of dedication.

But it isn't my style here. As my readers (being optimistic here on using the plural) can probably tell, most of my entries are the result of some thought or idea flinging itself into my face and into my consciousness, and if I have an opinion or another take on the idea or whatever, I bang out a blog entry in about 15 or 20 minutes. Sometimes longer if I have to get to a patient. But my total time writing it (first draft is what gets posted, usually) probably averages around that range. For example, it came to me as I was watching the news coverage of Steve Jobs' demise that he was more like Walt Disney than he was like the personages that the news commentators were comparing him to (Albert Einstein? Really?). So I thought about the comparison a bit, and came in to work the next morning, and banged out that blog entry between patients. Probably 10 minutes to write it.

I'm going on about 10 minutes for this one. What do you think? :-)

*****

Steve Jobs: The Walt Disney of Technology

2011-10-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

As everyone probably knows, Steve Jobs passed away yesterday, October 5th, 2011, at the age of 56. He's been battling cancer for at least 10 years, and though I haven't seen anything yet about the exact cause of his death (not because it isn't out there, I just haven't had time to look that much), I'd assume it was cancer-related.

I have read commentaries and seen news reports suggesting that Jobs is the Einstein of his generation. I don't know. There are different types of genius. Einstein was a genius with physics. He could see through the equations to the extension of our reality that we call "special relativity" today. But I don't really think he was a genius in terms of people skills.

A more apt comparison is probably to the 'raison d'etre' for my and many other blogs, Walt Disney himself. Walt was a genius, not because of his great artistic skills, not because of his intellect in academics, but because of his feel for what people wanted. Walt gave people animated feature films when the prevailing wisdom held that no one would ever go sit through a cartoon of that length. Then he built these things called "theme parks" that the experts felt would never succeed. They did succeed, beyond anyone's wildest expectations, because of Walt's special genius - a gift for knowing what people liked and wanted.

Steve Jobs had this same type of genius. He didn't invent the first Apple computer; according to what I've heard, Steve Wozniak was the one who built it. He didn't invent mp3 players, or cell phones, or tablet computers. But his genius was in recognizing the potential of these devices, and how they would relate to what people actually wanted and needed. He led in shaping the direction of these implements, and others have followed, but Steve Jobs' genius has placed Apple firmly at the forefront of their development, a step ahead of their competitors.

He also exhibited his genius when he saw Pixar for what it could be. George Lucas HAD Pixar in his pocket, but didn't recognize the potential there. Jobs did. Jobs let those boys work in the direction they wanted to go, recognizing the quality of what they were doing, and gave them enough time to succeed beyond their wildest expectations - eventually being bought by Disney and making Steve Jobs one of Disney's largest (if not THE largest) shareholders.

To Steve Jobs, the Walt Disney of Technology and one of those rare folks who are legitimately known as a genius, rest in peace.

*****

Disney Parks: DAK getting an added land...

2011-09-29T09:49:00.001-07:00

If the blog reports are true (I've read it in several locations now, including FutureProbe and Voyages Extraordinaires), Disney's Animal Kingdom is adding a whole other land, to be based on the movie Avatar. Reactions appear to be mixed.

The most common objection seems to be that Disney is not trusting enough in its own properties and its Imagineers to come up with something interesting enough to base an entire land on. Instead, they are "copying" off Universal and licensing a franchise to create content for their park. I suppose there is something to this. Not so much the properties part, because, well, what does Disney have as far as film that would fit with an entire land in the Animal Kingdom? I'm not sure; perhaps someone has some ideas. I understand the objection, but I don't know what the content that they already own that they're supposed to use is.

The second part is that the Imagineers could come up with something more engrossing than Avatar. This is a stronger objection, in my view. The Imagineers have proven themselves over and over again. Could they, on their own, have come up with a Beastly Kingdom conceptual overlay, for example, that would work better than Avatar? It's likely they could.

It does seem that Robert Iger likes acquiring properties rather than developing them, so the licensing of Pandora fits in with his modus operandi. Then there's cost. I'd guess that, since this story and theme have been pretty well developed for the film, perhaps it is somewhat cheaper to turn it into a land. Perhaps it's even significantly cheaper. I don't know. But it does take out the beginning stages of development, with all the failed ideas and directions, and sets the Imagineers firmly on their path. And there is no reason that they cannot shine in what they finally conceptualize and develop for the theme park land.

In the end, I don't care. This development addresses some significant problems that Disney has. They need something more at this park, and they need something to add capacity to the parks at the resort, on a whole. A while back I posted an entry wishing for a fifth gate, and in the comments it was suggested that they can't (or won't) maintain what's already there, and that what they really need is to turn DAK and DHS into something closer to a full day park.

This development may just do that for Disney's Animal Kingdom.

*****

Low Season?

2011-09-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the possibility of going back to Disney, probably sometime after the new Fantasyland opens in the Magic Kingdom, and the major negative of a Disney visit are the crowds. Elbowing your way through a crowded concourse in the heat is not that much fun, and waiting in line for as much as an hour or 75 minutes to get on a ride is not the highest, best use of my limited vacation hours in my opinion. If I was someone who had an annual pass and lived close, I might not mind the waits as much; I wouldn't mind experiencing the queues at, say, Toy Story Mania, or Big Thunder Mountain or the Jungle Cruise, or Everest or Mission:Space or Test Track. All good queues, by all accounts. But not the way I want to spend my handful of vacationing hours.

Is there a "low season' anymore at Disney World? I've been to the park at the end of September, a couple times in the middle of October, once over Thanksgiving (last year), once in the middle of January around MLK Day, and once in early June. There were two days I remember light crowds: Thanksgiving Day, and the day after Hurricane Jean struck in 2004 (I think it was). Every other time we've been there, it's been uncomfortably crowded at all the parks.

It was similarly crowded at Universal's Islands of Adventure last November, and it is always very crowded at Six Flags Great America during their limited summer months. The only park I've been to where it really wasn't crowded at all was Michigan's Adventure, on opening weekend of the last two years (Memorial Day weekend). (Later in the summer, when we visited Michigan's Adventure once in the middle of August, it was extremely crowded.) I will suggest that Disney's California Adventure over Easter Break was not as crowded as Disneyland or as any Magic Kingdom park, though it wasn't exactly what I'd call "empty" either, on our two visits to it.

Crowds are not fun. If I want to play in a mosh pit, I'll go to a punk rock concert! I want a modicum of personal space. I want to see a clear path ahead of me not jammed by people from the left of the concourse to the right, all wanting to get to the same somewheres. For me, it's the major negative about a Disney experience. I would hope they can figure out a way to make it less of a negative at some point...

*****

The Opening Sequence...

2011-09-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Sam Gennaway at Samland (too lazy to put this link in, sorry) had a post that caught my interest a short time ago, titled The Magic Kingdom: A Grand Entrance> In it he talks about the approach to the Magic Kingdom from the guest's perspective, and the way that Walt Disney and the Imagineers wanted to control the experience. Sam also talks about the "storyboarding" of the event, as many of the Imagineers came from a film background. So it was no surprise that the experience has parallels to the opening sequences from a film.

I never really thought about the approach to the Magic Kingdom, or to any Disney park, from this exact perspective, but I think it can apply to every park. Think about an opening montage of a film, then compare it to the "framed" view from, say, the monorail coming up on Epcot. You get your wide shot, narrowing in focus as we approach the park, the Sphere getting larger and larger, until finally it disappears out of the shot as we loop around FutureWorld, and again the wide shot shows the American Adventure in the distance, teasing us with the view for a few seconds until we loop back around and exit the monorail. The Sphere looms now, and as we pass through the entryway we have a still shot of the icon. As we walk toward it, it gets larger and larger, until we are in its shadow, and now we're part of the story.

It works for Animal Kingdom, too, as you drive in. You see the huge Tree of Life in the distance (the wide opening shot) then it disappears behind the foliage as you approach the gates. Finally you (the camera) are passing through the lush jungle, animals on either side of you, exploring a bit along the way, until you burst into the clearing, and there it is, a closer "wide" shot, now looking absolutely huge. And you are into the story.

I don't know film terminology, I am not from a film background. Yet I love watching movies, and I find this comparison to be almost inspiring. It's a whole other way of experiencing the park as I approach it.

Filmmakers build excitement and suspense, setting up the entire story through the use of their opening montages; Disney Imagineers do much the same thing. I'm looking forward to visiting in the future, to consider my approaches to the parks in these terms. I'm also going to think about this as I continue to armchair imagineer my own parks...

Thanks, Sam, for a Disney enthusiasm boost.

*****

Louis Prima and The Jungle Book

2011-08-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

I don't know what possessed me, but I typed in Louis Prima into Google and found this video:

Louis Prima I Wanna Be Like You

I don't know much about Louis Prima other than that he voiced the King Ape in Jungle Book. This is a short, very interesting clip of Prima doing part of the song, along with some documentary-style narration. Don't know where it comes from originally.

Here's the scene from Jungle Book.

Take a look if you'd like.

*****

Disney Books: Forthcoming Sam Gennawey book

2011-08-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

Saw a blog post at Imagineering, then at SamLand's Disney Adventures:

Sam Gennawey is publishing a book called Walt and the Promise of Progress City. The book will be published by Ayefour Publishing, who also published Project Future by Chad Emerson and two other books.

The link on the book refers to the blog post announcing the upcoming release, not a link to Amazon or anywhere that you can buy the book. But I'll post such a link when the book is released and avaliable for purchase. And I'll be buying it.

Sam's website SamLand has many interesting articles, often written from the perpsective of an urban planner. If I was designing a theme park complex, I'd hire Sam. (Fat chance of that, though...)

Check it out if you're so inclined...

*****

If I were in charge of Disney...

2011-08-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I could find tons of stuff to do. As long as I didn't have to pay attention to the bottom line too much.

But one thing I think I would do if I had any say in the doings of Disney would be to open a DVC resort in the Wisconsin Dells.

The Dells, if you don't know, is billed as the "Waterpark Capital of the World". There is a lot to do there, even if some of it is fairly "cheesy" type stuff. You can take a boat ride on the Wisconsin River and explore the natural dells, which the town takes its name from. You can take a "duck" ride, which is an amphibious craft from WWII that drives on roads and takes a trip down the river, and through Lake Delton also. You can go to see Rick Wilcox's magic show, or Tommy Bartlett's Water Show. You can go to Mt Olympus Water- and Theme Park, or a couple of other water/theme parks. You can visit haunted houses, an upside down White House ('Top Secret'), drive go-karts, play mini-golf, or just hang out at your hotel and play at its water parks. Plus there are some cheesier attractions like Ripley's Believe-it-or-Not, a 4D motion theater, laser tag and Wizard Quest (might not be as cheesy as some of the others).

We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge. Our room had a simulated 'cabin' in it with bunk beds and a single bed. We also had a queen sized bed with a pull out sleeper. The Lodge has a couple of restaurants, a big arcade, a very nice animatronic display in the lobby where they do "story time" every night, and of course, the water parks, both incoor and outdoor. Then there is the attached three story Magiquest building, where kids can play for their entire visit, for one admission at the beginning of the stay.

As I was sitting there watching my kids enjoy the water parks at our hotel, I couldn't help but think that it would be a great place for DVC to expand to. Right now, we have a slew of DVC resorts in Florida, one in South Carolina, one in California, and one opening very soon (maybe it's open!) in Hawaii. For a midwestern Disney fan, they all have something in common: a plane trip. Oh, I know that lots of Chicagoans drive to Florida routinely, but for many of us, when you have a week off, you want to get there quickly. With Disney, the journey is not part of the attraction. The destination is.

If Disney were to open a DVC resort in that area, I believe we would patronize it quite a bit. We might even buy some points there. It's the type of place we could spend a long weekend at, or even on occasion stay for longer. (Though that might be the limiting factor - I don't think the Dells get a lot of full-week visitors.) The Great Wolf Lodge sells its own time-shares, as do a couple other big resorts (like the Wilderness Lodge). Why couldn't Disney get into the act in this family friendly tourist destination?

If I were Disney, I'd buy one of the existing resorts (there's a Polynesian Village and Water Park, for example), close it for a year, remodel the heck out of it, and turn it into a Disney resort! The Polynesian, for example, could maybe be modeled on Disney's Polynesian Resort at WDW, but with a huge water park, part of which is alreayd there. Then I'd start selling DVC memberships. A lot of midwesterners who don't see a point to buying DVC might change their minds if there was something considerably closer to home besides the WDW, DL and three other DVC resort destinations.

*****

Frontiers...

2011-08-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

It seems when one reads the various blogs about Disney, there is a lot of commentary on two places: EPCOT and Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom or Disneyland. I would say this is probably because these are the areas that inspire - they are perhaps the best examples of the high-level imagineering that goes on when developing a theme park. When you talk to a Disney fan, it seems that often they came by their passion by visiting EPCOT as a child or a teen. Before that, it was probably one of the Tomorrowlands that inspired fans.

I've read a lot of "armchair imagineering" that reimagines the futuristic elements of Disney's park offerings, and it seems a common complaint is that they've become somewhat stale in their treatment of the futuristic themes. Or watered down, often, with attractions that are more for thrills or for character tie-ins than for any link to the future. I've done a bit of armchair imagineering myself back when I started this blog.

Anyway, it got me thinking. The future is about exploring new frontiers. Whether we humans are actually getting anywhere is debatable, but we certainly spend enough imagination thinking about the future. So what are those frontiers now?

Space, of course, remains a major frontier, one we've just barely touched on exploring. EPCOT touches on this frontier with the MISSION: SPACE attraction, and Tomorrowland is supposed to be all about a future where space travel is commonplace. It's a theme that is rich with possibilities. Science fiction writers still use human expansion into space as a major theme for their works.

Less popular, perhaps, but still a mystery to much of humanity, the oceans are another frontier. This environment offers challenges almost as harsh as exploration of space offers, and we know little about some parts of the deep oceans, including what sorts of creatures live there. When I think of the oceans, I always think of James Cameron's movie THE ABYSS. Other movies and books have dealt with the oceans as a frontier for our exploration also, but that's the one that jumps out at me.

A third frontier is the area under our feet. JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is of course the book and movie that jumps out at me. The world of caves and subterranean environment is a fascinating milieu, and we humans have often looked downward in our expansion efforts. Subways, basements, defensive installations, cave exploration and catacombs and graves are all ways we expand and utilize the underground frontier.

Does anyone have any other frontiers?

Do any of these frontiers excite you more than another?

*****

WDW - A Unique Place

2011-08-04T13:19:00.001-07:00

I was reading the recent blog entry over at The World According To Jack with the sure-to-draw-interest title Should The City Of EPCOT Have Been Built?. It's an interesting question that is sure to bring out opinions, and judging by the fact that there are something like 40 comments (too many for me to read in the limited time I had), it is succeeding.

Jack's position seems to be that he'd rather have what Walt Disney World has become over the years, a vacation mecca with four parks, two water parks, golf courses, other attractions, and tons of really well done resorts. He points out, correctly I think, that if it had been built, we would likely not have the other three parks and many of the other things that make it into a vacation destination. We might well have something more like Disneyland Resort in California, and while that's a really nice place, it isn't a destination by itself.

It made me think: How unique IS WDW? The answer seems to be, pretty darned unique. There really is nothing like it in the world, as far as I know. Universal's Orlando resort is more like DLR in California. No Six Flags or Cedar Fair park aspires to be what WDW has successfully become.

And what it is, is a self contained vacation destination in and of itself. You do not have to leave the grounds for days, if you choose not to. I know, I wrote in my last post that I thought a fifth gate would be a good idea to make the experience better, fresher, newer, and less crowded (perhaps). But we've gone to WDW multiple times in the last 6 or 7 years, and except for the first time when we also had a convention to attend, we've stayed on property for all 7 days of each visit. On our last visit we ventured off the property to go to Universal Studios for two days, and are likely to do so in the future. But we return for sleeping, eating, and relaxing. (Not that we do much relaxing when on our vacations.)

How come it is so unique? Why hasn't anyone else tried to copy the model? Somewhere, where land is relatively cheap, why doesn't a big company buy up a large amount of it and build something on a similar scale? Do they feel there wouldn't be a market for something of that nature? That they couldn't charge enough to cover costs? To be profitable?

The Disney Company is a mega-corporation, with fingers in a lot of pies. Revenue streams in from many sources. But by most accounts, it seems that the parks are always profitable for Disney.

In any case, I for one am glad it is there in the form it is today.

*****

What does Market Research Say about WDW?

2011-07-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

I'm asking. I really don't know. Over the years there have been plenty of blog entries discussing the status of WDW. We all know what's there: Four theme parks, two mini-golf courses, a couple of regular golf courses, two good water parks, their Wide World of Sports, the Richard Petty Driving Experience, and a retail center called Downtown Disney. Oh, yeah. And a WHOLE bunch of resort hotels of varying quality (Deluxe to Value Resorts).

I don't know what the occupancy numbers show, but from what I recall, it's pretty high for all the resorts. There are always plenty of people who want to visit the parks or the water parks. Their resorts probably can't house them all. Plenty of them stay nearby in hotels just off the Disney acreage.

Anymore, it seems like there really isn't much of a "slow" season. The parks are always jammed with people. Today, July 25th at 2 pm EDT, Space Mountain has a 55 minute wait, according to my iPhone app. Splash Mountain has a 65 minute wait, and Pirates and Haunted Mansion have only a 30 minute wait. Peter Pan's flight has a 65 minute wait, and BTMR has a 45 minute wait.

Over at Epcot, Soarin' has a 65 minute wait and Test Track has a 45 minute wait. At DHS, Toy Story Mania! has a 75 minute wait, and Star Tours has a 55 minute wait. Rock'n'Roller Coaster has a 65 minute wait, and ToT has a 35 minute wait. At Animal Kingdom, Everest has a 65 minute wait, kali River Rapids has a 70 minute wait. For som reason, the Safari has only a 15 minute wait, but Dinosaur has a 40 minute wait. (So I suppose it's possible that these times aren't totally accurate...)

So could they support a fifth gate? More to the point, would it increase revenues? Well, they CERTAINLY could support a fifth gate with attendance. The question is where do the people come from? Would a fifth park simply remove people from the walkways of the other four parks? Or does it bring in more business and maybe keep people away from the other Orlando attractions?

On our last visit to WDW, we stayed on Disney property for 7 nights. Usually we'd buy a 7 day pass to Disney and spend all of our time at their parks. But last time we bought the five day pass and spent two days over at Universal. We've talked about perhaps visiting Universal again, along with maybe Busch Gardens and/or Sea World. My younger son expressed an interest in going to the Legoland that opened in the vicinity.

Why this apparent willingness to go elsewhere than Disney? Because of a couple things. They've been to Disney a handful of times in the last several years. Not as much as some, but a lot more than most of their friends and classmates. They have ridden everything. They have their favorites, but they've done them enough that they aren't crying to do them again.

The other thing that none of us like is the fact that we always have to fight crowds and stand in long lines to get anywhere, seemingly. The parks are just TOO crowded. Doesn't anyone else feel this way?

So to sum up: Nothing much new at Disney, and too crowded and too much time spent in long lines.

A fifth gate would perhaps help on both of these counts.

Writing only from my own experience, I can assure you (and Disney) that we're likely to visit MORE if there is a fifth gate. And if the crowds are lighter, we'll have a much better time and that will also likely lead to increased time spent at Disney when we're in Orlando. We're DVC members, and so we are sort of roped into staying at DVC properties at least once a year or so. But we don't have to stay on Disney property - there's plenty within a short drive of the area.

I know it's not in the cards; the possibility of Disney spending the money to build a fifth gate is virtually nil at this time, but I for one would be thrilled if they would apply that Disney Imagineering to another really fun attraction at WDW - another full sized theme park.

*****

Disney Film: CARS 2

2011-07-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

We made it to the theater to see Cars 2 in 2D over the weekend, and as usual, Pixar produces a winner. Lots of laughs, good plot, and great animation. The scenes from Europe (Paris and Rome) made us want to book our flights to that destination right now!

All of the familiar voices returned, as far as I could tell, to voice their characters again, except, of course, the departed Paul Newman, who voiced Doc Hudson. I was happy to see the way they handled the character - with respect and reverence, almost, and I knew it was an homage to the incredible actor who voiced Doc. Michael Caine was perfect as the British super-spy car Finn McMissile.

I can't say I loved it as much as I loved the original Cars movie, which almost took me by surprise with how good it was. That was back when I was still capable of doubting Pixar, and now I just say "it'll be a good one," when I hear they have a new release coming down the pipe.

It's perhaps a bit of a departure for Pixar as they tackle the classic spy story in their own way, and perhaps this story is a bit more of a Dreamworks-style "ensemble" movie and less a buddy movie than some of their previous outings. Mater takes the lead in this one, with Lightning McQueen being a bit of a supporting character, as so many characters play important parts in the story. Lightning, Finn, Holly and the rest of the gang all are important to Mater's adventure. It's sort of like one of the shorts rather than a typical Pixar movie.

Still, a very enjoyable box office experience.

*****

A Whole Month!

2011-06-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

I hate to go an entire month without making an entry on the Disney Fan Ramblings blog, yet here it is, June 29, and I have yet to say anything.

Mostly that's simply because I don't have anything to say. Not about Disney, anyway. No trips are planned, no movies were watched, no new books have been read. Many of the blogs I follow haven't had too many updates, and what updates there have been have not inspired me to write my own entries about issues they might be addressing.

My main area of interest in Disney has always been the parks - how they developed them, what makes them special, the history behind them, and their future. Without a trip scheduled, or even in the foreseeable future, it's hard for me to make comments. I don't have a stash of photos to post, nor do I consider myself any sort of expert on all the details. So it's been pretty dry, as far as inspiration for subjects to blog about.

I also love the animated features, and Cars 2 is out, so I'll likely have something to write about soon. We also hope to get to see Kung Fu Panda 2 at some point soon, so I can perhaps write on that one as well. And of course, the next installment of Harry Potter is coming up soon.

Look for a little more in terms of content here in the near future. I am not promising it, but I'm hopeful...

*****

Index Post

2011-05-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

Now that the Bulls have lost (see my post at Chitown Sports Ramblings if you're interested in my feelings on that last game) I turn my attentions to the Cubs and maybe a little back to Disney.

Thought I'd put up an "Index" post. I'm not going to include the links, because I don't have time to do all of them, but I'll put up the months and if you want to read my thoughts on the subjects, click the year and month over to the left and click on the post. They're mostly titled pretty clearly.

Disney Books

The Kingdom Keepers 3 - March 2011
Theme Park Design by Steve Alcorn - January 2011
Walt Disney World: Then Now and Forever - December 2010
The Pixar Touch - October 2010
The Imagineering Field Guide/Disney's Hollywood Studios - August 2010
Project Future - July 2010
The Hidden Magic of Walt Disney World - June 2010
Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince by Marc Elliot - March 2010
Kingdom Keepers 1 and 2 - November 2009
Team Rodent September 2009
The Mouse That Roared - September 2009
Down And Out In The Magic Kingdomby Cory Doctorow - August 2009

Disney Movies
The Sword In The Stone - May 2011
The Sorcerer's Apprentice - March 2011
Alice In Wonderland - March 2011 (live action version)
Tangled - January 2011
Tron: Legacy - December 2010
Toy Story 2 - October 2010
Toy Story 3 - July 2010
Prince Of Persia - June 2010
The Princess and the Frog - December 2009
Up - June 2009
Pinocchio - May 2009
Bedtime Stories - January 2009
Bolt - December 2008
Presto! - December 2008

Check 'em out if you're so inclined!

******

Disney Film: THE SWORD IN THE STONE

2011-05-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to watching the animated film, THE SWORD IN THE STONE, yesterday. At 79 minutes, it didn't take an enormous committment of time.

I don't know how Disney film critics and historians view this film, but I'd guess they would see it as a fairly minor addition to the catalog. It was a good, but not great, movie, and was fun to watch. The songs seemed a bit forced and not really all that memorable. The animation was pretty basic but well done.

I believe it's based loosely on T.H. White's The Once And Future King, though they just say "based on the story by T.H. White" in the credits. In this one, Arthur, known as Wart, is a page trying to be a squire in the household of Sir Ector, and he is acting as Ector's son Kay's squire-in-training. Merlin meets up with him, and takes on the task of educating the young boy in something other than polishing boots and caring for armor and weapons. To do this he transforms young Wart into a fish, a bird and a squirrel. I'm not sure what lessons the boy learns from these things in the movie, but presumably it's something about using his head to solve problems.

As anyone who knows the Arthurian legends will recall, Arthur is the one who can remove the sword from the stone, which identifies him as king of England. In this (and, I believe, in T.H. White's) version, Arthur goes with Sir Kay as his squire to a jousting contest set to determine the king of England, and forgets Kay's sword. So he decides to go grab the one from the church courtyard that is set in stone. And of course, he removes it without being aware of the significance, and brings it to Kay.

And then the movie ends pretty abruptly, because once they realize Arthur is the true king of England, the film cuts to him sitting on the throne, an oversized crown on his head, and Merlin reappearing from his trip to Bermuda (in the 20th century) to advise him. The abruptness of the ending seemed very unlike Disney.

I felt like I could see some things that were used in Beauty and the Beast and Tangled foreshadowed in this film. Also perhaps some animation and ideas from other, older Disney films (Fantasia, perhaps?) seem to have been used here as well.

I enjoyed this movie, but wouldn't put it up with the greats of Disney animation.

*****

Where I'd like to be in Disney World

2011-05-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking (between patients) of where I might like to be at this moment, and as is often the case, I think of Disney World. So then I started thinking - if I were in Disney World right now, with a Park Hopper ticket so I could go wherever I want to go, where would I choose to be?

My wife mentioned last night that she wouldn't mind being in Epcot's World Showcase, sipping a Riesling purchased in Germany, just browsing the shops without time constraints. No fast passes or dinner reservations to get to. Kids can be with, but they can't be nagging. (Like that'll happen...)

Where would I pick? Would it be at the aforementioned Epcot? If so, where? World Showcase? Or FutureWorld? Would it be at a nice, cool, Animal Kingdom, like it was over Thanksgiving of last year? The Magic Kingdom, where I could get on Pirates, then move right over to Haunted Mansion, then Splash Mountain, then a leisurely ride on the PeopleMover, then back through the same ones again (with no waits, of course).

If I were there right now, I think I'd take being at the Polynesian, sitting by the pool, sipping an exotic drink, and just relaxing with a great view of the Seven Seas Lagoon and the Magic Kingdom. Not a park at all. Just a nice, relaxing location.

That sounds best to me.

*****

What to write about?

2011-05-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to write much here lately - partly because I haven't really had any "Disney" experiences to write about. (I had been hoping that I'd be able to write about the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco after visiting there, but I sorta screwed that up.)

But also I haven't been writing because I had been, in my head at least, planning out this midwestern indoor theme park. Because Disney is so successful at what they've done with theme parks (virtually inventing the art form), I was studying Disney intently while "imagineering" my own ideas.

This passion has sort of fallen by the wayside. Why? Because it's overwhelming! And because after messing with the idea for months, years even, I realize that I can't do it as an individual. (I guess I always realized this, but when push comes to shove - to actually start thinking about the FIRST STEP...) You need an organization behind you.

I read the book THE DISNEY WAY, and you know, it's one of those motivational things that tells you something like "if you can dream it, you can do it." I actually kept going back to that while thinking about it, as if it's actually true. And I suppose in a sense, it is. But you still need the organization.

So I'm thinking on a different tangent now. I'm thinking about the organization. I'm probably too old, but maybe my kids will take up this dream (they talk about it all the time) and I can give them a leg up on our dream. Silly, huh?

Take care, I'll be back when I have a movie or book to review, or have a Disney visit to report on. It won't be terribly long but it won't be tomorrow, either!

*****

That's what lack of research gets ya...

2011-05-04T16:21:00.001-07:00

We were fortunate enough to spend a week (kids' spring break) in San Francisco. Now too most people SF means Lombard Street, Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, Ghiradelli Square, and of course, Alcatraz. But to ne as a Disney fan, it also meant a chance to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio.

I looked it up months ago to see where it was and recall them talking about needing timed tickets for admission, but I thought we'd just get them when we got into town. So, we went about our scheduled activities, with a city tour on Sunday and an Alcatraz tour on Monday, figuring that Tuesday would be the day we'd rent a car and do things in various parts of town, including visiting some neighborhoods and getting some pictures under the Golden Gate Bridge. And drive to the Museum.

You may already see the flaw in my planning. Tuesday, unfortunately, is the only day of the week the place is closed. I never checked with the concierge at our hotel or anyone about it; we simply located it on our maps, then noted its location on the city tour (by Tower Tours bus), and made for it immediately after lunch.

The next day we were leaving the city to see Muir Woods and drive up to Napa, and there simply would not be time to go there.

So I guess a visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum, for me and my family, will have to wait till the next trip to San Francisco. Darn.

******

Off Topic Stuff

2011-04-14T09:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't found much to write about with respect to Disney related thoughts lately. I've had some other stuff on my mind, and found myself drawn to the ideas of self-publishing. I love books, and I love reading and writing, and I've kicked around the notion that perhaps I could start my own small press publishing operation.

With that in mind, and some thoughts about coming up with a different model, I started to research the self-publishing industry and some small presses, and was interested to find out how easy it is to publish your own work these days. Anyone can publish a book for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Sony e-Reader and other platforms by using services like Smashwords, CreateSpace, and Lightning Source. The up-front fees are manageable using these models, and the amount of money that is being generated from some mid-list authors using these models is impressive.

Dean Wesley Smith has a very informative blog which includes plenty of posts on self-publishing. J.A. Konrath is also blogging about his experiences becoming his own publisher. My friend Annetta Ribken also blogs about her experience in getting her collection of short stories published at WordWebbing and has plenty of useful information if you're inclined to do something like this.

I have a novel completed from several years back, and several others in varying stages of production. I also have a handful of fair to middlin' short stories. What I've noticed is that a lot of authors are publishing their short fiction and selling it electronically for $0.99, which to me seems like a lot for a single short story. Annetta Ribken collected her flash fiction short shorts in a book called Not Nice and Other Understatements and sells it for $2.99 through Kindle, or more for a print version at Amazon. So I'm debating whether, and when, I should begin trying to publish my own fiction. It's one thing to be an established author like Konrath or Smith, or even like Tim Pratt or Michael Jasper, and another to be unpublished and trying to break through.

We'll see what happens. In the absence of any Disney stuff that is intriguing me enough to blog about, this entry will have to suffice.

*****

Disney DVD: THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE

2011-03-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

I popped the DVD of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, starring Nicholas Cage and Alfred Molina, in for viewing yesterday. I don't know what I expected. The previews looked good, but sometimes that's the best part of the movie.

I wouldn't say this was in that category, but it was not the greatest movie I ever saw. The plot seemed a little loopy, with a lot of moments that made me go, "Where did THAT come from?" while watching. Not a good sign. To me, it suggests that they either cut out a bunch of stuff that explained these things, or it was just a poorly written script. I suspect that it was the former.

Cage and Molina are very good as the ancient sorcerers who are at odds in the story - Cage's Balthazar wants to keep Morgana, the evil sorceress from the Arthurian legends, bottled up in her Russian nesting doll prison, and Molina's character wants to free her and in the process destroy Balthazar.

The only part brought into this film from the classic Disney animated feature Fantasia was a scene where the apprentice decides to clean up the lab and uses magic to animate brooms and mops and buckets and other cleaning tools, and the objects go crazy, making a huge mess. Balthazar has to step in and make things right. The scene plays well in the movie; if you didn't know it was from Fantasia you'd not feel it to be out of place in this story.

It was sort of like watching Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief with Dave, the college-aged, nerdy apprentice character (played well by Jay Baruchel, except maybe in the Dave-doing-magic scenes) throwing magic around like Percy Jackson using his power over water. In fact, I saw similarities between the two films in content and in quality. Neither was a disaster, but neither was a great film. In my commentary about the Percy Jackson movie, I suggested that perhaps Disney should have done that film, and asked rhetorically what they could have done with it. I guess, with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, we find out the answer to that.

And the answer is: Nothing special.

*****

Disney Books: KINGDOM KEEPERS 3 - DISNEY IN SHADOW

2011-03-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

I finished Ridley Pearson's third book in his Kingdom Keepers series. I have mixed feelings about the book. I liked it for the most part. It held together and was consistent (for the most part). It resolved well. But I can't give it an unequivocally positive review in spite of those things.

For one, it was simply too long. I don't know how to put this other than for a large part of the book, I felt like the plot and the characters were just spinning their wheels, so to speak. The story wasn't really advancing. Was I learning anything new about the characters? About their nemeses? About the plot in general? I didn't feel I was. I wanted something more punchy, more to the point, with less meandering.

It almost seemed like Mr. Pearson had a laundry list of scenes and locations he wanted to make sure he fit into the book, and proceeded to force them all into the story whether they added to it or not. The Epcot settings for this story are a lot of fun, being quite detailed and varied. I understand wanting to get a lot of that detail into the book. Perhaps that's partly what drives readership among Disney fans - the detail they can ascertain, the familiarity they derive from reading those details, much like a search for hidden Mickeys. But it's at the expense of the flow of the story, in my opinion.

Briefly, in this story, Wayne is being held by the Overtakers somewhere, and through Jess's dreams, the Kingdom Keepers figure that "somewhere" is in Epcot. There are many ingenious methods the kids use to try to figure out where he is. Along the way they battle crash test dummies, Vikings from Norway, and Gigabyte, the giant snake. Meanwhile, their method of getting out of the DHI entities and back into their real selves (who are asleep in their own beds) is lost and the kids are all trapped in the "Syndrome", from which their bodies cannot be woken up. Meanwhile, Wayne continues to send cryptic messages through Jess, who, with Amanda, has been turned into a DHI hologram to fully aid in the efforts of the Kingdom Keepers.

I loved the ideas Pearson put forward in the first of this series, but did not like the execution or the ending in that book. I thought the second book corrected all the flaws I found in the first, continuing the story in a satisfying and consistent manner. This third book is consistent, but the story suffers, in my opinion, from a lack of editing and an overabundance of "stuff" happening, making it simply too long and lacking focus. But I'll read the fourth book when it comes out in paperback and hope for a tighter story focus with the same fun ideas and characters.

(Read my thoughts on the last Kingdom Keepers books HERE.)

(Read Imaginerding's review of this book HERE.)
*****

Reposting old entries: Kosher?

2011-03-24T10:27:00.001-07:00

A question to anyone who might be reading. Is it okay for a blogger (me, for example) to post an entry that was written a while ago, but which might not have been read by anyone who is reading today?

The reason I ask is because I had a couple entries from way back when I started this blog, and felt I had some interesting things to say (hence, starting the blog). I didn't have any readers then. I may not have many readers now, but more than back then.

I've since said those things, and am in the process of trying to think up new and interesting things to say about Disney. But I'm not a park historian, I'm not a trivia expert, I don't have a lot of experience with old Disney vs. new Disney, and I don't get to visit the parks enough to have new observations to write about (like someone like Kevin Yee does).

What do you think? Kosher? Or not worth it?

*****

Disney DVD: Alice In Wonderland - Tim Burton Edition

2011-03-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late to the party on this post - the film has been out for a while, and I've had the BluRay in my stack of stuff to watch for a long time. But I never seem to get to it - there always seems to be something else to watch.

Until yesterday. I had the afternoon to myself, and I used it to finally view Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland on DVD. And I have to say I enjoyed it, though it wasn't the best thing I've ever seen. It has that delightful quirkiness that Burton and Johnny Depp bring to most films. Depp is perfect as the Mad Hatter, and the rest of the cast does a really great job also. The special effects are nice, and add to the excitement of the story. The look of the picture is typical Tim Burton, also - not exactly "dark", but foreboding, if that makes any sense. Think Edward Scissorhands. That's what it reminded me of, cinematographically.

With respect to the story, it's not exactly Lewis Carroll's tale, but is an updated version, a sequel of sorts, with Alice being all grown up and preparing to be betrothed to a rather obnoxious Lord. She's not sure why, but something doesn't feel right, and soon she is led down a rabbit hole once again, where she plunges back to Wonderland. Once there, she is enlisted in the cause to overturn the rule of the Red Queen, played spectacularly and almost unrecognizably by Helena Bonham Carter. The "frabjous day" is approaching, and Alice must decide if she will act or sit back and let things happen for better or worse. (Sorta like a marriage!)

Matt Lucas, who played Thenardier in the Les Miserables 25th anniversary concert that I've been raving about on the pages of this blog and elsewhere, played the twins (Tweedledum and Tweedledee), with his head being put on the CGI bodies of the two "fat boys". Ann Hathaway plays the creepy (to me) White Queen, Alan Rickman gives his voice to the caterpillar Absalom, and Crispin Glover is the Knave of Hearts, with his head being used on a CGI body. And Alice Kingsleigh is played by Mia Wasikowska, who does a good job portraying her innocence and lack of confidence at the beginning and doing a 180 degree turnabout in the end.

I enjoyed the film on many levels, and it is something I want to watch again on BluRay. I think some of the scenes will really "pop" when viewed in the higher definition. Like a lot of Tim Burton's films, there is something a little creepy about the entire production. Not saying this is a big negative, but I'm not sure my kids will "get" it, or get into it at their current age. It's got a lot of hip attitude, but doesn't quite get to greatness, in my opinion.

*****

Scott's Theme Park thoughts

2011-03-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

If you were to peruse old posts on this blog, or click on the labels "Indoor Theme Park", "Cold Weather Parks", or maybe "Midwest Attractions" you might notice that it's been sort of a running theme of the blog that I play around with conceptualizing a high quality, year-round theme park in the upper Midwest, specifically in the Chicago area.

I believe that this would be a good location for such a venture, because of the population within driving distance, and because of the accessibility of the area via several means of transportation. There are two major airports in O'Hare and Midway, a proposed (but whether it will ever be build is a different story) third airport near Peotone. Two major highways crisscross here (I80 and I55), and Amtrack trains come through here as well. There is also a lot of land in the area that might be available.

The limiting factor is the weather. For 6 months out of the year, the weather here is unpredictible and not amenable to an outdoor park. The one large local amusement park, Six Flags Great America, is a 6 month outdoor park. There are virtually no other amusement parks in the area. Kiddieland closed, as did Santa's Village. You have to drive to Indiana (Indiana Beach), Michigan (Michigan's Adventure) or the Wisconsin Dells (a whole bunch of stuff) to find other amusement parks.

And there are virtually no "theme" parks. Legoland has an indoor facility in Schaumburg, which features a single dark ride, a 3D theater, a "factory experience", and a couple other things to do...not much for the almost 30 dollar admission price.
Other than that, there really isn't much. We can drive to Indiana to visit the Amish communities where there is themed dining and attractions in the form of an almost museum-like area. We can drive to Iowa, to Amana, where Amish also have tons of wineries, dining establishments and shops. We can drive to the Dells, where we can visit some themed water parks and other attractions. Or over to Michigan, where Nelis' Dutch Village and some other attractions are located in Holland.

So why NOT here? I can't see a good reason. We will fly to Florida or California and spend an entire week at Disney, in an immersive vacation where sometimes we don't ever leave the grounds of the resort. We don't always explore the surrounding area (well, actually *we* do...when we've gone to California we've always made it a point to drive to some of the attractions around the area - as far away as the San Diego Zoo or Hollywood, a bit closer, and seen some oceanfront towns also) so why do we need the beach a hundred miles (or less) away? The weather is great, but a lot of us from around here drive to the Dells to stay at a water park that offers us basically a waterpark. Artificial beach!

Assuming that I'm correct, and this area could support some sort of high quality themed park and resort, then I begin thinking about what it would look like. It wouldn't be Disney, obviously - I'm talking about ME designing this, not borrowing the Imagineers' work. It wouldn't be Universal, or movie themed. Could it be themed to life in the old days? Like the Holland, Michigan theme park, or the Amish communities? Well, yeah, but what about the weather?

I was thinking small at first, a single theme park and a hotel with a water park attached. But after reading Project Future, I decided that there was not enough in that concept to make the park a destination, and I'd need to expand the concept. So my next concept was for three theme parks, two hotels, a huge indoor/outdoor water park, a retail shopping and dining area, and a golf course.

Then I read Building A Better Mouse and thought about the cost of EPCOT in 1982. 1.2 BILLION dollars! Holy cats, that's a lot! And while my concept didn't call for quite the elaborate-ness of EPCOT's attractions, I was thinking of things that were on that order. Ride-throughs and simulators and boats and a coaster or two, with a few ideas where we'd be a bit more original in our presentation. (I'm not an engineer, so I was kinda thinking that if I get my own team of "imagineers" we'd come up with more cool stuff than I'd ever think up on my own...)

Now I'm thinking the whole thing needs to be downsized back to a much smaller initial stage. Back to the single theme "park", if you will, in the sense that Legoland in Schaumburg is a theme park. An enclosed building that can fit enough modestly sized attractions, with a low enough park ticket, to draw people from the area mostly, and hopefully get profitable quickly. Pay off the notes, then proceed with planning the more extravagant resort.

Think it's doable? I'd love to think so. But more likely it will remain a thought experiment, mostly worked out in my own notebooks and occasionally, like today, on the pages of this blog...

*****

Les Miz at the O2 Concert - BluRay

2011-03-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm nuts about Les Miz. I know it has nothing to do with Disney, but it's just such a powerful story that I keep coming back to it.

I mentioned that, in the same order as Building A Better Mouse and The Kingdom Keepers III - Disney In Shadows I got the BluRay disc of the 25th Anniversary concert of Les Miserables, and I got around to watching some of it recently. I'd just like to point out a couple of standout performances.

Alfie Boe as Jean Valjean - he steals the show with his performances of "Bring Him Home", "Who Am I?" and in the encore version of "Bring Him Home" with Colm Wilkinson and two other Valjean players.

Samantha Barks as Eponine, who gives it her all in her solo "On My Own"

Ramin Karimloo as Enjolras, whose strong voice gave me chills in "Red and Black" and in his parts of "One Day More"

Nick Jonas as Marius (yes, Jonas as in Jonas Brothers) for his performance of "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables. Nick does not have the theatrical voice of his co-performers, not by a long shot, but he stays right on key and puts himself into the role. Much criticism was heaped on Jonas in various reviews of the DVD and of the concert itself, but I felt it was overdone. Yes, he's not as good at Broadway style songs as the others in this and many other productions, but he's not THAT bad. He hits the notes he needs to hit. And he actually does a very good job on the previously mentioned song.

There were other good performances also, such as that of Norm Lewis as Javert and Lea Salonga as Fantine. But he ones listed deserved special mention, I think.

*****

Disney Books: Building A Better Mouse

2011-03-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

I finished my read of Steve Alcorn's and David Green's Building A Better Mouse - The Story of the Electronic Imagineers Who Designed Epcot last night. I've mentioned before that I thought it was a little pricey at $19.95 when it clocks in at 130 pages or so. I suppose you can chalk this up to the fact that it's published in limited numbers by ThemePerks Press - I know that doing these sorts of books in this manner results in a higher-than-it-should-be unit price. (I remember having the opportunity to read Tim Pratt's Bone Shop, an urban fantasy novel that he was self publishing, and balking at the price tag of $19.00. I ended up buying it for the Kindle for $5.00. Well worth it at that price!)

Cost notwithstanding, I enjoyed this book quite a lot. It's a series of anecdotes about the construction process of the unique theme park known as EPCOT or EPCOT Center or simply Epcot, whatever you prefer. It focuses a lot on the processes at The American Adventure, where Alcorn seemed to spend most of his time and energy.

We know something of Steve Alcorn's work through his book Theme Park Design; he is an electrical engineer if I read it right. David Green is less familiar to me - his bio on the back cover states that he is the president of Monteverdi Creative, Inc, a company that provides creative and technical design services. It seems David worked as a "wirelister" at EPCOT, though I am not entirely clear on what that is exactly.

It's amazing that these young engineers put forth the effort and the imagination they needed to put forth, all on short and irregular sleep hours and for not much pay. It seems like the engineers certainly enjoyed the perks of the job provided by Disney - merchandise, access to the parks, free lodging that tourists/guests were paying big bucks for. But they had a lot to contend with - not the least of which was union employees who had an interest in dragging out the job as long as possible instead of finishing on time or (God forbid!) early. Plus, the union rules required that union employees do all the wiring, even of sophisticated electronic circuit boards with which many of them had no experience or training. Mistakes were often made. And some of them were perhaps not mistakes but actual malicious actions in order to keep things from working right for whatever reason.

I didn't mean to recap the work, but it's a lot of fun to read and I'm glad I own it, even at the somewhat higher cost. I'd love to take Alcorn's class on Theme Park Design and learn even more about his experiences.

One somewhat depressing side effect of reading the book: the realization of the actual cost of doing a world class theme park. EPCOT was budgeted at 400 million dollars around 1980. It actually cost 1.2 BILLION to build it. Three times the original estimate. What would it cost today to do something like that? Probably 4 billion or so. Maybe more. That's sort of daunting. (Okay, more than "sort of"...) Who possibly could finance something like that? Anyone who could is going to want total control of such a project. There goes my plans! ;-)

*****

My New Disney Stuff

2011-03-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, I really don't have anything to say about Disney at the moment. But it's been a couple weeks since I updated, so I thought I'd post something...anything.

So I thought I'd post about my new Disney acquisitions. I got to Target before they took Bambi off their sale shelves, and picked up the combo BluRay/DVD of that movie. I have it on VHS but I don't have a VHS player currently. So I bought this 70 minute animated film, and am actually looking forward to watching it on BluRay.

I also ordered some books from Amazon, which came recently. I have started Steve Alcorn's and David Green's Building A Better Mouse: The Story of the Electronic Imagineers Who Designed Epcot. It's a very thin book for what it costs ($19.95) so I'm hoping the content is THAT good. So far I'm enjoying the stories.

I also bought Kingdom Keepers III: Disney in Shadow but my son commandeered that one as soon as I opened the box from Amazon. He's only about a fourth of the way into it, but his review so far is that "it's really good." (I'll withhold my own opinions until after I've read it.)

I also bought Megamind at Target but we haven't viewed that one. Yet. The boys really liked it in the theater.

Tangled will be out soon on DVD and I'm sure I'll add that one to the collection as well.

NEED MORE BOOKS!!! (Like I have time to read the ones I have...)

*****

Disney Books - the next title

2011-03-02T17:20:00.001-08:00

I placed my order with Amazon yesterday. The main thing I was ordering was the Les Miserables BluRay of the 25th anniversary concert at the O2. But since I was ordering, I also bought Building A Better Mouse by Steve Alcorn. (It's got a much longer title, and you can click the link if you want to see it all.)

It was a little pricey at $19.95, but I've heard such good things about it from several online sources that I decided that it would be worth it to me.

I also ordered KingdomKeepers III - Disney in Shadow in paperback, which is a title both I and my kids want to read.

I also got something by Cory Doctorow, a bargain book. I loved his Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom. (I blogged about it a ways back. Not going to go look for the link right now but if you want to read my entry on it, look under Books or Book Reviews on the key words.) I am looking forward to this book, and if I like it, to more books by him.

Currently reading John Scalzi's Zoe's Tale, the last book of a four book series that starts with Old Man's War. Very good reads, all of them. The best SF I've read in a while...

That's all for today! Happy March!

*****

Tap Resort App for iPhone

2011-02-28T09:21:00.000-08:00

My kids showed me this free app they had for their iPod Touches, and I downloaded it for my phone.

It's a fun little app, free (as I said), where you get an island, some "money", and a couple of "attractions", and then you buy restaurants, entertainment, lodging, and luxury items, and upgrade the ones you have over time. The tourists come to your island and spend money at your buildings and attractions, and you collect the coins a couple times a day. Then you can spend the coins you earn from your tourists on either new attractions or upgrading old ones. From time to time you get far enough along where you can then buy a new island and start developing it also. The more value you provide for your tourists, the faster the coins roll in.

Would that it worked this way at Disney, right?

*****

Kevin Yee's MiceAge Article - "Billion Dollar Band-Aid?"

2011-02-24T14:21:00.000-08:00

I read Kevin Yee's latest article, "Billion Dollar Band-Aid?", on MiceAge and found it to be thought provoking. Kevin Yee, as almost every Disney nut knows, is a blogger and author who focuses on the Florida theme parks, criticizing what he sees to be declines and praising the things they do right. He's got a bunch of books out (I don't have any of them), and he is a very frequent visitor to those parks.

In this latest entry, Kevin talks about the "NextGen" project, at which Disney is throwing a billion dollars. Yes, that's "billion" with a "b". A lot of money. Yee focuses on one part of this project: the technology to allow visitors to "reserve" their shows and rides from home. In essence, you could get a FastPass reservation in a similar manner to the way you make dining reservations now.

Yee is no fan of FastPasses in general; he knows that guests like it, and he also seems to admit that it works. But the reason it works is because a lot of guests don't know how to use it, or choose not to use the feature of their tickets. As it is, the most popular rides "sell out" early in the day anyway. So if you want to ride, say, Space Mountain, and you don't get to the park early enough, you get to stand in the standby queue. This wouldn't be a bad thing, because the queue is almost a show in itself. But because of the FastPasses, the wait times get incredibly high. 90 minute waits are not uncommon, and I don't care how involved you are in the queue, if you've gotta experience it for that long, it starts to get old. I have really only ridden Space Mountain when the wait times were low, or when we have a FastPass. I watch the people in the standby line stare at me and my two little guys as we walk past up to the entrance. Most of them seem to be groups of teens, and I guess they have each other for entertainment. But some older (as in not teenagers) couples look more than a little bored with the wait.

You can read Kevin's article for the specifics of what direction he foresees these changes taking. You can decide which group you fall into, the "ultra-planner", the "mid-level planner", the "non-planner", or the "local". There's numbers in there about how FP's work now, and how they might work under variations of "Advance Fast Pass" reservation systems.

What I found interesting was where Kevin thought that, given a billion dollars and the mandate to drive attendance to the parks, perhaps the best way to do it would be to install a bunch of new attractions! He says that a billion dollars would give you 20 new 50 million dollar attractions. No, this wouldn't be enough for 20 CarsLands or 20 Everests, but it would be enough for a couple of them along with several smaller attractions of varying quality - A through D tickets, so to speak.

As one commenter pointed out, this approach assumes that the whole of the Billion (with a "b"!) dollars going to NextGen stuff is going to FastPass. In truth we don't know what the rest of the money is going for. Certainly for interactive type stuff at the parks, use of mobile devices for things, etc etc etc. But Yee might respond that no matter what, if they were to invest a billion into increasing capacity at all the parks, it would pay off by alleviating crowding, driving repeat visitors, shortening line times, and pulling people away from 'old' E-tickets to visit the newer attractions.

I for one applaud this approach. We visited Disney World in November, and when we got back, my father-in-law asked me what was there that was new to see. I thought about it. The building we stayed in at our hotel was new, and we had some fun exploring around there in the limited time available for it. We saw the Hall of Presidents for the first time, but it wasn't "new", just new to us. I had never seen the Indiana Jones Stunt Show, so that was new to me, though not to my wife and younger son. We had never eaten at the Tequila Bar in the Mexican Pavilion, nor had we eaten at the Brown Derby. So those, too, were new to us. Of all those things in the parks, only the Tequila Bar was actually new to Disney. Nothing else.

Of course, we also visited Universal's Islands of Adventure, and that was all new to us. And the Harry Potter land was new to most everyone, having only been open a few months. But that's not Disney.

We're probably not going to return to WDW or Disneyland for a couple of years. If we do, it's possible that we may not even visit the Disney parks. We never take any time to enjoy our hotel. We've not been anywhere else in Orlando, and we have a lot to experience at Universal. But if they had new attractions for us to visit, we would certainly be more inclined to spend our time at Disney.

I know that the Fantasyland expansion will add a new restaurant, a couple of brand new ride experiences (the Little Mermaid ride and the Seven Dwarves Mine Coaster) and some rethemed older rides. Is that enough? I just don't really know. Maybe it will be enough to entice us to spend a day at the Magic Kingdom. Us and about a million of our closest friends.

But I like the idea of adding new things to experience, and not all of the hotel or restaurant variety. Disney needs to give their guests something new. Not all of them are first time visitors, or even second time visitors. Some of us have been there a whole bunch, and want to experience something new and exciting. And not necessarily on our cell phones.

*****

One more Les Miz - Disney connection

2011-02-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

I have one more connection between Disney and Les Miz. British comic actor Matt Lucas performed as the evil innkeeper Thenardier (who also provides comic relief to the otherwise very serious story) in the O2 concert for the 25th anniversary. (He will be playing the role on stage, apparently, in England at the Queen's Theater for a limited run.)

Matt has a Disney connection. From the Facebook Les Miz page:

Matt Lucas is one of Britain’s most successful comic actors and writers. His TV credits include "Come Fly With Me" and the multi award-winning "Little Britain", both for the BBC. His other credits include "Shooting Stars", "Wind in the Willows" and most recently Tim Burton’s film "Alice in Wonderland".

I don't know what role he played in Alice In Wonderland. I have the movie on BluRay but haven't found the time to watch it. But there it is - another connection, however meaningless, between my favorite musical and my favorite company.

*****

Changes over there at the left...

2011-02-16T14:44:00.000-08:00

I changed things up a bit on my blog list and my favorite internet spots. On the Blog List, I like to have blogs that are frequently updated. On the Favorite Internet Spots list, I have good blogs and sites but not ones that are necessarily updated routinely.

(The exception to the rule is "Disney and More" which is a great site but for some reason "My Blog List" wouldn't accept it.)

I "demoted" Disneyology and Disney's Folly to the Internet Spot list since they haven't been updated in 3 months. I "promoted" Disney Daddy to "My Blog List" because there are always some neat updates, especially his "Tip Tuesday".

I like to use my own blog as a starting point for my own Disney blog reading. I think I have some really interesting blogs listed there, and I can see what's new at the sites with a glance. I don't have to visit the sites if they haven't updated since my last visit.

The blogs I have listed there are all very interesting and worth your time.

*****

Les Miz - Disney Connections

2011-02-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

I've been in my Les Miserables bunker for a few weeks now. Besides seeing the stage production as it swings through Chicago, I've been watching the DVD of the 10th anniversary concert, and PBS showed the 25th anniversary concert on Saturday night.

As I mentioned in the previous post, it's my favorite musical, and as I was watching it, I mentioned to my wife and kids that it has a couple different connections to Disney. First, Cameron Mackintosh produces it, and he is also involved as producer for Disney's Mary Poppins stage musical.

But the Disney crossovers that I was pointing out to my family were two of the female leads in the 10th anniverary DVD. First, the role of Eponine is sung by actress/singer Lea Salonga. Ms. Salonga first came to attention in the title role of Miss Saigon, then went to play the role of Eponine on Broadway. Disney used her to supply the singing voice to Aladdin's Princess Jasmine. Then she also sang the on-screen songs for Fa Mulan in both Mulan and in the straight-to-video release Mulan 2. Her duet with Brad Kane on the song A Whole New World is one of the most powerful songs in Disney animation history, in my opinion.

The other tie-in is actress/singer Judy Kuhn, who voiced the role of Cosette on Broadway and in the 10th anniversary concert. Ms. Kuhn provided the singing voice to Pocahontas in the movies Pocahontas and Pocahontas 2 (also a straight-to-video release). Ms. Kuhn also had a cameo appearance in the recent film Enchanted, where she played a pregnant woman with kids.

Ms. Salonga went on to play the role of Fantine in the later New York production of Les Miserables. Ms. Kuhn replaced Ms. Salonga in that role, and played it until the show closed in 2008.

*****

Dearth of Posts...

2011-02-10T14:03:00.001-08:00

I haven't felt much like posting here recently - nothing seems to strike my fancy since I read the book by Steve Alcorn (that I blogged about in a couple of recent posts).

Been reading a bit, and not Disney related stuff. I just finished The Big Short by Michael Lewis, which discusses the story behind the subprime mortgage crisis that ended up almost bringing down all of the big financial houses on Wall Street, and would have, had the government not stepped in and guaranteed the losses and purchased all the crappy loans from them. I blogged it about it on my Journalscape blog; if you'd be interested in reading about it, here's the link.

I also read CJ Box's western, Below Zero. In this one, a pair of men, accompanied by a teenaged girl, go on a killing spree across the country, and the pattern of crimes makes no sense. That is, until you know what to look for. Joe Pickett is Box's game warden detective, and is involved because the teenaged girl is texting his daughter, and identifying herself as their adopted daughter April, who they believed was killed in a confrontation between the FBI and a group of survivalists (to which her natural mother belonged). Good mystery. I'm currently reading his next book, titled Nowhere To Run.

I've also been distracted by the opportunity to go see Les Miserables as it swings through Chicago on its 25th anniversary tour with a totally new production. It's my favorite musical (yes, I like it more than Mary Poppins) and I've missed seeing it in recent years. I got piano music of Les Miz songs recently and have been playing the heck out of them, trying to get up to speed. (My sight reading had gotten really bad from years of not doing it but I've been improving as I play along with my kids' piano lessons.) I blogged about the experience at the musical here on my Rambler blog.

Nothing in the world of Disney or theme parks has grabbed me of late. Hopefully it will again, and then my blogging will start again... I know I didn't follow through with my intention to post a photo summary about the Harry Potter ride at Universal, but I just haven't really felt like doing it, and it's getting more distant from my memory as time passes.

Till then, this will have to do.

*****

D23 Magazine here

2011-02-03T15:48:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, before the great blizzard of 2011 hit the midwest, the mailperson brought me my D23 magazine! She delivered it right to the door, because it was a pretty big box instead of the usual Fed Ex-style envelope. That's because it contained a couple of nice member gifts: A D23 watch, and a D23 luggage tag.

Okay, the luggage tag isn't that great...but for me it's useful because one of our old Disney luggage tags sort of got ruined on our last trip to Florida. So this one will serve nicely as a replacement. But the watch is okay. I'm sure it's not an expensive thing, but it's nicer than your average gift.

I haven't gotten into the magazine yet. Tuesday night was too busy, with kids coming home from school early and then the blizzard hitting. Wednesday was occupied with digging out, and again, not a lot of time for the magazine. (Plus I was reading one of my son's books, something called The Mysterious Benedict Society, a pretty good young adult book.) So I hope to get to it this weekend perhaps. Or perhaps not. There's a little bit of stuff happening this weekend, too.

Let you know when I finally get to it and if there's anything that provokes a blog entry.

*****

THEME PARK DESIGN - Themed Attractions

2011-01-31T09:06:00.000-08:00

In Chapter 2 of his book Theme Park Design, Steve Alcorn notes that "theme parks" are only one of the different types of themed attractions. He lists several others:

Museums

National Park Service Visitor Centers

Corporate Communications Centers

Broadcast Studio Visitor Tours

Themed Shopping Malls

Themed Restaurants

We've all probably been to museums and themed restaurants, and probably a Visitors' Center at a national park. I'm not as sure about the others. Would the "Jelly Belly Factory Tour" qualiify as a corporate communications center? It's certainly a type of themed attraction. What about something like the Empire State Building or the CN Tower in Toronto, or the Sears (Willis) Tower or the John Hancock Building in Chicago?

I was trying to come up with other examples of themed attractions in my own experience, because Alcorn mentions after his list that there are many more examples. Slightly later in the book he mentions arcades, and these could be themed, I suppose, though probably relatively few of them are. And casinos, especially those in Vegas, rely heavily on theming. I guess you could characterize them as "adult theme parks", but it's more than that. The fountains at Bellagio, the Volcano at Mirage, and the pirate ship at Treasure Island are all examples of themed entertainment that are designed to draw in people to the core businesses, that is, casinos, hotels and restaurants.

Some places, like Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas, are really attractions in and of themselves. They are incredible examples of over-the-top luxury that become more than just a hotel, a spa, a casino or a restaurant. (I haven't been to Vegas in a few years now so I don't know what other examples of decadence abound there.)

Whole towns probably have become types of themed attractions. Napa and Sonoma Valleys in California are dedicated to wine tasting. Some of the wineries are quite impressive; they probably are more opulent than they need to be for just raising and selling wine. They are part of the whole themed experience. The entire town of Sedona is another example, I think. You've got your red rock, your crystals and vortices channeling spirit energy, your cliff dweller ruins, and your southwestern artist motif going. New Orleans' Bourbon Street is another sort of themed entertainment venue, this one for jazz, booze and partying into the wee hours.

Closer to home, the Wisconsin Dells is another town/area that has basically become one big themed attraction. Everywhere you look there's a waterpark. There are amusement parks, water shows, magic shows, miniature golf, arcades, boat rides, shopping and eateries. The theming is haphazard, but I would guess that the overriding idea is just family fun.

Near the end of the book, Alcorn lists several themed attractions that "worked". Among them are:

The Star Trek Experience, The Hilton Las Vegas (closed)

Caesar's Magical Empire, Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas (closed>

Buccaneer Bay, Treasure Island, Las Vegas (modified)

Ka, Cirque Du Soleil, MGM Grand Las Vegas

NASA's Space Center Houston, Texas

Nauticus, National Maritime Center, Norfolk VA

The Pro Football Hall of Fame, Canton, OH

COSI, Columbus, OH

Madame Tussaud's, Worldwide

I've mentioned a few others in the course of this article. Anyone want to suggest any others, feel free.

This book goes on my shelf of themed attraction books, right next to the Disney collection! I hope to find more like it.

*****

Why Story is King: Steve Alcorn in THEME PARK DESIGN

2011-01-27T15:50:00.001-08:00

This is an important idea to Steve Alcorn; important enough that he uses "Why Story Is King" as the first sub-topic in his Chapter 5, titled RIDES, and then as the title of Chapter 9.

With respect to rides, Alcorn talks about his favorite Disney rides: a toss-up beetween "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "The Haunted Mansion". I've seen it echoed time and time again in blog posts and posts on the MiceAge discussion boards, these are the two rides that "real" Disney fans list as their favorites. Alcorn says that he now understands that what made these rides his favorites was their use of story as their "key ingredient".

Would everyone agree with that? I've seen it mentioned a few times that the reason these rides are timeless and so repeatable is the level of detail in the ride. So perhaps it isn't JUST story. Perhaps it's the combination of story and incredible attention to details. I know I'm still finding stuff in the Magic Kingdom's Haunted Mansion that is new to me when I ride it. It's a great experience every time I ride it, and I'm not entirely sure that it's all because of the story.

On the other hand, most of the "dark rides" in Fantasyland ARE almost entirely dependent on the story they tell. I don't see the same level of detail on Snow White or on Pooh that I see on Haunted Mansion and Pirates.

In Chapter 9, Alcorn talks about story as a component of Disney's thrill rides like Tower of Terror and Rock'n'Roller Coaster, He compares them to other thrill rides like Knotts Berry Farm's Parachute Drop, and concludes that the Disney rides are better, but almost always much more costly also. He mentions Universal's Earthquake ride, which I've never been on, and he feels that the reason it is less than "completely fulfilling" is because it does NOT have a satisfying story. The riders aren't given a reason for even being ON the subway train.

It was interesting to me that Alcorn feels that The Lord of the Rings would not make a good ride. He states that "rides with more complicated storylines are often best implemented using simulators". I take it that he feels LOTR is just too complicated to make a good attraction.

(I'm not sure he's completely right on that one. I think it would make an incredible "land" ala The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, what with the richness of detail and settings that the films offered to viewers. And I think that parts of the story would translate well to dark rides. The Mines of Moria, where Gandalf battles the Balrog and is lost to the Fellowship, for example, would make a really cool dark ride, if told with animatronics and with video on the level of Spiderman or The Forbidden Journey of Harry Potter. Other scenes would be probably make excellent dark rides or thrill rides. Just my opinion.)

I've seen it suggested in various places that Disney relies too much on the rule that everything has to have a backstory of some sort. They use it instead of making a higher quality ride, if I'm reading the criticisms correctly. But Alcorn seems to say you NEED both - high quality AND a good story, because "Story is King".

*****

Disney Books: THEME PARK DESIGN by Steve Alcorn

2011-01-26T15:50:00.001-08:00

While it's not strictly about Disney, this title from engineer Steve Alcorn has a ton of Disney-related content - stories about development of a handful of attractions at Epcot, especially the American Adventure show. And while this is not strictly a review in the sense that I'm not looking to critically analyze this book and tell my readers (optimistic, I know...)whether it's good or bad and why, I am going to tell you that I really enjoyed it and flew through it.

Others' experience with the subject matter may vary, but what anyone buying or borrowing this title will get is a sometimes very technical look at the processes behind both theme park design and attraction design. Alcorn might lose some readers when he starts talking about digital signal processors (DSP's) and video formats and programmable logic controllers (PLC's) and scripted show controllers and such. The level of detail is perhaps a bit intimidating at times, but it did (for me, at least) reinforce the idea that Alcorn knows what he's talking about.

(I guess that's sort of a review, after all...)

Anyone who's read this blog for a while or read back entries of the blog knows that I'm interested in theme park design from my own angle - conceptualizing and designing an original theme park in my area, near a major northern midwestern city. I'm not a city planner or an architect, not an engineer, not an artist, and I don't have a theater background. In short, I have no reason to think I could ever actually do this, but it remains a dream, and I keep working on it. Knowing this about me, one can maybe understand why a book like this would attract me. I've never come across a whole BOOK on this subject.

I thought it was interesting that Alcorn points out that when he hires, he looks for certain things. Obviously, since his is an engineering firm, he hires engineers, not artists or business people. But he also looks for experience in themed entertainment. He lists some examples of something that might look good is someone who worked at a theme park during the summer, or worked as part of the stage or technical crew for a local theater group, or even playing in a rock band. (I'd qualify on the last one - I've played in a dozen different rock bands over the years.)

Alcorn also talks about "empty theming" in his last chapter. He mentions that he thinks it's crazy for a restaurant to just nail "junk" to the walls and consider this a theme. I thought immediately of TGI Fridays. They do exactly this. This could probably apply to so-called theme parks like Six Flags and many others. They're big amusement parks with very superficial theming at best. Naming a coaster "Batman" then putting up some Batman artifacts or pictures does not make it a "themed" ride.

I also thought it was interesting that he points to the CN Tower in Toronto as the first place for a motion simulator to be used outside of industry or commercial application. I was on that simulator, watching the movie and riding in the motion theater, riding a log down a river and through a sawmill among other experiences. I thought it was interesting, and I also thought that the Ripley's Believe It or Not motion theater in Niagara Falls was interesting, if not all that impressive. It points to the widespread use of these simulators as entertainment, no matter how thin the theming is.

All in all, this was, for me, a very rapid read that inspired and informed me about some of the things I might actually need to consider if my blue sky dreaming was to ever get any closer to reality. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the technical side of developing and running a theme park, and to anyone with aspirations to work in the field of themed entertainment.

*****

Good Morning America tours the Disney Dream...

2011-01-20T10:44:00.000-08:00

I've never been on a Disney cruise, and I may never go. But this ship looks pretty incredible!

If you want to watch this video from Sam Champion on Good Morning America, click here and it will bring you to GMA's site with the video from this moring's show. (I didn't like how Champion kept cutting off the chef from their gourmet on-board restaurant, Remy, but the food still looked great!)

Makes me want to go sailing...

*****

Waiting impatiently....

2011-01-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

I saw a review of a book by Steve Alcorn titled Theme Park Design over on the Progress City blog, and I had to rush right over to Amazon to buy it. In the process I also ordered Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind The Scenes Look at Making More Magic Real and The Vault Of Walt.

So I'm waiting for them to arrive. I've read so many good things about all of these books that I hope I'm not anticipating delving into their content more than I should be.

Maybe they'll be here today...

*****

Midwest Attractions: Chicago's Field Museum

2011-01-08T10:21:00.000-08:00

Does she (or he) look familiar? This is Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton at the Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. It isn't her real skull attached to the body; that is displayed separately. This is a cast of Sue's skull. Perhaps she looks familiar because there is a T-rex skeleton in front of the Dinosaur ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom, which was created from casts of bones from Sue.

I didn't make it to New York City's Museum of Natural History, but we like Chicago's version. Named after the founder of Marshall Field's, the iconic department store that was absorbed into and renamed Macy's a few years back, it is a massive building that has tons of interesting displays. Of note is the Plains Indians' massive shelter built in the middle of their Native Americans displays. Also they have a really interesting permanent exhibit of Egyptian mummies and artifacts.

We didn't make it to see Sue's skull or the rest of the dinosaur bones exhibits, but we spent a bit of time in their temporary exhibit featuring GOLD, that beautiful, valuable metal. And we spent a bit of time looking at the gemstones and at the geology exhibits. They also have a permanent exhibit called UNDERGROUND, which "shrinks" visitors to the size of a bug and walks you through the world located 12 inches below our feet, complete with animatronic bugs. It's a cool if a bit creepy exhibit.

We have underutilized this attraction in our own backyard, and we hope to get to it and the other museums of Chicago's museum campus (the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium) more often in the next year.

*****

Disney Film: TANGLED

2011-01-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

It was raining in Chicago on New Year's Eve, so we thought that it would be fun to see a movie instead of walking around on Michigan Avenue. Checking the listings for the two theaters in our vicinity, we noticed that there wasn't much playing that was appropriate for families. Not much besides Tangled, in Disney 3D, which I had been wanting to see but had sort of resigned myself to waiting till BluRay release.

(Disney 3D is expensive to go see, by the way, especially at a near north side theater in Chicago. I wanna say we paid something like $58.00 for all four of us, and that was before concessions!)

I had no preconceived notions about Tangled; I had not stumbled across any reviews and only had a general sense that some were saying it was one of Disney Animation's stronger releases. That assessment was correct. While The Princess and the Frog was close to capturing some of that glory of the Katzenberg/Eisner golden years of animation, Tangled gets there, in my opinion. It is right up there with the best animated features from the Mouse.

There's something for everyone in this film. It's got romance, adventure, humor and story, and enough of all of them, and in the right balance, to make a really good film. I've heard some say that the name change to Tangled was ill advised, but I can speak from experience: My own sons were not at all put off by seeing this film, as they were by TPATF's title, however mildly. So maybe it was a good idea to use this title. It seemed to fit the tale, in my opinion.

This was a beautifully animated film, right up there with Pixar's films and the best of Dreamworks' films. The characters were classic Disney characters, and the backgrounds were spectacular at times. Of particular note was the hidden valley where Rapunzel's tower is located. It was like a beautiful painting.

It appears to me that Disney Animation is back with this triumphant film.

*****

Goodbye 2010...Happy New Year!

2010-12-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure that this will be the last chance I get to write a Disney Fan Ramblings post in 2010. I thought I'd recap my own Disney experiences this past year, and mention some of my favorite blog moments.

We returned to Florida for our first visit since January of 2009, and spent 5 days at the Disney parks and two days at Universal. I'm still writing about those experiences; I plan on posting something about the Harry Potter ride at Islands of Adventure (with photos) and writing something about my own comparisons between the two resorts/experiences, for what they're worth...

We also had the opportunity to see Mary Poppins (for our second time) at the New Amsterdam Theater in NYC. This was a very nice experience; the theater is beautifully restored, the performers in this New York version are top-notch, and the whole experience is very family friendly.

We went to a few Disney films this year, includingPRINCE OF PERSIA, TON STORY 3, and TRON: LEGACY. We watched a few more on DVD, including TOY STORY 2, which I was sure I had seen, but apparently had not, at least not in its entirety. I got a few Disney books, including THE PIXAR TOUCH, PROJECT FUTURE, and THE HIDDEN MAGIC OF WALT DISNEY WORLD. I enjoyed all of them and learned something from these three in particular.

We went to a couple of non-Disney offerings; of course I've already mentioned our two days at Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure, but we also visited Six Flags' Great America in Gurnee, Illinois, and Michigan's Adventure near Muskegon and near Lake Michigan's shores. (The post I linked to talks about the park in relation to some superficial discussion of the differences between theme parks and amusement parks.) We also found time to visit the Morton Arboretum, Chicago's Navy Pier, and Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, a wonderful example of what Epcot could be in part. Last, we also visited Central Park in New York City, which I saw one book refer to as one of the first "theme parks."

It was a good year for me and my family; we learned a few things, saw a few new things, and had some fun. I hope 2011 is just as good for us. And for you, my readers, also. Thank you for reading my ramblings, and I hope you continue to visit my blog in the upcoming year!

*****

Disney Film: TRON: LEGACY

2010-12-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

I took my sons to see the 3D version of Tron: Legacy on Sunday, and had mixed reactions. On the one hand, I loved the "look" of the film. The 3D world was incredibly imagined and rendered, and it was (to me at least) a very original take on something like this. I enjoyed the effects immensely. I also loved my kids' reactions to the film. They were blown away by the action and the appearance of the Tron universe, even though they had a hard time following every nuance of the story, in part because they had never seen the first Tron.

But only in part because of that. Also, in part, because the story itself had a bunch of "what the heck?" moments, where stuff just didn't make that much sense. My younger son was after me to explain why Clu was bad if he was a sort of copy of Kevin Flynn, and why he did the things he did. I couldn't really explain it to him, or to myself. (I think I said that he wanted to eliminate anything imperfect, but just *what* is imperfect differs from individual to individual. That was the best I could do. I guess it was good enough.)

Part of my problem was that I read too many reviews of the movie beforehand. Reviews like the Chicago Tribune article referenced in a post about a week ago, but also ones like this: Feo Amante's Tron Review

Or this: Blue Sky Disney's Tron Review

(WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE...)

These reviews pointed out issues with the script/story before I ever saw the movie, and I couldn't help thinking about the issues they raised as I watched the movie. For example, E.C. McMullen at Feo Amante (a pretty conservative character even though he does love his horror movies) asks why Sam Flynn is so pissed at the company that obviously affords him the wherewithal to simply walk out of jail after his intrusion on the company (where he controls most of the shares) causes a big problem for their latest OS release. After all, his wealth comes from this company. Why does he hate them so? Because they're big? Because they make money? Because they're duping people into buying their products when there is no improvement in said products? Especially since Sam can take control of the company any time he wants to.

The Blue Sky review points out that the CGI "young" Flynn doesn't look like Bridges did when he was younger, and again, I fixated on this. It does and it doesn't, at the same time. I didn't pay too much attention to the "real" young Bridges when he's talking to Sam (as a 12 year old) near the beginning of the film, but when you think about it, why should an artificial construct like Clu look indistinguishable from its creator? The odd thing for me was that Clu sort of looked like a young Sean Penn as much as he did a young Jeff Bridges.

I also didn't quite get the whole "Iso" thing. How do you wipe out a race that sort of spontaneously came into existence in the first place? Wouldn't they just continue to spontaneously generate themselves? Why don't they, if conditions were right? Or have conditions become "wrong" somehow? And when Sam first gets transmitted to the computer world, he comes out of something that to me looked analogous to Flynn's arcade in the real world. Why does he come out of there, but have to travel great distances to get to the portal to reenter our world? Where is that place, and how did Clu's "police" find him so easily and quickly after he gets to that world?

And Flynn's place: Is it a digital construct, or was Flynn able to bring physical objects like books to the realm? And for that matter, are the two Flynns physically there? They aren't digitized versions of themselves? Granted, this question goes back to the original Tron but it still makes me wonder. And it leads me to my last question: How does Quorra exit the digital world, and what exactly IS she in our world? Or is she in our world at all? When Sam was downloading something into his pocket computing device, was that Quorra? What was in the chip hanging from around his neck? Was the final scene actually Quorra or was it something existing in Sam's imagination?

All this said, I did not agree with McMullen about the look of the film. I thought, as I said before, that it was incredible, while McMullen hated it. For me, this was a film that left far too many questions and hanging plot points but was still a stimulating, exciting experience that was worth seeing in the theater, and worth seeing in 3D. A great film? Nah. A good, fun movie that delivered at least on some of its promise? I vote "Yea"! I'll likely buy it on BluRay, and I wouldn't mind going to see it again in the theater. (And I might try to check out Turistas which apparently starred Olivia Wylde...)

*****

Designing Disney Parks - Armchair Editions

2010-12-23T13:23:00.000-08:00

We all love to be armchair Imagineers, designing in our minds and sometimes on paper and/or the computer additions to the Disney parks. Sometimes, we go further, redesigning entire parks. Or we design entirely "new" Disney parks in new locations, using some of the attractions (maybe tweaked a bit) from existing parks, and maybe adding a few new ones from our own ideas.

One website that Future Guy at Futureprobe noted months ago was this one: Peter F. Schaab - Design and Visualization for All the Places We Gather To Be Entertained and Enlightened. This particular section of the site has a comprehensive redesign plan for EPCOT Center, which he did as a hobby project. It's pretty well done, with illustrations, 3D modeling, and even animations. Some really interesting, original thinking went into this redesign.

Another site is this one: Theme Park Conceptual Site Plans written by Randy Savage. This site mainly uses Disney themes to either reconceptualize existing parks or create new ones. The author does apply his imagination to Universal parks as well.

I recently discovered this site: Imagineering by Grumpyfan. The author imagines improvements to many Disney attractions, and also conceptualizes totally new experiences from time to time. It's a fun, interesting blog with tons of good ideas.

Another site, My Park, My Rides, is a fun site that combines the author's armchair imagineering efforts with commentary on the Disney parks (mostly), reimagining various rides and offering ideas for new things to entertain guests at the parks.

The last site I am making note of is Amateur Imagineer. This blog has "gone dark" so to speak, the last post being in May of 2009. But there were a bunch of entries before that, and some were pretty interesting (and still are). It's worth reading the back posts on this (apparently) now-defunct blog.

I've also seen some pretty incredible artwork on some MiceChat threads where contributors there post their own artwork, obviously mostly related to Disney parks and attractions. I don't have specific posts, however. I just remember being bowled over by the level of skill some of them had.

I only wish I could draw like that. I think that if I had some of the talent that these people do, I'd be in business designing my own concepts for parks and resorts and hotels and restaurants. At this point in my life, I don't have much interest in enriching Disney any more than I already do with my patronage, but I do have interest in designing my own project, as I've noted in several other posts. I'd be applying this imagination and these skills to conceptualizing a park in my part of the country.

I envy them. At the same time, I think they should dream even bigger!

*****

Disney Bookshelf: WALT DISNEY WORLD: THEN NOW AND FOREVER

2010-12-20T08:11:00.000-08:00

I enjoy my trips to Walt Disney World (and/or Disneyland) for many things, not the least of which is that I usually find a new book (for me) that I otherwise might not see at my local bookstores. (For me, there is something nice about holding a book in my hands and looking at it, rather than ordering from Amazon, though I've certainly done that also.)

This trip's book ended up being the Bruce Gordon and Jeff Kurtti book called WALT DISNEY WORLD RESORT: THEN, NOW AND FOREVER. It's a beautiful hardcover edition, listing for $22.95. From the look of it, I thought it would be more expensive. Following the introduction by Roy E. Disney, titled "A World of Family," there are ten sections, each called "A World of ...", starting with Imagination, and followed by Traditions, Surprises, Adventure, Wonder, Movies, Thrills, Music, Innovations, and finally Dream & Memories.

Each section has several nice photos, many of which were familiar to me, but some of which I had not seen before. There is enough text to elaborate on the high points and explain some of the history that the book illustrates.

I can't say that I learned a great deal that I didn't know from this book, but the images make the book worth owning. It is a very nice addition to my Disney bookshelf.

*****

Chicago Tribune Tron Legacy Review

2010-12-16T12:38:00.000-08:00

Michael Phillips, the Chicago Tribune's film reviewer, is not a fan of the new Disney movie, Tron: Legacy. He gives it two stars, and doesn't much like the look of the film. He doesn't seem terribly high on the story either. Says it will be something that fans of the original Tron will likely enjoy this more than viewers unfamiliar with the story.

Here's a link to the review. A Sequel Not Worth Waiting For.

*****

Animal Kingdom Pictures

2010-12-15T13:24:00.001-08:00

We have gone on Kilamanjaro Safaris every time we've visited Animal Kingdom and it is always a fun attraction. We seemed to see more animals than usual this visit, maybe because it wasn't too hot out.

The giraffes were extremely photogenic this time around. We saw lots of them from our room at Animal Kingdom Lodge, but we never get tired of them...

The ostriches sometimes don't seem like they have much interest in moving out of the way. This guy (girl?) was just laying around.

Those poachers didn't get these elephants!

And I leave you with a shot of Everest. One of Disney's best, in my opinion.

Other Parks: Islands of Adventure Day 2

2010-12-15T10:24:00.000-08:00

On our second day we decided that, since the boys only got on two rides, we'd just return to Islands of Adventure again. This time we headed straight back to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. As was our habit on this trip, it was late morning by the time we got into the park, and it was crowded! They told us up front that they were bringing people in the other entrance to the land, closer to the Lost Continent.

So we went back there to queue up for entry into Potter World, and we were directed to a line where this day, unlike the previous day, we were given a timed ticket. We happily took our ticket, with the advice to return between 12:20 and 1:20 pm to get in. We went off to find somewhere to eat.

That "somewhere" ended up being in Seuss Landing. We went into Circus McGurkus Cafe Stoo-pendous, a "counter service" restaurant with fried chicken, pasta, pizza and burgers on the menu.

Now, we were used to Disney counter service restaurants; there are crowds and lines, but you seem to keep moving. At this restaurant, we got in line and stood for a long period of time, waiting to get our food cafeteria-style. This system is SLOW! You finally get to the front, then wait for them to assemble your burger and fries from a pan of burgers, most with cheese and some without. I think two of us ordered cheeseburgers except for my older son who prefers hamburgers without cheese. My wife ordered some kind of chicken sandwich. They take a pre-made basket with a bun and the fixin's, plop a chicken breast or a burger (with or without cheese) on it, then dole out some fries, and hand it to you.

It doesn't sound that hard, but for whatever reason, they are very slow at this. The cash register attendant was basically sitting there doing nothing half the time because after checking out one family, it would be a while before the next came.

The food was fine, and the restaurant was very cute. Very Dr. Seuss. I love the theming and the attention to detail in this area. But based on my two impressions of dining in this park, I'd have to say they have a ways to go before they approach Disney's level of efficiency.

Then it was back to Harry Potter land. It was almost 1 pm by the time we got back there, and there was a huge throng of people waiting to get in. They had barricades set up and were letting people through at two small entrance points. A couple of Universal employees were trying to keep the mass from blocking an aisle on the side where people could exit, with not too much success. One was getting pretty testy with the crowd. When one of the guys in the crowd told her to lighten up or mellow out, she told him something to the effect of "You don't want to mess with me, sir. I'm not in the mood for to take it." (That isn't exactly what she said, but it's close. Not very friendly.)

The problem was that they were creating this bottleneck. And most of the people waiting had tickets that were for later. (We were within our time window and couldn't really get through.) Some didn't have tickets at all. One couple next to me looked at the ticket in my hand as we tried to force our way to the gate, and asked what it was. When I told them that you needed a timed ticket to get into the land, they were disgusted and began working their way out of the line.

We finally pushed our way to the front. Our progress sped up as we got within hearing range of the guy calling out for times of 1 pm or earlier, and we waved our ticket and finally people moved out of the way enough that we could get in. Crazy.

Of course, once you're "in", you're not out of the crowds - you're just in a different mass of humanity. We headed to the queue for the Forbidden Journey ride, which showed 100 minutes, I think. There again, confusion abounded. It seems that there is a line for those with bags that need to be checked into lockers before tey go in, and if you don't have bags, they shunt you to the left and you bypass the locker line. We did the latter, but when we got in line, some cast member told us that we were in the single rider queue, and we'd need to go back and get in the regular queue. So we did, and then we were told that we were now in the queue for the castle tour (no ride), and where we were before was the correct queue. Annoyed, I told that employee about the other guy telling us to go there. Seemed like no one knew what was going on.

The line was almost two hours, but it does keep moving and it is interesting. So it didn't seem as bad. When we got out, my wife had some butterbeers, and we downed them and left the Wizarding World.

The boys proceeded to ride the Pteranodon Flyers and then we headed into Marvel Super Hero Island, where we all rode The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. Had I ridden this before I rode the Forbidden Journey, I would have said that this was the coolest ride I'd ever been on. AS it is, it's just a hair below Forbidden Journey. We rode it twice; the waits were in the 30-45 minute range, and the queue is so cool that it goes by fast. The merging of 3D video effects with some sort of enhanced motion vehicle was incredibly effective.

We rode Doctor Doom's Fearfall after this; I rode it once and the boys went back a couple more times because it was a short (10 minute or so) wait. I'm not that much a fan of these sorts of rides; I didn't like Maliboomer in DCA, and Tower Of Terror is good but not one of my favorites. But my two sons loved it. Then they went on the Storm Force Accelatron, a Teacup-like ride that I had no desire to experience.

For some reason I thought that The Cat In The Hat attraction was a show, and didn't find out till later that it was a ride. I would have liked to do it but, too late now. The waits for it and The High In The Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride were always pretty high.

We left the park and ate at Emeril's for the high point of our Orlando dining experiences. I absolutely love Emeril's restaurants; they are unmatched for taste and service, in my book. This was no exception for us. I wonder if you can get to it without having to pay the all-day parking fees, or if there is a validation or something you can do. I see they do it at the theaters for parking. Because if you can, it will probably be on our eating agenda every time we go to Orlando from here on out. And if we make it to Vegas anytime soon, his restaurants there will be on our itinerary also.

The positives of Day 2 far outweighed the negatives. I'd like to go back and experience the Studios park, but that's not in the near future for us Chicagoans.

Bye, Harry, Ron and Hermione...

*****

Other Parks: Universal's Islands of Adventure - Day 1

2010-12-13T09:55:00.000-08:00

We spent Monday and Tuesday at Universal's Islands of Adventure Theme Park. We had never been to these parks before, and our plan was to spend one day at IOA, and the other at Universal Studios. Well, the Studios will have to wait because we ended up hanging out at IOA both days.

The first day was sort of a wash-out. Literally. It poured rain in the afternoon (although the morning weather suggested that there was only a 10% chance of rain that day), and we were totally unprepared. We had brought umbrellas to Florida, but they were at the bottom of our luggage. So we got drenched. It is not very comfortable walking around in soaking wet clothing when there is very little sun, even when the temperature is in the 70's. (I'm not sure what the temperature actually was after the rain - it felt COLD to me in my soaking wet clothing.)

Most of this first day was spent in lines. We got there a bit later than we planned to, since we were still more or less on Chicago time, and of course Florida is an hour ahead of us. We had trouble waking up before 7:30 am their time (which of course would be 6:30 am at home), and once we got ready and drove there, it was probably somewhere between 10:30 am and 11 am their time.

Universal has those enormous parking decks, but they don't have the parking down like Disney does. I think there were four or five booths open, and then all of those cars were funnelling into basically one lane as we got to our parking level at the top of the deck. So that was sort of slow, after experiencing the parking at Disney, where everything just flows.

I was impressed with the system for moving guests from the decks to the CityWalk area. I thought their CityWalk (analogous to Downtown Disney) was very cool. Cool restaurants and stores and a really neat look. We located Emeril's and other restaurants, and headed toward the Islands of Adventure park. Entry was fairly easy; we had our tickets we had purchased at Costco, and everything went beautifully.

Once we got in, we were impressed by the level of theming in their version of "Main Street", which sets the tone beautifully for the rest of the park. I took a couple of photos with the iPhone, as you can see. Then we came to the end of the street, and had to choose right or left. A staffer was there pointing out where the lines for The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter started. Turns out that at this point in the day, one of the two entrances to the land is closed and you have to queue up to get into the land.

Anyway, we walked into Marvel Super Hero Island, thinking that maybe we could do a ride before lunch. The boys and I decided to do Doctor Doom's Fear Fall, which said it had a 20 minute wait. So we entered the queue (it was a well themed queue, sort of dark and interesting), and got to the end of the line. In about 20 minutes, we still had a long ways to go. I decided that we better not chance it because we might miss our lunch reservation at Mythos, so we left the line. I am not sure why we weren't moving; was the ride broken down, or were Express Pass people keeping this line from moving? Whatever, we left. I wasn't impressed with my first experience with a ride at IOA.

We decided to walk back into Toon Lagoon and Jurassic Park, where we figured we'd scope out the line for Harry Potter, and cross the bridge to the Lost Continent, where Mythos was located. Line number 2 was at this restaurant. Turns out that what we thought was a "reservation" was actually "priority seating", which means you get to wait a long time until you get seated. Our scheduled time was at 12:30 pm, but we weren't seated till close to 1:30 pm. The place is a really cool looking restaurant, and our service and food were both OK once we got seated. They were a little slow, offering as an excuse that the kitchen had gotten "slammed" by a couple of big parties at the same time.

After lunch we went to get in line for Harry Potter. First we got in a line to get a ticket to stand in the real line. Then we got into that rather long line and waited. And waited. I don't know what time we finally got in, but eventually we did make our way into the land. (We still have not gotten on a single ride!)

We got in line to go on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. I'll be doing a post on this by itself later, I think. For now, let's just say that the queue is fantastic and the ride is even better. We didn't mind waiting the 45 minutes it took at that time.

When we got off, my wife had bought a butterbeer. Butterbeer is OUTSTANDING! Can I have more? I miss it, just thinking about it! Very tasty. She got in line to get more butterbeers and I was going to get the kids onto the Flight of the Hippogriff coaster. That's when the skies opened up. My kids got under an umbrella with a line attendant, but I got soaked, and so did my wife. There is no real shelter in Hogsmeade. So then we had to buy ponchos, and at least the ponchos kept us warm the rest of the day. The kids remained relatively dry at least. So then we drank our butterbeers and my wife got in line for Ollivander's Wand Shop, while I put the kids back on Flight of the Hippogriff. They said that they weren't all that impressed with this coaster. It was a very short ride and didn't have much to it, according to them. (I didn't ride it.)

We were silly enough to stand in line for Ollivander's for almost 2 hours. The first 1/3, my wife waited alone while I took the kids on the ride. Then we joined her. (Some might say we should not have done this, that it was sort of cheating, or cutting, but so many people did it that it didn't seem like cutting. You had to wait to get into every store in Potter Land. Crazy. Lines to get into stores!) Anyway, we almost decided to leave after about an hour and 20 minutes, but thought, hey we waited this long, let's see what's in here.

Honestly, it seemed to start moving faster as we got closer. What I think happened was that "Ollivander" started to rush through his show and move people in and out faster. We finally did get in, and it was a fun little show. My kids didn't get picked, but they enjoyed it anyway. And after waiting for almost 2 hours, you're darned right we bought the silly wands for them.

It was late, we were soaked still and the park was slowing down, so we decided to leave. We made our way out of the park through the Lost Continent and into Seuss Landing. My wife checked out the shops and we sat there, taking in the scenery.

What a cool looking land! Just like stepping into the pages of a Dr. Seuss book.

We exited the park, damp and tired, and stopped at Pastamore, having missed our reservation at Latin Quarter. Pastamore could seat us immediately, and so we had some Italian food there. Fun place, good food, nice kids' buffet!

That was Day One. All in all we went on 2 rides and saw the little wand show. The next day was better however. I'll try to get to a post summarizing that day later today or maybe tomorrow.

*****

Worthy Charity Plea at SamLand

2010-12-11T07:39:00.000-08:00

I failed to note this issue earlier, but Sam Gennaway at SamLand's Disney Adventures has been running a charity drive for donations to Women At Work. To date he has gathered $300.00 in donations.

Sam is still collecting donations for the charity, and a new prize is available, donated by Ryan Wilson over at Main Street Gazette. If you make a donation you will be entered into a drawing for the book Since The World Began.

Here is the link to that post: Thank You and a New Contest

Drop on over. Sam has lots of interesting content!

Disney Parks: Epcot

2010-12-10T09:01:00.001-08:00

Saved the best for last, didn't I?

That's because we spent Friday, our last day, at Epcot. Lunch (for the kids) at the Electric Umbrella. (I picked at a couple of fries and grapes from their plates.) Dinner at Le Cellier. In between, we did Spaceship Earth (twice!) Mission Space, Test Track (last ride of the day), Soarin', Living With The Land, and The Seas With Nemo.

It's the first time we did the standby line for Mission: Space, and I thought the queue was pretty interesting. The huge rotating cross section of a space station was cool and so were those two hanging space thingies. (One's some sort of a Mars rover, I think, and one is a smaller mockup of the ship you're supposedly piloting to Mars, or so it appears.)

Soarin' looked to me like the film had been fixed up a bit. Perhaps we were in a different "theater" but I remember sort of a "hole" in the video that was sort of annoying, and I didn't see it this time. (And I looked for it.) As usual this attraction had very long waits. So did Test Track. Nothing else was too bad.

The first part of Living With The Land was pretty boring. It needs an update badly. But the second part, the greenhouse part, was as interesting as usual. Looked like a few different plants growing there, but I can't be sure - it's been almost two years since we saw it.

We didn't ride the Gran Fiesta ride in Mexico but we did visit the pavilion while it was raining, and noticed the little tequila bar on the side to our right as we entered.

As usual I'm sorry about the quality of the photos. They look better on my iPhone screen, but I think you get the drift. La Cava De Tequila a nice little nook where you can get a drink and some food. We got some guacamole, and it was tasty! And we got it as a take-out, but then ended up eating it at a stand-up table in the bar. From the look of it, we got considerably more in our takeout container than others got who were ordering from the waiters.

What else? The boys played the Kim Possible game for two pavilions (Germany and China) and we all made it in to see the Captain EO film.

I was surprised by the EO film. Yes, the 3D effects weren't what we're used to today. Yes, the show itself is sort of dated. But the music was okay (if not my usual cup of tea), and it was fun to see Michael Jackson when he still looked human. We all liked it. It isn't the sort of thing I'd need to see more than once, but it was sort of fun.

Our first day (Saturday) was also spent in Epcot, but mostly what we did was eat at Chefs De France and then watch Illuminations. (The only ride we did that day was Spaceship Earth.)

Epcot could use some TLC from the Imagineers without impediment from the pencil pushers, but it's still my favorite park.

*****

Disney Parks: Animal Kingdom

2010-12-09T11:57:00.000-08:00

On the third day of Disney, my true love gave to me...

A visit to Disney's Animal Kingdom! (sorry)

This was without a doubt the best time we've ever had at DAK. That had a lot to do with the fact that we didn't have sweat dripping off of our faces the whole time we were there. The park is beautiful, and when keeping the beads of perspiration from running into your eyes is not the only thing you can think of, it's much easier to appreciate that fact.

There isn't a lot to do at this park when you stop and think about it. But there are a few really high quality attractions here. We rode Dinosaur! twice; it was virtually a walk-on attraction this time. I saw it suggested on Futureprobe that many of the effects have been "turned off" and this ride is not what it used to be. It may be a case of not knowing what we're missing, or it might just be a case of when you only invest 10 minutes in getting on the ride, the ride seems better to you, but whatever it is, we enjoyed the ride this time. More than other times.

Expedition: Everest I rode twice, and my boys did it two more times. They rode standby once (the line was only about 15 minutes late in the day) and since my wife didn't ride at all they used her extra Fastpasses another time. They loved it. My younger son declared it to be his "favorite ride in the world". (We had one "favorite ride in the world" each day of our vacation, except Friday.)

We also did the standby line for Kilamanjaro Safaris, and that seemed to move relatively quickly. Saw a lot of animals out, but just caught a glimpse of the lions. We did see the hippos and the elephants, however. This is always a fun ride.

I wanted to do the Maharajah Jungle Trek but my wife preferred to go see the Festival of the Lion King. So we did the latter, and I have to admit that I enjoyed it. It was a well choreographed and well performed show, and I'd go see it again. The boys also rode the Primeval Whirl after we did Dinosaur. They liked it; they got put in a car with another boy a little older than them, and they always like that.

(Is that Chester and Hester's Dinorama cheap? Well, yeah...but I understand that it's the "story" that goes with the land. I like most Disney fans wish they would have come up with something more elegant or more interesting. But I'm not going to let it stand in the way of the kids' or our enjoyment...)

We had lunch at the Yak and Yeti, and you can see my photos and comments on that lunch in a previous post. We left the park in order to get back to the hotel in time for our reservation, but after stopping to do some shopping (I got a book by Jeff Kurtti and Bruce Gordon!) we were late anyway. Fortunately they were still able to accommodate us and we got a nice dinner after all.

The Animal Kingdom park is usually a shorter day for us but this time it ended up being a full day project. I think it was less crowded than usual due to the fact that it was Thanksgiving Day, but when we got there it sure looked packed.

One more day to go in the World...

*****

Disney Parks: Hollywood Studios

2010-12-08T14:04:00.000-08:00

Our next full day at a Disney park was spent at Disney's Hollywood Studios on Wednesday. I know there are those who don't really care for this park, but I'm not one of them. With Star Tours down for its refurbishment, it's true that there is less to do here than usual, and it's also true that the park is sort of heavy on shows and light on rides anyway. But that said, I like it quite a bit. I like the dining choices and I like the rides it does have.

We ate at the Hollywood Brown Derby for lunch and at the 50's Prime Time Cafe for dinner. You can read my thoughts on those in previous blog posts if you're interested. (Feel free to comment if anything strikes a chord...)

We made it on many rides at the park but we did not go on Toy Story Mania, because all the FastPasses were given out by the time we got there between 10:30 am and 11:00 am. It's a good ride, but not one I'd stand in line for over an hour to ride, even if the queue is supposed to be really cool. (We've never seen it, having only ridden it using FastPasses.) Plus, we have the Wii game, and while it isn't exactly the same, it's not totally different either. (Some levels are even in 3D!)

We also skipped the Backlot Tour, not because we hate it, but because we never seemed to make it that far back in the park. We also didn't go to the Beauty and the Beast show (something we've never done to this point) or to Lights, Motors, Action! on this trip. Fantasmic wasn't running on the day we were there, so we didn't have to make a decision about going to see it.

We did ride Twilight Zone Tower of Terror twice, once with and once without a FastPass. We rode Rock'n'Roller Coaster (with Fastpasses) and my younger son declared it to be his favorite roller coaster ever! We did the Great Movie Ride and we saw the Indiana Jones Stunt Show. All fun rides.

We also made sure to wander back into the Animation Academy and take a drawing class. We drew Dale (the one with the big nose), and had a blast doing so.

While we were on the Tower Of Terror, my wife wandered over to the Writer's Stop, then when I called her that we were out of the ride, she said that she was watching the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights, and that we had to see it. So we made our way across the park to the Streets of America, and watched the shows for about a half hour. This display was perhaps the coolest thing, decoration-wise, I've seen in the parks. It's extensive and quite beautiful. All that light movement synched to music...it was really impressive.

When we came out of our dinner, the park was closed, and it's pretty neat to see it without people but still lit up. My wife tried to get some good shots of the boys with the Hat in the background, and I tried to get some pictures with my cell phone of the Hat and the streets without people, like so many of the publicity photos you see at various places. I'd like to report that I got some great pictures, but the truth is, I wasn't impressed with any of my shots. (If you've seen my photography, you probably have to wonder just how bad these were for me to call them bad. I guess they weren't THAT bad - just not anything special.)

It was pretty late by this time, but we didn't have anything scheduled for the following morning, so we made our way back to our room, and called it a day!

******

Disney Parks: Magic Kingdom

2010-12-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

I was going to do an entry on the dining we did at Universal, but thought I'd put that off another day or two till I could sort of reconstruct our dining choices there. I remember (mostly) what I had, but I don't remember what my wife had, and I was getting confused on the appetizers and desserts, so I need to consult with her.

So I thought instead I'd recap the parks. Our first full day was spent at the Magic Kingdom. We were able to do quite a few rides, though it seemed as crowded as ever there. In Tomorrowland, we did the Carousel of Progress, Buzz Lightyear, Space Mountain, the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor, and the TTA PeopleMover. There was a short wait for the PeopleMover, something I'd never seen before. Lines were long at Buzz and Space Mountain, but we used our Fastpasses on those rides and were able to get on relatively quickly. The Carousel of Progress seemed to have some technical difficulties. They kept interrupting the show to announce that people should remain in their seats, but at least in our theater, no one was getting up. Then we didn't move when we were supposed to, sitting in the same scene for a couple of times. Finally it moved, but right in the middle of a presentation. Just when we were getting irritated and half ready to get up and walk out the exit doors, it started working correctly again, and we got out.

In Frontierland, we did Big Thunder Mountain Railroad via our third and last FastPass. In Adventureland, we did Pirates of the Caribbean. The line was long for that one also. In Liberty Square, we did the Haunted Mansion and, for our first time, we saw the Hall of Presidents show. My kids are at an age where they can appreciate this one now, though I think at our last visit they wouldn't have enjoyed it much. I really liked it. We did no Fantasyland rides this trip. Lines were long at all of them and we didn't feel like waiting.

The Magic Kingdom has plenty to do, and we enjoyed our day there. We capped it by eating, as I mentioned in a previous post, at the California Grill and watching the fireworks from the best table in the house. Weather was perfect all day, and it was a fine finish to a fine day!

******

The limitation with an all year park in the north - illustrated.

2010-12-04T10:55:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here in my office at work, between patients (I figure I have 10 minutes till my next one) and looking out the window at our employee parking lot. It's snowing.

It's been snowing since sometime in the middle of last night. I shoveled the drive this morning, and I'd guess something around 3 inches had fallen overnight. The drive to work was miserably slow; it's our first real snow of the year, and the plows are out but the snow is heavy and slushy, and the roads were slick. Now I'm used to driving in these conditions; I do it every winter.

But it got me thinking as I drove to work about this as a limiting factor for a park in the north. It's not a day to be outside, unless you're 10 years old and building snowmen. But on the other hand, there were some really beautiful places I drove past, where the snow on the trees really makes for a gorgeous vista.

It's winter here, and we generally don't hang around outside. If you're dressed for it, and you're in a place that's designed for it, a walk on a snowy day can be fun, interesting, even exhilirating. But when you think about a theme park and that sort of day outside, it doesn't fit.

I've always thought that most everything would have to be inside, with enclosed walkways or the entire park in a huge superstructure. Days like this just make that limitation much clearer.

*****

Disney Parks: Dining in the World (continued)

2010-12-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

Besides the California Grill and the Yak and Yeti, we also dined at many other fine restaurants at Walt Disney World. I'm going to try to list them and say a few words about the experience, though not in any order.

The Hollywood Brown Derby was our lunch destination on Wednesday. It's a "signature dining" experience, and we'd not had the opportunity to eat there before. It's sort of pricey, but we figured that it would be worth trying. We split a Cobb salad to start, then I had the Sterling Silver Pork Chop, while my wife had the 6 oz Char Grilled Filet of Beef. The service was good though not outstanding, and the ambience was nice. The food was good but after eating the night before at Emeril's, we may have been spoiled. It didn't stand up to that experience, although the prices were right up there.

We also dined at Le Cellier on Friday night. This is a small restaurant with a limited number of tables, and though we called exactly 90 days in advance of our vacation to make the reservations, the only time we were able to get was at 8:20 pm. A little late when you're dragging 2 kids ages 8 and 10 around, but we (I) really wanted to dine there, so we took it. As it has been in the past, it was one of our best meals. I had the Le Cellier Mushroom Filet Mignon, which is served with a wild mushroom risotto. That risotto is excellent. My wife had the same thing. I can't remember what we had as an appetizer; perhaps we didn't get one. I know I ate my kids' soup, and we did get an order of onion rings for the table. But I thought we did order something. Oh well. The food and service were both top notch. I see on the Disney website that this restaurant is considered "signature dining" also, but I thought it used to only take one table service point. No matter to us; we weren't on the dining plan.

The 50's Prime Time Cafe was another dining destination. We ate there on Wednesday night right after watching the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. The greeters couldn't have been nicer. Our service was a little slow, but was she a riot! She was so funny! My kids were laughing so hard that we were worried they'd lose their supper. The food - eh. It's okay. My steak was so-so, and the kids' chow was average at best. My wife had the fried chicken, though, and said it was really good. The server made this experience, however, with her performance. I tried to remember her name but I didn't write it down so of course it's gone from my memory.

Les Chefs De France was the location of our first night's meal, and it was decent. I started with lobster bisque, and my wife had the Soupe a l'oignon gratinee (French onion soup). Both were excellent. I followed it with the Trio de fruits de mer au bouillon de homard (scallops, mahi mahi and shrimp), while my did the Filet de boeuf grille (grilled tenderloin of beef). Mine was quite good. She said hers wasn't as good as she remembered. Our service was excellent. It's pricey but worth it for the atmosphere and the service as well as the good food.

On Thanksgiving, we dined at Sanaa, the restaurant at our hotel. This was terrific. We started with the bread service, which consisted of Naan, Onion Kulcha, and Paneer Paratha. We selected the Mango Chutney, the Garlic Pickle and the roasted red bell pepper accompaniments. They were all excellent. For dinner, we both went with the "Slow-cooked in Gravy, Simple and Well-seasoned" dishes. I selected the Chicken with red curry sauce and beef short ribs. My wife had the same chicken but did the Shrimp with Green Curry Sauce. She loved hers. I really enjoyed mine, too. (The waiter told us that we were one of the only tables to order off their regular menu, but we figured we're at this restaurant NOW, and we want to try what they have to offer, not an American Thanksgiving meal. We were getting that on our return home anyway.) For dessert we did the sampler, with Chocolate cake, passiou fruit kulfi, and chai cream. I really loved the chai cream. I'd highly recommend this restaurant.

I'll post separately, later, about the dining experiences at CityWalk and Universal. It won't be as long, thank God.

*****

Disney Parks: Dining in the World

2010-12-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

We had many fine dining experiences during our WDW visit last week. Among them were stops at California Grill, Chefs De France, Le Cellier, the Brown Derby, the 50's Prime Time Cafe, Sanaa, and the Yak and Yeti. We also ate at Pastamore and at Emeril's at the CityWalk, but I didn't take pictures of those meals.

My dinner was the Grilled Pork Tenderloin, and my wife did the Oak-fired Filet of Beef, and both were done to perfection. The presentation was beautiful, and the tastes were incredible. I know I wasn't feeling all that well, and it was late, but this restaurant, while pricy, has been the highlight of our Disney dining experiences the last two times we've gone to the World.

Dessert was also excellent. If I'm remembering correctly, this was the California Bread Pudding, and we shared it. It was delicious and we cleaned our plate! (Well, I did, anyway...my wife has willpower.)

We started with one of the flatbreads (I believe it was the Spring Vegetable flatbread) and the Sonoma Goat Cheese Ravioli. Both were excellent. (The kids helped with the flatbread.)

We were also lucky enough to get what I think was about the best table in the house - the one with a perfect view of the Magic Kingdom fireworks, which we were able to enjoy without leaving our table. A very nice finish to our Sunday in Disney.

Thursday we went to the Yak and Yeti for lunch. This was a really good day. The weather was perfect, the crowds were manageable, and the park was beautiful. And the Yak and Yeti's food was excellent. We started with Pork Pot Stickers (not pictured) and they were excellent, though about what you get from most Asian (and some non-Asian) restaurants. I followed it up with the Shaoxing Steak and Shrimp, and my wife had the Stir-Fried Beef and Broccoli. Both of these dishes were presented nicely, and were quite tasty. We did order the Fried Wontons for dessert, but I don't have a picture of it.

This is one of my wife's favorite restaurants in any park, and I have to agree with her that it's a culinary treat.

I'm going to stop here but I'll be back with another post about dining, though sadly it won't have pictures (because these were the only ones I took). Or maybe not so sadly. Bon Appetit!

*****

Disney Parks: Holiday Decorations

2010-12-01T10:54:00.001-08:00

The parks were festive, decked out in Christmas splendor. It's our first trip to WDW at the Christmas holiday season, so I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't overwhelmed, but I wasn't disappointed. I guess that's another way of saying that most of it was about what I expected, but a few things stood out as "really something special"!

I apologize for the quality of my photos; I took them with my iPhone, and while it's not bad, it's not great, either. Plus, the hand behind it isn't so great. But I think they show that the decorations were not excessive at the Magic Kingdom. Nice, but not overdone, or spectacular, really. Same with the trees. All the parks had them, and they're nice, but they're what I'd expect - not much more.

Now here is something that really IS spectacular. The lighting of Cinderella's Castle is just breathtaking. It rotates through 4 or 5 background colors, and those white icicle-type lighting just make you go, "Wow!" My picture doesn't really do it justice; it is much more beautiful in person.

And something else that is spectacular, and exceeded all my expectations, was the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. Again, the pictures I took don't really do it justice; it's much more spectacular in person. The colors and the movement of the lights just mesmerized me and my family for quite a while. I was insisting to my wife that we make sure we see this, because I suspected it would be cool, but it was so much cooler than I thought it would be. Everyone should see this spectacle, it's that impressive, in my opinion. (Maybe I'm easily impressed, but...)

The decorations were nice all over, but those two things really stood out, head and shoulders above anything else I saw at the theme parks at Disney or Universal last week.

*****

Back from the World...

2010-11-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

We just returned from a week-long vacation to Walt Disney World, and it's back to reality today. But the good news (I think) is that I may have some material for a few blog entries coming up over the next week or two. Today's entry, however, is just a quick recap of the trip, hitting the high points, so to speak.

We were in Florida for seven days, Saturday to Saturday. We spent five of those days at Disney parks, and two at Universal's Islands of Adventure. We had five days of perfect weather, and two days when we had to deal with a bit of mid-day rain and slightly cooler conditions. Very nice weather overall.

We had planned on spending one day at Islands of Adventure, and one day at Universal Studios park, but it didn't work out that way. Our first day was spent waiting in lines and getting drenched. It wasn't supposed to rain that day (Monday); I believe they were giving it a 10% chance. But rain it did, and we were caught unprepared.

Our first line was the line to get into Mythos. We had booked what we thought was a reservation for lunch, but we learned that they really don't take "reservations" per se, just priority seating. So our 12:30 time was just a what? An estimate? We did finally get seated right around 1:30 for lunch, blowing over an hour just doing nothing (because there isn't much to do in the Lost Continent, and the girl at the counter said that if we missed it when we were called, we could just tell her when we got back and we'd be moved back to the top of the list) and then another hour eating. Then there was a line to get a ticket to stand in line to wait to get into Hogsmead. Then a wait in that line, then finally a nice long wait in the line to get on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. Then a wait to get into Ollivander's, Makers of Fine Wands. I'd guess this one was close to two hours. (I know. You're saying, "Sucker!" That's what I felt like.) You see a quick show where one kid (not either of mine) was chosen to have a wand selected by the proprietor and to work some spells on various objects in the store. Then you buy a wand, whether you intended to or not, because you stood in line for TWO HOURS!!!

I said high points, didn't I? The point was that we didn't get much done that first day because of the rain, which kept us huddled under an umbrella used by the line attendant for the Flight of the Hippogriff ride, and because of all the lines. But the butterbeer made it all worth it!

So we spent our second day at the same park, and hit more rides, including the Forbidden Journey ride again.

The rest of the week was spent on Disney property, one day for each park, with two (the short Saturday of our arrival and the Friday right before we left) at Epcot. We had some really good meals at Chefs De France, Le Cellier, the California Grill, the Brown Derby, the Yak and Yeti, Sanaa, and the 50's Prime Time Cafe. We stayed at Kidani Village at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, but didn't really take the time to enjoy the resort itself - something we will be certain to rectify next time. I'm thinking that perhaps we'll skip the Disney parks altogether.

We hit most of the high points on rides, too. We did NO water rides, just because it felt a little cool to walk around wet all day. But we did most everything else at the parks. Saw a few things we'd not seen before, including the Hall of Presidents and the Festival of the Lion King show. The boys tried a couple of Kim Possible missions in the World Showcase and that was actually pretty fun for them!

So I think I have some more detailed posts coming up over the course of the next few weeks, and even some photos! It's good to be back! I needed to get back to work to get some rest time in!

*****

Your blogging will resume after Thanksgiving...

2010-11-18T15:53:00.000-08:00

Next week will be a busy week, and I likely won't have time to make any entries in this (blog or either of my other blogs.

So if you've been looking in, please don't take this "week to ten day" period of inactivity as an indication that this blog is going dark. Check back with me after Thanksgiving. I may have some things of interest to write about then. (Or not...)

To everyone who ever looks at this blog: Happy Thanksgiving!!!

*****

Disney and Dentistry - Walt's Words

2010-11-15T10:43:00.000-08:00

Oddly enough, after posting my last entry, I went to a seminar on comprehensive dentistry, and I opened the binder that was provided with all the handouts and notes from the class. On page 3 of the binder, the instructor gives us this quote:

It seems to me shallow and arrogant for any man in these times to claim he is completely self-made, that he owes all his success to his own unaided efforts. Many hands and hearts and minds generally contribute to anyone's notable achievements.

Walt Disney

The course was using these words to illuminate his views on the value of our dental team, including hygienists, assistants, and clerical staff. When you think about it in terms of Walt himself, he was obviously talking about all the talented individuals who did a lot of the heavy lifting in the process of making Walt Disney Studios the huge success that it became.

What's it have to do with Disney today? Probably very little. Probably has more in common with Pixar, where the team effort of all those guys produced the end result we see today every time we watch a Pixar animated release in the theaters. And maybe that's part of the problem at Disney today (assuming there IS a problem at all!), that it's way too huge to innovate anymore, whether it be in animation or in the theme park industry.

When you think of it, the newest part of Disney is probably the Disney Vacation Club, and that IS in fact a different way of packaging the concept of time shares. And their hotels and resorts are very much destinations in and of themselves. A very successful, very profitable business for the Disney Company. Maybe that spirit of innovation, of lots of talented hands, hearts and minds coming together to make something really cool, is alive and well in this branch of their business. A lot of people scoff at DVC, or resent it, but if you've ever stayed at one of their resorts, you'd probably agree that they're great places. With resorts in Hilton Head, Vero Beach and soon, Hawaii, they aren't limited to the theme parks either.

But that's probably a blog entry on its own. I just found it rather coincidental that I came across more references to Disney as it related to dentistry.

*****

Disney and Dentistry

2010-11-10T16:24:00.000-08:00

Some people who read this blog might know that in real life I am a dentist. And if it wasn't for dentistry, I may not have come upon my love of Disney, even as late in life as I did, because the reason we decided to first visit WDW with our kids back in 2004 (I think) was because the American Dental Association was having their annual meeting in Orlando that year. It also happened to be a really bad hurricane year, and we got to Orlando about an hour before they closed the airport. Hurricane Jeanne hit the next day and we spent our entire Sunday, our first day at Disney, cowering in our room at the Port Orleans French Quarter resort, munching on cereal and snack foods, waiting for the winds to pass. (It took them all day to do so because after Jeanne passed to the south of Orlando, she took a right turn and headed north. So we got the high winds and storms twice, sort of, with very little let-up in the middle.)

It so happens that the ADA held their annual meeting in Orlando again this year. We didn't go, because it's in the middle of October and our kids are in school. And school's important to us; we don't feel comfortable taking them out for Disney vacations anymore. But it didn't stop the ADA from having their meeting.

So what's the connection to Disney, you might ask? Well, apparently a hugely popular course titled "Disney's Approach to Quality Service" was on the course list, led by facilitator Tom Thomson of the Disney Institute. This course discussed Disney business philosophies and relating them to dentistry, mostly about anticipating and reacting "to patients' needs, wants and emotions." He drew parallels between the emotions people feel before they come in for their dental visit, perhaps their worries, and the emotions and worries that people have before signing up for a Disney vacation. How we deal with these issues might be different, but the need to deal with them is the same.

I found it interesting that even the ADA recognizes that Disney has something good to add to their program!

*****

Film - Disney Trailers

2010-11-10T13:57:00.000-08:00

When we went to see MEGAMIND, I noted two trailers for the anticipated upcoming Disney releases, TRON: LEGACY and TANGLED.

Both looked like fun films. I haven't been following the hype for TRON: LEGACY, and just a little of the pre-release information on TANGLED, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that Jeff Bridges is returning in the sequel to TRON. Aside from that, the look of the new film is incredible, if the trailer is any indication. (Or maybe I'm easily impressed.)

TANGLED "looks" like a Pixar film, with the crisp computer animation and detailed backgrounds. But I was unable to get a sense of how the story will play out. From the trailer, it looks like it will have it's share of funny bits. If past history is a guide, I think it will probably be a pretty good film.

TRON: LEGACY opens on December 17th.

TANGLED opens on November 24th.

*******

Film Review: MEGAMIND

2010-11-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

I took the boys to watch the only animated film out there right now (and they weren't interested in seeing Secretariat), MEGAMIND from Dreamworks.

For those who might not know, the story of this film is that two "babies" are sent to Earth for some reason, sort of a variation on the "Superman" theme where Clark Kent's real parents put him in some sort of spaceship and send him away from their dying planet. The two babies become Metro Man, protector of Metro City, and Megamind, who ended up as a child in a "prison" for the criminally gifted. Voiced respectively by Brad Pitt and Will Ferrell, these two grow up more or less together, attending a school together where Metro Man is always the beloved one and Megamind, with his giant blue noggin, is the outcast.

From there, the story is predictable, riffing on superhero/supervillain stories, with a love story that is just about what you're probably thinking it is. Tina Fey voices lovely news reporter Roxanne Ritchi, who Megamind is constantly kidnaping. That's played as the cliche it is in many of these sorts of stories, and because it's played that way, it actually works. Metro Man is the too-good-to-be-real superhero who is always foiling Megamind's plots, and if I wasn't seeing things, Ben Stiller was credited as the voice of the boring clerk Bernard, whose identity Megamind usurps in order to try to relate to Roxanne.

This movie didn't hold a candle to Dreamworks' last offering, How To Train Your Dragon, as far as the story goes. The look of the movie, especially the city vistas, is really cool. My kids loved the way the skyscrapers looked in Metro City, and I thought it was a beautifully animated movie. The 3D worked really well on this one, and I'm glad we saw it in that version.

And I don't want to suggest that it isn't a fun movie, because it is. Dreamworks' offerings are always a cut above all of the competition not named Disney or Pixar up until now, and this was no exception. It is one I will probably buy on DVD when it comes out.

*****

What is it about Disney?

2010-11-01T11:14:00.001-07:00

I was thinking about this over the weekend as we prepare for our upcoming WDW vacation, wondering what it is about Disney that attracts me?

If you've read any of my old posts, you probably know that I've come sort of late to Disney in my life. Not to a love of Disney movies; I've always loved them from the time I was a little kid and 101 Dalmations captured my fancy, along with many others. But the parks - to them I am a late-comer. I went in high school with my HS band, when only the Magic Kingdom was built, and I just don't remember much of it. I mean, I remember having a blast there, riding Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion and Pirates, and the Skyway, but for some reason it didn't register that Disney was doing something more than other, more local "theme" parks were doing. Right around that time, Marriot's Great America (now a Six Flags park) opened, and in hindsight it is obvious that they were trying to connect to the Disney theming, but on a less intricate, less detailed level. With "lands" like Hometown Square, County Fair, Yukon Territory, Yankee Harbor, and a few other America-themed areas, they were sort of trying to tie into that feeling that you get when you walk down Main Street, USA at a Disney MK type park.

But I'm getting off track here. Since we chose to combine a Disney vacation with a professional meeting held in Orlando in 2004, we've been to WDW 4 times (including that first one) and Disneyland twice. And it was really after the second trip that I fell in love with Disney as a destination...not after the first trip. So what was it?

Well, part of it was that my kids were older at that second trip. Not a lot older, but when you're in preschool, two years is a lot. They definitely enjoyed the trip more the second time. My little one wasn't as afraid of different rides and shows. I mean, Hopper's appearance in It's Tough To Be A Bug was still a little frightening, and there were a few loud noises on Pirates that startled him, but generally he did well on most everything. And my older boy was game for some coasters, like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and he was ready for Splash Mountain.

But the other thing that was different was that we went to Epcot for the first time. We didn't make dining reservations; we just took what we could get, and what we were able to get was dinner at the restaurant in Italy and lunch at the Morocco pavilion. But we were bowled over by the dining choices and by the architecture of those pavilions. And we were knocked out by Soarin'! We loved Epcot!

And when I left there that time, I remember thinking, as I would drive to work, that someone, some entertainment company, could do something like Epcot anywhere. You could go to visit Morocco, or France or Italy, any time of the year! Good weather was only part of the equation when most of the attractions were inside show buildings. And good design should make someone able to draw up a place that would have elements that would work well in winter, as well as elements for summer. It started me on a thought experiment that I'm still messing with - designing a "resort" and "theme park" complex somewhere around where I live.

So that's part of it - the idea that I'm sort of studying Disney to further this thought experiment of mine. But there's more to it than that, certainly. Because there is a sort of "magic" that comes with walking through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, or Disneyland, or Epcot, or any Disney park. There's a magic in staying in their hotels, getting excellent customer service, having good dining experiences regularly, with boarding a bus or a monorail and knowing that your destination is somewhere completely different than anywhere else on earth, at least in *my* experience.

What is it about Disney for you? Is it the connection to the well loved films and TV programs? Is it your kids' reactions to the castle and the characters, to the iconic attractions? Is it the look and feel of the place? Is it the hotels? The restaurants? Is there something about Disney that doesn't have to do with "content" per se?

I'd love to hear what other people think about this.

*****

My Disney Bookshelf - Listmania List from Amazon

2010-10-29T08:45:00.001-07:00

Here is a list of titles on my Disney bookshelf, as noted on Amazon's Listmania feature. It may not be complete, but it has most of them, I think.

How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life by Pat Williams

Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World by David Koenig

Disney War by James B. Stewart

The Disney Way, Revised Edition: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company by Bill Capodagli

Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making the Magic Real by the Imagineers

The Imagineering Field Guide to Disney's Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World by Alex Wright

The Imagineering Field Guide to Epcot at Walt Disney World by Alex Wright

The Imagineering Field Guide to Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World by Alex Wright

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney by J. Michael Barrier

Building a Company: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire by Bob Thomas

Designing Disney by John Hench and Peggy Van Pelt

Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park by Jeff Kurtti

The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland by Alex Wright and the Imagineers

The Hidden Magic of Walt Disney World: Over 600 Secrets of the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom by Susan Veness

The Imagineering Field Guide to Disney's Hollywood Studios by Alex Wright

The Disney Mountains: Imagineering At Its Peak by Jason Surrell

The Pixar Touch by David A. Price

Project Future by Chad Denver Emerson

I started collecting Disney titles about 4 years ago, so my list isn't as extensive as it could be, perhaps. But there are a lot of worthwhile titles on there. (I didn't include fictional stuff like The Kingdom Keepers series, or Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom.) It's a work in progress...

*****

Parks - "Hard-Ticketed" Events

2010-10-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

We're going to be at Disney next month, and though it's not running at all on any of the nights we're in town, Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party is a so-called "hard ticket" event that will be available before and after our vist.

I've always wondered how these events are. I've heard good and less-than-great things about Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party...more good than bad, actually. I've heard it's a treat to see the park lit up in spectacular fashion, to get the treats from cast members in costume, to see some neat mini-shows and such going on, and of course, to be able to get on rides quickly and without lines. What I've heard bad about it is that it's not great for families with smaller kids, since it doesn't really "start" till 7 pm, and if your kids are going to be crashing by 9, you're not getting much for your money. We've been there two or three times when MNSSHP was running, and never saw fit to buy the tickets for it.

I've heard that MVMCP is not as good. I've heard that the park looks good, and the fireworks are first rate, but it isn't as much fun for the kids as the Halloween events. Still, with my kids getting a little older now, I was thinking of doing it, as much for the access to rides as for seeing the park decorated and lit specially.

I do think, however, that these sorts of ticketed special events are good for the business. With three parks that DON'T require a special ticket to go to, closing one park early to all but the ticket holders has to be profitable. And having a special event that makes the guest feel really plugged in, really special, can be a lot of fun, I'd guess. I really think that, if I were Disney, I would be looking at doing more of them throughout the year.

I've mentioned it before, but I think DHS would be a natural place to have one, some sort of "movie premiere" night where you could really feel that you were going to a red carpet Hollywood event. I'm sure you could think of a really cool thing to do at Animal Kingdom, too...the old Beastly Kingdom thing would be a cool overlay to part of the park for a special hard ticketed event a few times a year.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Do you like "hard ticketed" events? Do you hate the concept? Would it just be greedy of Disney to do more of this? Or would it enhance the experiences of those guests purchasing the tickets?

*****

Obituary - Alexander Anderson Jr.

2010-10-26T07:14:00.001-07:00

Saw this in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday:

Animator Alexander Anderson Jr. died on October 22 at age 90. Mr. Anderson is credited with creating the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon characters, as well as Crusader Rabbit and Dudley Do-Right. He was the nephew of Paul Terry of Terrytoons, the studio that created Mighty Mouse.

The article mentions that he started with Terrytoons in 1938, then went into the US Navy (as a spy!) and returned to the studio in 1946. He suggested creating cartoons for TV but the studio wasn't interested as they were producing cartoons for the movie studios at that time. So Mr. Anderson went out on his own (with the apparent permission of his uncle) and began producing cartoons with his friend Jay Ward.

In the 1990's Anderson discovered that Ward was the sole holder of the copyrights for Bullwinkle, Rocky and Dudley Do-Right, and he filed suit. In 1996, a settlement was reached which recognized Anderson as the creator of the characters.

*****

Changes over there at the left...

2010-10-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

I rearranged my "Blog List" and my "Internet Favorites" on the left side of the page to reflect activity of some blogs that I like to check in with on an almost-daily basis.

I've added Progress City USA and Imagineering Disney to "My Blog List", where I (and you) can see when the most frequent post was for both of these fairly frequently updated blogs was made. Both of them are very interesting blogs with tons of good information.

I've moved Epcot Central and Reimagineering to the "Favorite Internet Spots" because it seems they have gone dark. If they start updating again, I will probaby move them back to the Blog List because they were two of my favorite destinations.

*****

Book Review: THE LOST HERO by Rick Riordan

2010-10-20T10:59:00.001-07:00

Finished up my read of this book yesterday, and I was engrossed by the story almost immediately. It is a continuation of the story told in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and I was happy to revisit this universe, where Greek gods still exist and still wreak havoc in our world.

Interestingly, this book takes a small twist, recognizing the differences between the Greek and Roman gods. At first glance they would seem to be the exact same gods, just called by different names, but Riordan recognizes that the Roman gods were more warlike, more disciplined. He builds the basis for this second series in these differences, and it promises to be a good one, I think.

The story starts with the "extraction" of three young demigods from their school in Nevada. Piper and Leo are more or less what they appear, but who is this Jason kid? They all seem to remember him, all but Coach Hedge, who is wondering just where he came from. The students are on a field trip when they are attacked by vengeful storm spirits, or venti. And Jason shows that he's no ordinary demigod.

But that's about as far as he can go because he doesn't have any memories - and doesn't know anything about himself or his past. Where did he come from? Who are his parents?

We find out a lot about Jason, Piper and Leo as the story progresses, and we also meet some characters from the first series, including Chiron, Argus, and Annabeth (among some other demigods at Camp Halfblood). But conspicuously missing is Percy Jackson himself - he seems to have disappeared and no one knows where he went.

Jason and his two friends get sent out on a mission to stop another massive war between the gods and their foes, somewhat different enemies than last time. Along the way they meet Medea, King Midas, Boreas (god of the north winds) and Aeolus (god of the winds), who provide them with plenty of peril.

It's a fast paced, well written young adult novel, that grabs the reader and pulls him/her in to the story quickly. For a long book, it doesn't take long to read (as is the case with many young adult novels). I for one am really looking forward to more books in this series, as well as Riordan's Kane Chronicles series which deals with the Egyptian gods.

*****

THE LOST HERO and TOY STORY 2

2010-10-18T10:44:00.001-07:00

We popped Toy Story 2 into the DVD player on Saturday night and I watched it with my two sons. I was sort of surprised; it was like watching a new movie for me. I was certain I had seen it before but I guess I must have stopped watching at some point, for some reason. The ending was unfamiliar. I mean, I sorta knew what was going to happen but I don't remember ever seeing any of it.

I know, from reading THE PIXAR TOUCH and from reading comments about the movies, that a lot of people thought that the second of these movies was better than the first. If I'm not mistaken, one reviewer, back when it came out, stated that this was the "rare sequel that surpasses the first film," or something to that effect. I can't say I agree with that. I'd say it was my least favorite of the three. But it was still an excellent film, and ranks right up there with all the other Pixar movies.

*****

A while back I wrote a couple of posts about "Should have been Disney" or something like that. We picked up The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan last week; it's a continuation of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. It's published by Disney Hyperion Books, like the rest of the series were. And it's a really interesting, well done continuation to this point. (I'm about 200 pages into it now.) I suppose I could call this part of the post "Probably can't be Disney" since I'm sure that whichever studio it was that made the first Percy Jackson movie has the rights to sequels and characters. But I'll repeat: This series would have made an excellent addition to Disney's movies and to the parks, too!

*****

That's all for this Monday.

*****

Book Review - THE LONG TAIL by Chris Anderson

2010-10-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

Off topic, perhaps, but still interesting to me...

Right before I read THE PIXAR TOUCH, I read this book by the editor of WIRED magazine, Chris Anderson. It's title is THE LONG TAIL: WHY THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS IS SELLING LESS OF MORE, and it deals a lot with online retailers such as eBay, Amazon, Lulu, iTunes and Rhapsody, as well as with the blogging industry such as it is. Anderson examines how it becomes profitable to offer consumers more choice, beyond the culture of "hits", as it were - hit TV shows, hit motion pictures, hit songs, and hit books.

I found it interesting that this "fringe", consisting of mostly "niche" products and works, is providing a significant portion of the sales and profits from most of these online businesses. These are the products that the big box retailers, the big record labels, the big publishing houses, do not care to carry, simply because it makes no sense for them to do so. There's limited capacity. Limited shelf space. Limited screens to show films on. Understandably those sellers and publishers and labels and such want to spend their time, resources and space on the big ticket, big money making items. The hits.

The hits are the "short head" of the market, the part where relatively few products account for most of the sales. The "long tail", by contrast, is the part of the market extending out past the first 100, the first 500, the first 1000 maybe, works. So while a conventional retailer must figure in the costs of having an item physically present, a "long tail" retailer can stock larger and larger numbers of works. Songs, to Rhapsody and iTunes, take up just a small part of the digital storage available. Amazon can store ten times, maybe more than that, the number of books that your friendly Borders brick-and-mortar store can stock. eBay does it even more differently - they don't have anything to do with the merchandise. The author also mentions Alibris, a network of used bookstores that, like eBay, simply aggregates the information about merchandise located all over the United States.

One thing that struck me (and other Amazon reviewers too) is that most of the examples Anderson gives are from entertainment product fields. eBay is not stricty that, but other than media, I don't know how this would work. A "long tail" is possible where the means of production have become cheap, where almost anyone can record their music, write and publish their book, even make a film. But perishable products certainly do not fit the model as well, nor do products that take specialized manufacturing. There aren't a million people out there making, oh, say, plastic buckets. Or car parts. Etc etc.

I consider this post to be off topic, but I think there are some tie-ins with Disney and Pixar. Disney may well have been sort of a part of a "long tail" back in the early 1900's when they were making animated films and struggling financially. Back then there was no internet of course, but movie houses were different - they were almost like social gathering places. Not like multiplexes today. There were places to put Disney products in almost every small town in America. Of course, today, Disney is part of that "short head", wanting copyright protection extended on everything they do to protect their investments. (As they should.) But back then, they were making films that, really, they didn't know if there was a market for them.

And Pixar, well, there is a classic example of the production technolgy being used for something that no one exactly knew what would come of it. The idea of making a feature animated film with only the computer was far-fetched back then. The tools of production found their way to the dreamers. Much like independent filmmakers today can make films on a shoestring. (I heard about a new film about a sports talk show guy, something like Nice Guy Billy or something like that, made on a budget of 25K, and it will not be released in theaters - it is going right to NetFlix, iTunes, On Demand platforms, and of course DVD. The director talked about how he had a camera and film editing tools, and was able to make the picture so inexpensively. Classic long tail - a film that otherwise would be seen by virtually no one outside of a major city with an art film theater will now be ONLY available through these long-tail types of outlets.)

I keep thinking about how the long tail relates to my own entrepreneurial ambitions, but I'm coming up dry so far. I'll keep thinking on it though. In the meantime, this book is a worthwhile addition to my (and maybe to your) library. A quick read and full of interesting theories and information.

*****

Pixar vs. Disney

2010-10-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about what I learned as I read THE PIXAR TOUCH, and was amused to consider the origins of both businesses. Disney's origins are in a far flung past, when things were different. Pixar's origins are more rooted in a near-past from which things have not changed all that much up until today.

Walt started the Disney Brothers Studios on a shoestring - he had virtually no money, except for a few hundred dollars from his uncle and whatever he and his brother could plow into the business. He had arrived in Los Angeles with virtually no money, but he did have a mostly finished print of his Alice film. Using this print, he was able to get a contract to deliver short films to a New York distributor and, as part of the contract, get some advance money to allow him to hire a few people and finish the one he had and film and produce more of them.

Walt struggled to keep things afloat in those early days, but it was the newness of the medium that really allowed him to begin. There was not a lot of competition in what he was producing at the time. Yes, there were places doing some animation, but not too many of them were trying to combine story and animation as Walt was doing. He sold his productions as he made them, and was paid for them as he sold them. He took chances, gambled on animation being capable of far more than anyone thought it could ever be. Later he gambled that an amusement park could be far more than anyone thought it could ever be, too. Both gambles paid off big time - SNOW WHITE and Disneyland resulted in huge successes for his company.

By contrast, Pixar really began in college laboratories - first at the University of Utah, where computer graphics were being developed, then at NYIT, where the administration (in the person of wealthy entrepreneur Alexander Shure) shared Pixar's founders' filmmaking aspirations.

While it seems that both companies started with something "new" (animation, more or less, with Disney and 3D computer graphics/animation with Pixar), it also seems that the computer 3D graphics takes a LOT more money to get started. Hence the private origins of Disney, while Pixar had to exist as a division of something first. The hardware needed for the research that eventually made Pixar's products possible was cost-prohibitive except to a larger organization. So Pixar by necessity had to start under the auspices of a institute of higher learning, then continue its existence as part of Industrial Light and Magic. It finally earned its independence when Steve Jobs bought them for around 5 million dollars. And even that was not true independence - because Catmull, Lasseter, et al, still had to pretend that their hearts were in the hardware side of things.

So what is analogous today, or in the near future? I don't really know - I'm not an avid reader of those tech magazines that might be writing about the next big thing - but I wonder if it will be something that we can all do on our laptops, or is it going to require even greater technology than 3D computer graphics did at their inception? Walt needed a camera, but he could get cameras at pawn shops and in equipment liquidations by photo houses and such, and while it may have been a struggle, he could swing it. No way could Pixar have afforded the computers that the first digital projects were done on - the Cray computer system that Pixar "borrowed" time on to make Lasseter's The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. costed 10 million dollars at the time.

Most of the computers we take for granted today have greater computing power than the Pixar Imaging Computer that was so powerful (and expensive!) in its day. While I'm sure there is a "next step" to be taken, and probably to be taken by someone outside of the major studios, I'm not at all sure when it will happen or what direction it will take.

Thoughts?

*****

Book - THE PIXAR TOUCH by David A. Price

2010-10-13T10:20:00.001-07:00

THE PIXAR TOUCH: THE MAKING OF A COMPANY, by David A. Price, was a fascinating look at the history of Pixar, who we all know is making animated feature films for the Walt Disney Company these days after Robert Iger and Steve Jobs were able to come to an agreement that made Jobs the largest Disney shareholder by a wide margin, made Ed Catmull the president of both Disney and Pixar Animation, and made John Lasseter the CEO of both organizations, as well as principle creative advisor to Walt Disney Imagineering.

But that merger/acquisition is the culmination of a much longer story, and really is nowhere near as interesting as Pixar's history as a company. For example, I had read that Pixar started their existence as a hardware company, but I really didn't know what that meant. The more accurate way of portraying things, according to Price, is that Pixar was always a company, from the moment Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith joined together in New York at the New York Institute of Technology with Alexander Shure as their wealthy patron, that was primarily focused on using 3D computer animation to make a feature film. It was Catmull's interest and it was Shure's interest as well.

The company ended up at Lucasfilm when that organization hired Catmull to head its new computer division. The only trouble with LucasFilm was that George Lucas did not see computers or 3D computer graphics as the future of filmmaking; he saw computers as a tool that could make film production easier, faster, and of higher quality.

The technologies that Lucas was looking for - digital film compositing, digital audio mixing and editing, and digital film editing - existed, for the most part, only in Lucas's own fertile imagination. Catmull would just have to dive in and cope.

Their breakthrough came in 1981 when they were contracted to make a short sequence for the STAR TREK film, THE WRATH OF KHAN. The scene where Kirk, Spock and McCoy watch a simulation of the so-called "Genesis Device" - an animation of a world being consumed by the device and finally coming to life anew as the device worked its magic - that was the one of the first real scenes in a movie that was computer animated entirely, and it was done by Industrial Light and Magic - or more specifically, by the computer division of ILM. The first Pixar film, really.

In late 1983 the group had an opportunity to hire a Disney animator, someone who had just been let go by Disney. You can guess who this was - of course it was John Lasseter. The trouble was that George Lucas did not see his computer division as a filmmaking unit, he saw them as a computer group. Lasseter, an animator and a born storyteller, didn't really fit in. But it didn't stop Catmull and Smith from getting him on their payroll; they gave him the title of "Interface Designer" and they were off to the races.

Can you tell by reading, so far, that I was fascinated by the company's history? The author does a fine job of detailing that history, through Steve Jobs' purchase of the company from LucasFilm, from Jobs' own reservations about the company's ambitions as filmmakers, from the money they lost for Jobs, and finally, for the money they made for him, and for themselves.

But Pixar was never about money, and doesn't seem to be about money today - they are about artistic achievement in 3D computer animation. The book details the progression of their skills and their technology from the first TOY STORY movie, through CARS and RATATOUILLE. The epilogue talks about WALL*E and about the state of the principle characters since the Disney merger/acquisition.

I couldn't put this book down - it rivaled some of the best fiction I've been reading lately. A must read for anyone interested in animation history, in business, in filmmaking, or in Disney.

*****

Two Years!

2010-10-09T09:10:00.001-07:00

I've reached a second milestone: With this post, I've now been blogging about Disney and Disney related (however loosely) subjects for exactly two years! This is the 142nd post on this blog, not as active as some, not as indepth as many, not as many photos as several, and certainly with less expertise as most. It was on October 9, 2008 that I started the blog with this post.

But I still love the parks, the films, and the history of this company. I've enjoyed doing this; it has let me put into words a few of the thoughts going through my head since I re-acquainted myself with the world of Disney in 2004 (I was always interested in the movies but the parks and the company were not part of my focus before that), and I've found a few really fun blogs to follow in the process. Learned a bit, too. That's always cool.

I see today that I have 6 followers: I'd like to thank them for following my ramblings and I'd like to thank anyone who has listed me in their links section.

(BTW, I'm working on the Pixar book now and will try to post my thoughts after I finish it sometime next week.)

Have a great upcoming year to all!

*****

Disney Parks - EPCOT: Failed Promise or Unique Theme Park?

2010-10-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

As you peruse the Disney blogs, one of the topics that elicits the most passion, in both blog entries and in the reply sections to those blogs, is the theme park known as Epcot. Or you can call it EPCOT Center, if you're so inclined.

As we all know, the letters E*P*C*O*T actually stand for something: They are an acronym for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow". And as we Disney fanatics also know, the original intent of the "Florida Project", at least in Walt Disney's mind, was to create the city of tomorrow, where corporations would save the day along with astute city planning and concepts of development. It didn't happen that way, and without Walt, there was probably never a chance of it happening. Walt was the one who could "sell" the various corporations on his ideas. Whether Roy and the others who succeeded Walt ever fully believed in the concept is open for debate, I suppose. I know that Roy paid lip service to the goal of building such a city, but I wonder if, had he lived longer, he would have continued to push for it as a goal.

So EPCOT became a thing of legend, and in its place came EPCOT Center, a park dedicated to ... to what? The front half, Future World, was obviously themed around the near future, while the back half was themed around presentations of different cultures in the World Showcase. I was never there, but I know from my reading that the pavilions that are there today were mostly there back then, with two notable exceptions: the Horizons pavilion and the Wonders of Life pavilion.

Nothing seems to elicit more passion than the Horizons ride-through attractions, heavy on animatronics and futuristic imagery. It was closed eventually, for whatever reason (a sinkhole?), and later, in its place, the Mission: Space pavilion opened. The World of Motion pavilion gave way to Test Track, but at least it is still more or less dedicated to the topic of transportation. Wonders Of Life simply closed and has not reopened.

Let me state right here that the current theme park known as Epcot is my favorite park at the WDW resort. There are some really fun attractions, there are many, many good dining choices, and the architecture is still incredible. And I never had the chance to visit the old EPCOT Center, so I can't really speak to its brilliance or supremacy. I have to take various bloggers' words for it.

Still, I see what they are saying. This park was supposed to be about an optimistic future, but it's just become about the present. And the present is as non-controversially presented as it possibly can be. What is futuristic about it now? Ellen and the Universe of Energy? Fossil fuels? How retro is that? The Seas With Nemo? Cartoon fish swimming in the ocean? Testing autos for GM? Hang gliding over California? And Journey Into Imagination? The one Epcot attraction that almost never has a wait?

At least Mission: Space takes us somewhere that no one has ever gone - except that we're told as we enter that it is a training exercise - presumably for something that hasn't happened yet. And Spaceship Earth's voyage through our (animatronically portrayed) past in order to presumably learn something about our future ends up forward looking and interesting.

So I think it is a park full of failed promise, at least in Future World. I think World Showcase succeeds beautifully at what it presents. But Future World is not about the Future anymore. I am led to believe by everything I've read that the goal of this park was to showcase the cutting edge of technology.

Maybe this is impossible to do in today's world. After all, we aren't amazed anymore by things like videophones or robots. We've been living with them for a really long time. We also aren't all that amazed by the new technology of energy production, at least not wind farms and nuclear power plants. We aren't amazed when NASA sends a rover to Mars or anywhere else to collect data. Advances in technology and science seem to be smaller and less accessible today. And the ones we are aware of seem to be mostly in the entertainment industry - iPads and iPods, Kindle readers and Droid X phones. Not to mention video gaming.

I'm sure there are things out there to amaze us but Epcot doesn't really show us much about it. I am amazed by my mother's cochlear implant. Imagine that a device can take sound, convert it to electrical impulses and transmit it along 22 or so tiny wires to directly stimulate the cochlear nerve, and the brain can make sense out of this and turn it into what we all take for granted: hearing sounds.

Epcot does have a display on cochlear implants, but there's no depth. It's just an advanced hearing aid to most, I think. There are nods to other technologies there, too, but they seem to me to be of the same depth, which is to say, not much. And they don't generate excitement, they are just displays. High school science projects might be more exciting.

Instead of trying to showcase the future and inspire us today, the management has chosen to simply entertain us. And they do an okay job of that with rides like Soarin', Mission: Space, Test Track and even the Living with the Land and The Seas With Nemo rides. They're fun, exciting, and repeatable. They just don't teach or inspire. Edutainment? Not so much.

That said, Epcot is still an incredibly unique park, and it is still "working" for millions of visitors. What other theme park tries to do what Epcot does? I can't think of one.

Were I going to spend more than 4 days at Disney World (as I am in November, though two days will be spent at the competition, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure), Epcot would be the park I'd spend more time at than any other. Just walking around there is a worthy experience. The dining choices make it THE place to go for food in WDW, and the attractions are just icing on the cake.

But they could be more. They could BE the cake.

******

Book Post - THE PIXAR TOUCH by David A. Price

2010-10-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

*****

Really, I don't have much to say about this today, except that I purchased this title yesterday at my local Borders (33% off coupon and some money left of a gift card offset the $16.00 cover price) and just barely started it last night.

It promises, I think, to be a very interesting portrait of the personalities at Pixar as well as at the company itself.

I'll be posting more about the book when I finish it...

******

Theme Parks - Kinetic Energy

2010-10-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

When you are wandering around a Disney theme park, perhaps you notice that things are moving. Or perhaps you don't notice. But it makes an impression, if only subconsciously.

I don't have a great deal of theme park experience. I've been to both Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort, and I've gone to Six Flags Great America, plus the St. Louis version of Six Flags and a couple of smaller parks. But when I think about it, the major difference I see is the quality of motion around the guests at the parks. Yes, at Six Flags, there is plenty of motion with coasters flying around, but they just look intimidating and scary.

At Disney parks, the motion is of a different quality. In Tomorrowland, you have the PeopleMover going past above you, and the Astro Orbiter, also happening above your head. At Splash Mountain you see the logs coming out of the mountain and down the flume before spashing into the water. Even Dumbo and the Magic Carpets of Aladdin provide kinetic energy in their corners of the park. Near the main entrance the Disney Railroad provides the motion.

The motion at the Magic Kingdom is exciting, inviting (perhaps), interesting, but not intimidating or frightening in the least.

Epcot's Dancing Waters Fountain provides kinetic energy in the Communicore, as does the monorail itself as it loops through the park. Test Track, of course, has the motion of its vehicles as they race past its entrance, and the pools of the Imagination! pavilion have their own brand of kinetic attraction with the illusion of water flowing uphill. Even The Seas With Nemo and Friends have motion with those silly animatronic pelicans in front of its entrance.

The other two parks don't have as much kinetic energy available for guests' diversion and for subliminal atmosphere, at least not that I can think of. It's been almost two years since I've been to Disney, so some stuff is a bit hazy in my mind. (I'll be rectifying that next month with my family.)

If any readers come up with any other examples of how Disney uses kinetic energy to set atmosphere and keep things interesting for the guests without hitting them over the head with the motion, please feel free to mention them in the comments section.

Thanks for reading.

******

A Red Letter Day in Disney History

2010-10-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

HAPPY 28th BIRTHDAY, EPCOT!

You're still my favorite!

DVC Trades

2010-09-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

I was trying to keep this blog updated, at least with minor entries, but the last few weeks have been dry for me. It seems my brain has been too occupied with the political debate (if you want to call it that) going on in this country, as I've been doing some light research on the health care bill (aka ObamaCare) and on federal spending. (I made a couple of blog posts over at my Rambler blog on Journalscape. If anyone's interested, there's a link over there on the left side of your screen.)

So Disney has been fairly far from my mind over the last couple weeks. Until this weekend. We are Disney Vacation Club owners, and one of the main reasons we bought it was because of the potential to trade for weeks at nice properties around the country and world. They have an exchange program with RCI Timeshare properties, but it is something that till now we haven't attempted to utilize.

But this weekend, we started thinking about possible trips for spring break of 2011. So we pulled out our DVC book, and started looking at the locations in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona. There are a few very nice properties listed in that area. So we picked out two or three, and called to see if they could check availability.

No availability at any of the properties we wanted.

So we did the same thing for San Francisco, but this time rather than spending an hour searching the internet for the various resorts and figuring out which ones we'd like to maybe try out, we called first. No availability in the entire state of California for that particular week.

The second agent was much more informative than the first - she let me know that the way most people do this is that they put their names on a "wait list" and wait for someone to give up their week to the exchange program. She said that it usually happens within a couple months. The trouble is, the airfares we were looking at were this price, today! Two weeks ago, they were more. Two weeks from now, who knows what they'll be?

Perhaps this is simply the way this exchange program works, but it was one of their major selling points when we were buying, and though I asked all the questions I could think of before we bought, no one explained that it was likely to be difficult or to take time to actually get trades through. In fact, just the opposite - the guy making the pitch suggested that since Orlando was the number 1 tourist destination in the world, trades were easy to make and happened very quickly. He went through the process, calling DVC and requesting the trade. But he seemed to suggest that it was about the same as using our points to book a vacation at a non-DVC Disney property, except cheaper, points-wise.

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with the way this worked out. I and my kids really love Disney, but there is more to life and to the world than Disney property vacations. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn't purchase DVC points again...

*****

Imagine(er) That!

2010-09-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

This is a poster which can be found in the Innoventions pavilion at Epcot.

Don't you sort of wish there really WAS a reality tv show called this?

*****

Music: My favorite band ever

2010-09-08T12:04:00.001-07:00

I'm a huge Beatles fan. I believe I have everything they've recorded on CD, and I was smart enough to keep some of my old vinyl records of their recordings, including stuff like Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour. These young men were musical geniuses, in my opinion. They shaped the course of rock music, and they continue to influence people today. The recording technology has gotten better, but the music has not advanced as much, in my opinion.

I'm a musician myself; my main instrument is keyboards, but I also play a passable guitar and am a fair drummer. I've played in a lot of bands over the years, and it seems we almost always covered at least one or two Beatles songs, even if it was just Twist and Shout and I Saw Her Standing There. But we've tried a ton of 'em...Harrison numbers like Something, Lennon songs like Glass Onion and The Ballad Of John and Yoko, and McCartney tunes like Back In The USSR and Lady Madonna.

Not surprisingly, there are tons of cover bands, groups playing the Beatles' catalogue, and some doing it very well. I've not seen a ton of Beatles' tribute bands. But the few I've seen are good. American English is a group that plays around the Midwest, and they try to look and sound like the Fab Four. The Fab Faux is a bunch of guys from New York who don't care so much about looking the parts; they prefer to do the music perfectly. Saw them at the Vic Theater in Chicago where they did the White Album in its entirety just before Christmas last year. (Did I say they do the music perfectly?)

The only other Beatles tribute band I've seen is this one: British Invasion. If you have visited Epcot and lingered in the United Kingdom pavilion, it's likely you've seen them too.

I'm led to believe (by my wife and others) that, as a musician, I look for different things than casual fans do. I listen for guitar riffs, for drum fills, for vocal harmonies, for bass runs, for all the little things that make the songs sound close to the originals. And I hear those things when I listen to British Invasion. They appear to be top-notch musicians, on the order of American English (the band I referenced earlier). And they appear to love the music they are performing.

These are just a couple of pictures I had in my camera of the band performing in their gazebo in the courtyard of the UK pavilion. I hope to catch a set by them when I'm there later this fall.

Rock on, British Invasion!

*****

Disney's Hollywood Studios: The Hat

2010-08-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

There always seems to be criticism of DHS's "new" park icon, the Hat. Most of the blogs and commentaries hate it. They hate it with a passion. Kevin Yee recently posted a question about what to do with DHS to increase the bottom line, like what shows or attractions to cut down on or cut out. Several of the suggestions on his Facebook page boiled down to "Tear down the Hat and sell it for scrap metal."

(My own suggestion, there and in a blog entry, was to create a boutique experience a couple nights a week, or maybe just several times a year, where they turn the park into a "Glamour Night", like a movie premiere or a big star studded event. The architecture is there and so are the facilities to put on some special shows, roll out the red carpet for guests. I'm sure Imagineering could come up with some wonderfully fun stuff to do at this party, much like the Christmas and Halloween ticketed events at Magic Kingdom...but that's not really the point here...)

Everyone seems to hate the Hat. It never bothered me all that much. I didn't like that it blocked the beautiful reproduction of Graumann's Chinese Theater, and I didn't like that it only houses a pin trading store. That seems to cheapen the whole thing. And as I said in the last post, it makes a certain amount of logical sense, since it is Yensid's hat, and Yensid is the sorceror who makes the magic happen, and who also stands for Walt himself...

But the more I think about it, the more I look at the various park icons, I've decided that it just doesn't work as a park icon. It struck me as I was watching the video in my Disney Parks 6-pack on Animal Kingdom, when one of the Imagineers (Joe Rohde, perhaps?) was talking about constructing that park's icon, and he referenced the Castle and Spaceship Earth as icons to live up to. And DAK's Tree of Life DOES live up to those icons. It's a work of art on its own, and it is striking!

There is an elegance to all three of those icons, the geometric perfection of the Epcot geodesic dome, the sweeping spires and detailed architecture of Cinderella's Castle, the portrayal of LIFE itself by the big Tree.

There is no elegance whatsoever to the Hat.

It's a cartoon.

I realize that this is a park about movies and that animation is where Disney made its bones as a studio. But something else is needed as the icon, if it is not going to be the Theater.

Most bloggers and folks commenting on the issue seem to feel the Theater building is a perfectly adequate 'weenie' and perhaps they are right. But if Disney, for whatever reason, feels that it cannot be the symbol of DHS, then I'm going to weigh in on the side of those who feel that the Hat is not elegant enough or iconic enough to be used as the symbol. Surely they can come up with something that rivals the beauty, elegance and power of those other symbols. (Just off the top of my head I thought of some sort of sculpture featuring an Academy Awards statue and empty film reel spools. It probably wouldn't work since that Oscar statue is a copyrighted and protected symbol of the Academy, but something like that. There have to be ideas out there.)

I like the Hat but not where it is, and not as the park's 'weenie'.

*****

Disney Bookshelf: The Imagineering Field Guide to Disney's Hollywood Studios

2010-08-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of factoids in this book, mostly listed under the "Quick Takes" sections of various topics, that I didn't know. Most of them I won't remember. But there were some larger items that will undoubtedly stick with me. Not a ton of them, but a few.

So here's my list of "Stuff I didn't know about DHS (and learned from the Field Guide):

The concept for DHS came from the Eisner/Wells management team, and was originally envisioned as an entertainment pavilion for Epcot's future World.

The architecture in the park is of the Streamline Moderne style.

The initial liner acceleration portion of the Rock'n'Roller Coaster ride serves to bring the ride to a seperate show building far enough away from the Tower of Terror so that it doesn't compete with the view dominated by the Tower in that part of the park.

Four theaters from around Hollywood are represented on Sunset Boulevard: The Warner Beverly Hills Theater, the Academy Theater, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Carthay Circe Theater.

Each player in Toy Story Midway Mania is "handicapped" in the target practice round, with difficulty levels for the rest of the experience being determined by how well individual riders do in that round of play.

There is an interactive umbrella on the Big City Streets that lets guests do a Gene Kelly impression. It has a switch that triggers a little downpour over you for a good photo opportunity. (I have never noticed this when visiting the park!)

There is a lot of good information in this book; maybe not as much as some of the other Field Guides, but still, it's a fun read. Those six items stood out to me as things I didn't know but thought were pretty fascinating.

*****

Disney's Hollywood Studios and the Imagineering Guide

2010-08-23T10:18:00.001-07:00

Talk about timely! As I'm finishing up The Imagineering Field Guide to Disney's Hollywood Studios, Jason over at Disney's Folly posted an entry titled Disney's Hollywood Studios: A Boulevard of Broken Dreams. In that article he describes the current state of the park in less than glowing terms. Jason suggests that the park was quite popular, and was a worthy addition back in 1991, but that it hasn't aged well and needs an injection of, well, something (read his article!) to get back on track.

Some who have read my entries in the past might remember that I really like DHS, that I don't see it as a half day or second rate experience, and that I feel it offers an excellent mix of attractions. We all know what's there: Tower of Terror, Rock'n'Roller Coaster, Toy Story Midway Mania, Star Tours (though it closes soon for an update), the Great Movie Ride, and the Backlot Tour. As parks go, it isn't a lot. But it does feature several shows: Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, Lights, Motors, Action, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast at the Theater of the Stars, MuppetVision 3-D, the American Idol Experience, and Playhouse Disney Live on Stage. I didn't even mention Fantasmic! because I've yet to see it. As parks go, that's a LOT! And there is also the experience of One Man's Dream, the museum walkthrough dedicated to Walt and his life, and the one-of-a-kind (at least in my experience) Disney's Animation Academy. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Is the Sounds Dangerously still showing? And there are also those cute little street performances that are quite entertaining.

Aside from Epcot, I believe that DHS has the best dining experiences of any Disney park I've visited (this includes all six stateside parks but nothing overseas). The Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater is unique and tons of fun, even if the food isn't the best and perhaps is overpriced. The 50's Prime Time Cafe is also fun, and we haven't even tried The Hollywood Brown Derby or Mama Melrose's. It also has some decent counter service options in the Backlot Express, Pizza Planet ARcade, the ABC Commissary, the Studio Catering Co, and other places.

The architecture, as Jason points out, is really well done; there is nothing second rate about that aspect of the park. Of course, there are the numerous complaints about the Hat which has been settled in the middle of the park, but it doesn't annoy me as much as it seems to annoy many purists. It's too bad it blocks the Graumann Theater building, but it does make a certain amount of logical sense, since the park is about the wizardry of movies, and the hat belonged to Yensid the Sorcerer, and Yensid is of course a not-so-hidden reference to Walt himself. It's Walt's hat, I think, and as such it does fit as a park icon.

The problem with the Hat is that it blocks the beautifully done Graumann's Chinese Theater building, and I understand that. It is lousy placement, and to have it house a simple, almost crass, pin trading store under it, is less than optimal (to be kind). However, as the park's symbol, I do think it works.

The Imagineering Field Guide sheds no light on WHY the change was made (from the theater building being the "weenie" to the Hat taking its place)except to state that:

"In preparation for the 2001 celebration of the 100th anniversary of Walt's birth - known as 100 Years of Magic - the company looked for a way to create an iconic statement to represent the park during that celebration in the manner of Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom Park, Spaceship Earth at Epcot, and the Tree Of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom. After the event was over, the hat remained and continued to fulfill that role, much the way the Chinese Theater had in an unofficial capacity during the early years of the park."

The Field Guide also points out (at the beginning) that the park used to be about the "nuts and bolts of filmmaking craft" but the advent of DVD's with their numerous special features and behind the scenes films included with most every film these days, the park needed to shift away from that focus and become "more about putting guests into experiences inspired by film, television and other media in new and exciting ways."

I can't disagree with Jason that the park could use an expansion, some fresh subject matter. I love the idea, voiced in Jason's blog article and mentioned by Kevin Yee recently in one of his Miceage updates, of adding a Star Wars World, perhaps behind the Star Tours attraction where there is land to use. But I also do feel that DHS is still a very fine park and a mustn't-miss park to visit on any Disney World Vacation.

I'm in the process of trying to accumulate the interesting facts and bits I got from the book, and compiling them into a blog post. Hopefully I'll get it done tomorrow and post something on Wednesday. Till then, I guess I should just yell, "CUT!" and finish this particular long winded entry up!

*****

Disney Bookshelf - The Imagineering Field Guide to Disney's Hollywood Studios

2010-08-19T13:03:00.001-07:00

Hey, it's August, isn't it!?!!

I remembered that the latest of the Imagineering Field Guides to be released had, in fact, been released, and there it was at Amazon for just a bit under ten dollars! So I ordered it (with a couple CD's, one by Adam Lambert for my wife and one by Tinted Windows, a sort of pop supergroup with members from Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne, Cheap Trick and Hansen - but if you want info about that, you'll have to wait a bit), and have been reading through it for the last couple of days.

I'll probably make another post about this book after I read more of it, but it's what I expected - insights from the Imagineers about details of DHS, much like the previous books provided for other parks. I'm learning the background of many of the names of stores and buildings, and little tidbits about some rides and attractions. I think it's probably best if I reserve specifics for that future post.

But, as I have posted here in previous entries, I do not consider DHS to be an inferior park. I think there's plenty of cool stuff to see and do, plenty of good places to eat and I love the ambiance of the place. So this Field Guide is going to make a handy travel companion in the fall when we head down to Disney World.

So far, I'm satisfied with my purchase.

*****

Disney DVD - The 6 Pack

2010-08-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

Not really about the content about the DVD's themselves, but today I found myself disappointed.

I paid the 28 bucks plus to get them through Amazon, and I still haven't watched all of them. But I wandered into Sam's Club today in search of supplies for the office, and when I do that, I always have to see if they have any deals on DVDs. No deals on stuff I don't have, but...

The DVD 6 pack of the Disney Parks programs was there, and had a price tag of something just over 18 dollars on it.

It always bums me out when I spend more than I need to spend for something. And when it's 10 dollars, well, that's a lot of money!

If you are looking for this collection, and you have a Sam's Club nearby, check it out before you buy at Amazon.

*****

D23 Magazine and Epcot Patch

2010-08-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of D23 is an entertaining and informative one, even if there isn't much that I'm particularly interested in blogging about. The main feature is a reminiscense about the development and opening of Epcot, through the eyes of Marty Sklar and SF author Ray Bradbury, both of whom had a lot to do with the way it looked on opening day, October 1, 1982.

The article has some concept art and several photos from the development and construction of the park, most of which we've seen before. One interesting quote from the article itself:

What had been two disparate concepts began feeling more and more like a uniform whole as Epcot took on the hourglass shape so familiar to today's visitors. Future World anchored the north side, with World Showcase laid out around a large lake on the south. Conceptually, they're radically different, but together, they contain an important underlying thread: The notion of progress, of working together to achieve a better tomorrow. One part of Epcot shows us what is possible, the other shows us who will make it happen: We will. By understanding and celebrating our differences, we can create a better future.

Mr. Bradbury accepts this premise about the concept of Epcot as it existed on opening day, and today:

"The whole of Epcot teaches us how miraculous we are," Ray says "We are very special people. We are part of something that began millions of years ago. So, all the time, on every side, Epcot points to you and says, 'You are individual. You are creative. I hand you the future; step into it. Believe and go forth.'"

Other marjor articles include one about Jungle Cruise skippers, a feature on the upcoming animated offering Tangled, one titled "Journey Into Imagineering", and a salute to Fess Parker. They're all pretty interesting.

The gift that came with it was an Epcot patch specially made for D23 members. This one is the symbol of "The Living Seas" pavilion. I wonder if it will be possible to acquire the other eight patches at some point.

Here's the picture of the patch: (apologies for my poor photography skills)

Have a great day!

*****

D23 magazine

2010-08-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

The new magazine is here! The cover features the main characters from the upcoming film Tangled, which I thought (for some reason) was going to be hand-drawn animation, but looks to be computer generated by the quality of the image on the cover.

The "gift" that comes with the magazine is a custom made Epcot patch. Apparently there are 9 designs, and each member gets one. Mine is for "The Living Seas". A nice design featuring white waves on a green background.

I haven't had the time to look at the magazine in any depth but am looking forward to the article mentioned on the cover: "An Exclusive Tour of Walt Disney Imagineering". On the back cover they have an ad for next year's D23 Expo, which I had hoped to attend. Unfortunately, it will be held August 19-21, 2011, and I will likely not be able to go in August - busy month with birthdays and back to school rush at both home and work. Darn.

Looking forward to reading the contents in more depth than a quick flip-through.

*****

Other Parks: Six Flags Great America

2010-07-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

We made our annual pilgrimage to Six Flags' Great America yesterday. We do this because our sons, avid readers (at least during the school year) both, each earned a free ticket. And the park currently is offering a special where if you buy your tickets at Jewel or online, you pay kids' prices. So off we went.

One of my favorite things about the park is this carousel as you walk through their entrance gates. I think it's striking, a park icon of almost (though not quite) Disney quality. It goes back to the original park, when it was Marriot's Great America, and was actually themed to be a mini-USA. I have fond memories of the way the park was in those days when it was brand spanking new. It was not the steel jungle of roller coasters that it is today (they said on the train ride that they have 14 roller coasters, the newest of which is a small wooden coaster that used to be at Kiddieland, called the Little Dipper), and though there were thrill rides in the park, it was milder stuff. The log ride and the boat ride were both there back then, as they are today, and the Whizzer (then called Willard's Whizzer) was on the premises, as were some of the smaller rides like the Orbit (then the Orleans Orbit), the rotating observation platform that ascends its tower, and of course, the train.

They used to have this towering Ferris Wheel, with three arms, and each arm held a Ferris Wheel that rotated independently of the other two. They'd haul us up in the air, turning, as they loaded the next arm's wheel. Great views, and a great place to take your dates. They used to have a roller coaster called "Turn of the Century", which did some corkscrews and was probably their biggest thrill ride at the time. That got replaced by "The Demon", a coaster that does a couple of looks to go with the corkscrew inversions, and is still there today.

Shows were a big part of the park then. "Hometown Square" featured a big theater where singers/dancers would perform a musical tribute to this era, or that era, depending on what the theme was that year. There was always a big parade midday, and Looney Tune characters were all over the place (they still are). There was an iMax theater that is still present also, but was a much bigger deal then (the technology was really new back then).

This year, we went on the Whizzer, the Demon and the American Eagle (their large wooden coaster). We went on Logger's Run once and the Yankee Harbor Boats twice. The boys did the Chubasco Teacups and the Condor and a couple other minor rides. And we took a train ride, for old time's sake, around the whole park. I think that maybe I liked that ride best.

They claim the title of "World's Cleanest Theme Park", which is interesting. Yes, there is no garbage laying around, there are plenty of supervisors walking around with their claws and brooms and such, sweeping up just like the custodial staff. But when you look just off the path, you notice that there really isn't a lot of attention paid to the landscaping. Dirt, gravel, and branches take the place of nicely trimmed grass or groundcover. There are flowers in some places, but not in too many places. All in all, I'd say any Disney park is better kept up and manicured than this place.

But that's not why people are there. They are there for the big roller coasters, like Raging Bull, the Iron Wolf, Batman and Superman coasters, and V2 (Vertical Velocity). That's just to name a couple of their bigger rides.

I still like the image of the carousel best, I think.

*****

Disney Video - 1/3 of the Six Pack

2010-07-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

I finally got the opportunity to watch a couple of the videos from the Disney Parks collection that I got about a month ago. The two I watched were (and I don't have them in front of me so I'm doing the titles from memory) Walt Disney World Behind The Scenes and Undiscovered Parks.

I must admit I sort of had a different idea about the second of these two titles; for some reason I was thinking that this one might be more about parks not in the United States that we aren't able to discover. When I was thinking about it, I was thinking that "Unbuilt Parks" might be an interesting subject as well, a documentary on stuff like WestCot and Port Disney, and Disney's America. (I think there is a DVD program there; history, concept art and interviews with Imagineers. People like me would buy it, I believe.)

Anyway, the real subject of this DVD was the lesser known activities available at the American resorts. It discussed things like the "Richard Petty Driving Experience", parasailing on Lake Buena Vista, the "dream suites" at both resorts, and some of the tours that are available, like the "Walk in Walt's Footsteps" tour at Disneyland. It was an interesting DVD to watch, showing some overlooked details and giving a heads-up, sort of, on some things offered by the resorts.

The other DVD was a behind-the-scenes look at the attractions and offerings at the four parks in Disney as well as the water parks. It had some beautiful videography, but there was nothing earth-shattering in the subject matter. They discussed the remaking of attractions like "Test Track" and "The Seas With Nemo" among other things. There were some interesting interviews and some neat shots of the parks being built.

I have four more of these DVD's to watch. They are more like advertisements for a Disney vacation, but as I said, the images are at times stunning, and the picture quality, even in DVD (not BluRay), is excellent. If the other four are more or less like these two, I will feel I've gotten more than my money's worth for this 6 DVD collection at a price tag of under $30.00

*****

Checking out the blogs...

2010-07-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

I don't do a lot of linking posts, but this week I found several interesting posts on various blogs that I thought I'd call attention to.

Over at Progress City, Michael Crawford reports on the history behind the designing of Disneyland in his post The Ryman Centennial - The Phone Call. Lots of art and an overall interesting post!

Samland is reporting on the events at the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco in his posts titled "Disneyland 55 - A Birthday Celebration at the Walt Disney Museum Part 1 and Part 2. I believe a Part 3 is forthcoming. (link added on 7/28/10)

The World According To Jack at AllEars.net has two posts on the Port Orleans French Quarter resort - Part 1 and Part 2. This resort holds a special place in my own heart because, even though we haven't stayed here but once, that stay was our first stay as a family (and my first stay at all) at a Disney resort.

The Imagineering Disney blog has a great post called Disneyland In 1955. Lots of great photos of all the lands.

It's Golden State Month over at Voyages Extraordinaires where Cory Gross has written several very interesting articles about California history.

In the absence of much of interest around here, take a look at some of these entries. They'll keep you entertained.

*****