A lot more of SHAG’s art pieces for the Haunted Mansion 40th anniversary next year have been unveiled. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
You can find many more of SHAG’s upcoming Haunted Mansion pieces by following this link.
I’d like to welcome back Chuck Canzoneri to Disneyland News Today, now in a new role of site photographer! Let’s get to his first photo report for us from Thanksgiving Day:
Pictures of the pardoned turkey parade.
From the OC Register:
ANAHEIM – The awe on children’s faces was apparent as they lined Main Street, Disneyland, to watch the first day of the Disneyland Christmas parade, which runs everyday until early January.
That’s when Denny Newell, the park’s senior show director, will start planning for next year.
With 17 custom-crafted floats and 120 performers and musicians, the parade is a massive undertaking. Newell starts taking auditions in September and parade cast members practice from 8 p.m. until midnight leading up to the parade’s kickoff around Thanksgiving.
For the parade, float drivers ensconce themselves in the hidden cabs of the steel-frame-and-fiberglass floats, which include some shaped like giant toy blocks with “Toy Story’s” Woody on top, ornate gazebos with dancers inside, or life-sized music boxes complete with a live ballerina.
The Toy Factory float is one that changes every year.
This year, it has elves marching beside it, pumping raw materials into one end.
A series of conveyor belts, pumps and hydraulics create the illusion of finished toys dumping into Santa’s bag as the float tools down the street. It features toy blocks as well.
“Last year, it didn’t really feel like a factory,” Newell said. “Through Disney Imagineering and some North Pole pixie dust, the new blocks match up with the ‘Toy Story’ float.”
As far as Santa’s own float, the right jolly old elf’s sleigh hovers above ornate fiberglass pine trees as he hollers good wishes to the children below.
It takes six men to wheel the bright-yellow, 12-foot steel staircase over to Santa’s float back stage so he can climb up to his perch in the sleigh.
Dancing and frolicking among the floats are roller-skating snowflakes, elves and actors portraying princesses from Disney movies – all rouged to a cartoonish glow.
Newell spends his days as the general to an army of toy soldiers with trumpets as Prince Caspian clops by on a Clydesdale and Buzz Lightyear does stretches like an athlete ready to sprint.
Is it surreal?
“It’s definitely interesting,” he said.
While there isn’t a lot news going on at the moment, I thought I would post the new Holidays at the Disneyland Resort commercial, that features snow on Main Street, Sleeping Beauty’s Winter Castle, the Main Street Christmas tree, & It’s a Small World Holiday:
DMC_Man on the WDWNT Community Forums sent us some pictures & a description of the new Muppet scavenger hunt going on at Disney’s California Adventure. Here is his description:
On the website you help Kermit find all the missing Muppets who are scattered around California in 1937 because they were trying out Dr. Honeydew’s time machine. Eventually they get all-together and met up with imagineers to leave clues as to where they are through-out DCA. Then you go and run around DCA, find clues to where they are, text the answers through your phone to Dr. Honeydew and then you’re told to go to the Blue Sky Cellar and say, “I saved History & the Muppets,” show them the text message, and then you get an envelope which essentially says that everyone got back okay, and DCA is going to look very different in 2012. Also in the envelope is concept art with of what DCA will look like after all the new stuff is put in.
Basically it’s a big thing to make you go through DCA and see everything (very obvious from the get-go).
And here are the pictures:
A letter from Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.
Guests get given this map to take home, which is currently featured in the Blue Sky Cellar.
Our very own Chris Lastrapes just did the online Muppet Scavenger Hunt & after completing it, he was given a pdf to print out & take with him to Disney’s California Adventure. You can find the pdf at this link (and play for yourself at DCA if you have the mind to).
ANAHEIM, Calif. (Nov. 26, 2008) – The National Thanksgiving Turkey will really have something to celebrate following today’s traditional Presidential pardon ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. “Pumpkin” and his alternate “Pecan” are going to Disneyland! It starts with a police escort to Dulles International Airport. Then the birds will “fly” First-Class on United Airlines Flight Turkey-1 to their new home at Disneyland Resort in Southern California.
The turkey’s special Thanksgiving Day celebration is a preview of things to come in 2009, as Disney Parks asks guests, “What Will You Celebrate?” and invites them to mark life’s special moments with a Disney visit.
The trip from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles will mark the fourth consecutive year that the National Thanksgiving Turkey has celebrated his pardon at a Disney Resort. Accompanied by National Turkey Federation Chairman Paul Hill of Ellsworth, Iowa, Pumpkin, a 20-week-old, 45-pound tom turkey, will be the grand marshal in a special Thanksgiving Day parade down Main Street U.S.A. Following the parade, Pumpkin and his alternate Pecan will find a home at Santa’s Reindeer Round-Up at Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland, where they’ll remain throughout the holidays and the rest of their lives.
Americans nationwide will be able to share the celebration as the turkey enjoys his new Disneyland home. See photos of the National Thanksgiving Turkey and watch video of this year’s White House pardon at www.disneyparks.com on Nov. 26 and 27. And, for the first time, watch the turkey LIVE from Disneyland on Thanksgiving Day from 12 p.m.-4 p.m. PST (3 p.m.-7 p.m. EST). Go to www.disneyparks.com, listen for the turkey’s gobble, and then click on the turkey face to access “Turkey Cam” LIVE from Disneyland.
“My family and I celebrate the honor of presenting the National Thanksgiving Turkey to the President of the United States,” said Chairman Hill of the turkey federation. “We’ll also be celebrating the special privilege of flying to Disneyland where the turkey will be the grand marshal in the Disneyland Thanksgiving Day parade.”
Added Captain Vince Kramer of United Turkey-1 and Assistant Chief Pilot for United’s Airbus 320 Fleet, “United is proud to fly our special, feathered guests and to help them achieve every turkey’s dream of flight. It is a rare treat for turkeys to reach 30,000 feet, and we look forward to getting them to Los Angeles and landing safely and on-time.”
U.S. President Harry S Truman was the first Commander-in-Chief to be presented with a Thanksgiving turkey (in 1947) by the National Turkey Federation. This year’s presentation marks the 61st anniversary of a tradition that has continued through 10 successive White House administrations. The 2008 National Thanksgiving Turkey was raised under Chairman Hill’s supervision on a farm in West Liberty, Iowa.
The National Turkey Federation is the advocate for all segments of the U.S. turkey industry, providing services and conducting activities which increase demand for its members’ products, as well as enhance the ability to effectively and profitably provide wholesome, high-quality, nutritious turkey products.
According to the OC Register’s Around Disney blog:
We at Around Disney didn’t find out until later that the Jonas Brothers were going to be signing copies of their new book, “Burning Up: On tour with the Jonas Brothers,” at Disneyland this morning, but they were there.
Disney spokesman John McClintock said the semi-secrecy was on purpose. The Jonas Brothers didn’t want to appear before the media, just the approximately 250 screaming tween girls that were allowed access to the Disney-sponsored youth pop outfit.
The signing wasn’t all fun for the girls and their parents who didn’t get the requisite arm band needed for access to the young heart throbs, though.
We at the Register took a few phonecalls this morning from irate parents demanding that justice be served against the few unscrupulous mothers who rushed ahead of the security guards after 1 a.m., when the girls started lining up (the event was at 11 a.m.)
“They lined up behind the security guard at 1 a.m. and were going to be at the front of the line,” said Cheryl Sullivan, the mother of a 13-year-old who tried to get to the book signing. “All of a sudden, these moms hauled … out of the bushes and they all got bracelets and we got none.
“Some of these moms decided they wanted to try to teach their children to cheat at Disneyland,” she said.
McClintock said fans attending limited-admission events surrounding teen stars at the park tend to get a little cutthroat.
“That doesn’t entirely surprise me,” McClintock said. “They’re only going to be there for a limited time, so there are going to be people who came out very early who aren’t going to get access.”
From the Disneyland Resort Annual Passholder website:
Greetings, Disneyland® Resort Annual Passholders! I am Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from Muppet Labs, where tomorrow is the future.
We at Muppet Labs are all atwitter about our fantastic new invention — The Muppet Labs Time Rewinder™! Thanks to this amazing scientific breakthrough, we will soon be able to send you back in time!
As a Disneyland® Resort Annual Passholder, you have been specially selected to be some of our first test subjects. If you are interested in time travel or simply have some time on your hands, please visit our website and fill out our volunteer questionnaire! Registration is limited, so please sign up soon! We’ll be selecting our lucky team in just a few days.
Thank you, and see you in the near future, or the recent past… oh my it’s so hard to keep track.
Scientifically yours,
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
The interior of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, long closed to guests, will “reawaken” in time for Thanksgiving. A vibrant new version of the classic walkthrough attraction features colorful scenes of Aurora, her gallant prince, the evil Maleficent and other characters from the beloved fairy tale film.
This revived Sleeping Beauty Castle “show” differs from the window-display dioramas which could be seen in the castle during the 1980s and ’90s. It takes its inspiration from the unique style of the original Disneyland castle walkthrough attraction of 1957, co-designed by animation art director and color stylist Eyvind Earle, who was credited with giving the motion picture “Sleeping Beauty” its distinctive and colorful look of storybook illustrations in medieval style.
Enhanced with new scenes and special-effects magic, the re-Imagineered attraction employs technology not available in the 1950s to tell the story of Sleeping Beauty, including the magic of good fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, and the more sinister spells of the evil Maleficent.
For the first time, guests who are unable to climb stairs or navigate the passageways of the Castle will be able to experience the walkthrough “virtually” in a special room on the ground floor of the Castle.
The attraction is scheduled to open at 5 p.m. Wednesday, kicking off the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
