Myrna Litt was at the Disneyland Resort yesterday for the first day of soft openings for It’s a Small World Holiday & has sent us in some great pictures of the classic attraction which has finally re-opened at Disneyland:
The Holiday clock ceremony.
The new boats running through the attraction before guests were let on.
A bunch of Disney executives.
Read More about Myrna Litt’s 11/19 It’s a Small World Holiday Photo Report
According our friends over at the LA Times Travel Blog:
President-elect Barack Obama will soon take his place among the 43 previous commanders-in-chief at Walt Disney World and may join Abraham Lincoln and George Washington at Disneyland. (Story updated below.)
Disney hopes to entice Obama to record an address for his animatronic likeness, which will be added to the Hall of Presidents show at the Magic Kingdom by the Fourth of July 2009. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush lent their voices to their Disney doppelgangers.
The revamped show in Florida will include speaking parts by Washington, Lincoln and Obama, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Mice Age columnist Al Lutz reports that Obama and Washington may join Lincoln at the Disneyland Opera House in time for the Anaheim theme park’s 55th anniversary in 2010.
Disneyland’s “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” closed in 2005 to make way for the 50th anniversary movie, “Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years.”
Walt Disney Imagineering officials said that while discussions have been ongoing to bring back “Mr. Lincoln” at Disneyland, no such plans are currently in the works.
UPDATE: Walt Disney Imagineering officials now emphatically say a Barack Obama animatronic figure will NOT be added to the “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” show at Disneyland, calling the Al Lutz story “patently false.”
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Disneyland’s latest official podcast is quite a treat. It features a look at all of the new & upcoming attractions to the Disneyland Resort in this last leg of 2008. Covered are the Blue Sky Cellar, High School Musical 3: Right Here! Right Now!, Pixie Hollow, the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough, & Holidays at the Disneyland Resort.
My favorite part of this video was the portion on the “re-awakened” Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough, that actually shows some of the Imagineers working on some of the show scenes for the walkthrough. The Holidays at the Disneyland Resort portion has a look at the new lighting for this year on Sleeping Beauty’s Winter Castle & the Main Street Christmas Tree.
You can watch the video bellow:
I have 2 pieces of news for you that I wanted to bring out in one post. First off, as was expected (we just didn’t know when), the Main Street Christmas tree has been installed in the park. This year is the first year a fake tree is being used, due to the new LED lights that have been installed in the tree to go along with the Sleeping Beauty Castle Lighting Show.
The 2nd piece is a rather shocking piece. Captain Jack Sparrow has been cut as a meet ‘n greet character in the park, which basically means that after November 15th, you’ll no longer be able to meet with Jack anywhere in Disneyland. I find it quite odd that if they’re trying to conserve money by cutting characters, that they cut Jack first, who seemingly is one of the more popular meet ‘n greet characters at the Resort. Again, this could just be a temporary thing, so be sure to stay tuned to Disneyland News Today for the latest.
To help everyone get through the transfer over to the new version of Disneyland News Today, here is a piece of concept art we just received of the new Toy Factory float coming to A Christmas Fantasy Parade this holiday season:
I’m back from an absolutely fantastic day at the Disneyland Resort, & I have a video for you guys of the new Bolt Pre-Parade to Walt Disney’s Parade of Dreams:
We’ll have a complete photo report for you guys tomorrow, so stay tuned!
Here’s a very interesting quote from Bob Iger brought up on the OC Register Around Disney Blog about Disneyland & the state that the economy is currently in:
I was at Disneyland and California Adventure on Sunday, in the middle of this tough economy on a day that started with rain in Southern California and there were 50,000 people at Disneyland and California Adventure combined for the day, which is — I know that doesn’t help because you don’t have much perspective but that’s a pretty strong showing.
And one of the things that was clear is that at California Adventure, where we’ve got good attractions, a new one, Toy Story Mania, for instance, there’s real appeal and real demand. We have an opportunity there because of the size of that property to infuse it with stronger attractions and I believe end up with a park that is substantially more successful than the one that we have today. And as Tom referenced it, because Disneyland itself is so built out, the primary way to really grow that resort is by improving California Adventure and growing that out. And when you consider that what we are putting in there is so attractive, Cars Land will be the anchor, a very, very successful franchise for the company, then we believe not only will we grow the top line but our real focus is to grow the bottom line and to grow our returns on invested capital.
Here’s a look at the now available Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland, from the LA Times Travel Blog:
The new pocket-sized “Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland” answers the question, “What would it be like to walk through Disneyland with Walt by your side?”
The 128-page paperback takes readers land by land through the Anaheim theme park, offering anecdotes, history and trivia from Disney Imagineers as well as early concept art, sketches and schematics of many rides and attractions.
“From a process standpoint, it offers a bit of a peek behind the curtain of how we turn concepts into reality,” said Alex Wright, an Imagineer who gathered tales from his co-workers for the book. “In a way, there’s no one person who can tell you all these different stories. We have so many different disciplines.”
To research the book, Wright delved into the extensive Disney archives and toured the park with long-time Imagineers Tony Baxter and Kim Irvine. The hard part, Wright said, was deciding what to leave out.
“When it’s Disneyland, there’s always more to tell,” Wright said. “You could have told another 1,000 stories with all the history that’s gone on there.”
The book starts off with a short overview of Imagineering’s 140-plus disciplines and insider lingo (Blue Sky, Plussing, Wienie) before diving into a land-by-land tour.
Designed to be read in the park, the “field guide” attempts to strike a difficult balance between appealing to first-time Disneyland visitors as well as life-long fans. Leaning more to the fan boy side of the spectrum, I read the book hoping to learn something new. My favorite finds can be broken down into three categories — abandoned concepts, park trivia and odd facts.
Among the early concepts:
- Walt envisioned live exotic animals roaming the banks of the Jungle Cruise.
- A runaway mine-car theme for Indiana Jones Adventure incorporating the Jungle Cruise boats and the Disneyland Railroad.
- A walk-through Pirates of the Caribbean wax museum — the water and boats weren’t added until after construction started.
- A Casey Jr. Circus Train roller-coaster thrill ride — retooled within weeks of opening day into a gentle kiddie ride.
Among the trivia tidbits:
- The New Orleans Square train station depot taps out Morse code of Walt Disney’s opening day dedication speech.
- The Latin motto on Mr. Toad’s coat of arms reads: “Speeding with Toad is always absurd.”
- Walt liked to take pre-opening morning drives in a Carnation milk truck along Main Street U.S.A.
- Steven Spielberg recorded the rumbles and clanking of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad for the mine-car chase scene in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
And the truly odd:
- Uprooted orange trees were planted upside down during the construction phase of the Jungle Cruise to represent missing foliage.
- Walt gave his wife, Lilly, a petrified tree for their wedding anniversary. (She donated it to the theme park, where it still resides in Frontierland.)
- Visitors in the Star Tours queue may hear an intercom page for Egroeg Sacul (George Lucas backwards).
My favorite part of the $9.95 book was a visual explanation of forced perspective, where shorter upper floors create the illusion of taller buildings while maintaining an intimate streetscape. My one criticism of the book — the pocket-sized format reduces the early concept art to business card size.
It’s once again time for a photo report from Mrs. Myrna Litt. She visited the Disneyland Resort yesterday as Christmas decorations have started to be put up:
Anyone know why there was a conductor in this restaurant’s train?
Christmas decorations have started to be put up in Sunshine Plaza.
Scaff-holding is up around the Sun Wheel.
I absolutely love these construction walls at the bottom of the picture! An absolutely fantastic design choice.
