Under the "Radar" at Disneyland...

[ickymouse]

Hi, all. Long-time listener, first-time poster. I recently went with a friend to Disneyland and spent three awesome days there. That is, for me the longest stretch of time I have done there. By Sunday evening when we left, if felt as though we lived there. My friend was visiting from Florida and was quite the WDW aficionado but hadn't yet had any Anaheim magic. He loved it, commenting the whole time how much better our park was than Florida's. We went to DCA (I had never been - I promised I would never go unless someone paid my way - which my friend insisted on doing - mostly in protest to opening a 2nd-rate park with off-the-shelf rides when they could've done something really cool) and actually had a good time for the whole three hours it took to see the good stuff. Back at DL, the park looked beautiful! They finally painted and spruced up the place and it looked great (it was about time). The new Tiki Room queue looked awesome. It seemed also as if they pumped up the sound, and the animatronics were firing on all cylinders as well. I really loved the way the Portraits in the Haunted Mansion Hallway were flickering simultaneously with the lightning (the way they used to) and thought the floating Leota looked really cool. Well done. But what's up with the annoyingly bright lights in the hallway just as you exit the stretching room? It's so bright you could read a book in there. Totally kills the mood & spookiness in there.

The Castle did, as one woman wrote on the Mouseplanet.com's site, look "Like a Puerto Rican's Wedding Cake". Tac-KY!!! I hope to god they paint it back. It looks like a giant plastic toy now. I thought the one-out-of-every-ride-car being painted gold to commemorate the 50th was kinda cool. The really neat thing was the 50th fireworks show "Remember, Dreams come true". It starts off kinda barfy, with that little kid singing "Star light, Star bright..." (I just shuddered), but then goes into this really cool medley of all of the lands in the park, complete with special pyro & lighting effects. I actually got kind of misty when they played the recording of Walt's Inauguration speech ("To all who come to this happy place – Welcome!...”). Really one of the best Fireworks shows I’ve ever seen.

In a weird, unexpected moment, my friend and I asked a couple of DL Security guys on Tom sawyer’s Island to take a photo of us, and subsequently got into a 25-minute-long conversation about how they both used to work in the Aerospace industry and had kids in the Military (?). It’s those moments that I love when I go the park. I’ve been so many times (it HAS to be up in the high hundreds by now -! ) that you start to look for those rare, unique moments that are out-of-the-ordinary; Chatty Monorail Captains that tell you about some backstage secret; a Mark Twain Skipper that lets you in on an inside joke with co-workers; A Disney Gallery CM that relates an amusing anecdote.

Speaking of CM’s relating amusing anecdotes, has anyone read the hilarious & Informative piece in the new Radar Magazine about the behind-the-scenes debauchery at WDW? It’s definitely worth the newsstand price.

Sorry for the longwinded post. Talk to you all soon.

-Ickymouse.

[Club33Hopeful]

The Castle did, as one woman wrote on the Mouseplanet.com's site, look "Like a Puerto Rican's Wedding Cake". Tac-KY!!! I hope to god they paint it back. It looks like a giant plastic toy now.

You should have seen the designs before they got scaled back. Those crowns were supposed to be at least twice as big and gawdy.

[ickymouse]

Yes. I'm sure they were even more "Fabulous" before they "Scaled them back". Oh well...they'll only be up until the end of the year.

[subsonic]

Great report. The major attractions at DCA are good, but it's just not a full day park.

As far as the castle goes, I wish they used that projection technology they were testing. That looked cool.

About your avatar: http://www.subsonicradio.com//forum/viewtopic.php?t=536

[subsonic]

Why do posts randomly dissappear? There were several more in this thread? That's cool if they were deleted for a reason. I've seen this a few times before, and wasn't sure if it was a bug or a moderator...

I split it, because the discussion was 5 posts off topic. It's locked in the Off Topic forum. It's now 3 posts off topic again, which I'm about to delete. I'll be sure to post a link to the split topic next time.

That costume is fantatic Icky!

[DisneyManInSeattle]

I agree - great writeup! Reading your comments on the fireworks show really is fun. I agree that the starting music and the kid talking is kinda lame since it is just part of "Wishes" show. Kinda wish that they recorded new music for that part. Of course watching TinkerBell fly around the castle kinda made me forget the opening. Way cool to watch.

The "E-ticket in the sky" portion of the fireworks is the best but Disney has a way to create unique music that really tugs at your heart, so I'm more of a sucker for that than listening to music from the rides. That said, from a purely fireworks point of view, the fireworks for this portion are awesome!

-mark

[ickymouse]

Thanks all for the kind words RE: my last Disneyland trip. I could go on like that forever. I have to admit - as much as the recent developments within the Disney Company have marred much of the magic of the park (in my opinion) for me, I still had a great time there. Now whenever I go there, I try and find little, untouched, unnoticed areas that have missed the wrecking ball. In my humble opinion, the last time Disneyland was truly great was 1996, just as the last Main Street Electrical parade "Glowed away" for it's last time (until it "Glowed" back on at DCA - !), and, ironically, the last year I ever owned or paid for a premium annual passport. I think seeing the parking lot dug up and the new ticket concourse put in really was the last nail in the coffin for me. I hate to be so dramatic, but, I was trying to explain the whole thing to my friend from Florida who was visiting and I basically came up with this: The reason I get so bummed every time they change one tiny, little thing there, is that for YEARS you could go there and virtually everything was exactly the same as when you left last time. You could take a month, a year, five years, and come back - and everything was exactly the same. It was being able to count on all those things being the same that was the magic for me. That dependability that you could literally close your eyes and point - and there was the Sub Voyage, there was the Skyway, there were the Rocket Jets. It seems as though every time I go there now, something has changed. It's like if you went inside your house, and there was different furniture and strange people in there. You're like, "Where's my couch? Who moved the TV over here? What's THIS doing here?". I used to count on that feeling of everything being in it's right place; that counting on those elements was why I got excited as I rode in on the tram from the vast parking lot, walked up to the same, old ticket booths, swiped my pass & walked under the tunnel onto Main Street.

I realize a lot of it's still there, but it's different. I know it's different. It's an almost invisible thing to the average Disneyland guest's eye, but I sense it. Yes, Disney said Disneyland would always be changing and growing. But the idea of taking tried and true attractions that were crowd-pleasing favorites for years (case in point - every "last" performance of the MSEP was PACKED to capacity on Main Street) and taking them out - for no good reason - that's just lame, and I really wish they hadn't done it.

To "DisneyManInSeattle" - I just saw a program for WDW and it listed their Fireworks show as "Wishes" and was wondering if that was the same show - I guess it was. That's kinda lame. I guess they just tacked on the Julie Andrews and Disneyland part. Whatever. I still miss Jack wagner's voice booming over the "Fantasy in the Sky" Fireworks show (BTW - has anyone noticed that there are NO more Jack Wagner spiels ANYWHERE in the park? Nope. The new, safety-conscious - see what happens when you buck your safety reports for years and don't properly train your new CM's to safely operate rides? - Disneyland has Spanish safety spiels on ALL attractions now. They have a new guy doin' 'em. Now, why couldn't they have just added a Spanish speil onto Jack Wagner's? He's rollin' in his grave, poor guy. Sadly, we'll never hear his "Ladies & Gentlemen, Boys & Girls..." again.

See what I mean?

I agree with you on the whole "Heart-string-tugging" aspect to all of their music, though. As big of a dork as me admitting this to you makes me, I STILL get choked up during Fantasmic! when the "Someday my prince will come" part of the show kicks in. Same thing in the "Dreams come true" fireworks show. At the finale, I'm dabbing. Such a dork.

Ok, I'm going now...

[ickymouse]

Thanks for the compliment on my Auctioneer Pirate costume! That seriously is an idea I had for years finally realized. I'm so proud of how well it turned out. My girlfriend was the wench. It was for a Halloween Party at a makeup Effects shop a few years back. I have worked in that business for the past ten years, on & off. It's always surprised me that, in ten years, with so many of the Effects guys being such huge Haunted Mansion & Pirates squids as they are, that no one except me has ever done a HM or POTC character. There were a lot of Johnny Depp-Pirates that year, but I was the only POTC attraction one. Back in 1998, I did the Hatbox Ghost from the Haunted Mansion for another Effects party.

If you go to http://photobucket.com/albums/v404/ickysan/

and type in "bunion" in the password, you can see a photo of the two costumes.

Thanks again.

[subsonic]

very nice, I wish I had that skill of doing makeup

[ickymouse]

Thanks, man.

[ickymouse]

Look - I'm a "C"-ticket!

[Club33Hopeful]

Yes. I'm sure they were even more "Fabulous" before they "Scaled them back". Oh well...they'll only be up until the end of the year.

You mean the end of 2006

[ickymouse]

Ew. Really? Ew.

[Club33Hopeful]

Yup. Remember, it is an 18 month long celebration. (Actually 5 days shy of 20 months). 05/05/05 - 12/31/06. They should be removing the crowns around the second week of January 2007.

[zenmondo]

I loved the long rambling post. If I can't get to Disneyland, the next best thing is this radio station and living vicariously through the forum posts and pictures.

That Pirate costume is incredible.... did you move all stiff like you have a board up your back to complete the illusion?