Spring Is Maaaaaaagic! Let's Watch The 1985 WDW Easter Parade!

I am heading down to Walt Disney World very soon!  Goodness I can't wait to experience the whole Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group insanity for myself!  Ha ha ha (please keep my family and I in your thoughts and prayers) ha ha!  😨

So as is tradition, let's travel back to the long-long ago and watch a weird vintage Disney Parks special.  Now this particular special is mostly here due to unabashed nostalgia.  I haven't seen this in ages and can't believe how much I remembered from it; it's almost certainly my first encounter with most of these songs and artists.  I'm not going to say it's outright good, you don't even see much as far as vintage Walt Disney World goes.  But among the wonderful things you do see and hear are Doug Henning!  A very young Bobby Brown!  Upsettingly wrong-sounding Goofy!  The star of the brand new Disney movie "Baby"!?!



Stick around after the parade for a couple local news shows and a pledge drive!  Ah, YouTube.

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Art of the Day!

The coming spring season is a time for animals to get flashy, so here is an extremely speculative Triceratops couple:

WDW Trip Report: Epcot Gets Artful! Like, More So Than Usual!

My family's most recent visit to Walt Disney World was a bit of a doozy.  There were lot of brand new (and new-to-us) events and shows and rides to be experienced.  My personal priority was the brand-new Epcot Festival of the Arts.

I arrived on the very last day of this festival.  Fortunately, it was early enough that I could run right through the International Gateway from the Boardwalk (our first time staying there and we love it) and have myself a whirlwind tour of what the fest had to offer.



And for the most part, what Artful Epcot had to offer in terms of art was... Epcot itself, being artful.  Epcot really is a downright beautiful place, and the many artists working throughout the park on both temporary and lasting pieces made it all the more lovely.  Furthermore, since they were preparing for the upcoming Flower and Garden Festival, the gardens were fabulous works of science-art.

And cooking is a science and an art as well.  Don't you forget it.  This festival wasn't about to let me.  Yeah, it turns out that this was really the Festival of All Arts, But Mostly Culinary Arts.  I didn't have time to try any of the food, but what I saw looked like it was more visually appealing than appetizing.  I'll direct you to the good old Disney Food Blog to have a look at the many and varied "Deconstructed" food.  (I did finally try School Bread this trip and... I don't get it.)

There's also the matter of the Figment's Brush With the Masters scavenger hunt...



I swear to God, years and years of Art History classes and I have no idea how to react to this.



I found my new Twitter avatar though.



Figment's Brush With the Masters may be the ultimate perfect storm of Disney-cutesy and "We can't possibly let kids be bored for even a second in World Showcase aaah!"  But it's nice to see something (or anything, really) done with Figment in Epcot proper.  And anyway, I want these adorable frames.



Of course, one of the nicest overlooked attractions in World Showcase -one of the things that attracts *me*, at least- are the many galleries to be found in nearly every country's pavilion.  I had the "Frozen" concept art gallery in Norway to myself, the Kawaii gallery in Japan was fantastic, and I loved the exhibit of concept art from Shanghai Disney in China.  (But somebody help me identify the sheep in the above Twelve Friends.  E: It's one of the lambs from "Mary Poppins".  Sucks to be Danny from "So Dear to my Heart".)  They stick around long after the Festival, thankfully.



I did get to visit one temporary gallery in the Odyssey building (and being open looks real nice on the Odyssey).  It was full of lovely concept art by Mary Blair and Herb Ryman, including the above Ryman piece that hit me straight in the childhood.

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Art of the Day!

Thus inspired, I made some Artful Epcot Art of my own:

"Hooray for the 21'st Century!" - Let's Watch the 1982 EPCOT Opening Special!

My winter hiatus is over!  Let's go to Disney World!



Oh my goodness, this is wonderful.

First off, when I think of futurism circa the very early 80's, I think of no other person but Danny Kaye.  Yeah, it's a strange choice from our point of view here in the actual 21'st Century, but it works.  Early Epcot was very high-concept, and Kaye introduces it all with humor and warmth.  (And ear-worms.)

Keep an eye out for Roy "Guy Who Seems To Be In All These Old Disney Specials" Clark, Sico, better known as that robot from "Rocky IV" with a surprisingly poignant origin, many teases for pavilions that would never see the light of day, a finale where Marie Osmond makes it weird in the way only an Osmond can, and loads of early 80's "Computers can do ANYTHING" hype.

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Art of the Day!



Winter Goldfinches are extra-cute.

It Really Was Better When I Was Your Age. Deal With It. Let's Kill, Refurb, Marry Extinct Attractions!

This is going to be an interesting one, because I'm not quite sure what the age-range of the bloggers who participate in Kill, Refurb, Marry is.  Bringing up extinct attractions will inevitably date many of us.  Let's get right into it.

Kill: "Honey, I Blew Your Eardrums Out Shrunk the Audience" - At first, I thought the "Kill" section here seems a little strange.  "Extinct attractions are already dead, by definition, and anyway MAH NOSTALGIA!  EVERYTHING WAS BETTER WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE!  FACT!"

Then I remembered that the attraction that turned me off the "Audience Abuse" subgenre of 4D shows forever, "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience", was a thing and thought, "Oh, no, nevermind.  That thing can go right straight to hell."

Refurb (more like "reinstate"): "The Magic of Disney Animation" But With Actual Animators Animating Things Again - In the original version of this attraction, you watched a short, very funny film that explained how animation is created and then got to walk above the heads of animators working on films.  I can't express how awesome this was.

In the current version, you stand in line to meet costumed versions of the characters standing in the very same places the animators used to work and get to watch the closest thing a real theme park has come to the "Mr. DNA" movie in "Jurassic Park". Also, I got yelled at for wanting to walk down a corridor that had actual animation concept art displayed on the walls.  Yeah.

Marry: "Horizons" - Was there any doubt?

I'll be honest.  I'm still a little angry that I'm not currently living in an undersea building with a sea lion buddy.  I WAS PROMISED UNDERSEA BUILDINGS AND SEA LION BUDDIES!  ALSO, SPACE-HOTELS!

Then again, I am able to wish my relatives Happy Birthday instantly with time and space being no problem.  It's not as fun as Horizons made it look though.

Next Time: Resort Pools! The big surprise here would be if anyone chooses anything other than Stormalong Bay to marry.

Important Note: I was unaware that the date for this entry had been pushed forward to June.  Oh well, here it is early.

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Sketch of the Day: Yi qi yi qi yi qi!!!

Ray Bradbury's 1977 "Man and His Spaceship Earth" Script

Ray Bradbury was a huge influence on the earliest version of Epcot Center.  It's well known that he collaborated on many of the attractions in the Future World section of the park.  That said, I had no idea that Bradbury's original vision for Spaceship Earth would have been... different.

Cory Doctrow recently posted the script to Bradbury's original version of Spaceship Earth and I have to say, of all the obscure Ray Bradbury things making the rounds after his passing, this one might be the Ray Bradburiest. Unfortunately the script is a PDF file, so get the most majestic music you have readily available queued up as you wait for it to load.  Then get ready to have your mind blown to smithereens.

In my humble opinion, "Let's bury ourselves like the Five Billion Year Locust and then burst forth with wings - to plan tomorrow's Noon!" beats the stuffing out of "If you had an easy time learning your ABC's, thank the Phoenicians!" every day.

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Sketch of the Day!