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:

Florida Holiday 2011 Trip Report - In Which I Heart Scopa Towers

After leaving Tampa, we headed over to Orlando and Walt Disney World to meet mom and dad, who had a studio room in the new Bay Lake Tower (sometimes called "Scopa Towers" for reasons that are unclear by the "Walt Disney World Today" podcast.) Now, I will admit that this oddly-shaped building (cylindrical from the ground, more like a "C" with the open side facing away from Magic Kingdom from above) didn't look like much when I saw it under construction a few years ago, but having stayed in it for a week... wow. WOW!!!

At the top is the view from our balcony at night, facing Contemporary Resort. Note the curving walkway in the lower-right. BLT isn't completely autonomous, having no restaurants or shops of its own. It's more like a weird new growth sprouting out of the older building. That said, everything you'd need including monorail access to Magic Kingdom and fast 'rail or boat transportation to the Bay Lake/Seven Seas Lagoon resorts, was just minutes away across this windy bridge. Had we stayed anywhere else, we wouldn't have seen nearly as much as we did in the time we saw it.



Our little room had a hell of a view. From our balcony during the day, we could easily see all the way to EPCOT...



...and Animal Kingdom. Everest was taunting me, but we'll get to that in due time. Here's the view from the windows near the elevators:



This one, you'll want to click for big. It's a rush just looking out the window and Cinderella Castle is practically across the street anyway, but look at all the New Fantasyland buildings you can see! Using this map as a reference, they've clearly been making lots of progress.



My gosh, we could even see the pyro effects in Illuminations from our room! All Disney resorts have their different advantages, but I think Bay Lake Tower won me over completely in terms of convenience and comfort (the rooms are small but much nicer than some college dorms I've seen) and just feeling right in the middle of the Disney Magic (trademark, copyright, patent pending, old joke, still funny.) And I haven't even mentioned one of my favorite features:



The Top of the World Lounge! Now, this semi-private bar isn't very large, but it's mostly a place to get drinks before headed out to their expansive balcony. More on that in a second.



I need to get my Tradition.



The balcony gives you an amazing view of the Magic Kingdom at night. My poor little camera was overwhelmed by the loads and loads of LEDs on the Castle (I have better pictures coming up in a later post). That's not what we came up here to see though...



You can watch "Wishes" from the top of the tower! Oh, but it gets even better!



On a later night, we came up and watched the special "Spirit of the Season" fireworks finale to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party! This is a pretty big deal because MVMCP is what Disney calls a "hard ticket event"; that means you need to pay extra for it. Once we learned that we would be able to watch the only part of the party we were really interested in from Top of the World, we decided not to spring for tickets.

But look at all the fireworks! Some of them dwarf Space Mountain! As we'll see, Disney likes to celebrate the spirit of the holidays by blowing stuff up. Do not try this awesome thing at home, kids.



As for the Contemporary itself, Walt Disney World's oldest resort is amazing. I have vague memories of staying here during one of our very first trips to WDW when I was little. I just loved being steps away from the monorail and getting to see the Mary Blair mural almost every day. Every time I looked at it, I noticed more little details.



Everyone's favorite, the five-legged sheep.



This is way, way too adorable. And expensive. *sigh*



And I just love little details like this.

Tomorrow, we see how other Disney resorts celebrate the holidays.

On to Part Five!

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Sketch of the Day! I'm so glad I made time to do this:

Walt Disney World Trip Report part 2: Magic Kingdom pre-Princesses

Best thing about going on an exciting trip for a week is that you come home with a week's worth of blog posts. :)

Now in case you have not heard, some very interesting things have been happening in the world of central Florida theme parks. It is, to put it lightly, a damn good time to be a fan of theme parks. When they compete with each other, we win, as each park will try to design more awesome attractions than what their competitor has lined up.
Which brings us to the mayhem that is unfolding as we speak. If you were watching the Winter Olympics, you certainly saw this commercial maybe eighty times:

Now, we didn't go to Universal this trip (the ad says that the park will be "coming this spring" but according to a recent press release, "Spring" = "The middle of June" -- and I feel bad not warning my fellow airplane passengers of this), but I have seen Hogwarts Castle from the road, rising in the air like a giant middle finger right in Mickey's face.
Now, here's the fun part. At the D23 Expo (a huge convention for Disney fans; it's surprising that there was never anything like that before), Mickey essentially countered with this bigger, and even ruder gesture in Universal's face:

So as I visited Magic Kingdom this time, I was on the lookout for (a) evidence of construction and (b) things that might not be there next time we go.

Construction in the Magic Kingdom must be interesting to work on. They need to work on a project without destroying the illusion of being in a magical land. They probably work mostly at night. They hide their progress well; you wouldn't know that Cinderella Castle was being worked on unless you looked very hard.

The construction here in Fantasyland is a little easier to make out. This view will be radically different in a few years.

Now so far the biggest point of contention in Disney message boards, regarding the Magic Kingdom expansion, is that there isn't anything new for boys what will become of Toontown? The history of this little "land" has been... interesting to say the least. A full rundown can be found over at the lovely Walt Dated World. I very distinctly remember riding the train into this new "land". And I do have vague memories of the first version of the stage show described on the site.

Now Toontown is basically a place for people to meet the Disney characters in a predictable spot. It's niche is gradually being overtaken by the old Emporium building right when you enter Main Street. (This building was the site of one of our best serendipitous moments. I went in hoping to see a different animated mural -- this one does exist and shows off all the significant moments in Disney history -- and wound up meeting all manner of Disney characters. It was raining, so the Magic Kingdom was practically empty, and we got lots of attention. So I can't ever not say that I was hugged by a bunch of people in furry suits on my B-day.

Tellingly, we saw no characters at all in Toontown. So, instead, here is a photo of me in Minnie's house. Note the Notorious Birthday Button.
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Sketch of the Day! Now, in all my journeys to WDW, I have never ever tried a Dole Whip. This time, I went well out of my way to rectify this glaring oversight.

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I was listening to Episode 24 of the very nice Sci-Fi Saturday Night podcast and was delighted to hear them give a shout-out to the Comicbook Artists Guild (they were actually giving away some art we had donated during the October Boston Comicon as a contest prize. Still, very cool.)
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I feel incredibly bad for all the animation fans in New Hampshire.
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I also watched "$9.99" and... well, about fifteen minutes in, I had to ask myself what will henceforth be known as the "Only Yesterday" Question: Would I have watched this entire movie if it were live-action? It is, essentially, one of those "just a bunch of things that happened" movies -- but it's all stop-motion animation. I can't even say whether I liked it or if I can recommend it. I will say this: it is weird in ways you would not expect a stop-motion existential film about just a bunch of stuff that happens to be... if that makes any sense.