August 30, 2010
Disneyland's "A Walk in Walt's Footsteps" tour takes guests on a long, guided amble through the park in search of the spirit of Walt Disney, enhanced by audio clips and climaxing with a picnic lunch.
Annemarie Moody recently took the tour and and then touted it in an article for MousePlanet.
The audio clips, Annemarie reports, are delivered via short-wave radio to the headphones you're given when you arrive for the tour (preferably early) in front of Main Street's City Hall. As the tour progresses, you'll hear location-relevant music, commentary, and sound effects - unruly guests will hear nothing but the song from It's a Small World.
A highlight of the tour is a hushed, reverent moment spent in the lobby of Club 33, the park's exclusive dining club. Guests are then ushered out of the lobby by security and told to eat their picnic lunches outside.
The tour lasts just under four hours, not including the picnic lunch at the end, and for $59 it's within reach of most people, especially those eager to fathom further the history of Disneyland.
I've never taken "A Walk in Walt's Footsteps" though it's on my list and Annemarie's report pushed it a few notches higher.
MORE: Mouse Planet (Annemarie Moody)
AJ Wolfe writes in the Disney Food Blog about the loss of the leisure suit. When I (purposely) lost my leisure suits, including the brown one my mother gave me, in the early 1980s, it was a celebratory event and ushered in the era of Hugo Boss.
But AJ isn't talking about that kind of leisure suit.
She's talking about the increasingly factory-plain experiences that Disney has begun to manufacture for its guests instead of the unique, magical moments of bygone days. AJ's article, in fact, is partly a continuation of Matt Hochberg's recent gripe on StudiosCentral (hullabaloo'ed here on August 26).
Since AJ runs a food blog, she focuses on food, or rather the newly standardized pool bar and lounge menus which lack one of AJ's favorites, the 8 Trax Leisure Suit, a concoction so forgotten that few Disney bartenders are able to reproduce it when AJ asks (who are we kidding, pleads) for the favor.
I've noticed the same. You have to work harder for your magic these days. There's less differentiation in merchandise, menus, and many others things at the Mouse. Good business: yes! But Disney didn't become so successful primarily from 'good business' but from the expectations of its guests who pay a lot of money for the privilege of sharing in Walt's vision and who will eventually become pissed if that vision is sacrificed for short-term profit and logistical expediency.
Most of AJ's article is an excerpt from a reader's e-mail about his disappointment with the shrinking set of spirits available at Disney-owned bars. This reader brings up the excellent point that the really interesting drinks at Disney are now being served not by Disney-run watering holes but by companies who paid Disney to build restaurants on its property.
Many of us notice these things long before the general public. And I imagine many of us care about these things much more than the general public. But you can only get away with wearing a brown leisure suit for so long before someone calls you on it.
MORE: Disney Food Blog (AJ Wolfe)
Walt Disney Studio, like any creative entity, has its high points and its low points, but arguably its lowest point (as in 'got my feet against the muddy bottom') occurred after Walt's death and continued into the early 1980s.
During that period, the Studio put out sturdy but stale cinema like The Aristocats.
The subsequent upheaval - as much creative as political - that removed much of the Disney old guard in 1984 and installed in their place innovators like Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg is chronicled in Waking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary about Disney's Golden Decade of 1984-1994 when it released such modern classics as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Lion King.
The documentary was compiled by Don Hahn (who also produced many of those modern classics) and consists of the typical stuff you find in documentaries: clips, interviews, and 'back-stage' footage.
Apart from the obvious appeal of Waking Sleeping Beauty to Disney fans, it's also instructive as a business model for people or organizations experiencing a dark age similar to the one which afflicted Disney. How to (re)-awaken your own 'Sleeping Beauty' is a useful question to ask.
You can buy the DVD, as always, from Amazon, and Disney's official site has links to a litany of positive reviews as well as videos, images, and a media kit worth downloading for background about the film.
MORE: Waking Sleeping Beauty
The creator of this site - what beautiful pixels he makes!
(That makes sense only if you're wearing a cape and imitating Bela Lugosi's classic line from Dracula: "the children of the night...". Actually, even then it doesn't make much sense, but let's move on.)
Doombuggies is a labor of love by Jeff Baham, known professionally as Chef Mayhem, who calls his site an 'online documentary about Disney's Haunted Mansion attractions'.
Jeff loves the Haunted Mansion. I mean really loves it to the point where he may have proposed to it once or twice. His site has won numerous awards, including a Webby, has been featured as a 'hot site' by USA Today, and has gotten the imprimatur of Forrest J. Ackerman himself.
Visiting Doombuggies is the next best thing to riding in them. Jeff's design, his graphics, his photos, his 'extras' (like a 13-hour clock you can download) capture perfectly the look and 'feel' of the Haunted Mansion. Jeff runs a Haunted Mansion fan club, too. He sells merchandise: T-shirts, posters, bumper stickers. And he wrote a book, The Secrets of Disney's Haunted Mansion, which if you ask politely Jeff may even sign for you ... in invisible ink! (Cue demented laugh.)
I admit to not exploring every nook and cobwebby corner of Doombuggies. (No, I ain't scared!) As I find more noteworthy stuff on the site, I'll headline it here, but in the meantime, if you plan to enter the Haunted Mansion on your next Disney trip, visit Doombuggies first: you'll enjoy the experience much more after you have learned its history and (some of) its secrets from Jeff Baham.
Those who dig sites like Doombuggies may wish to revisit (or plain ol' visit) my hullabaloo in the August 28 edition of the Disney Dispatch about Skipper Brodie's equally tricked-out fan site celebrating the Jungle Cruise.
MORE: Doombuggies (Jeff Baham)
Murphy the Dragon, Mickey's fearsome Fantasmic foe, has fallen and can't get up, according to a story broken moments after the incident by ThemeParkReview.
It's unclear, as yet, whether Murphy hit the bourbon harder than usual prior to a performance last Saturday night at Disneyland's Fantasmic show, or whether more sinister forces are at work, judging from a gash spotted in the dragon's soft underbelly.
Disney hoped to question Bilbo Baggins but then realized the company doesn't have that license.
Eyewitnesses report that Murphy - not the dragon's 'real' name but rather the one given her by on-line wags after a series of malfunctions last summer - slowly lowered her head during the final part of the show, her snout eventually coming to rest on the ground with unconfirmed accounts of loud snores (like a friggin' steamboat, one astonished park guest said).
Caught off-guard by Murphy's unprofessionalism, Disney churned out mist to partially obscure the dragon and to further confuse the people there watching the show. Disney personnel armed with flashlights quickly surrounded Murphy though repeated kicks in the butt failed to rouse the reptile.
Lead technician Foster 'Mickey' Brooks said what everyone was thinking: "yep, she's down, alright".
We here at Disney Dispatch wish Murphy a speedy recovery.
MORE: Theme Park Review (Robby Alvey)
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