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Passport to Dreams Annual Disney Parks review is a must-read

Seven Dwarfs Mine Train

Foxx Fur, whose Passport to Dreams blog I return to time and time again for her detailed dissections of Disney’s theme park & resort design, is out with a wrap up of how good (or bad) 2014 was for Disney’s domestic theme parks. Okay, technically, the full reviews ended in 2011. Foxx Fur just hasn’t had the heart to continue them since then, too depressing. Instead this year, we get a take down of epic proportions on three huge mistakes Disney made in 2014.

To be fair, there is some good stuff to be happy about in 2014, New Fantasyland finally opened its final attraction “The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train” and it is a charming dark ride (albeit with some unforgivable errors at the end) and the Magic Kingdom also got a parade it deserves in “Festival of Fantasy.”

But three major changes are pretty much unforgivable from the author’s perspective.

I haven’t been to Disneyland in much too long. When I was last there, you could still visit Walt Disney’s un-used apartment above New Orleans Square. It was great having that previously private space open to guests, even if it was as a store. When it became the Dream Suite, that space was lost to guests. I knew that the expansion of Club 33 in 2014 cost guests another space (the Court of Angels), but I didn’t realize how badly it mangled Walt Disney’s vision of New Orleans Square destroying perspective and genericizing facades that were previously some of the best examples of Imagineering in any of the parks. Read More »Passport to Dreams Annual Disney Parks review is a must-read

Ten Years of Stitch’s Great Escape

I really can’t believe it, but it has already been 10 years since the Magic Kingdom installed the little blue alien creature Stitch in Tomorrowland and the former home of Mission to Mars and Alien Encounter. Foxfurr at Passport to Dreams blog is out with… Read More »Ten Years of Stitch’s Great Escape

Toy Story 3 at Center of Critics Debate

For a few days Toy Story 3 enjoyed a perfect rating on Rotten Tomatoes and then one critic comes along who seemingly writes a bad review just to knock the popular film off its perch. That has happened time and again with Pixar and other… Read More »Toy Story 3 at Center of Critics Debate

Cinema Interruptus by Roger Ebert

Cinema Interruptus is the analysis of a film “one shot at a time” as described by Roger Ebert in his latest column. It’s incrediblyly information rich, as you can tell. visual compositions have “intrinsic weighting.” By that I believe he means that certain areas of… Read More »Cinema Interruptus by Roger Ebert

Constructions of Masculinity in Disney Movies

Because it is important to think critically about your sources of entertainment, I present to you another youtube find: I won’t deny the influence on-screen characters have on people’s perceptions of who they are or who they want to be. However, I think having other… Read More »Constructions of Masculinity in Disney Movies