1000th Post

Welcome to the 1000th post on The Disney Blog. I can’t believe there have been 999 posts preceding this one, but there’s always room for one more. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) While The Disney Blog is mostly news oriented, I thought I’d take a few moments and link back to some of my favorite posts and give a quick ‘state of the blog’ update.

June 28th 2004 was opening day here at The Disney Blog, it’s taken 415 days to reach 1000 or an average of 2.4 posts per day. My goal is to average 3 posts a day, but I had a long period of low activity after my move cross country in May. So excepting that period, I have been averaging more than 3 posts a day.

Right now my daily unique visitor rate is north of 1400 on average, with a 300-500 readership in feedland. That puts The Disney Blog in the top few thousand blogs by readership. Considering there are 14 million blogs in the Technorati index, I’m pretty happy with that.

I’d have to say that my biggest failing is the lack of links to The Disney Blog. Because of that I don’t  rank as high in the major indexes. I’ve never really asked for people to link to me, and they say if you don’t ask, people won’t know. So here I am asking. Please add me to your blogroll if you’re a regular reader of this site. Let me know and I’ll list you in my reciprocal links. I think it’s a definite advantage to the older blogs that they got started while blogrolling was still popular.

Okay, so without further ado, here are my favorite posts from among the first 999:

My first essay post was about the removal of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln from Disneyland for the park’s 50th Birthday Celebration. Looking back, I’m a little more confident that the attraction will return, but I do so hope that they consider doing something for 2009 that returns the attraction to its former glory days.

While technically on another blog, now archived, the story of the Disneyland Marquee is a fan favorite.

My posts on The Disney Store have received a lot of heartfelt comments from store CMs and ex-CMs. This is one of Disney’s biggest blunders of the last 10 years in terms of lost potential revenue and with the new agreement with Children’s Place, it’s going to be a long while before this can be fixed correctly.

I reviewed Pixar’s The Incredibles and linked to an Edith Head and Edna Mole comparison (a very popular post).

It’s not a long post, but this one that looks at two websites with 50 years of theme park souvenirs from Disneyland is wonderful.

Mikey Walters guest blogged for a week ( his last post  ) last year while I was on vacation. That was a great experience and I’m totally open to any other people who might want to guest blog, just let me know.

Recently the Disney theme parks have undergone a run of accidents and deaths. My first response on the matter led me to wonder if Disney was doing enough to educate their visitors on the actual affects an attraction could have on its guests. I certainly hope this is a statistical blip and not an ongoing trend.

In conclusion, so much has happened in the past year and 4 months at the Walt Disney Company it’s been hard to keep up. There was a huge shift in leadership, the whole SaveDisney.com campaign flourished and then vanished, hurricanes swamped Disney World (three times!), The Ovitz case has been resolved, and much more. I don’t know if the next few years will ever be able to live up the past two. But I aim to be there to report on it if the excitement does continue.

Finally, it’s a little early for blogday 3108 (see spells out blog, cute, eh?), but I really want to thank these five websites that have consistently great stories so I’m going to jump the gun:

• CartoonBrew is always on top of the latest animation news, and has the links to the best, and quirkiest, sites as well.
• LaughingPlace.com consistently great writing, an amazing magazine, a strong community board section, and a daily news section that always finds the best links of the day.
• BoingBoing deserves the title of top blog. I wish I could link to all of their amazing Disney posts, but I try and maintain a PG-13 rating here. I also appreciate it when they link to me.
• Celebration Florida Blog has some of the best writing I’ve seen on the net, and is a wonderful look at the day to day life of a real Disney fan who also lives in Celebration, Disney’s version of a perfect small town USA. I could link to almost everyone of her posts.
• Right now I’m also enjoying reading Jason Calcanis‘ blog over at the dominant weblog consortium. I share many of his concerns, and one day, I hope, his success.

So, thanks to you all. Would I be writing this blog without the readers, sure. I love Disney and love having an outlet for it. But the readers make this a community. Everytime you post a comment, trackback, or drop me an email, the community grows stronger and the conversation gets better. So, here’s to the future. Let’s keep this conversation going.

[ttags: disney, disneyblog, thedisneyblog, 1000posts, 1000thpost, weblog, blog, blogday2005, blogging]