Friday Morning Roundup – Disney Links and News

It’s Friday morning and time to close some of my open tabs by passing those links along in what is perhaps a more brusque fashion than the topics really deserve. My apologies in advance.

• A woman who missed her journey on the Titanic celebrates her 100th birthday in style at Disneyland. Great feel good story.
• Gardenwalk, the formerly vaperware mall that finally opened adjacent to Disneyland last year, is having mixed results for its tenants. Frankly, they’re lucky any guests are coming in this economy.
• Disney Channel rolled out Disney XD this week and Amy Quinn, who calls herself Citizen Mom, takes on Disney’s attempt to market to boys, her boy in particular.
• IDEAS a design and marketing studio, previously located in the backlot offices of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, has moved to new digs in downtown Orlando.
• The Orlando Sentinel reports that Disney and other theme parks continue to spend money lobbying the government for various projects even while they’re cutting back on other expenses.
• KryptonLogic.com believes in the rumors that Star Tours 2.0 is coming soon, or at least a formal announcement of it’s eventual installment is. May 2010 is the expected date. Also remember Star Wars Weekends is coming beginning in the last two weekends of May this year. A great place to make the announcement if you ask me.
• I’ve updated my list of ‘Dream Ticket’ winners from Disney’s American Idol Experience attraction. Still a few holes to plug, but I’m getting more names. Thanks for your help in continuing to provide the names of the winners. Photos or confirmation to help verify winners names are also appreciated.
• I particularly enjoyed this description of the American Idol Experience Premiere weekend by Billboard Magazines ‘Jaded Insider’ blog.

Finally, below the cut meet TOFU. He’s a robot that emulates the ‘squash and squat’ techniques of Disney animation developed by students at MIT. I hope someone from Imagineering already has this inventor on the phone.