Mickey Heads-Disney Podcast Review 5-19-10

With Free Dining recently offered, the closing of Honey I Shrunk the Audience, and updates to Muppet Vision 3D, these 7.5 hours of podcasts provide us information we need on these changes to our favorite park. (Find your favorite Disney Podcasts on iTunes)

Be Our Guest Episode #226 Disney Dining Considerations In preparation for Free Dining, the team goes over the basic details of the various Disney Dining plans. They ask a question that many of us have wondered: Do the dates of your plan correlate with your park tickets or your nights stayed? Next, they consider some ways to get the most out of the plan. What are their favorite restaurants that they would recommend to a first-timer. But the best advice, learned by all users of the Dining Plan: Don’t be a snack credit horder!

Character Breakfast Episode #91 With their ‘Disney Morpher’, the gang is changing people into level 5’s. Monorail Station explores the sit down restaurants at the Animal Kingdom. They bring out that the real beauty of dining in the Animal Kingdom is that you can pick your food out before you sit down and eat it! LOL The crew also analyzes their own top 3 attractions and restaurants of Disney Hollywood Studios. Of course Roger Ramjet was bound to make this list. Put the surfboard on the jeep, we’re going to the beach with a song from Food Rocks.

WDW Today Episode #717 Decadent Disney Dining Revisited-The humongous Milkshakes, the crispy onion Rings with its many sauces, the Fried Chicken, the Blackberry Lemonade, the sweet cream cheese pretzel, anything at the Boulangerie Pattiserie, the BBC, the No Way Jose, the Kitchen Sink, the unmatched popcorn. Need I say anything else?

Five Minute Magic Episode #42 Metro Retro: Queue or Not? This is one heated discussion of where the queue stops and the ride begins. Is Disney telling you the story or trying to convince you you’re not still waiting in a line? And they query, what is the difference between the queue, the pre-show, the attraction and the post-show?  Evidence used to support the discussion is the Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and Muppets.

Inside the Magic Episode #266 Interview with Ian Brill of Boom Studios about the new Darkwing Duck comic book series. He indicates that the series is based on a new storyline but keeps the same classic elements that we enjoyed, such as the comical villains and Darkwing’s renowned monologues. Also chiming in on this is Jake Myler who designed one of the issues ‘incentive covers’ telling how the series is reminiscent of Batman the Dark Night. It is always interesting to appreciate how much artistic license these artists were given, as well the inspiration process, and a peek at the plot.

Mousestation Episode #404 Error 404: Podcast Not Found In the rich history of honoring the Disney attraction down code 101, this episode takes the station slightly out of orbit with an opening parody of Phineas and Ferb that set the tone for the craziness to follow. Bloopers, bloopers and more bloopers give us a look behind the scenes of many of their late night recording sessions. But they also have reader answers to which attraction would to see extinct forever. . .forever?

Mousetalgia Episode #80 What characters/movies would they like to see in parks? Yeah, where is Mary Poppins? The movie Bambi is the center of attention for the bulk of this show, starting with some speculation on why you don’t see it represented in the parks more. With the movie, they point out the notable use of the multiplane camera. And they also ponder whether this movie can be classified as a coming of age movie or a nature/environmental film. To hear the extent that the studio went to portray the animals as authentically as possible, and that only 950 words but a million cells made up this picture was amazing! Also, it is astounding how the animators succeeded in the struggle of putting human traits upon animals and animate objects A truly WOW moment is given when they played a demo recording of April Showers. Also reviewed is the new nature film Oceans with the ‘how did they get that shot’ feeling. They recount the many ‘ooh’ moments of the movie along with the music score and even the lack of score in many parts of the film, all culminating with their overall impressions of the movie.

Betamouse Episode #15 Disney Q & A Boy, am I amped up for this show! Where do you go for answers to your questions?  Don’t discredit email, friends in the Disney community, message boards, the Disney Mom’s Panel, Facebook, Twitter with its creative hashtags or even Len Testa in person. I found it intriguing that while they turn to research boards, they also feel inadequate when it comes to answering questions. “I like to hear the answers, but I don’t like to answer the questions.”  The importance of building trust within a community is emphasized, so that you may be a confidant to others, though they may never have met you. Then they start using a whole bunch of terms I didn’t understand, like Aardvark, Stack Exchange, Cora, SEO, Stack Overflow, Sever Fault Super User, and self moderated community.

WDW Radio Episode #169 Lou looks at the merging of the Muppets with Disney, and the many ways they appeared in the parks. The long lost Muppet Land is front and center with the planned restaurant, The Muppet Movie Ride, and most importantly why we don’t have them today. As we go around park and peek where each part of the plan would have been built, we realize how different the Studios would have been with this extensive section. How did Jim Henson’s death affect these plans that were well under way before his death? And we now ask, “What would Jim Do?” Would any of these great ideas be built now, or has Disney changed so much that this is no longer a possibility? Yet, we do have such well themed attractions as the Muppet Vision 3D and the Stage One Company store. And we hear details of both and the stories they tell.

Mousetimes Episode #99 John helps us say Good-bye to an old friend, Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. He takes us through the pre-show with its witty institute inspired comments (we’re nuts. . .about Ideas!), and the touching photo collage and song interlude.  And while I have seen the main show many times, hearing it again brought back the immersive memories of reacting swiftly to the mice and wiping dog sneeze off my face at the end. All this made me actually a little sad to see it go away, with anticipation for the Amazing Captain EO there to soften the blow. Next, John and his friends create a friendly ruckus on Splash Mountain as they try to decide what comical face to have at the drop for the on-ride photo.

Don’t forget, you can download your favorite Disney Podcasts on iTunes.