Disneyland has announced the French Market Restaurant in New Orleans Square at Disneyland park will soon be transformed into a new eatery called Tiana’s Palace. The Details The new quick-service Tiana’s Palace will offer authentic New Orleans flavors inspired by Tiana’s friends and adventures, according… Read More »Disneyland to Transform French Market Restaurant Into Tiana’s Palace
Get out your baking equipment and strap on that apron, it’s time to recreate another iconic Disney treat at home in your own kitchen – The Mickey Mouse Icon shaped Beignets from Port Orleans Resort at Walt Disney World and New Orleans Square at the… Read More »Recreate the popular Mickey Mouse-shaped Beignets at Home with this Disney Recipe
For people who weren’t alive in 1967 it’s hard to understand how large a leap in themed entertainment Walt Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean attraction was at the time. Up until the time of the 1964 World’s Fair, the attraction had been planned as a… Read More »Pirates of the Caribbean to be feted at Disneyland for 50th Anniversary
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
Early Disneyland food options were limited mostly to carnival food and chicken dinners. Most of the restaurants were run by third party operators that Walt had brought in when he ran short of money building the park. These food locations often competed against each other to attract guests and gave park management an awful time trying to control quality and service.
One operator, Don DeFore, ran the Silver Banjo Restaurant. It was located in a small part of Frontierland and DeFore felt it was too hard for guests to find. To help attract guests, he would boil onions and blow out the smell with a fan. He even went as far as creating a sandwich board sign which he placed out on the main walk way. It all infuriated Walt who thought the signs and smells cheapened his park.
This led Walt to take over all the food operations, a move which he accomplished by 1965. He also decided Disneyland would up its game with the addition of a restaurant attached to the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction he was building. This restaurant would help convince the public that top quality dining experience could be had in the park.
Read More »Blue Bayou Memories
(photo courtesy LaughingPlace.com) When New Orleans Square’s original perfume shop, with its personalized perfumes, closed in the early 1990s many bemoaned the loss of some of the individuality associated with the theme park. The loss of the One of A Kind shop cemented that. Those… Read More »Mlle. Antoinette’s Parfumerie returns to New Orleans Square
With the World Premier of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides set for tomorrow night, final touches along Disneyland’s Rivers of America are underway. In addition to the New Orleans Square theater setup, bleachers are expected on Main Street allowing up to 10,000 fans… Read More »Disneyland’s Rivers of America invaded again for Pirates 4
The OC Register reports that the “Jewel of Orleans” store n the New Orleans Square section of Disneyland has decided to close its doors. The reasons are as you might expect, the economy just doesn’t justify keeping this location open. That’s a shame for this… Read More »Unique Jewelry Store to close at Disneyland