I made it back to the Magic Kingdom this weekend to film another Seven Dwarfs Mine Train roller coaster construction update. It’s great to see how much further its come since just two weeks ago. That said, there’s a lot left to do, but we are finally beginning to see some of the final shape the mountain will take.
This new mountain in the Magic Kingdom mountain range (yes, I’m calling it that) will be the last part of New Fantasyland to open. The exact date has not been announced, but it’s currently scheduled to welcome its first guest sometime in 2014. So cross your fingers and hope for good weather so we can all visit the gem mine as early in the year as possible.
Want more? Plenty of photos of the construction below the jump:
Ever since my first ride on the monorail at Disneyland I’ve had a fascination with Mass Transit. A ride on the PeopleMover energized my idea of personal rapid transit the same way. Unfortunately, I’ve been disappointed by the lack of wider adoption of these technologies… Read More »Could Google provide a solution to Walt Disney World Transportation Issues?
You may have heard of the term “pin code,” but wondered what it was, exactly. A pin code is a discount offered by Disney that’s personal to the individual whose name it comes in, and not only the name, but the address must match as well. These codes come out several months prior to general public promotions and are usually room discounts or free dining offers. While they are often an indication of what the general public will receive in the near future, they generally cover a broader span of time. Additionally, room discounts under a pin code are often better and cover more room categories than those offered to the general public. In the case of free dining, pin codes are sometimes offered in place of a similar general public offer. For these reasons, pin codes are highly desired.
In the last year, Disney has indicated that it is more interested in marketing directly to certain groups of consumers rather than releasing the broad, general public offers of the past decade. If you look at the most recent free dining offer, for example, the exclusions are surprising: Port Orleans French Quarter and the Art of Animation were excluded from the offer entirely and Riverside, long a top first choice for families of five, had almost no rooms available under the offer. Why is this? It’s not because more people are visiting Disney World and because fall has suddenly become a “busy” season. It’s because the pin code that came out several months prior, which did, incidentally include the suites at Art of Animation and Port Orleans French Quarter, did such a great job of filling rooms before the general public was ever offered a discount. So when free dining was released to everyone, the rooms available under the offer were, for many room categories, scant at best.Read More »What’s a Pin Code?
I appear to have started a series of short-form Expressions videos looking at some of the Walt Disney World resort’s overlooked attractions. Sometimes there’s a theme right in front of you, you just have to grab it. Here the talented glass artists of Crystal Arts… Read More »Crystal Arts, Talented Glass Artists in Latest Expressions Video
If you twist my arm and force me to pick my favorite restaurant at Walt Disney World, I’ll probably say the iconic California Grill. It has certainly hosted many of my favorite meals over the years and a number of special occaisions. So when it… Read More »California Grill To Reopen in September, Reservations Available Soon.
Do you self a favor next time you visit the Magic Kingdom, stop in at the Main Street Confectionery to watch cast members as they assemble some of the scrumptious sweets available for purchase just a few feet away. With everything arriving pre-packaged at the… Read More »Main Street Sweets Delight
This week crazy-like-a-fox billionaire businessman Elon Musk introduced his latest revolutionary concept, the Hyperloop, and then gave it away to the masses as an open source project. Musk’s previous successes include Paypal (without which much online transactions wouldn’t happen), Tesla (an electric car company that’s profitable for a change), SpaceX (a private company that is helping NASA get payloads into space with an eventual goal of Mars(!)), and SolarCity (affordable solar panels for home and business; It remains to be seen if this will fall into the success category, but it seems likely with a net positive in the profit column last quarter).
Hollywood director Jon Favreau has said he modeled his version of Tony Stark, aka Marvel’s Iron Man, at least in part after Musk. But I think Tony Stark is the wrong model. Musk reminds me more of late period Walt Disney, when Walt had his eye on the future, not just of entertainment and the Disney Company, but of the planet as a whole and improving the lives of those who live on it. His gained steam with Monorails (mass transit), moved onto PeopleMovers (person rapid transit (PRT)), and dabbled in energy efficiency and recycling. Then Walt united all his theories and took on the mother of all urban planning projects – EPCOT, the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. With EPCOT, Walt wanted to build a working community where he could partner with industrial explorers with a similar vision for the future.
That is essentially the same vision as Elon Musk; which is why I think there is a natural partnership between Musk, his companies, and The Walt Disney Company. To get started, create the partnership for the purposes of building a working prototype of the Hyperloop at Walt Disney World. Musk, or his team, would be involved enough to oversee things, but most of the R&D would be left to Walt Disney Imagineering. The resulting prototype would be a great first step to making a full scale Hyperloop a feasible project to get past local and state governments.
Disney’s Imagineers already have much of the expertise needed to build such a system. They have experience with air-bearings (from the Flying Saucers ride in 60s to the revisited version at DCA), mass transit systems (Monorail, PeopleMover, etc.) and for years they used a garbage disposal system at the Magic Kingdom that magically whisked away trash right from the curb side down an air pressure driven pipe. They also have good contacts in the coaster and mass transit construction industries, so finding suppliers would not be difficult. Read More »Bring to Walt Disney World: The Hyperloop
