Disney has provided this video highlighting the process of creating and recording a soundtrack for the next attraction to arrive at California Adventure – The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure. The same attraction will open as part of Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom’s Fantasyland Expansion… Read More »Scoring the new Little Mermaid Attraction
The hotel that was originally planned as the Legendary Years and the second half of Pop Century sat abandoned and forlorn for many years. Eventually it became known as Disney’s ghost hotel with the occasional brave soul venturing inside to take spooky videos of the partially constructed buildings.
Now Disney is in the middle of finishing the hotel, but not as the Legendary Years. Instead it will become the Art of Animation Hotel and feature some regular value rooms, but also a new type of room at Walt Disney World, the family suite.
Here’s a video from Jeff Lange showing construction going on at the site earlier today.
Come below the jump for concept artwork:
Read More »Signs of Life at Disney World’s Ghost Hotel, Art of Animation nee Legendary Years
If you haven’t yet seen it, start at part one of our exploration of Mickey’s new Town Square digs. We’ll going into more detail down below. For those who already saw it, welcome back and away we go.
Starting in the lobby, there is a great new ‘mosaic’ on the floor. The 1901 is a hidden reference to the year of Walt Disney’s birth. Thankfully Disney has resisted the urge to use every square foot of the lobby for selling things. The lobby, as it stands now, has a good balance between the waiting area for Tony’s restaurant, the photo shop, and the entrance to the meet and greet queues. The flow worked nicely.
If you look in the door of the queue to see how long the wait is, you’ll get a pretty good feel for the Mickey Mouse queue. As I mentioned, it never grew over 10 minutes the Saturday we were there. But if you look to the back and see no queue for the princesses, keep in mind that there is an extra hidden room that hides a wait of up to 35 minutes (depending on Fastpass volume). I know the princesses are only in this location temporarily, but this blue room is worse than soulless, it’s mind numbing. Can they at least bring in one or two monitors and some wall art like they had in the old location? Better yet, have a play area for the kids and a queue for the adults like at Pooh.
Once you get through this area, you may have an even longer wait in the single room for the Princesses. Which brings me to my other chief complaint about the Princess Meet and Greet. Because there is only one room for the Princesses (as far as I could tell), they only way to speed up the queue is to reduce the interaction time with each Princess. The day I went the queue was pretty small (never longer than 30 minutes) so the the Princesses were generous with their time. But I can see pressure turning this into a photo factory.
Alright follow me below the jump back to Mickey, where the magic is happening:
Read More »Mickey’s new Magic Kingdom Digs, plus more (part two)
Had a few hours at the Magic Kingdom on Saturday and found quite a bit of change. So much, in fact, that I can’t fit it into one post.
First, they’ve finished the sign over the bridge to Adventureland. Looks really good.
Read More »Mickey’s new Magic Kingdom Digs, plus more (part one)
The biggest project being worked on in the renowned underground bunkers of Walt Disney World is the ultra-secret Next-Gen system. Known as NGE internally, to differentiate it from the Next-Gen interactive queues that are part of a separate project from WDI, development costs are reportedly as much as building two brand new theme parks. So it better be good right?
This morning I had the chance to sit down with two Disney executives who recently left the NGE team to start up their own company. The pair definitely had some interesting things to say, things that might just turn your ideas about the Walt Disney World Resort on its head.
The wrongful death lawsuit filed against the Walt Disney World resort over the death of a monorail pilot on July 5th 2009 has been voluntarily dismissed by the pilot’s family. This is very likely a sign that a settlement has been reached between Disney and… Read More »Monorail Pilot Family’s Lawsuit Against Disney Voluntarily Dismissed
I noted on Twitter Friday that actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson was having fun at Universal Orlando which seemed odd given that he’s one of the stars of ABC television’s hit series “Modern Family.” Shouldn’t he have some brand loyalty? Many answered my query with the… Read More »Jesse Tyler Ferguson of ABC’s Modern Family on Toy Story Midway Mania
Spotted some fun new hats and t-shirts while in the park this weekend. There are some great new antenna balls too, but for some reason those didn’t download from my camera.
I particularly liked this new Pirates of the Caribbean cap. Saw it on quite a few heads walking around the park, so I must not be the only one.
This hat is part of a set with the T-shirt below. Both are part of the new ‘street-art’ series. I like this one in that it features Mickey with a remote control and a crazy Pete.
