Lines, Lines, Everywhere There’s Lines

Just got back from the D23 Expo and while it was fun seeing the exhibits, I think Disney underestimated the number of people that they thought were going to show up.  I know that this is only the second Expo and that the first one probably underperformed, but a lot has happened since then such as the acquisition of Marvel, the continued success of Pixar, and the beginning of the rebirth of California Adventure and the Disneyland Resort.

These things, along with the word of mouth of D23 members, and the fact that they had two years to advertise the event brought a lot of people in and created lines for everything.  From getting into the convention center, to seeing a panel, to even lining up to get into a store to spend money.  There were basically lines everywhere.

My hope is that they have larger rooms for the panels and change the convention center seating so it holds more than 4,000 people because I have a feeling that this Expo is just going to become more popular year after year.

Sights & Sounds

With that said, lets get to the good stuff.  Below are some pictures and videos I took at the Parks & Resorts exhibit:

Red the fire engine was in attendance and will be in the Radiator Springs attraction.

This is a quick video of a ride vehicle for Radiator Springs Racer.

Below is a picture of another ride vehicle for Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree attraction.

This picture is of the new Carthay Theater. There will be a nice sit down restaurant and possibly a Club 33 type of restaurant.

This is a picture of a pretty detailed model of Buena Vista Street which will be the entrance of DCA. The theme and detail seems to now be on par with Main Street at Disneyland.

These next pictures are of the new Fantasyland that will be at Walt Disney World.

While there weren’t any major announcements about new attractions or expansion within the Disneyland Resort, there is a lot going on and this exhibit was a major highlight at the Expo.

Disney recently announced that they are offering a 30% discount for lunch at select restaurants at Disneyland and DCA.  The catch is that you will need to eat at “off hours” at these establishments.  The 30% discount is good for lunch before 12:00 noon and between 3:00 and 4:30.

You will also need to print out the voucher before going to the parks.  Here is a link to the voucher:

30% Discount

Just present the voucher at these restaurants:

Disneyland

• French Market Restaurant
• Hungary Bear Restaurant
• Rancho del Zocalo Restaurante
• Redd Rocket Pizza Port
• Tomorrowland Terrace

DCA

• Cocina Cucamonga Mexican Grill
• Lucky Fortune Cookery
• Pacific Warf Café
• Taste Pilots’ Grill
• Award Wieners

The 30% discount is valid from 12/19/10 to 1/3/11.

Disney quietly launched a new iphone app this week.  The app allows you to keep track of the money you have on a Disney gift card.    The great thing is that it will keep track of multiple cards in case you and everyone else in your family has one.  This app is also free, so any Disney fan should take advantage of it.  Here is a link to download the app from the iTunes store:  Disney Gift Card App

This is the first version of the app and I can see them do a lot with it, like being able to keep track of your Disney Reward Dollars from the Disney Visa Credit Card, or to even add dollars to an existing gift card.

Now that both parks have made it past the busy Summer season, more and more construction walls are going up around California Adventure because of the $1 billion expansion/upgrade.

To really see how far this park has and will come I thought it would be fun to look at the opening day park map and see what has stayed and what has already changed or will change.

Entry Way /Golden Gateway – The first section that everyone sees as they enter the park is this one.  The thought behind this area is that Disney wanted it to look like a postcard with the Golden Gate Bridge and California mural flanking each side.

This area will drastically change and set the mood for a 1920’s theme which will be carried through the park.  The actual turnstiles will be pushed out to about where the California sign is now and the murals and bridge will be a thing of the past.

Sunshine Plaza – Again, nothing has really changed in this area since the opening, but parts of this area are already behind walls.  The cement planters and sun “hubcap”  will be going away soon and its place will be the Carthay circle with a replica of the Carthay theater.

Hollywood Pictures Backlot – As we move to the left of the map we will soon be entering a land with a new name “Hollywoodland”.  Work has already started on the Red Line Trolley which will run from the Carthay circle to the Tower of Terror.  However there have already been a lot of changes to this area:

-        Superstar Limo-  Was a really bad dark ride that has been updated to a much better Monsters Inc attraction.  I believe this attraction was originally going to be a fast paced ride with the paparazzi chasing you, however after the Princess Diana tragedy, Disney changed directions for the worse.

-        ABC Soap Opera Bistro -  This was a themed sit down restaurant where you were in the middle of an ABC soap opera story.  This is one of the few times where a restaurant changed to a show/attraction  (Playhouse Disney) instead of the opposite.

-        Hyperion Theater – While the building has been there the whole time, the very first show was not Aladdin.  It was a show called “Steps In Time”.  I did see this show, but to be honest I can’t even remember what it was exactly about.  I believe it was about some bratty kids and their fairy godmother along with classic Disney songs.  I guess that shows you how “good” this show was.

-        Restaurants – When the park opened this area was heavy in one area –restaurants.  They had the above mentioned ABC Soap Opera Bistro, Award Wieners, Between Takes (gone), Fairfax Market, Hollywood & Dine (only used for private events and the Food & Wine Festival), Pop-arrazi Popcorn (gone), Schmoozie (I think it’s gone).

The biggest change in this area to date though has been the addition of the Tower of Terror attraction.  This attraction has been a hit since day 1 and provided Disney with a much needed boost in the number of “E ticket” attractions for this park.

For the next post, we will take a look at the “Golden State” and “Paradise Pier” sections of the park.

Star Tours has only been closed for a couple of weeks and Disney is already releasing a teaser video of the new Star Tours that will launch next year.  This sneak peek video will appear within the queue of the updated attraction.  There has been no confirmation that the attraction will take us to any of these planets.

Summer is in full swing at both parks which means people near and far are flocking to the resort.  This also means celebrities are flocking to the parks as well.  The list of celebrities going to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure over the last month is a “who’s who” of A-list celebrities.  These include

• Kobe Bryant and family
• Michelle Obama and daughters
• Salma Hayek and daughter
• Gwen Stefani & Gavin Rossdale and sons

Everyday there is a probably some sort of celebrity at Disneyland and I am going to let you in on a secret on how to spot them.

Unlike the rest of us, most celebrities or their publicists call ahead to Disneyland to let them know they will be coming to park.  This allows Disney to know what type of security they need in the parks, but more important it allows them to schedule a Disney Guide that will stay with the celebrity the whole day.

The Guide is the key to spotting celebrities.  It’s very difficult to really spot a celebrity outright, because they really blend in to crowds (like we all do) and they almost always wear hats or sunglasses so you can’t see their full facial features.  So what you want to do is look for Disney Guides that are walking around in the parks.  If you spot one of them, look around because there could be a celebrity close by.

Remember though that they are there to fun too, so if you gather up the nerve to get a picture, autograph, or just to say “hi” you should always be cordial and discrete so they don’t get mobbed.

The World of Color show debuted on Friday at DCA and I was lucky enough to catch the 10:15 performance (thanks to my friend David who provided me with 2 Fastpasses) with about 7,000 of my newest friends. Because of this show, the date of June 11th will probably go down as the day that DCA finally turned the corner and became a true Disney Park.

It has taken me a couple of days to write this because the show definitely achieved sensory overload due to the scale of the show along with the layers of music, fountains, gigantic mist screens with animation, lasers, and of course all the colors. Just because of this fact alone, along with some others I will get to, I will have to see this show again to get the full effect.

The show does start out with the World of Color theme from the old Disney TV show and then runs the gamut of Disney’s most popular movies including Wall E, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Pirates of the Caribbean. It also includes quick scenes from some older movies like Dumbo, Bambi, and Lady & The Tramp which really don’t get the credit they deserve anymore.

There is no real story line for the show as far as I could tell, so it was more of a Greatest Hits clip show than anything else. This could be a good thing or a bad thing in the future. It’s a good thing that it was done like this because it can allow Disney to easily update and replace segments and re-program the fountains for different clips from different movies. If they don’t do this though, these segments could get old pretty quick. Now I know the show just opened, so Disney has plenty of time to figure this out.

As for the seating, they are currently providing FastPasses for the different colored viewing sections. We were in the Orange section which is basically the bridge that leads into Paradise Pier so we were watching the show at an angle which I’m sure isn’t the best way to see the show. Here is a clip of what we saw:

If you do get a Pass for this section, my recommendation is to give that ticket to someone else and try and get in the Paradise Park section on your own.

If you don’t want to deal with the crowds and trying to get a Fastpass then you should without a doubt purchase the Dinner Package at either Wine Country Trattoria or Ariel’s Grotto. The preferred seating area for the dinner package is right in the middle of the Paradise Park viewing area.

I will say this though, for an opening day, the cast members doing guest control did a great job. I am sure Disney is still working the logistics out to find the best way to move people in and out of the show, but from what I can tell it was done much better then when Fantasmic first opened. The horror stories I heard from the Fantasmic opening of fights breaking out between guests, people in trees to see the show, and guests trampling through fenced in garden beds made World of Color look like a cake walk.

Now maybe the hype was too much and maybe our viewing area wasn’t the best, but I thought the show was good but not great. My wife may have said it best when I asked her after the show what she thought of it and said that if the Bellagio fountain show and Fantasmic had a baby it would be World of Color. This doesn’t mean the show is bad, but to me it had no “wow” factor. The show basically had elements of shows that have already been done -animation on mist screens, and fountains. The impressiveness of these elements is the scale of which they are done at World of Color.

With Fantasmic just on the other side of the esplanade, it’s hard not to compare the two and when I do I still get the “wow” factor from the almost 20 year old show due to the storyline and different elements of the show which includes the mist screens and fountains on a much smaller scale.

Don’t get me wrong though, I am not saying don’t see World of Color. I guess what I am saying is set your expectations a little lower before seeing the show and you will probably enjoy it more. However if you are at the Disneyland resort for only 1 day and you haven’t seen any show and could only see one, then go with Fantasmic.

My viewpoint could change the next time I see it, but let me know what you think. Am I right or wrong with my review?

Just wanted to give a quick update on the progress of Disney’s California Adventure, or should I say Disney California Adventure.
Earlier this week Disney released a new logo and took out the apostrophe from the “Disney” portion of the name. I think the new logo is good, but not great.

The new Little Mermaid attraction building looks like the framework is almost done.  The building is much larger than I thought it will be. Money is still being poured into this attraction and it should really be an immersive ride like Pirates or the Haunted Mansion.

Courtesy J Masunaga

The Carsland section is also gaining momentum with the framework going up for the desert rockwork.  The height of the rockwork will be impressive and will really make guests feel like they are in Radiator Springs, especially during the hot summers.  There is also a test car on the small portion of the track that is already up.  It looks like the Imagineers were inspired by Ferrari.

Photo courtesy of J Masunaga

The Silly Symphony Swings are done and the ride looks great.  Now, I know it it’s a standard “off the shelf” attraction that almost every amusement park has, but in this case the structure and architecture fit nicely into the themed boardwalk section and is so much better than the plywood orange that was there before.  The attraction is having soft openings and should officially open on June 11^th.