Category: Disneyland Resort

Not knowing is more fun.

In the early days of the public Internet, even before the World Wide Web, I felt very plugged in to what was going on with Disney theme parks. I followed usenet newsgroups like alt.disney.disneyland and rec.arts.disneyparks. I was on the GEnie online service hanging out in the Destination Florida RoundTable (which also featured a Disneyland area for some reason). Folks routinely posted about their recent visit to the parks. It was because of discussions there about the building of the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland that I made a goal to return to Disneyland once that ride opened. I had not been there since Space Mountain/Big Thunder were new.

Over the 1990s, fan sites, web message forums and all kinds of new resources replaced the old newsgroups and pay services. If something was known, it was shared. I felt completely plugged in, and on top of every tidbit happening—from the change of a cup size or altering of paper napkins, to more major things like ride refurbishments.

It was a great time. But now I have regrets.

I became disconnected, though not because I wanted to be. I had financial struggles for nearly a decade. If I couldn’t go, I didn’t need to follow a dozen websites daily to see the latest news about Disneyland of Walt Disney World.

In those years, money was so tight I took no vacations. I had no home phone, no cell phone and no home internet. The only contact I had with cybespace was through an iPad or taking my laptop down to a place with free WiFi.

I was only able to return to Disneyland thanks to a friend offering me free lodging in his vacation home, and after getting a different job that had slightly higher pay.

That trip, my friends, was probably the best Disney trip I’ve ever had since my first ones as a kid in the 1970s. I was aware that Cars Land had been added but did not know any details. One of my local SoCal friends, Steve (R.I.P.), escorted me through Disney California Adventure park where I saw the new entrance area and many other changes since my last visit in 2009. He walked me past the main Cars Land entrance, distracting me with details on the other side. He wanted me to walk through the backside arch in to the land and see the “mountain range.”

We did.

Cars Land (2017)

And it was epic.

Riding Radiator Springs Racers spoiler-free was also an absolute pleasure. I had read no reviews, seen no ride through videos, or even read comments about it.

Best. Ride. Ever.

Because of that, I continued to try to avoid spoilers. This made the Guardians of the Galaxy Mission Breakout a fantastic new experience when that ride opened.

The magic was back.

I have not had a Disney annual pass since the pre-Covid era. I did, however, taken advantage of a low cost (“three months free”) passes to Universal Studios Orlando, which turned out to be a gateway back in to regular theme park trips — just not to Disney.

And since I had not been following Universal at all, ever, I did not even know there was a new mega King Kong ride there. I remember walking from Jurassic Park and seeing this “mountain” looming in the distance. “What is that!?” I thought.

Reign of Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Approaching it that first time was thrilling.

Between the time I started writing this article, many months ago, and the time I finish it today, I have become a bit more plugged in with Universal Orlando — watching YouTube video “news” about the park from time to time. But, no where near the level of plugged-in-ness I was in the 1990s-2000s with Disney.

And I think I prefer it like this.

If you ever feel burnt out or jaded, try unplugging for awhile. It might just give your next visit a boost!

Until then…

9/11 and Disney Parks

9/11 ribbon.

NOTE: This post was originally written a few years ago.

I was working for a startup tech company in Silicon Valley when 9/11 happened. I remember going to the lobby of the hotel I was staying at and the front desk clerk saying “I hope you weren’t flying out today.” I was not, and I had no idea why she said that.

After the hotel shuttle dropped me off at work, I learned of what was going on. I spent my work day distracted as I kept an eye on news websites. Many must have been doing the same, as “big” news sites were reverting to very sparse, simple web pages to keep up with the traffic.

And even though Disneyland and Walt Disney World were far away from the attacks, the parks closed — something they rarely did. If you tried to go to the official websites, you saw the following:

Disneyland website on 9/11/2001.
Walt Disney World website on 9/11/2001.

It took years for tourism to recover. Hotels closed. Disney projects were canceled. But recover it did, and here we are, almost twenty years later, with some of the busiest parks and largest expansions those parks have ever seen.

Today, as we “Never Forget,” I hope all continue to move forward.

Until next time…

Haunted Mansion product placement

Haunted Mansion, not to be confused with The Haunted Mansion (2003), opened in theaters today. Since most of the movie is set in the mansion, product placement was not as easy to do. Watch for verbal references to:

  • Zillow – there really is a Zillow listing for this mansion, a very clever movie tie in.
  • Amazon – though perhaps just a joke…
  • CVS – This one was blatant. The medium brings out a notepad and says that she got it at CVS.
  • COSTCO – I forget where this was mentioned.
  • Burger King – a Burger King fry bag is passed around in a car, and references are made to its contents.

What others did you notice? Please leave a comment and I will update the list.

Disneyland’s Oogie Boogie Bash 2023 sells out in 10 hours

After an initial attempt to sell tickets on July 6th, ticket sells resumed on July 11th. A short time before the selling queue opened at 9 a.m. PST, folks were able to join a holding queue which was (so we are told) going to randomly insert us in the actual ticket queue.

I was there before 9 a.m., and remained in the queue until just after 8 p.m. PST when all tickets were sold out.

During the day, the screen would update as certain days became “limited” or sold out. I took screenshots every time I noticed a change, and if there is interest, I’ll write a post that shows which dates sold out first.

It was quite the waste of a day. And this, my friends, is the same company that folks are saying is in financial trouble because Indy is only the 12th highest grossing film in the world, currently.

Until next time…

Disney California Adventure Winery $16 pineapple rum cocktail

At the Sonoma Terrace at Disney California Adventure is a $16 (as of 10/2022) pineapple rum cocktail. It’s 10% alcohol, and packs more of a punch for the money than any other drink in the park (beyond something the real bars at Lamplight Lounge or Carthay Circle could make, of course).

And, it’s a bit unique — from Hawaii and not available many states. If you are looking for it, here it is:

https://koloarum.com/rum/hawaiian-pineapple-passion-rum-cocktail/

I cannot buy it anywhere here in Iowa, but your state may have it.

Disneyland 2018 vs Disneyland 2022 – introduction

In the not-too-distant future (but probably not next Sunday, A.D.), I plan to write out my thoughts about the Disneyland of 2022 versus the pre-COVID Disneyland of 2018. For those that go all the time, the changes are incremental. Stay away a few years, and the changes are huge.

From the introduction to mobile ordering, to the need for using a phone for “everything” (even getting to view World of Color at DCA), a current visit to Disneyland is vastly different than one just a few years ago.

And I don’t expect to even discuss price increases, since anyone old enough knows this is not a new thing, and we’ve talked about them for decades.

More to come…

The time(s) Disney changed the lyrics to the Pirates of the Carribean theme song

Updates:

  • Added Google screen shot for ”stand up me hearties yo ho” version.
  • Added YouTube video of that version.
  • Updated title. Will there be more versions found?

ADVISORY: This article uses the ”r“ word, mostly so search engines can find it in case anyone else stumbles upon this topic.

While researching something completely unrelated, I ended up exploring some old internet newsgroup messages. (You see, kids, before there was a World Wide Web, Disney fans used text and things called ”news groups” to communicate with each other.)

I stumbled across a 1997 posting about the breaking news that Disneyland was going to be changing Pirates of the Caribbean. This was followed by a comment wondering if they were going to remove the word ”rape” from the Yo Ho theme song, too. As a kid who visited Disneyland and Magic Kingdom in the 1970s, I also grew up thinking there was a line in that song that used that word. As an adult, I had assumed Disney must have edited out that inappropriate verse.

It wasn’t until years later when fans had access to full source audio and scans of he original sheet music that we could confirm that there never was such a line in the original song. All such memories were false. Seeing others, back in the mid-1990s, make references to it let me know that at least I wasn’t alone in mishearing a song lyric.

But I digress.

In that discussion, someone pointed out that this word never appeared in the theme song, but that Disney had removed ”drink up me hearties, yo ho!” from a CD release of the theme song.

Some quick research led me to the album: Music From the Parks, 1996. I had this album on cassette. It contained remakes of Disney theme park songs done by other artists. Read more about it here:

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney%27s_Music_from_the_Park

The track listing as as follows:

  • “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” – Patti Austin
  • “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)” – The Pointer Sisters
  • “It’s a Small World/When You Wish Upon a Star Medley” – Etta James
  • “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” –  Tim Curry
  • “Grim Grinning Ghosts” – Barenaked Ladies
  • “Hakuna Matata Medley” – The Rembrandts
  • “Circle of Life/Can You Feel the Love Tonight Medley” – Richard Page
  • “SpectroMagic Medley (Instrumental)” – David Benoit
  • “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” – Linda Ronstadt
  • “Part of Your World” – Olivia Newton-John
  • “Mickey Mouse March/Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Medley (Instrumental)” – The Disney Big Band
  • “When You Wish Upon a Star” – Take 6
  • “Remember the Magic (Theme Song) – Brian McKnight
  • “IllumiNations 25” – The Disney Big Band

…and while researching this, I learned there was a bonus track on the CD I never heard. I only had it on cassette. (And still do, somewhere.)

I bought this album specifically because it had remakes of the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean theme songs. About the only other thing on the album that stands out in my mind to this day is the Davy Crocket song sung in Rocky Horror Picture Show style by Tim Curry. It’s quite the hoot! (“Davy …. David, Crocket… King of the …*wild* frontier…”)

I found The Pointer Sister’s version of Yo Ho on YouTube, and sure enough, the song had been re-arranged and omitted ”Drink up me hearties, yo ho”:

Since this was around the same time decisions were being made to alter the ride, it does make me wonder if the changes in these lyrics were done for a similar reason — or maybe they just decided to change the song for artistic reasons, leaving out the one line all of us know even if we cannot remember the versus. (Typing that out now, that would seem to be a very odd decision, if so.)

The original:

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.
We pillage plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho.
We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot.
Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho.

The Pointer Sisters version:

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.
Yo ho, yo YO, a pirate’s life for me.
We pillage plunder, we rifle and loot.
We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot.

The same pattern follows through the rest of the song.

If I ever noticed this at the time, I forgot that I noticed. But I think that I didn’t. At that time, we did not have access to full versions of these soundtracks. I remember being quite happy at discovering one could pull of some audio files from the Walt Disney World Explorer CD-ROM and get some instrumental background snippets that had never been released publicly before.

So, while the R word never appeared in the original song, a Disney remake of the song did alter the lyrics to remove lines about drinking.

The more you know…

Stand up me hearties, yo ho?

And further proving you can’t really trust what a search engine chooses for you as the best possible answer, look at what Google brings up for the lyrics:

Stand up me hearties, yo ho?

There must be some Disney Kids album that has a censored version of the song on it… I guess.

Update: Jonas Brothers, Disney Mania 4. https://youtu.be/ywUujyCsNZE

Disneyland’s last Annual Passholder Party in 1997.

I returned to visiting Disneyland in December 1995. I was then an annual pass holder every year except for the dark times (after the great tech layoffs following 9/11) through the late 2000s.

Disneyland used to do a yearly Annual Passholder Party. It was a hard ticket event that gave pass holders special access in the evening to presentations, entertainment and food. The last one was 23 years ago today on March 14, 1997. I thought it might be fun to look back on the event through my ancient digital photos.

Getting there is half the fun

I travelled for work, and just happened to be in Irvine, California the week this event was held. I had no ticket, but my local friend Steve roamed the lines asked if anyone had an extra ticket. Thanks to Steve and some random nice guy I was able to experience the event. (I used to have a picture of him, but it seems to have been lost to time.)

New Tomorrowland

The new New Tomorrowland was under construction, so there were many displays set up showing things to come.

Innoventions

This one shows the paint job that Innoventions would soon have.

Innoventions model. Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997

It was on this night that the made the building rotate (to great applause) for the first time since it America Sings was inside. I highly suspect they practiced this before they tried to power it up in front of annual pass holders.

Rocket Rods

The PeopleMover had been shut down for a few years, but its high speed replacement, Rocket Rods, would soon be operating. This was a map of the track layout.

Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997

The next resort…

And of course, with Disneyland soon to be the Disneyland Resort featuring a new theme park, Disney’s California Adventure, there was concept art on hand about changes coming to the resort area.

Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997

And check out this “now” and “later” image showing the yucky run down strip mall look that surrounded Disneyland … and the lush tourist district it would soon be transformed into:

Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997

Won’t you let me take you on a Disney cruise?

The Disney Cruise lines was also represented, showing off a model of an upcoming cruise ship.

Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997

Animal Kingdom: coming soon!

There was also a new Florida Disney theme park opening — the first new U.S. park since Disney/MGM Studios opened nine years earlier. Animal Kingdom was represented with a display of concept art.

Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997
Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997

Test Track!

The transformation of Epcot’s World of Motion into Test Track also got some concept art.

Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997

Imagineers standing by…

This is where I got to meet some imagineers for the first time. I had my photo taken with Bruce Gordon and Tony Baxter, though I don’t believe I had any idea who either of them were at the time.

  • Me with Imagineer Bruce Gordon (and ???) at Disneyland on May 14, 1997.
  • Me with Imagineer Tony Baxter at Disneyland on May 14, 1997.

Hungry yet?

Outside of Tomorrowland, the walkway between New Orleans Square and the Rivers of America was taken over by food booths. You could buy samples of all kinds of food items from the different lands of the parks. Back then, the prices were very reasonable!

Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997
Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997
Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997
Disneyland Annual Passholder Part on May 14, 1997

Light Magic

This was also the first night we got to see a sneak preview of the upcoming Light Magic parade… but I will save that for a second part.

I thought I had many more photos from this night, but it appears they may have been lost with some hard drive failures I have had over the years. Stay in school kids, and backup often.

Until next time…

P.S. The photos in this article were all 640×480 low resolution images from my Epson PhotoPC camera. They have been upscaled using software as an experiment. What do you think? I think they look like Instagram filters. . .

Using 1996 photos in 2020.

When I bought my first digital camera in 1996, the specs were quite impressive. My Epson PhotoPC could take a picture large enough to fill my entire PC’s VGA-resolution screen – 640×480! Of course, on dial-up modems, you would never put pictures of that size on a website, so I often used the half-size 320×240 images online (or smaller).

But today, icons for phone apps are larger than 640×480. My huge 1996 pictures now look like postage stamps.

But technology always finds a way, and I am experimenting with some modern image processing that uses artificial intelligence to try to figure out what was supposed to be in the photo, and make it larger.

Here is an example… This is a 1996 photo from Disneyland:

1996 Disneyland Frontierland (original).

And here is the same photo, reprocessed to be double the resolution:

6401996 Disneyland Frontierland (reprocessed).

If you viewed the original at double size and compared it with the reprocessed photo, you could see quite a difference. But in small sizes in this article, it just looks a tad sharper. Zooming in on the people in the canoe shows there wasn’t enough detail for the AI to do much. It gives them a weird artistic filtered look.

Let’s see if we can show them side-by-side. You can click on these to see them full size.

1996 Disneyland Frontierland (original).
1996 Disneyland Frontierland (reprocessed).
Which do you think looks better?

The question I have for you today is … should I reprocess the photos I share in these articles? Or just use the original 1996 versions as-is?

Comments are appreciated.

Remembering the Soap Opera Bistro

In February 2001, I got to visit the just-opened Disney’s California Adventure Park. It seems the first thing we did was get breakfast at the ABC Soap Opera Bistro. Here’s a few minutes of video from that brand new restaurant.

Soap Opera Bistro, 2/18/2001.

More to come…