reddening's thread of DISNEY PARKS gossip

i haven't seen that guy in 10 years but there's an ~85% chance he currently posts to reddit

rip skyway ride

in ref to those pics obv

unfortunately can't get to my 50s-60s photos, waiting for flickr to unlock/renew my account arrgh

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltt5kzPqxh1qbh9d4o1_500.jpg

also RIP: creepy waving dolls inside Sleeping Beauty's Castle

i miss you, disneyland :(

― chaki, Tuesday, February 12, 2008

ohhh just realized you can see Monstro the whale in the background of Shakey's first pic! <3

also i covet the shirt the girl in the lower left corner is wearing

so.... gossip?

here is some gossip for you: last week, Disneyland quietly hooked up the Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin Fastpass system to the park-wide network of Fastpasses! for the last decade you could go get a Fastpass for the ride and it wouldn't count against your limited Fastpass total, because it wasn't hooked up to the main network. now you have to either waste a good Fastpass on Roger Rabbit or wait in line, which is of course fascist bullshit.

this is an outrage

oh man, i abused the fuck out of the fastpass last time i went cause i was there with my whole family and a bunch of peeps didn't want to ride the fastpass rides so i just grabbed fastpasses with all their tickets and had like five fastpasses at one time

how do the fastpasses work?

instead of waiting in line you go to a machine for the line and swipe your ticket and get a fastpass. the fastpass has a time on it and if you come back at that time you basically get automatic admission to the ride. but you can only have like 1 (or 2?) at a time

iirc

yeah, i think it goes: you get a fastpass with a return time on it, and then you can't get another one until it's that return time. however, if the return time is way later in the day, you can get another one two hours after you picked up the first one.

I am going to WDW in April. I am very excited. What are your pro tips, ILX friends?

use your fastpass.

find hidden mickeys.

get autograph book + have characters sign it

get the secret character phone number and call in to stalk, uh, hunt down, uh, find your fave characters.

playing drinking around the world where you drink at every country in epcot world pavilion. ride the troll ride.

ride the troll ride. 4chanstorm

You can get a second Fastpass if you approach the fifteen-minute window of the first -- at least in WDW.

whoa, neat!

1 day in Magic Kingdom
1 day in Animal Kingdom & Epcot (together)
1 day at Sea World

Sound good? I would skip Sea World but girlfriend is a big coaster fiend, and I don't think I can get away w/o going to another park outside Disney. I don't like coasters terribly much, so I figure Sea World might be kind of fun when she's whipping around upside down.

if you have a smartphone, i believe there's an app that shows you the wait times for all the rides. there's one for disneyland at least, i'm sure wdw has one too.

Confession: ten trips to WDW since '98, still haven't visited Animal Kingdom.

I would go for Universal Studios for your coaster needs.

Is Disneyland a completely different beast than WDW? We are tentatively considering a West Coast trip and loved WDW so much that Disneyland is under consideration.

Animal Kingdom is great. Not sure about feasibility of doing AK + Epcot on the same day, though. Epcot is my fave park. Also you're going to miss MGM? Tower of Terror is classic. Other good stuff (like 3D Muppet Movie! Star Wars ride!) worth doing there too.

Is Disneyland a completely different beast than WDW?

yes. it's much smaller for one thing.

I would go to MGM instead of Sea World and ride Tower of Terror and Aerosmith roller coaster which are both thrillier rides than most of WDW attractions.

also it's way older, there's stuff there from the 50s

xp

There's no comparison: WDW is immersive. You can hang out in a Disney hotel playing golf, swimming, eating, and hanging with bros and not step foot in a park.

even the drive into the Magic Kingdom represents a triumph of Walt Disney learning from the mistakes of Disneyland. You drive further and further north until you're forced to park at the Transportation and Ticket Center, and even then you still can't see the park until you're on the monorail or ferry boat.

mistakes!

Also you're going to miss MGM? Tower of Terror is classic.

Isn't MGM now called Disney Hollywood Studios? Is that the same thing? We've done Muppets and Star Wars in California, so really we'd only be going for Tower of Terror.

I like the idea of Epcot, but a lot of what I've read says it's very out of date, and I don't want to invest myself in too much hoakum.

I remember it so fondly from the '87, I'm worried it won't hold up

Disney regretted the development around the Disneyland park.

Epoct is by far the best park! It's the one with all the restaurants, and you can Drink Around the World.

I've never been to WDW but yeah it seems much closer to, like, an actual functioning city or resort town than Disneyland, which is very much an amusement park.

I am also very fond of Disneyland's original inspiration (which is even smaller in scale), Children's Fairyland in Oakland.

xp

some parts of epcot are out of date (like the technology pavilion, the growing grain pavilion, and the communications throughout history pavilion) but they're out of date in an incredibly sincere optimistic way about the future of humanity and the promise of technology. it's a very renewing experience!

Hollywood Studios is the one to miss if you can't do them all, but I had the most fun on the Toy Story Midway Mania ride there, and my coaster-loving other half loved the Rock'n'Rollercoaster.

End your Animal Kingdom/Epcot day at Epcot for the IllumiNations show, do Animal Kingdom in the morning.

Epcot is really the only thing I am curious about at WDW

Yeah. Future World doesn't feel dowdy.

Epcot is the one park in which I feel no pressure to ride anything. You can walk with a beer and soak it in.

Okay, we'll do Epcot. Only thing: neither of us drink. Will it still be fun? We can afford three days at theme parks. We both want to do Animal Kingdom (suckers for giraffes), and obv. Magic Kingdom. Epcot would be our third day, just want to make sure it's a good call, and that we're not gonna regret skipping Sea World and/or Universal Studios.

Cheers all, I realised it was smaller and older, is it just that it's not so Disneyfied? We stayed offsite in Orlando, but visited a park about 10 out of our 14 days. This would just be because we're there and wouldn't be the major point of our trip.

if anything it's MORE Disneyfied

basically every ride/feature is tied to a specific Disney film or property

Ah, cool. I think I meant how WDW is so immersive with hotels and transport and whathaveyou, I sort of feel Disneyland seems more pop in then pop out again as opposed to being swallowed up in the whole culture of it. I may have this all wrong in my head.

yeah, i think the fact that it's older + smaller actually makes it ideal for a "just popping by" trip. also the new cars land is going to open this summer, presumably with new rides that haven't made it to wdw yet? i heard one of the new rides is going to be like the old flying saucer ride and i am psyyyyyyyched

I dunno when yr in Disneyland you are IN Disneyland, the outside world sort of ceases to exist, there are no signs of it. in my humble opinion anyway.

rumor: Ratatouille ride at Parc Disneyland Paris coming soon

I highly recommend Disney lovers make a trip to Disneyland Paris. you're gonna think: I came all the way out here & you're expecting me to do something American? but the park's a masterpiece of design, even among the other Disney parks: compact & intricate, & yet you don't see e.g. Space Mountain when you're walking through other parts of the park (unless you climb something to see it). It doesn't feel as huge as the FLA parks, but it is; it's just more tightly woven.

plus it's fun to compare tourists from e.g. Spain & Italy to those from e.g. Missouri & Ohio.

next month i'm going to disneyland for the first time. i've never done any disney thing, never wanted to, but i'm being taken there by a person who is a big fan from childhood. i'm excited to do the lame stuff, like see the singing parrots and the hall of presidents or whatever it is.

That park has been reopened since May 11th!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3OnQ1CTkkM

this is art

Jungle Cruise about to be less racist

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-01-25/disneyland-plotting-long-overdue-changes-to-the-jungle-cruise

https://www.tiktok.com/@metaphoricallychallenged/video/6901315384029351174

https://www.tiktok.com/@showmelovejete/video/6940050692551822598

Just licking toads to see what happens

https://apnews.com/article/business-lifestyle-entertainment-travel-arts-and-entertainment-071c80ae6c0dabe6e1afbc3b59240131

This is cool

Rolly Crump has passed. Man, the impact!

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-03-13/rolly-crump-dead-disneyland-designer

Those who know, know.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/dining/disneyland-disney-world-restaurants-food.html

Separately I am delighted to realize that whatever else with Gawker at least their 'Best Restaurant' series with Rich Juzwiak and Caity Weaver is still up as a subdomain and therefore their extensive grading of nearly everything possible in Epcot is too:

https://bestrestaurant.gawker.com/the-best-restaurant-in-the-world-is-disneys-epcot-them-1700655297

(Though it looks like the links from that overall page aren't working, but if you go to https://bestrestaurant.gawker.com/ itself they seem to be. And so, the key one for Alfred remains:

https://bestrestaurant.gawker.com/shot-sake-margarita-slush-the-best-drinking-around-1699537518

Also, separately, maybe I need to finally go to Disney World?

https://www.foodandwine.com/disney-wine-bar-george-7371523

It's fine? The food, that is.

I once had a dole whip at the grand rapids john ball zoo that was so good because I didn't pay $120 for the opportunity.

.@RobertIger to the state of Florida: FAFO

“Disney pulls plug on $1 billion development in Florida”

via @NYTimes https://t.co/FEr9UgBM9p#FlaPol

— Peter Schorsch (@PeterSchorschFL) May 18, 2023

They're also closing the immersive Star Wars hotel, which is one of the only contemporary Star Wars things that sounds remotely interesting

Wow, didn't last long

I don't really gaf about Star Wars, but I really love the idea of an immersive hotel, and would absolutely love to stay in an immersive hotel for two days.

Galaxy Cruiser seems absolutely in tune with the age of Sleep No More, escape rooms, Meow Wolf, Instagram "museums," etc.

Unfortunately it ALSO seemed in tune with a US economy that increasingly only seems to cater to the needs and wants of the wealthy. Disney stuff was never CHEAP but it always seemed like the type of thing a family like the Griswolds could save up for and enjoy. I did 8 days @ Disney World with my wife in 2014. We stayed at a midprice hotel and still balled out one night at Victoria & Alberts. It was, again, not cheap, but not prohibitively expensive: something I could def do on a music writer's salary

These days it really seems like the whole thing is just made to milk Disney Adults with the ability and desire to drop $4k on a weekend.

The idea for this sounded neat, but I heard nothing positive about it when it opened, and it seemed insanely expensive even for a Disney property, which are all overpriced. But still, I would have thought they'd figure out a way to make it work given the massive popularity of SW stuff.

A relatively low occupancy, luxury priced "immersive" (do the toilets look like RSD2?) experience has got to be about as precarious a concept as some super pricey fine-dining spots (many of which are struggling). Expensive is one thing, expensive and a pain in the ass is another.

stayed at a midprice hotel and still balled out one night at Victoria & Alberts.

My guy.

I wanna say I went on your recco, but I'm not sure

also shout out to Victoria & Alberts who hooked me up with 100% Japanese waygu beef, which apparently has only been available in America for 10 weeks

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Sunday, April 13, 2014 12:09 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

...which is a fairytale straight out of Fantasyland lol. Sorry Whiney.

Were you living in NYC at the time? There's a few spots in midtown that have been importing 100% wagyu (then known as Kobe beef) since the '80s.

All I know is that it was really fuckin good.

No doubt!

Best restaurant in Florida.