reddening's thread of DISNEY PARKS gossip

don't knock the tiki room, it's a good place to rest for a bit and sing some goofy songs with singing birds and plants. Make sure to get a pineapple whip while you are there.

the Tiki Room at Disneyland is easily in my top 5 park attractions

xpost And I think they finally got rid of Zazu and Iago, which is another major point currently in its favor.

I hate pineapple whip.

Back to Epcot in a bit for my daughter's 10th. We have so many leftover food credits I fear for my health.

xpost

Yes, Zazu and Iago and the whole re-vamped tiki room was a travesty and I'm glad they fixed this at WDW

?? none of that shit at the Disneyland one, which has remained unchanged since time immemorial afaik

Aerosmith and Everest and Dwarves all awesome additions, BTW. Epcot still sort of worthless, though they do update exhibits pretty often to keep them more timely.

has Test Track been Tron-ified yet

looks like that was a couple years ago.

Total Tron.

My kids love Soarin, but I think it's dumb. At least there is no 3d involved.

fire breathing sleeping beauty dragon at the magic kingdom parade was awesome.

best Disney genius idea by the way is to buy some Disney doo dads, t shirts and stuff, at Target before you leave, and give it to the kids at the park. Probably saves you hundreds of dollars.

another is to give your kids each a $20 gift card, and tell them they can spend it on whatever they want, but they are not getting more.

yeah my first Disney World trip in 1997 featured cracking open the owl-shaped coin bank we had been feeding change to my entire life (I was 8) and me and my sister each got $40 for spending there. I got a ceramic figurine of Mickey in the Sorcerer's Apprentice hat.

Does anyone have a good book on WDW? I'd love to learn how it works.

the DL tiki room hasn't added anything, but they did remove a full musical number from it during the nineties due to kids these days and their attention spans and their gameboys, etc.

it is amazing how many kids and tweens I have seen with their headphones on, staring at a screen.

I say, as I type into my phone.

just a reflektor maaaaaan

I learned so much this trip I will relate when I'm back to a computer.

Does anyone have a good book on WDW? I'd love to learn how it works.

I have the Imagineering Field Guides for each of the four parks, and they provide a lot of interesting background info. Disney Editions has three big Imagineering books that I'm aware of, and a couple actual Imagineers have written their own books. Jim Hill's site is pretty decent for behind the scenes stuff. And if you want the seedier behind the scenes stories, check out the websites dedicated to the bitchings of people who've participated in Disney's college program.

There's a wonderful eye-opening book about the history of WDW published about six or seven years ago: a full history. I don't remember its name.

actually, avatar land seems like a dumber use of resources that Marvel Comics land.right now there is virtually new Marvel presents at the park. Not even people dressed up as superheroes.

No marvel, that is.

Presence.

thread woefully short on parks gossip. You ppl want to pour your savings into a wretched conglomerate, be my guest, be our guest, be our guest....

About twenty years ago a guest jumped from the 15th floor of the Contemporary Resort, crashing through the glass atrium below. As other guests gawked, Disney "cast members" chirped, "Nothing here, ladies and gentlemen...."

hey guys did you hear how anyone who dies in the parks is transported outside of the parks before they're declared dead so that no one ever technically dies at Disney World p gnarly huh

You're welcome, Morbs.

I die a little whenever I hear a Frozen song but I will do it nowhere near Orlando.

We've already established that WDW has been really slow to acknowledge Frozen's popularity so if you avoid the meet & greet, it's safe for now.

Frozen… that's the one with the snowman who's the lead character, right?

Morbs, I have great gossip, for later. Meanwhile, please provide a list of OK conglomerates, thanks!

This is fascinating, you guys, I have really been kind of dreading this trip and you make me feel like there might be something here to enjoy. I will be with my 9-year-old and 4-year-old, who have not been particularly pressing us to go to WDW but they seem into the idea now that we're going.

wdw is the best

"no gossip" when a ride literally caught fire within the last week, smh. morbs won't be satisfied until the streets of the magic kingdom are awash with blood.

sorry, need toonville sex

Harlan Ellison almost got disappeared by Disney for that, so be careful.

I'm sure a trip with kids can be a blast (albeit exhausting, I'm sure) but, yeah, going to WDW as an adult (of drinking age, natch) has been a revelation. And there's so much to do that you can go with a degree of regularity and focus on different stuff each time. I'm absolutely sure it isn't for everybody, but it's the perfect foil to my general travel/vacation anxiety.

Seriously, Morbs, just Google "Disney World cast confessions" if you want to peel back the sunny corporate facade. There's plenty of scandal floating around out there.

WDW really started to shine when in college I visited with friends; I took it for granted for years.

Because of Universal's Islands of Adventure there's some legal stuff with Marvel characters and the WDW parks. I think Disney can't use any Marvel stuff east of the Mississippi? Disney's doing a weird traveling Marvel theme park this winter and it's not getting any further east than Texas.

also I'll be at Disneyland and California Adventure in a week and can't wait. Space Mountain is a rocket back to the 80s.

It's amazing how well these parks work. Really make it easy, especially with kids.

OK, gossip: I talked a while with a security guard while I waited for a bus (apparently, they have some discretion to call for more buses if guests are waiting more than 20 minutes). He like everyone else there was very nice, or trained to be nice, so asked about our trip. When I told him how many broken rides we encountered, he had some really good hypotheses for me. One is that they keep adding more and more "magic hours" (or whatever), so the parks open earlier and stay open later. A few days a year each park even stays open 24 hours. Anyway, that puts so much extra strain on the rides as those hours add up, which leads to more broken rides, plus, all those extra hours operating reduces the amount of time they have to clean, care for and otherwise maintain the rides. Ergo, these extra steps taken to give guests more fun sometimes backfires and causes the rides to poop out, at least for a bit.

Similarly, I asked about the fire on the Seven Dwarves ride. He told me that Disney, to satisfy demand and add spectacle, has been expanding the range of the fireworks (bigger, better, etc.). Up until last year they gave guards asbestos gloves and a bucket of water and had them patrol the roofs of rides post show to look for smoldering or unexploded fireworks, but recently took the guards off fire duty, ceding the job to engineers. But I guess they only check for fire if they see smoke.

Also, trivia! The fake eiffel tower is 1/10 the size of the real one, which is cool, but in order to preserve the illusion they have to keep the birds off, because otherwise it would look like the tower was covered with giant birds!

More trivia! Did you know a rhino can only see about a foot away, so that when they charge they are largely running blind? That's nuts.

Saddest thing I learned - and I think this was online - was not just the physical but emotional stress of playing one of the Disney characters, because they see so many terminally ill or otherwise very sick kids every day. The thing I read noted the Fairy Godmother has it worst, because guess what wish the kids all make?

:(

That the rides would stop breaking since they probably won't make it back next year?

Guilty lol

On a couple of the Disney message boards I visit (ahem), frequent guests complain about the strain on transportation and employees that Early Magic Hour, etc place on them. Until a few weeks ago, the resort monorail, for example, was running on reduced hours to alleviate strain.

At the same time, demand is so high the park keeps trying to up what they have to offer.

This was out first experience with the (admittedly only a year old) magic bands, but they were by and large helpful. I asked some cast members about them, too, and they said that there seemed to be less of an issue of guests figuring them out (barring the visitor or two who can't open their hotel doors) and more retraining the entire cast to work with them. Plus, there is still the odd glitch or two. Hence our essentially free Crystal Palace meal.

WDW may also be the only place on earth where you walk 10-15 miles a day and still put on a few pounds. Man, my gut ...

Great food, though. They do it right.

and park food has improved vastly since the fried horrors served in the seventies and eighties

going to WDW as an adult (of drinking age, natch) has been a revelation

WDW really started to shine when in college I visited with friends

OK wait you guys now I really feel like I have no idea what to expect. People go to Disney World without kids? I literally have no concept of what we're talking about. I went here as a kid and I liked it but what I remember is, like, there was a haunted house and It's A Small World and Pirates of the Caribbean and Disney characters. And Main Street Electrical Parade. And there was Epcot, which was like kind of a cool slightly corny Festival of Nations kind of thing. But it was definitely for kids. If it's a place where adults go without children then I feel like I... don't know actually know what Disney World is? What do you do there? My cousin works at Animal Kingdom and told me "it's a glorified zoo with a few rides" which somehow doesn't sound supremely exciting (but I think we're planning to be at MK and Epcot and skip AK anyway, we're just there a couple of days.)

OK I guess one way for me to deal with this would be to actually read this thread? So it sounds like

a) I'll be impressed on some kind of intellectual level with the sheer scale and attention to detail and design?
b) There is actually good food to eat? (But only at the sit down restaurants which you have to book months in advance? Seems very unlikely I'd know weeks or even days in advance what time we were going to be where and whether we would want to eat.)
c) Roller coasters (I don't really dig roller coasters, just listing things that I think a grownup would do.)
d) Just hanging out at a hotel and sitting by the pool and reading or whatevs -- I mean, that sounds fun, but I somehow can't see going all this way and then sitting and lounging like I'd do at home except it'd be warm.

I think I'm not really gonna get the idea of this until I'm physically there.