Posted by Scott Sevener on August 28, 2008 under Trip Planning & Trip Reports | 
Not exactly sure why it took almost two days after our trip for this to show up in my inbox, but regardless, this was our image from the new interactive simulations at the end of Spaceship Earth. Now not only do you get to watch “your future” unfold on the screen in front of you as the attraction comes to an end, but afterwards they’ve also got kiosks setup in the exhibit area exiting the attraction where you can mail a copy of “your future” to the e-mail address(es) of your choice.
I only think it would’ve been neater if you could actually send the entire video - that may have been a bit more entertaining than this horribly timed still - but nothing’s perfect. Not even the future…
Posted by Scott Sevener on August 27, 2008 under Trip Planning & Trip Reports |
Yesterday was a good day!
This has been a particularly busy year for us, with my fiancée up to her ears in nursing school, so we haven’t really been over to Disney World nearly as much as we have in years past. Between unbelievable amounts of stress from school, wedding planning, and everything in between, yesterday ended up being a really good time for us to take a break and enjoy some much-needed relaxation…
The plan was simple – show up “early” (well, for me, anyways!), run around like crazy all day long, and leave happy at the end of the day. We had decided to try our luck on the Find-a-Pin scavenger hunt that Disney has been running this year after picking up April’s pin during our last visit earlier this spring, which meant that we basically had to pay a visit to each of the four parks in hopes that we could still catch some of the older pins that came out in months past. And even though after doing the whole four parks in one day deal last summer for my birthday with less than preferred results, it seemed ok for another go around this time with just Sara and I in the traveling party and pins being the main item on the day’s agenda.
Taking a hint from our last experience, we opted to only set our sights on a few select attractions for the entire day – Sara really wanted to ride Toy Story Mania again at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, while I wanted to have lunch at the new Yak & Yeti restaurant in Disney’s Animal Kingdom again. Of course, we also wanted to hit up some of our favorites like Rockin’ Rollercoaster, Expedition Everest, Soarin’ and Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, but we decided to leave that up to chance – if the lines were tolerable when we got to that point, we’d ride, otherwise we’d move on…
Ultimately it was probably a good thing that we kept our expectations as we did because while we did manage to hit our whopping two must-sees, the trip reminded us once again that four parks in one day just doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room, especially if you’re pre-occupied with a pin hunt! Here’s how we ended up faring:
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
- Toy Story Mania
- zero pins from the list (didn’t realize until later in the day that we went to the wrong location)
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
- Expedition Everest
- lunch at Yak & Yeti
- one pin from the list
Magic Kingdom
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Hall of Presidents (see an air conditioning theme here?!)
- Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin
- another pin from the list
Epcot
- Spaceship Earth
- Gran Fiesta Tour starring The Three Caballeros (Mexico Pavilion)
- one more pin from the list
Downtown Disney
- one final pin from the list, among others
- dessert at Ghirardelli Soda Fountain
- some more sweets to take home from Goofy’s Candy Company
Believe it or not, we ended up walking through the gates at the Studios right around 10:00am, which is crazy for me because usually that’s pushing it even when we’re staying on-site! One of things we hadn’t considered, though, was just how unbelievably hot it gets during the summer - we did go right around this time last year, but I swear it wasn’t nearly as hot! Hence all of the indoor attractions come afternoon, mind you. Also, in being a Tuesday, we really didn’t expect crowds to be as busy as they were – we passed on both Rockin’ Rollercoaster and Soarin’ at different times of the day because they both boasted 100-minute wait times when we went by, and even at 10:30am when we did Toy Story Mania, the fast pass return time was already at the 5:00 – 6:00pm range! I’m still not entirely sure if that was an error or just crazy crowd levels, but overall we sort of assumed that at least part of the crowds was due to being the week before Labor Day and families getting in that last-minute trip before school starts.
Needless to say, I think four parks in one day is officially out of our system for a while now – we might be inclined to do two parks in one day when we go over for our honeymoon in October, but even then, that’ll most likely be broken up by a visit to Stormalong Bay back at the resort! We still had a good time, though … didn’t get to see fireworks because we retreated to Downtown Disney for dessert when it started to look like rain, although rumor has it that the globe for IllumiNations was being refurbished anyways and we weren’t sure how the show would be without it.
At the end of the day, we came home extremely tired, a little sunburned, and definitely hopped up on more sugar than either of us ingest in about a week, but we got our relaxation in and that was the whole point of the trip.
Well, relaxation, and also these…
Posted by Scott Sevener on August 26, 2008 under Disney MoBlog |
Goofy After a Long But Fun Day…, uploaded via camera phone by s_sevener
Posted by Scott Sevener on under Disney MoBlog |
Fountain of Nations @ Epcot, uploaded via camera phone by s_sevener
Posted by Scott Sevener on August 21, 2008 under Random Blog Stuff |
Fortunately Tropical Storm Fay ended up landing farther south than expected and pretty much bypassed us here in Tampa, but at the same time we couldn’t help but notice that the new path put it dangerously close to Mickey’s house instead!
As luck would have it, though, Disney World ended up being spared also, 
but I think it’s interesting to see some of the steps that they did to help prepare for even a less-than-hurricane strength storm. Mike Scopa just so happened to be at Disney over the past week and put up some photos from around the Magic Kingdom that provide a glimpse at Mickey’s storm prep activities. Clearly they weren’t too worried about it, or the parks themselves would’ve been closed down as they were for Charley and Frances back in 2004, even with the smaller storms, it’s important to secure any loose objects to avoid them becoming projectiles. All in all, most of the structures themselves are able to sustain high winds, but here in Florida, it’s still better to be safe than sorry…
Posted by Scott Sevener on August 17, 2008 under Random Blog Stuff |
So after almost two months of being in theaters, I finally got around to seeing Wall-E yesterday – probably just in the nick of time, as I was beginning to think that it was going to have to wait until DVD because we kept putting it off – and ultimately, I think I probably would’ve been ok if that had been the case…
Honestly, I was very torn about this movie even when I saw the previews last year, although I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt not only because it’s a Disney-Pixar picture and I’d probably pay to see these guys animate the phonebook (although I wouldn’t automatically come back for the sequel…), but also because I came into Cars with the exact same feeling and ended up absolutely loving that movie so I figured that there was always a chance that Wall-E would fare the same.
Unfortunately, it ended up just being ok for me.
I mean, sure – the imagery was beautiful, especially the scene where Wall-E goes into space after Eve, and it definitely continued the trend of every single Pixar movie looking better than the one before it – that, I can’t deny. And I even enjoyed the character of Wall-E, watching him interact with the world almost like a child as he explored and learned about his surroundings – the personification was another plus. But ultimately, there was just something missing, whether it was the lack of real “speech” in the film for me or possibly just a lack of that shivery feeling that I usually get when I watch a truly great movie – like in the scene where Remy’s rat friends all come to help in the restaurant in Ratatouille, the montage at the end of Meet the Robinsons where Lewis “grows up,” or even the very opening scene of Cars as the title comes up on the screen in the middle of the track.
In the end, it was a quaint story, Wall-E was adorable, and the movie had some scenes that really left me in stitches, but it didn’t exactly knock any of my favorite Pixar movies out of their ranks (Cars, The Incredibles, A Bug’s Life for my top three) and even in comparison, I think I still enjoyed Ratatouille from last summer better. Of course, no studio is going to crank out a hit for everybody every time – Disney itself has been a prime example of that lately, so now it’s just a matter of what we’ll see next. I still look forward to adding the DVD to my collection this fall, not to mention seeing just where they fit the little robot into the parks in the future. It seems like it would be easy to fit Wall-E into either Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom or Future World in Epcot, although admittedly I’ve thought the same about Meet the Robinsons ever since I saw the flick, too, and we’ve yet to see anything on that front.
Next spring brings us Up, the tenth feature film from Pixar … so despite Wall-E being “not bad” in my book, hopefully I’ll have a slightly better review for their next offering come springtime!
Posted by Scott Sevener on August 15, 2008 under Random Blog Stuff |
So it’s official – our honeymoon suite has finally been booked!
Ok, so it’s not technically a suite, at least not by Disney’s $1000+ / night standards, but I think it’ll still do us just fine. We were holding out for Disney’s Beach Club Resort and availability was looking pretty slim, but somehow a miracle happened when they finally got around to posting the passholder rates for October – December and I was able to secure two nights in a Garden View, Club-Level room for the weekend after our wedding!
Note #1: We’re still technically not in the clear yet, as the plan was to be able to stay Friday – Monday and so far I was only able to book two of the three nights that we need, but it’s a start and hopefully as we get closer to the actual date, somebody will end up canceling and we’ll be able to scoop up that extra night. Who knew Columbus Day, of all holidays, would be booked up?!
Note #2: I didn’t necessarily intend to book a club-level room, as all of the talk I’ve heard is that they’re not really worth the extra money, but it was literally the only thing they had left at Beach Club, so I bit the bullet and decided that if ever there was a time for us to splurge, this was it! Plus we have to try it at least once just so we know for ourselves…
So needless to say, we’re definitely looking forward to spending plenty of time in and around Stormalong Bay, seeing what club-level (concierge) is all about, and of course, being within stumbling distance of Epcot during the Food & Wine Festival! We’ve also got a huge group dinner booked at Cape May Café for a bunch of friends and family who are sticking around after the wedding, so that should be good times, too.
Of course, while I was hunting around for our reservations, I also happened to come across these photos showing pretty much the most beautiful, amazing, and god-awful expensive rooms you’ll ever find on Disney property!
http://www.suitedisney.com/wdwphotos/suites/
Believe it or not, I even got offered the one at the Contemporary both online and when I called via phone to make our reservations, but at $2190 per night, they just weren’t able to give us the two grand per night discount/wedding gift that would’ve been necessary to make that purchase a reality!
It’s definitely easy to get a little dazed after looking through some of those photos – keep in mind that these are the Presidential and Vice Presidential Suites that Disney rents out at anywhere between $1600 and $2000+ a night when they’re not being used by executives and others that have earned themselves a good wooing by the Mouse! I’d love to spend a few nights in one, especially the Royal Asante Suite at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge (the last photo shows its awesome balcony looking over one of the savannahs), but other than by winning the lotto or figuring out how to get Disney to comp such a room, I can’t ever imagine spending two grand a night for a hotel room.
Of course, if a certain Mouse wanted to upgrade a certain couple coming over to celebrate their honeymoon in October, I don’t think either of us would complain…
Posted by Scott Sevener on August 13, 2008 under Random Blog Stuff |
If you pay any attention to theme park news other than specifically Disney-related, there’s been some interesting speculation lately with regards to Anheuser-Busch’s myriad of theme parks and what will happen to them when the company is purchased by the Belgian beer maker InBev. The company had stated that they would plan on partially financing their purchase of Anheuser-Busch itself by “selling off non-core assets” because they have no real interest in the theme park industry, so of course, said speculation now revolves around exactly who might be interested in buying this division, which consists of ten theme parks total including two properties in Tampa (Busch Gardens & Adventure Island) and three in Orlando (SeaWorld, Discovery Cove, and the newly-built Aquatica).
It was hinted at in our local paper today that Disney was one of the corporations in line to bid on the $2.58 billion Busch Entertainment unit, but ultimately even though I could technically imagine something like that happening, I wanted to comment for just a moment today on why I don’t think it actually will. And I’m not even taking into account the sticker price, although I’m sure that’s enough for most financial analysts to chime in with their two cents worth!
For me (i.e. from the Disney fanboy’s standpoint), I don’t see this working out, specifically for use of the Orlando parks, simply due to the physical distance between the two properties. SeaWorld Orlando is about 6 miles from the closest edge of Walt Disney World (Downtown Disney), and all of the land in between is owned by pretty much anyone except Disney, so trying to loop it into their existing parks would make an absolute mess of their existing, one-world footprint that was well planned for over thirty years ago. If it were possible for someone to simply pick up the entire SeaWorld park and plop it down somewhere in the middle of Disney’s current map, I think with some money they could definitely convert most of the existing attractions into something that in five or ten years feels like it’s been a Disney entity all along…
It won’t happen though - the money isn’t in Disney’s best interests, especially not for a property so distant and also containing so many other parks to also have to deal with. Also, while some of Busch’s other parks could certainly be broken off by themselves no harm, no foul (i.e. Sesame Place, Water Country USA, Adventure Island), it would likely be pretty damaging to the brands to break up the others, if for example, Disney wanted SeaWorld Orlando, but not San Diego or San Antonio. Of course, another article that I read mentioned that Disney’s name very well may have been dropped into the discussion simply to drive the bidding up … which honestly makes more sense to me at this point because unless they got a really good price, I just don’t see it in Mickey’s cards.
Which is fine for us, really. I think we can live without seeing Shamu at a Disney park, but it is definitely some interesting food for thought. I have a feeling that this isn’t exactly going to be a deal that gets done overnight, or even over year, so if it’s going to be another year or two before you can make it down to see Shamu or go swimming with the dolphins at Discovery Cove, I wouldn’t worry much about seeing any change whatsoever.
Posted by Scott Sevener on August 10, 2008 under Random Blog Stuff |
I found the sample menus and Eat to the Beat Concert Series schedule for this year’s Epcot International Food & Wine Festival posted over at AllEars.Net and I can definitely say that my anticipation for our trip this fall is building even more!
You see, the trip is already going to be awesome because my fiancee and I will actually be going over to the World as a bit of a honeymoon after celebrating our wedding, so it only gets even better to see things for Food & Wine starting to take shape. We’re hoping to get a room at the Beach Club (just waiting on passholder rates to be released for October - any day now…), which we’ve always thought would be pretty sweet to be within walking distance of Epcot during the festival. The last two years we’ve explored the World Showcase eating options during Food & Wine, we had an absolutely blast - once during a long weekend trip and last year pretty much just for dinner and fireworks. Not to mention that this year we’ll also have a number of friends and family sticking around through the weekend after the wedding to play at Disney for a while before heading home, it should give us a unique opportunity to share all of that food with a much larger than normal group of people!
I can’t even remember what all we tried last year - we just barely made it all the way around World Showcase and definitely didn’t try something from every single venue - but just perusing the list this year, here are a few that stick out as sounding worthwhile:
- Boston Crab Cake (Boston, USA)
- Mascarpone Cream Puff with Gianduja Chocolate (Bolonga, Italy)
- Durban Spiced Chicken (Cape Town, South Africa)
- Kiwi Meringue Tart (Wellington, New Zealand)
And granted, a lot of the items on the list I almost need to see a description and often times an actual sample before I take the plunge, but I guess that’s half the fun of it!
Oh yeah, and there’s also this one other thing that has me excited for Food & Wine this year…
Eat to the Beat Musical Act for Oct. 13-14 : Sister Hazel
I saw these guys maybe seven or eight years ago when they made an appearance at a friend’s college and they’re one of the increasingly few acts that I’ve wanted to see ever since! They really helped get me into the whole acoustic rock kick back then, so this ought to make for a neat way to wrap up our honeymoon before heading back home Monday evening…
Posted by Scott Sevener on August 9, 2008 under Random Blog Stuff |
I’ve been watching some interesting discussions take place since Sunday’s ticket price increase - Mike Scopa has written up a pretty interesting blog post over at AllEars.Net, followed by Friday’s episode of WDW Today…
I’m not quite sure what to make of it all, except that it does admittedly disappoint me to see Disney go ahead with a price increase when the economy is in such bad shape and many of us are focusing more on filling our tanks than our next trip to Walt Disney World. I’ll admit that even though we’ve been trying to save for the wedding and that alone has cut down our trips this year, the idea that gas for a trip over now costs double what we were used to isn’t any easier to swallow knowing that prices for just about everything else over there are jumping up, too. And while we may not really be affected by the regular ticket increase itself, there are still hotel increases, parking increases, and dining increases around the holidays, not to mention the scaling back of some favorites to help keep the books pointed in the right direction.
I agree with Mike when he says that we won’t necessarily all just stop going due to the increases, however it’s definitely going to have an effect on guest experience and at this point I simply can’t see how it could be considered a positive one. I think the problem is that Disney has been inching up prices around the World so much recently that it’s beginning to be difficult to say whether these changes were solely an effort to make up for rising operations costs or if they’re simply another example of Disney trying to squeeze just as much from that almighty turnip as possible to find the maximum sticker price before guest numbers will be affected.
And while that’s certainly not how I would run Walt Disney World, unfortunately it’s not my decision to make so in the meantime the rest of us are forced to just sit tight and see what happens. I can only hope that things like cutting back Fantasmic to only a couple of nights per week or increasing dining rates during the holidays will eventually backfire and cause Disney to re-think some of these kinds of decisions, but in the meantime, I suppose us Disney geeks will just have to keep doing what we do best - maximizing our experiences over at The Happiest Place on Earth…
