Adding to our list of Disneyana here at Remain Seated Please, I wanted to share this piece my wife and I just got from Disneyland. Online, it looks like this piece is pretty old but I absolutely love it!
Our Shag as it appears in our home!
This piece shows Shag’s take on New Orleans Square. It depicts a family between Pirates and Mansion with the father taking a photo. This picture, minus the kid, basically is my wife and I at the parks! I love Shag’s 60s style, I love that it has a 60s take on the Mansion, and I love how the characters look so enamored with the park. I can only hope my kid is as cool as this one some day.
Do you have a favorite Shag piece? Let us know in the comments below!
I saw an interesting thing on a Disney blog where someone’s comment signature was a running count of the most rides accomplished in a day. I have never thought to keep track but I now have a mission — to not only meet their record but to smash it.
Have any of you ever counted the number of rides in a day? I would assume that riding something multiple times would count as a line is a line is a line. I do, however, consider having a handicap pass to be in another category.
Let’s create a bracket and set the record for most rides ridden in a day as a normal guest, as a guest with a handicap pass, and perhaps as a guest with a plaid cast member.
[table id=1 /]
Let’s start filling this in. We obviously have to use the honor system but pictures and stories are encouraged! I’ll update this as we find out more. This sounds like it could be fun!
***UPDATE #2:
I think I found a solution to the issue. Let us know if all makes sense to you. Happy riding!
***UPDATE #1:
Should we include semi-queue-based attractions such as Lincoln, Tiki Room, Muppets, etc. as they are not “rides” (a word I specifically used in leu of “attractions”)? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks!
As promised, here is the second part of our DCA grand re-opening coverage. While I was not able to go on the 15th, I did go all day both Saturday and Sunday and let me tell you — first thing I noticed was that I did not get tired of being in the parks for the bulk of both days. This is no longer a half-day park as far as I can tell. This is a complimentary park that I have even seen begin inspiring trends over on Main Street, U.S.A.
RSR Fastpasses!
Of course the first thing we did was rush to get Fastpasses for RSR as well as jump in line for the new E-Ticket attraction. Our impressions can be found in Part 1 of our coverage but let’s just say that it’s an incredibly large ride that’s full of visuals and incredible animatronics. I really really love this ride and at night it’s incomparable with the lighting the Imagineers and designers pulled off.
We then headed into the shops on Buena Vista Street and while they are definitely sparse to say the least and chock full of a lot of your standard Disneyland merchandise, their more period pieces like the Red Car Trolly Ears and Carthay Circle themed merchandise. One of my favorite details, though, are these classic looking mannequins. Can you spot some pseudo-celebs?
Who…Are…You??
Then we just had to check out the Carthay Circle Lounge. Was there a bar right there in Carthay Circle? Yes — and it is GOOD! They also serve incredible food in not only the restaurant, but in the lounge as well. We will cover the food in the next post.
Pictured here: a Tequila Daisy and a Ginger Rogers
Next, we had to check out Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree. I had been hearing the songs playing from the ride for a while while walking by and seen the ride system making me cautiously optimistic about the ride. It was incredibly fun! It’s a super intricate ride system that I hear caused a lot of problems but in the end, WOW is this ride fun! It whips you to-and-fro along with some pretty funny songs from what’s arguably my least favorite character in all of Disney film history. Somehow, they made this ride and that character lovable and fun in this incarnation. Very very well done!
“Sumthin’ sumthin’ sumthin’ dag’gum!”
Next was a stop by the Cozy Cone as we had a little buzz from our drinks at the CC Lounge and that spin on Mater. So many great looking options! We decided to get both of the Chili Cone Queso offerings. We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food! I got the standard Chili Cone Queso offering while Suzi tried the Chipotle Chicken Cone and both were wrapped in a fresh pretzel cone-shaped bun. What a great idea and great treat accompanied by a Pomegranate Lemonade!
So Many Cones!Chipotle Chicken ConeChili Cone Queso
Not to overwhelm ourselves, we left Cars Land and headed back to some classic DCA rides and around through what’s becoming our favorite spot – Carthay Circle. I just love the characters’ and their costumes here!
Look at these guys! Adorable.A dapper copper!Got nothin’ but a suitcase and a dream!
Luigi’s Flying Tires is another incredible time in Cars Land! This remaining of the Flying Saucers from Disneyland back in the 1960s returns with a revamped ride system that’s truly an incredible experience. Look at the detail that went into the queue — the best in all of Cars Land if you ask me.
Tail-light flowersTry on some new tires!Car-shaped topiary. This will look great once it’s fully grown, I’m sure.The Loading AreaThe exit queueRe-admit for when the ride stops because of unruly guests
This is a truly great ride but with an 8-minute start-stop-reload time for guests, prepare to wait a while!
At night, there are some incredible sights to be seen. One of which is the nightly lighting ceremony in Cars Land and a ride down Hollywood Blvd. on the Red Car Trolly as seen in our previous post. This is a beautiful park that is only just beginning to stretch it’s legs. More to come! Stay tuned!
Here we see the nightly lighting ceremony at Cars Land inside Disney California Adventure Park. True to the movie, even down to the 3rd light flashing slower than the others!
This is a full ride-thru on the Red Car Trolley from the Tower station to the Buena Vista Street station by way for Carthay Circle. This park looks truly amazing lit up at night!
A few weeks ago, we went down to the parks and the first thing we did was ride the Disneyland Railroad. Our plan was to do a grand circle tour plus one stop to NOS. On the ride, I decided to see how well we could capture the Grand Canyon Diorama and Primeval World and what came out looked really great!
Let us know what other video content you would like to see on the site! We hope to have some great interviews coming in the next few months.
This was one of the coolest things I have seen at the park. A quick google search will show that the custodial team at TDA has been at this for a while, but with as much time as I have spent at the parks I have never seen this!
We had just finished out Fantasmic! 20th anniversary showing, had already ridden on Big Thunder Mountain and were headed to Pirates… when we saw a few people admiring something on the ground. We saw some water on the ground and as our eyes adjusted to the ground in front of Riverbell Terrace, we realized that it was artwork!
Here are some pictures we snapped of a few of the characters drawn on the ground and to boot, I caught some video of the cast member drawing a huge Mickey Mouse in front of Pirates! Enjoy!
I was moving some files at work last week and one of the moves was from this timelapse camera we have set up at a construction site. The timelapse camera shoots as many pictures as can fit on the card but splits them into folders with 999 files each so as to not have duplicate file names, etc. I thought it would be funny to see the Mac file transfer window moving 999 files into a folder called “Haunted Mansion.”
I had a pretty bad day today and was cleaning up my desktop and came across this and it made me laugh a week later after I had forgotten about it completely. Thought I would share.
"There's room for 1,000. Any volunteers?"
What do you do when bored or stressed at work to remind you of happier times or Disneyland?
Every now and again we all get a little blue. What at the magic kingdom of Disneyland do you long for on those days when you feel down about yourself?
Mine? The Enchanted Tiki Room. How can anyone be sad when being crooned by birds, flowers, and tikis?
A year ago, I would have had a completely different answer but now, nothing brings a bigger smile to my face in the parks than a romp through the Enchanted Tiki room. And an intro by famed cast-member Maynard is icing on top of the cake!
Well, yesterday was the highly anticipated Disney24 event “One More Disney Day.” Disneyland Park in Anaheim, CA and The Magic Kingdom at WDW in Florida were open from 6am on the 29th of February to 6am this morning for the leap year… and we have questions.
Did you get in?
We here at RSP tried, like much of the rest of Southern California, to go for the night after work yesterday and we were met by gridlocked traffic and a lot of “shave and a haircut” horn-tooting with other frustrated Disneyland hopefuls. Since we had to work both yesterday and today, we planned to head down after work for a few hours, have some dinner, catch the 1am Fantasmic! show with some friends, and head home around 2am. We, however, sat in 3 hours of traffic while – on the resort grounds – a worse picture was being painted by the twitterspere.
photo credit: @btr0n
Long lines, capacity signs, and the almighty APs all met for a pow-wow in the esplanade between DCA and Disneyland at 8pm and it never seemed to die down from there. Ticket booths were packed, cell phones were dying, and, as I can imagine, people were really upset. “One More Disney Disaster” was a potential headline thrown out by a few Disney-fan twitter feeds. Had we planned on staying until 6am, we may have stuck it out, but it was 11:15 and we hadn’t crossed Ball Rd. yet after exiting the 5.
Not everyone was waiting in 3 hours of traffic though. “[We got there at] 11:50pm. Took [an] hour to park. We bypassed the [trams] and walked to the park. My pass was scanned in around 1:10am” says annual passholder Tiffany B. “Would I do it again? Probably not. Its been crossed off my to do list.” Jenene C. from Los Angeles said, “I got there at 9 o’clock tuesday night… we waited outside for about 9 hours. The only real problem was with the charging lockers. [They] malfunctioned and people’s phones were stolen.”
Why wasn’t DCA open?
photo credit: @CharlieSpillers
I just don’t understand what the logic here was? Perhaps it was a staffing shortage to have both parks fully staffed for 24 hours straight with normal operating park days bookending the event, but one would think one would have planned for that when planning an event of this magnitude. One park guest said, “The real insanity started after 7pm a lot of people came after they got off work to stay the night, the wait times more than doubled in a matter of minutes…” This is when DCA closed and just as all the APs and SoCal residents coming straight from work descended upon the resort. Keeping DCA open just makes sense. From what I read, people were left in the esplanade with nowhere to go but home while waiting for the chance of the park to re-open to first-entry guests.
And by many accounts, the ticket booths were still crowded at 2am! Everyone wanted to take part in the promotion whether it was for a few hours or the entire 24 hours and whether they were APs or not.
Why did we all want to go?
photo credit: ocregister.com
This isn’t something new — at least it wasn’t for me. In fact, I remember when the #disney24 tweets started and there was a great video promotion and whispers of a great announcement. Robert tells me, “They think there’s going to be a 24 hour party at Disneyland.” To which I responded, “That’s the stupidest promotion I have ever heard of.” Cut to: 2 months later, I am sitting in 3 hours of traffic only to turn around and go to In-n-Out in La Mirada, CA. What was the draw? I wasn’t excited about any of the mercy or food or pins, I just wanted to go to Disneyland overnight. But where have I heard of that before?
Oh yeah, Gradnight. High school, people! Still, Tiffany B. says of one of the highlights “…it was awesome to see the sunrise from the park!” But Disneyland also did a similar event when Star Tours opened in 1987 — the park was open for a full 60 hours just so guests could ride the new attraction.
So if we all have passes, go to Disneyland whenever we want, and for the most part have been to Gradnight or Disneyland at night, what was the draw? The merchandise? Why did we all feel the need to take part in this event which, for some, was so disastrous? Some guests weighed in on the subject. “it wasn’t worth the hype, just like a crowded Disneyland trip that started at 1a versus 5pm”, “it doesn’t seem like they were prepared enough for the huge crowds”, “people began to clear out of the park after [Fantasmic!] at 1am then again around 4am by 6am there weren’t that many people left in the park for the sunrise over the castle.”
But to some, it was a different story. “It was something different to experience.”
What was open and what was closed?
photo credit: ocregister.com
I haven’t been able to get a solid answer on this one yet. One of our biggest peeves with the park here at RSP is how early the restaurants close. Last night, we were to meet up with friends at the Café Orleans for a 12:20am “breakfast” which was awesome to be able to go to eat that late in the park — but what else was open and what was closed?
One of our friends in the park said, “They should have kept more food places open because the ones that were open had very long lines for them as well.”
Was all the hustle and bustle worth it?
photo credit: @MousePlanetAVP
Among the list of offerings from the park for this event were special edition mouse ears, a t-shirt, sweatshirt, watch, pin, and food stops. With all that said, it seems a majority of the people came after all of these offerings were gone. “In all my time at Disneyland for this event seems much like a very crowded summer day at the park.” says Alexandria who drove to the park that evening to only get in after 1:30am. “Was it worth it for me to go? Sure!… [however] I would have to pass [on] any kind of future event like this. I’ll just stick to going on Sundays during the fall/winter with my pass.”
“I don’t feel like they focused on making people happy because I don’t think anybody enjoys being at the park when it’s that crowded.” says Michelle H. who travelled to the park from the Santa Clarita Valley. “I don’t think it was worth it at all. I wouldn’t go again.”
The most consistent take-away we got from the 10-or-so people? “Any cast member I interacted with were quite friendly.” It’s their job and even with all the craziness, they should all be commended. I am sure the angry crowds outside didn’t make it easy to wear a smile all night.
Were you there? Did you try to go but gave up? How did it go for you?
Here comes the beginning for a series of great videos I came across while researching stock footage at work. I will post some of the best video footage of these pre-Disneyland theme parks here for your enjoyment. See what inspired some of our favorite Disney attractions!
First up: Coney Island
Coney Island was probably the most well-known amusement park in the world in the first half of the 20th century. Here’s a look at what came before the magic kingdom:
