The Man of a Thousand Voices, Paul Frees, would have been 91 today. Disneyland would not be as great as it is today without his incredible and unique vocal characterizations. Let’s take a look at some of the incredible characters he has voiced:
The Haunted Mansion:
Paul is the voice of our Ghost Host in the Haunted Mansion. His rich and ominous sound echos through the halls of the Mansion and it is what I consider to be the greatest single voice over performance in Disneyland. Welcome Foolish Mortals!
Pirates of the Caribbean:
Paul is the voice of many Pirates including the Auctioneer, the Pirate with the Cats, and one of the imprisoned mates. Of course, he used to be the voice of the Pooped Pirate and the Captain of the Wicked Wench before they changed the ride. Shift Yer Cargo, Dearie...
Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln:
Paul is also our narrator for the Lincoln attraction. He does an incredible job setting up the story of our greatest president in American history. From the skills of the sculptor and the talent of the artists...
Adventure Thru Inner Space:
An attraction that is no longer with us, but lies in the memory of anyone who experienced it. Paul was our host on this journey through the atoms of a snowflake. It was a wonderful voice over performance full of wonder and excitement. Oh how I wish I could have experienced this attraction. Can I possibly survive?
Happy 91st Birthday to the greatest: Paul Frees! The Man of a Thousand Voices
The day was upon us! We were finally about to go on Star Tours: The Adventures Continue! But before that, let’s get started on our entire trip.
A beautiful day at the Disneyland Resort!
We arrived at the park at about 1PM and we headed straight to the Main Street station to try to hitch a ride on the Lilly Belle but the next available time was during our Star Tours adventures so we opted to forego a jaunt around the park to explore the Mary Blair exhibit some more. Her work really set a lot of styles in motion for the parks that not only lives on from her original designs, but transcends to new designs and attractions. What a great innovator!
One of her great triptychs on display
We then headed over to the lockers and — what’s this?! New lockers! Check out the photos below:
That’s kind of cool, if you ask me! They let you choose your own 4 digit pin! After the lockers, we went to the Star Trader. The new merch has just been released for the APs and I was SUPER excited to get the new older version of the Star Speeder: The Star Speeder 1000!
A great addition to my collection!
So amazing! We then checked out the uncovered FastPass distribution droids and marveled at their detail. Love stuff like this!
GONK Droids!
We then headed to our first attraction of the day, Pirates of the Caribbean, to check out the new Black Beard projection that has replaced Davy Jones for the summer. Robert was right last week when he reported the ride looking better than it has in a while. We even had a rowdy group of girls in our boat that calmed down about the time we hit the shipwreck scene (my favorite) — they must have been enthralled with the ride!
Nice wait time for Pirates...
The Black Beard projection looked GREAT! The waterfall effect looked better than the Davy Jones version and while he has the same script, I just liked Black Beard as a character much more than Jones. I wouldn’t mind them randomizing this section of the ride between the two villains.
If ye be brave of fool enough to face a pirates curse, proceed!
We then headed over to DCA and on the way met up with Geppetto on Main Street! Robert couldn’t have been more excited to meet his “Papa.”
"Hi, Papa!"
DCA’s entrance looks to be wrapping up construction and I still wouldn’t at all be surprised at it’s completion by June 3rd, but don’t quote me on that! But our real reason to head over to DCA just before our first Star Tours flights of 2011:
The Corn Dog Castle!!!
It was everything we remember it being plus they have cheese sticks! A corn dog was way against my diet so a cheese stick would have thrown me down a spiral which I might never return so I steered clear of that. But, I can’t wait to possibly try it in the future! On our way back to DL, we saw the cast member preview queue loading into the Little Mermaid attraction. How lucky were those people?! I cannot wait to ride TLM next weekend!
It was now time to check-in for our fastpasses to an intergalactic adventure aboard Star Tours! The process was well-organized and painless. We won’t cover any details on the ride as we don’t want to spoil anything for those of you holding out for June 3rd or a soft open (although you can find plenty of spoilers on some of our favorite Disney blogs by looking at their twitter feeds or sites here)
Star Tours: The Adventures Continue's FastPass queue
The GONK droids (recognizable from “A New Hope”) serve as your FastPass distributors and then you head across the path to Star Tours: The Adventures Continue (although the signs lead you to believe you’re about to ride Star Tours: The Adventure Continues.) The extended queue has awesome murals and music playing but the chains were not well laid out by the CMs so it was up to the APs to figure out a system best suited for navigating the queue. Not a problem!
Cannot wait!
The inside looks pretty much the same except a SP1000 where the SP3000 once stood, a new destinations screen, and a shiny C3-PO and R2D2. The real surprises were in the next room… but we’ll cover that in a future post! There are plenty of nods to the old attraction as well as some other attractions, some great hidden treasures as well as an AMAZING ride!
Just enough to tease...
The first time we rode, the ride stopped abruptly in the middle of our jump to light speed, our pilot abruptly turned away from us and the screen went up — I thought we were going to get boarded by Darth Vader and some storm troopers! However, I think some girls in the row below us pushed open the door on accident in the midst of all the excitement! (I don’t know that that’s what really happened or if that’s even possible — just an observation) We were then transferred to another star speeder through the entrance terminal which made it almost feel like we landed on another planet and were part of a layover on Tatooine or something (how amazing would it be if that were an option?!)
After that, we finally rode it in it’s entirety. After the ride, we were all in aggreance that the ride was just “OKAY.” But after our second, third, and fourth times, it was solidified: it had a GREAT story, an amazing randomized story arc, and it was “lightyears” beyond the old version. I will always have a place in my heart for Rex and his misadventures but with how well this ride was updated, I am proud to see it go to yesterland.
After our fourth go-round, our girlfriends went over to DCA to meet up with a castmember to preview TLM. Lucky girls! Robert and I took the opportunity to ride on my personal favorite attraction, The Haunted Mansion.
I. Love. This. Ride.
While Madame Leota wasn’t floating, we did see some other great things. We hung back when everyone left the stretching room and descended upon their doom-buggies. We took some great long-exposure shots of the hallway scene, as seen below:
There are several prominent ghosts that have retired here from creepy old crypts all over the world!
We met back up with the girls after HM and thought we might go check out the new restaurants at the Disneyland Hotel but opted for an awesome dinner at Tortilla Joes! This is one of my favorite restaurants on DD. After dinner (and losing a pin 🙁 !) we headed home, only to look forward to returning this Sunday!
I love Disneyland history. Recently, Disney Parks Blog posted this amazing look back at the construction and creation of one of the park’s flagship and most iconic ride:
This picture was one of my favorite shots from the piece:
A rare look at the creation of the home of "the wildest crew that ever sacked the Spanish Main"
I had never seen a photo quite like this one before and it’s shots like these that really excite me. If I were a kid back in the 1960s, this would have been the cornerstone of the Disneyland trip’s photo album. I have a lot of photos of the creation of Ariel’s Undersea Adventures, World of Color, and the Finding Nemo Submarines.
What are some of your favorite ride construction photos?
So what do we have here? Barbossa is introducing this video and there are a couple things to notice:
1. Barbossa is in his classic Barbossa pirate garb. Does this mean that by the end of the film Barbossa will be a pirate again and no longer working for the British Royal Navy?
2. Look closely at the last scene with Barbossa… Does something look familiar? Barbossa is lying on a bed with a skeleton looking through a magnifying glass! An obvious attraction reference! I have to assume he is on the set for the film because it looks too authentic for a quick promotional piece. I’m so excited for this reference and I really hope it makes the final cut.
“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” opens May 20th at a theatre near you!
I’ll be honest, I was pretty worried about there being a 4th “Pirates…” movie; especially without two of the main characters. Then the first trailer came out and I was really worried because it was a teaser with what seemed to be a last-minute little thing shot with Johnny Depp announcing the new pirates film to a small audience at the Downtown Disney AMC theatre.
Then, they kept using it for each and every trailer and I got really worried because I didn’t think that little announcement was well produced or well acted. However, the trailers have been getting better and better and this looks like it could be the most fun “Pirates…” film since the first.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, TDA announced that they were going to do a big preview event similar to what they did with “TRON”. I was pretty upset and confused about the whole thing even though I remember how cool I thought the “TRON” preview was. Then I started seeing the construction photos and artist renderings for a transformed Festival Arena has gotten me all giddy!
Tron 3D Sneak Peek
I don’t care at all for the 3D aspect to the movie nor the preview event but what they have planned in the way of cast-members interacting with the show as well as pyrotechnics, etc… I think Disney has created a new way of showing movies. They have been doing it for years with films like “Captain EO”, “It’s Tough to be a Bug” and one of my favorites, “MuppetVision 3D.” But in recent years, the El Capitan theatre in Hollywood has been doing these interactive shows with the movies as they’re shown.
Same with the “TRON” preview at DCA, this new interactive storytelling is immersive and fun for the audiences and really gets the audiences pumped up for a thrill ride not only at the park that day, but in the theatre when the film is released this summer.
I suppose it’s more the technology than the film that I am excited about but there’s something about this installment that excites me. I back it!
We all have our favorite DLR attractions. Some of you are lucky enough to have favorite Disney attractions the world over. Today I’ll cover my favorite local attractions from the Anaheim Disneyland Resort.
Haunted Mansion
Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
Remember… Dreams Come True
Pirates of the Caribbean
Space Mountain
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Fantasmic!
California Screamin’
Blue Sky Cellar
California Food and Wine Festival
Probably a less-than-traditional list and not all of my favorite things are rides. Many might be shocked to see rides such as Splash Mountain, Matterhorn Bobsleds, and Indiana Jones are missing. But fret not — I do enjoy those rides but this is a list of my top 10 and compared to this list, those just don’t do “it” for me. These attractions — I back ’em!
Feel free to comment and let me know what your favorite attractions are!
