Permanecer Sentados, Por Favor
Here’s another list hosted by Well for the Disney California Adventure Park. I started the list with more of a suggestion than a probable real HM but it’s still fun to see these. More lists to come!
Today was the day I was to finally ride the original Tower of Terror. I was SUPER excited!
Disney’s Hollywood Studios is a smaller park that’s more focused on shows and entertainment than attractions but the few attractions they do have really pack a punch and the shows are among the best I have seen at a Disney park. Orlando seems to be a haven for film and stage hopefuls with plenty of roles to go around. Really top notch stuff coming out of these parks!
So we entered through some familiar looking gates — the new Disney California Adventure Park gates, while modeled after the Pan Pacific park theatre are actually modeled after Disney’s own Hollywood Studios park. I had no idea until DCA’s walls were about to come down in front of the new gates and a buddy of mine showed me a picture of the Hollywood Studios gate. I was surprised and thought that DCA’s walls had come down early. It’s striking how similar these parks look from the front!
And that’s not all. There’s even a Carthay Circle Theatre (which is a shop rather than a restaurant) and a lot of the same building replicas DCA has in it’s Hollywood Blvd. area. Even the gas station looks a lot like Oswald’s at DCA. I went to high school in Hollywood and lived there for about 5 years and they really nailed a lot of the tiny details. Their Crossroads of the World replica (information station at the park) is uncanny and their Max Factor building (a shopping plaza) is spot on.
After taking in the main drag Hollywood Blvd., we took a right and headed down Sunset Boulevard toward the Hollywood Tower Hotel known as Tower of Terror.
We took tons of photos of this attraction which seems to house more homages to the show than our DCA counterpart. Traveling through the 5th dimension caused me to laugh out loud in glee the first time the doors opened and we moved forward. It’s really neat and almost too stimulating upon the first ride. There’s just no way to sell how incredibly detailed and awesome this ride is. The day we came home we went to DLR and rode Tower and while it’s still a great ride and superior in a few areas, as a whole, I would have to say that Hollywood Studios’ version of the ride is in a completely different league.
Next it was onto Rockin’ Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith. We had done this at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Paris and I remembered really enjoying it. The queue in Paris seemed a little more detailed but the facade was much better at Walt Disney World.
This ride has some great holograms for the pre-show and a nice story and great theming. We are granted backstage passes to a concert that’s happening in 10 minutes and Aerosmith has demanded that their manager sense a limo our way to get us there. Unfortunately there’s traffic but our “driver” seems to know some back-alley shortcuts. We take off into the dark night past some hollywood landmarks along with some rockin’ tunes. It’s a whirlwind thrill and if I had to compare it to something, it would be a mix of Space Mountain and California Screamin’ at DCA.
We grabbed a quick bite at the farmer’s market area. What was nice was the even though this was standard theme park fare, it’s pretty regional so BBQ baked beans and cole slaw are common hot dog toppings. I loved it! They also had bacon macaroni and cheese toppings. A great treat I have yet to discover at our 3rd and Fairfax farmer’s market.
Our first new-to-us attraction at this park was The Great Movie Ride. While it’s a great ride, it seems to be a lot like Jungle Cruise in the way that your “skipper” can make or break the ride, and you have multiple ones so landing multiple good hosts can be difficult. We had two pretty bad ones but there are some great things to look at. I liked how large the ride vehicles were. They really move a lot of people in there!
The Voyage of the Little Mermaid was a fun show with some cool laser effects and some great puppetry. However, there’s a whole scene where Ariel is live on stage singing a song and animated Ariel is singing and swimming on a projection right next to her. Seemed like a mixed message. It’s also a very truncated version of the film’s story. You should go into this having already seen the film.
Star Tours! While exactly the same as ours in almost every way including the queue (minus a few things), the exterior of this one is superior to Disneyland’s. There’s an AT-AT out front walking through the Endor Moon terrain. Super fun to look at and walk through!
Walking straight into the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, we had no idea what to expect. We walked into a very large set so we figured there’d be a lot of col stuff to see while the actors made their way from section to section in what may be a 15 minute show, or so. However, after the entire set gets used in the first scene, I was worried there wasn’t going to be much more to see. Then, the set change happened. This has to be some of the most incredible set design I have seen at any Disney park! The scenes are HUGE and the stunts are great. I highly recommend this show!
On our way back to Tower (I know, I know…), we stopped into the Beauty and the Beast show. Yet again, if you’re an out of work actor, make your way to Orlando because these shows are just top notch! Absolutely terrific performances all around and this show is a little longer than The Little Mermaid show although there’s still some plot holes if you have not seen the film.
Next was more of a showcase of all things Walt. Put together by D23, One Man’s Dream is a huge love letter to Walt with props from his boyhood desk with his name etched into the wood to his Glendale, CA office as it would have been seen on the lot. It’s a wonderful museum of Walt Disney treasures with an amazing film at the end that’s sure to bring tears to your eyes. Well done!
After this, we wandered the park awaiting Fantasmic! at 7pm. We planned on grabbing good seats at the amphitheater so a 5:30 arrival was key. We walked thru the Pixar area where their Toy Story Midway Mania was. We skipped it as the lines were just outlandish and we aren’t huge fans of the DCA version so we figured we weren’t missing anything. We saw Pizza Planet (having my birthday there next year for SURE! (I kid…)), a huge Muppet store (we skipped MuppetVision 3D), the backlot area (the backlot tour was down for the duration of our trip there), and skipped the Lights! Motor! Action! stunt show as we had seen it in Paris. After some sightseeing, it was time to go see the East Coast version of the Disneyland classic.
I took a little nap while waiting for the show but we certainly had GREAT seats! While it’s different, it was cool to see some added scenes with rarely seen characters like Pocahontas. Their dragon is like our old dragon and they have a smaller and sort of dinky version of the Mark Twain for the finale. All in all, it’s still a magical show but in the amphitheater setting, it seems a little too far away. I was still able to grab some awesome pictures. See if you can spot the Mickey with the weird eyes. What’s THAT about?
Tons more Fantasmic! pictures below! After leaving Hollywood Studios for the night, we headed over to The Magic Kingdom to take advantage of the extra magic hours. We headed over to the Tiki Room but they closed early so we went to Tomorrowland to check out Space Mountain which wasn’t bad. It’s very different and more like the pre-1998 DLR version. I really liked the star effect inside the queue — it was very convincing. Unfortunately we were not able to play with the interactive queue. Has anyone done it? Is it any good?
Before we left for the night, we went on TTA’s Peoplemover. It moved a lot faster than I expected and was visually different from our old Disneyland version but it was still a great ride with some incredible park views!
Another perfect day at WDW in the books! Nice touch upon exiting the Magic Kingdom for the night and retiring to our hotel room once again.
Here I have compiled some of the videos I took this past weekend. More to come but thought I would share!
Here we see a DCA Cast Member doing his best impression of this classic Twilight Zone character:
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!
Somehow, I stumbled upon these frighteningly real-looking videos from the security cameras at our favorite park on the planet, Disneyland. Now, I have heard of people seeing ghosts at the parks and seen really bad photos of ghosts at the park, but nothing quite like these.
I work in “the industry” and know a visual effect when I see it. This is either a very well executed visual effect by an avid Disneyland fanatic with a lot of time and resources on his hands, or a very bored security officer.
The problems I have with these videos is that there are either so many ghosts at the park that shooting any security camera at any time provides one with these results, or they’re a hoax — but how?! These are so incredibly haunting, I got goosebumps while watching them at work and continued to rewind them back and play them over and over again with a very genuine “how did they do that?!” look on my face.
That last one is my absolute favorite. Not just anyone has access to these apparent security cameras. How incredible is it that the possibility of these being real evokes these emotions out of me? I am a huge skeptic but I have an open mind. I just don’t have any grounds to disprove any of this.
I found another YouTube channel debunking these videos but I just don’t find their arguments to hold water. I, too, thought that it was a reflection at first on the lens but man, that last HM video is just INCREDIBLE! I don’t know much about security monitors but I have never seen a monitor “ghost” in that way. I liked watching his one video, though, because it has some other great videos.
The “ghost” videos that prompted this post were found at this YouTube page. They, unfortunately, are the only ones this user ever uploaded and the page has laid dormant for over 2 years — but not without gaining a substantial amount of hits! What do you think is going on in these videos? Is our magical park a haven for the disembodied?
Hey all!
Here’s another in our ongoing series, but first, where was last week’s photo taken?
And this concludes our very first contest entry period! Thank you all to those that entered. We will be doing a drawing this week and the winner will be announced next week on Floor Fridays #13. Thanks for playing, and now for this week’s floor:
Good Luck!
Here’s another in our “tiny details of Disneyland” series. I love this kind of stuff at the parks. The tiny details that start as a rumor and are confirmed by a cast member or website are what make repeat visits to the park a joy for APs and families alike.
Today’s easter-egg is at DCA inside the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Upstairs in the boiler room part of the queue, this “Lil’ Homies” action figure (available at your local grocery store or penny (.50¢) machine at the mall) stands guard at the far right elevator.
He’s difficult to see in the dark queue but he’s there! He welcomes everyone to the upper right-side freight elevator. Keep an eye out for him next time you take a trip into the 5th dimension at the Disney California Adventure park!
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.
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!