Mousin' It Up

Theme parking - The Magic Kingdom

2009-10-02T00:20:49Z

The photo above shows the tram lanes as they pass beneath a viaduct under a road. The Road above that tramway takes guests headed to the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, or Polynesian Village resort . In the distance a monorail appears to be entering the station on the express loop, and this photo was taken FROM a monorail that was heading TO the Ticket and Transportation Center FROM Epcot. While a parking lot may seem to be the "plainest" scene in WDW ...

...even in these wide open expanses of asphalt a few interesting details can be found, the very practical need to have row numbers gave the folks at Disney to use character names for parking lot sections, these make it easier to remember where you park, and by using the characters to name the sections at the Magic kingdom they were also able to use the characters on the signs for the various sections.

The Walk Around the World

2009-09-15T01:09:31Z

Thereis SO MUCH information about Walt Disney World out there on the internet that sometimes it seems like mit must have all already been written about MANY times over, then i'll hear some questions from listerners on a couple of different podcasts and realize there is one subject or another that a lot of newer WDW fans might not know abot, lately I've heard a few questions about "The walk around the world" on various podcasts including WDW Today, so it occurs to me that this might be a good time for a review.

What is it?

If you have ever noticed on your way to the Magic Kingdom, either at the TTC or at the Kingdom itself that there are large numbers of hexagonal bricks with names and dates inscribed on them then you've had a glimpse of the walk around the world, starting sometime in the early 1990s these bricks were sold, and, similar to the images on the leave a legacy monument for a one time payment WDW would agree that for a set number of years they would allow you to sponsor a brick in this walkway. Early on I think that just the standard Pinkish-reddish bricks were sold, but around the time of WDW's 25th anniversary in 1996 they also sold granite ones for a while that were used in to form some patterns (both on the TTC and Magic Kingdom side if i recall correctly.

Where is it.

One end of the Walk Around the World is at the TTC, part of it stretches through the Polynesian Village resort, but I don't think it necessarilly is paved continuously in those bricks the whole way, in some older parts of the Polynesian I think you simply walk on the Polkys own walkways to make the connection,

from the Polynesian though there is a LOOOOONG stretch out past Luaa cove, along the side of the Seven Seas Lagoon, around Disney's Wedding Pavilion, and extending to the Grand Floridian, much as at the Polynesian though, once it gets to the grounds of the GF I'm not sure if there are any portions of it that go through the grounds there.

On the other side of the lagoon there is are a large amout of Walk around the world bricks in the giant transportation hub at the Magic Kingdom,

They are used as a sidewalk to the Contemporary going along the side of the bus lanes nearest the monorail tracks (but not the other side of the bus area),again once it gets to the grounds of the resort hotel though I belive it ends.

The oddest spur of this walkway though is the one that goes the OTHER way from the front of the Magic Kingdom this spur goes along the lakeside IN FRONT of the monorail station and wind its way to a Cul De Sac (Dead End) near the canal that is betwen the Magic Kingdom and Grand Floridian.

Why build it all the way out that far? you may wonder, well at the prices they were charging per brick it was quite profitable, and the little bit of money it cost to run the electric out there for lighting along the walk was small potatoes in comparison, in fact it was SO profitable that some folks speculated that it really WOULD become a walk aroungd the world after all it would not cost much to build a little footbridge across that canal right? well if you LOOK at the monorail tracks where they cross that canal they rise up QUITE high and there is a reason for that, that canal is used to get large watercraft to the Rivers of America in Frontierland, and it is also the home of the barges that perform th nightly electrical water pageant,

so to a person who knew the profit on these bricks but who did not know the potential cost of the bridge it seemed obvious it WOULD get built, but to those who realized that no "cheap little footbridge" would do here it probably seemed obvious from the start that this probably would NOT happen.

It's A Jolly Holiday Inn LBV (Lake Buena Vista)

2009-07-13T02:48:29Z

Recently several of the podcasts I listen to have mentioned the pending opening of the "First Holiday Inn" on Walt Disney World property, this announcement gave me that feeling that I think was best described by Yogi Berra when He said "It's deja vu all over again". You see there was a big announcement several years ago when Holiday Inn purchased with the transfer Courtyard by Marriot to Holiday inn took place effective Dec. 31, 2003, I don't think that it ever opened as a Holiday Inn though because it was very shortly thereafter that renovations began, and it is not hard to imagine that, later on that year, after three hurricanes affected central Florida in just a few months (Charley, Frances, and Ivan) the renovations became much more extensive, additionally at that time I would imagine that many construction companies probably had to re-prioritize their jobs, and that a business that was already closed may have taken a back burner to other jobs, for instance if Holiday Inn has any of their own "in house" construction crews, they would probably have been prioritized to fix up other OPEN Holiday Inns that had suffered damage. Still I'd love to hear some of the stories behind this.
This hotel will be one of a very small number of hotels that are actually ON Disney property but that are not ran by Disney four of those hotels opened in the early 1970's (Dutch Inn -- Howard Johnson's -- Royal Inn -- Travelodge) on what is today known as "Hotel Plaza Boulevard" (though at the time they opened it was known as Motor Inn Plaza ), a few more opened around the time Epcot Center opened (Buena Vista Palace, Pickett Suites Hotel, and the Hilton), and then in 1990 on the new resort property developed between Epcots' then newly opened "International Gateway" and the Disney-MGM Studios the Swan and Dolphin Hotels opened The Swan was originally operated by Westin, the Dolphin by Sheraton, one additional lessee is a group that operates resorts for use by the folks in the United States Armed services, they converted the former "Disney's Golf Resort/ Disney Inn" into a resort called "Shades of Green". These hotels have MUCH better bus service than "off-site" hotels, though still perhaps a bit below the level of service Disney offers to it's own resorts.

Here is a brief history of this particular property from my site:
www.bigbrian-nc.com/wdw-sb03.htm

Howard Johnsons Resort Hotel / Courtyard by Mariott / Holiday Inn
The view I have of this hotel is a bit unusual in that the view picked is one I think is an unflattering view of the hotel showing I-4 behind it,

a better view might have been a view with the Walt Disney World Shopping Village in the background. I think this view is contemporary with the view of Americana's Dutch resort that has the Empress Lilly in the view, the reason I think this is that the number on the back of this card seems to be in the same series.

As I mentioned before, in 1991 many of these hotels had postcard strips produced the ones for this Howard Johnsons are shown Below. (NOTE: There are more photos on the site than the two below, but they are other scenes of WDW not the hotel, so I'll leave them out).

In 1995 this hotel became the Courtyard by Marriot. They issued the continental sized post card pictured below.

On Dec. 30, 2003 it became a Holiday Inn. ( information from Disney A to Z .pdf update available free from the Disney web site)

I don't think it ever opened as a Holiday Inn before the hurricanes damaged it and it began its LOOOOONG refurbishment.

Additionally here is a view that has not yet made it onto my site it's part of a series that came out in the early to mid 1990's that are actual WDW postcards complete with the WDW logo and Disney copyright on the back:

May 20, 1775 Independence Day? Maybe not

2009-05-19T23:27:33Z

One day, when I was in Epcot in between sets of the Voices of Liberty I went over to the Counter service place in the American Adventure Pavilion to grab a bit to eat, and I took a good look at this placard on the wall done in the style of a colonial flag. Well this flag is a little odd in that these flags would seem to be ones the colonies might have used during their struggles for Independence, yet it is hard to imagine that this would have been around at that time, you see the date of May 20, 1775 refers to something known as "The Mecklenberg Decleration of Independence" Quoting from Dan Morrills Charlotte History site:
http://www.danandmary.com/historyofcharlottechap2replace.htm

It was not until 1819, forty-four years after the alleged signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, when Virginia and Massachusetts were arguing over which of the two states had been first to break with Great Britain, that U.S. Senator Nathanial Macon and William Davidson , the latter representing the Mecklenburg County district in the U.S. House of Representatives, put forth the astounding claim that the Scots-Irish of North Carolina were the first to declare their independence. Thomas Jefferson dismissed it as a hoax "until positive and solemn proof of its authenticity shall be produced."

Even its staunchest defenders admitted that no copy of the actual document existed. "Nearly all of my father's papers," declared a son of John McKnitt Alexander , "were burned in the spring of 1800." A document was supplied, but it was John McKnitt Alexander's account of what transpired in May 1775, not the actual Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence itself. To bolster their case, supporters of the so-called "Meck Dec" interviewed several signers, all of whom had attained advanced age by the time they were asked to search their memories. These elderly gentlemen, mostly Presbyterians, all agreed that they had attended a meeting in May 1775 but could not recall the exact date. William Polk, son of Thomas Polk, published a pamphlet containing these testimonials and declared the matter settled. In 1825, a large crowd gathered in Charlotte on the 50th anniversary of the alleged signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and heard it read by Reverend Humphrey Hunter of the Presbyterian Church. What further proof could one want?

Trouble for the backers of the "Meck Dec" surfaced in 1838. An archivist uncovered an article in the July 12, 1775, issue of a Massachusetts newspaper that reproduced a series of resolutions that had reportedly been drawn up in Charlotte on May 31, 1775. Unlike the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the Mecklenburg Resolves expressed the hope that the exercise of independent authority by officials of Mecklenburg County would end if Great Britain would "resign its unjust and arbitrary pretensions with respect to America." This was a remarkable display of defiance, but it was not an unequivocal pronouncement that the people of Mecklenburg County were "free and independent." Any doubt about the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Resolves disappeared in 1847, when scholars found the entire text published in the South Carolina Gazette of June 13, 1775. No such contemporary verification of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence has ever come to light.

The fact that the leaders of Mecklenburg County backed a conditional separation from British rule just eleven days after they allegedly declared their independence seems oxymoronic. Also, none of the participants who was interviewed years after the dramatic events of May 1775 made any mention of the Mecklenburg Resolves. One cannot help but wonder whether these aged men remembered the meeting where the Mecklenburg Resolves was signed, not the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

So being that the Meck Dec was not really known at the time of the American Revolution it would seem this flag is from a later time than that. The hornets nest design would seem to stem from October 1780 when after suffering a number of losses in this area Cornwallis was forced to retreat from this area and the British refed to the region as "A Hornets Nest of rebellion"
I did find another referance to this flag design near the bottom of this page:

http://www.houseofflags.org/flaghistory.asp

North Carolina’s 1st Historical Flag: The “Hornet’s Nest Flag”

After being driven out by fierce opposition of Charlotte’s & Mecklenburg’s citizens to British occupation in 1780 during the American Revolutionary War British General Cornwallis wrote that “Charlotte Town was a hornet’s nest of rebellion.” The date “May 20, 1775” reflects the date that the citizens of Mecklenburg declared independence from Britain… more than a year before the Continental Congress in Philadelphia declared independence from Britain.

"The first flag of North Carolina… was white and bore a hornet’s nest and the date May 20, 1775…” (page 627: Preble, George Henry. Origin and History of the American Flag…Fourth Edition 1894, First Edition 1872 Boston.

Still this flag would seem to be pretty obscure and I bet the folks who brought these flag style plaques to this counter service restauraunt in Epcot certainly dug deep for some interesting details. You can hear a bit more about this, if you wish by listening to this weeks "Your Ear to The World" podcast Episode 37
http://eartotheworld.net/

The Trip without a Camera...but NOT without photos Part 2

2009-05-19T02:46:13Z

Epcot's 25th Anniversary Celebration or Celebration 25 bears another nickname for me "The trip without a camera", and this is just the second in what I hope will be a series of posts with memories from this trip shared by others who let me use their Celebration 25 photos here with a special focus on those photos that have me in them.

here's a link to the previous post in this series
http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/11645.html

While we were gathering and waiting to take the BIG group photo I got to talking to a few of the Disney fans nearby one of them took this photo and let me use it (thank you Brad Lewis!), as we talked I noted that the name tag on this fellow in the blue shirt said Werner, so I had to ask "Are you Werner Weiss of the Yesterland web site" or words to that effect he was and so I told him how much I liked his site complete with the whole "you're the reason I bought a computer" thing, as his site has always been the one I considered my "favorite". I would still claim that, though in the early days of the internet he really went a LONG time without having any real competition in providing fantastic Vintage Disneyland content, even now his site is so well put together with very consistent well themed and formatted pages (right down to the text fonts) and so not to be missed if you do like vintage Disney parks content.

Flags at Walt Disney World - part 2 Other Flags of Main Street U.S.A.

2009-05-15T11:08:14Z

In addition to the American flags I mentioned yesterday there are other flags as well, in fact over the City Hall building (which serves as the Guest relations department of the Magic Kingdom) flys a flag which seems to best represent this park.

Also over near the train station there are a couple of flags that fly atop the Main Street buildings nearest either end of the station that are also icons of the Walt Disney World company, being at the entrance to the park and being that the Magic Kingdom is generally most folks first exposure to Walt Disney World these too seem quite appropriate, as these can be seen from the entrance turnstiles of the park.

Below: I see that I didn't take a photo of this flags context the way I did with the others above, but it too is near the train station and you can see it from the turnstiles, the flag was actually turned the "wrong" way when I took this so I "flipped" it (if you want to see the original orientation just scroll down a bit further.

Flags at Walt Disney World - part 1 American Flags of Main Street U.S.A.

2009-05-14T23:07:53Z

The theme of Main Street U.S.A. in Walt Disney Worlds Magic Kingdom could possibly summed up in one word "Americana", there are many Red, White and Blue touches, for much of the year there is Red white and blue bunting in many places including at the train station (though nowadays it is replaced in the Fall with Autumnal colors). The folks who perform the Trolley show seem to have these as the dominant colors in their wardrobes as well, and all along Main Street U.S.A. (though around Christmas much of that blue seems to be replaced by red for a red and green Holiday feel).

Also, all along the tops of the many buildings on Main Street look at the tops of the buildings, they ALL have their own American flags as well.

Those flags along the building tops presented a bit of a challenge though, after all the American Flag as a symbol of our nation demands special treatment, and rightly so, typically an American flag is supposed to be taken down and carefully stored each day, or it must be lit at night, taking them down each day would not take all that long, but I doubt these places are built with easy access in mind, also since the upper floors of the Main Street buildings have a scale that diminishes with each floor so sending someone up there would break the illusion of that scale, similarly, lighting these flags at night would possibly pull you out of that Illusion of being on a street of the 1890s. Still the imagineers came up with a simple and ingenious solution, one that sort of fits into the theme in a way, they simply use flags with LESS than 50 stars, this works on a couple of levels, after all, at the turn of the 20th century (from the 19th) the USA did not yet have 50 states, also in dealing with flags of less than 50 stars these are not technically referred to as flags but rather pennants, and do not hold the same status as an official US flag, they don't need to be lit at night or taken down every day.

Above and below : on a typical American flag there are 5 rows of 6 stars each with 4 rows of 5 stars each between those rows, whereas you can see these 45 star flags there are 3 rows of 8 stars alternating with 3 rows of 7 stars.

That said one of the reasons I noticed this detail is that I have had lots of time to take zoom photos of those flags while I was standing near Town Square waiting for the daily flag retreat ceremony, where they take down the true 50 star flag that flies at the center of Town Square each day, they do this with a grand ceremony that often includes the Main Street Philharmonic Marching band, The Dapper Dans, a guest who is usually a retired member of the United States military, and many of the Main Street Cast Members, so they do really go all out in taking care of their true 50 star flag.

Those Darn Cats - Episode 46 - Into every life Some Rain Must Fall

2009-04-05T18:07:12Z

I listen to a LOT of Disney World related podcasts, sometimes I want to give them feedback, if that feedback gets sufficently long to warrent being it's own blog post it can end up here this is one of those times:

for the episode you can right click to open in a new tab or window, or save file as to listen.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/tdc/TDC46_economy_040109.mp3

I loved the Disneyland Rainy Day intro,classic and totally perfect for the subject matter.
As to Hong Kong the wheels of Government sometimes grind slowly and that is not unique to our country, so for the time scale it would be pointless for Disney to try to say, since what they are really waiting on is reaching an agreement with the HK government.

As for DCA, I'm not sure it is a "fail", it has ALWAYS suffered by comparison to the Disney Theme park with both the greatest number of and greatest density of attractions that stands across the Esplanade from it. DCA didn't bring in what was projected and what they need it to be capable of, so they have to fix it BUT, what I'd like to know is a comparison of Disneyland RESORT attendance statistics for the last 4-5 years before DCA opened and compare that with the most recent 4-5 year period, from that you could probably see what DL's rate of growth was before DCA, and how much they have been able to grow the audience WITH DCA, BUT, even if DCA has not significantly increase the growth in turnstile clicks, you do have to keep in mind that at some point Disneyland would hit a ceiling where that one park just could not have continued to grow their audience each year, you can only squeeze so many people per day into a 60-70 acre theme park, at some point the HAD TO open a second gate to sustain growth AT ALL.

As to weather WDW is or is not more crowded, I've heard enough reports to believe that it is, BUT as Pete said on the DIS podcast with the buy 4 get 3 free special folks are paying a LOT less for those rooms, and as you guys pointed out people will be more conservative with other purchases like souvenirs and food, souvenirs can take an incredibly steep drop and many folks may downgrade from Table service to Counter service, or even bringing some sandwiches/snacks along to replace at least one meal.

Lisa, I hope you don't find the restrictions on your gift card to be all that oneous once you actually get there, you just need to get on vacation so you can relax! and if I'm wrong my apologies, but you just sounded like you really needed a little stress relief.

After above saying I do believe some of the anecdotal evidence about WDW crowding this spring I'm now going to turn around 180 degrees and totally agree with Jenn about the fact that the buses seem to take longer mostly just being random chance is 100% right on the money, with the exception of the times there actually have been reasons for which they expected disruptions, like during the roll out of the new bus deployment system last year.

As to the pin codes and Lisa's frustration with them (I believe I heard her say "I Hate Everything"), there are some separate Room codes that are not PINs as I belive PIN is being used to stand for Personal Identification Number, and the room rate codes she may have heard folks get excited about are probably NOT PINS, but the booking codes for various discounts like those available to AAA members Annual Pass Holders, or in some cases even the general public.

As for Jens specific PIN offer, you mentioned that you got it ON A POSTCARD!!! I'm the WDW postcard collecting guy! I'd love a scan of the card you got! If you can send me scans or photos of both sides to use for the web, I can make any personally identifying information unreadable if you are not sure of how to do that, or I can give you ideas on how to do that if it is something you would be willing to tackle (just putting text over the portion of the photo where your name and address were often works, doing a "cut" of a small box on those lines of ID information works too. Also for ANYONE reading this who has old ROOM RATE special/Pin code or GUEST FEEDBACK/SURVEY postcards, please share scans or photos, these are the HARDEST types of postcards to collect so even any scans of photos are always appreciated!

As to the Sanrio land memories, it's always fun to hear Jen's interactions with the whatchamacalit, and the pug putting in his 2 cents worth didn't hurt things either.

The Wheels on the Classical music bus go Rondo and Rondo

2009-03-19T11:09:26Z

Not too long ago I featured some audio of Nova Era a group that used to perform in the World showcases Epcot pavilion at Epcot, on one of the podcasts I do.
eartotheworld.net/archives/253

listen here:
eartotheworld.net/podpress_trac/web/253/0/ettw-27.mp3

, but that wasn't the only group that ever performed classical music in the Italy pavilion, though some of the others that performed there used "traditional" instruments rather that the updated electronic counterparts that Nova Era uses, here is a photo of a group we saw perform there back on my first trip to WDW in 1996, though I swear I think the guy on the cello here MIGHT be the same guy that plays in Nova Era!

www.bigbrian-nc.com/tr1c.htm

www.bigbrian-nc.com/wdw96/23ws.jpg

Looking at the history of Epcot live entertainment it looks like this group is Rondo Veneziano - which was an "Epcot Version" of a long time popular classical group of the same name.

quote from:www.last.fm/music/Rondo+Veneziano/+wiki Underlining added by ME
For a while, Rondo Veneziano had a group that performed at Walt Disney World in EPCOT Center at the Italy pavilion. The photo at left shows the group at Disney in front of the stage where they performed. Sadly, they no longer perform there, however, for a few years afterwards, a new group, Nova Era performed on the same stage and utilized some of the members who played for the Disney edition of Rondo Veneziano.

later after they dropped their affiliation with that organization (and I'm speculating also dropped perhaps some type of annual licensing fee, they may have paid the original group? ), and Disney made the group their own by simply changing the name to Rondo Masquerade:

http://pages.prodigy.net/stevesoares/Rondo.htm

pages.prodigy.net/stevesoares/rondophotos.htm

UPDATE:

When I wrote that post this morning it occurred to me that it might not hurt to use the email for the "Nova Era Fan Club" I found on their site http://www.novaeramusic.com
they emailed me back today in fact according to the header the groups founder Andres Roca is the one who replied and he confirmed my suspicion about the Cellist Daniele from Venice.

Hello Brian,

Thank you for your email and for enjoying our music. Our current Cellist was a member of a previous group in 1996.

Regards
Nova Era

How cool is that!

The Trip without a Camera...but NOT without photos Part 1

2009-03-18T03:05:22Z

In October of 2007 hundreds of long-time Disney parks fans gather at Walt Disney World for the Celebration of Epcot's 25th Anniversary, for many of the internet fan groups this gathering will be remembered forever as "Celebration 25" but for me the short 2-day trip I took for this celebration has another nickname, "The Trip Without A Camera" as once I checked into my room at All Star Movies I proceeded to unpack from my bag, my batteries, cords, memory cards, and slowly came to the realization that I had left my camera at home!.

Still if I had to leave the camera at home for one trip I certainly picked the right one! As for most of the events of that trip I was surrounded by other members of the WDW internet fan community, at an event like the Epcot re-dedication I was surrounded by MANY fans who had their own cameras trained on the same sights I was seeing. Anyhow there are a quite a few photos that actually go with this trip but for this post I just want to concentrate on those taken of one set of the Voices of Liberty that I recorded on September 30th, not only did the photographer get a nice set of photos of the folks as I recorded them but you can even see me in some of the photos, I'm seated on the floor a few rows ahead of the photographer, and you can even see my ear microphones in a few of the photos (I'm in a lime green shirt). The photographer, Amanda, goes by Aeillill on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/74307853@N00/

Amanda has eclectic tastes and a look through her photo sets will show it, and she also clearly has a love of Disney as probably OVER half of her over 6000 photos are of her Disney trips.
and the photos below are part of her Disney 2007 set which itself has just a bit over 1000 photos in it!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeillill/sets/72157603356916474/

If you'd like to hear the set recorded on that day here's a link:
http://eartotheworld.net/podpress_trac/web/258/0/ettw-28.mp3

Above: This is probably the best shot of the Ear mics

Below: This was the only shot of the group where she got the conductor (Dirk, far right, in the shot).

FYI - Fort Wilderness Campgrounds Comfort Stations

2009-03-16T22:23:18Z

A lot of folks would never consider camping at WDW, othere would consider it but perhaps the thought makes them nervous, well the best way to arm yourself against nervousness is with information, and there are some great resourced devoted to WDW's campgound including the Venerable FORT WILDERNESS - FAQ http://home.hiwaay.net/~jlspence/faq_fw.htm maintained by Jeff Spencer, If you really want to learn about the campground THAT is the place to go. Recently I heard a discussion on the Disney Dudes podcast that touched on the campground that let to the writing of the post below.

Hey Dudes,
You were talking about Fort Wilderness (and the guy who took a window A/C for his tent) and I thought I'd throw in a bit of information here. One of the thing that rises the Fort Wilderness campground to a level of civilization above many camping experiences are the "comfort Stations" There is one for each campground loop and they are extremely clean and well kept.

The comfort stations also have some information all campground guests can use:

The Laundry rooms are also located there:

Here is the view to your left from the entrance into the mens room side:

now imagine you've walked over to the stalls and are looking back out:

looking back at the entrance door:

Now if you had looked straight ahead instead of to the left when you came in:

walk down that hallway an then looking to the left you will see another short hall with three shower stalls on the left, and a bench to your right:

a shower stall looks pretty much like a shower stall, thought I remember liking the shower heads and water pressure when I stayed at the Fort some years ago.

The comfort stations are renovated every few years and there is tile throughout, including the floors:

I hope if you are considering staying at the Fort Wilderness Campground this information make you more COMFORTable with that decision.

The WDW's Navys OTHER fleet, the Sassagoula Steamboat Company

2009-03-05T01:48:42Z

Back to the world of blogging after a long hiatus! in fact a lot of my typical internet/mousing it up activities slowed down quite a bit in January, now I'm getting caught back up and the urge to blog has returned, in part because I've been starting to podcast more, but not on the "Mousin it up!"/bbdp feed. I took Tom Corless up on his offer to let me host the "Your Ear to the World" podcast, and have actually put out an episode a week for going on four weeks, and part of the inspiration for this post came from the latest episode Your Ear To the World 26 - Captain Lisa and the Jazz Lady.

The desire to take a trip on the Sassagoula had been growing for some time as over the years I've covered many of the other "fleets" in WDW's navy on the WDW: A History in Postcards section of the site as well as in this blog. Disney's watercraft is a subject that has brought be more feedback than almost any other facet of the resorts history that I have covered. During Mousefest, I was happy to have the opportunity to take a cruise on the Sassagoula after attending a party some friends had held in thier unit at Old Key West, and while heading to Downtown Disney to catch Nova Era a group that many moons ago used to play in the Italy pavilion of Epcots World Showcase.

I suspected that with it already being dark I might not learn all that much about the ships or get many good photos, but luck was on my side. As I walked up to the dock and took a few pictures of the ship that awaited, The Jazz Lady, my skipper for the trip approached and both offered to take my photo and struck up a conversation with me, what was even better was the fact that she seemed to have quite an appreciation for WDW herself, and tried to be as helpful as possible in trying to help me get all the names of the ships of the Sassagoula Steamboat company.

Now despite the fact that she had trouble remembering the names,by the end of the cruise she had come up with 14 of them, which is the same as the number of units in the fleet, she also passed on to me some other details below, now since she was a little unsure of some of the names this list is no "sure thing" but it's certainly more than I've seen anywhere else, the best I had seen before was a short list on the portorleans.org web site and I think it is possible that was a sort of attempt to capture what types of names the ships had, that might have been more to give the feel, than an actual recounting of exact proper names, still I've given the list of which names are on his list that were not in Captain Lisas below.

These photos are the visual accompaniment to the podcast Your Ear To The World Episode 26.
http://eartotheworld.net/podpress_trac/web/249/0/ettw-26.mp3

Captain Lisa remembered 14 names,
Although I've assigned the list here a numerical order, I don't know what the actual order of launch was for all these vessels.

The oldest three ships on the Sassagoula river (in italics and underlined) are single hulled

1. Memphis Miss
2. Sassagoula Sunset
3. Louisiana Lady
4. Sassagoula Queen
5. Bayou Queen
6. Bayou Princess
7. The Azelea Bloom
8. Delta Lady
9. Jazz Lady
10. Florida Queen
11. Memphis Belle
12. Southern Breeze
13. Sassagoula Steamboat.
14. Florida Lady.

Names in bold are the ones I found on www.portorleans.org/ferryboats.htm that don't match one's mentioned by Captain Lisa

Crescent City Queen
Saratoga Queen
Magnolia Blossom
Blossom Queen

UPDATE: A reply by Andre of the Port Orleans web site (in the comments below), let me know that these are all actual names read from nameplates of the various barges. So the task now is to figure out which of the names on Captain Lisa's list were wrong the first obvious possibility is Sassagoula Steamboat, she may have been reading something of a piece of paper looking for names and I mistakenly assumed it WAS a name. Next candidate Bayou Queen , immediately after she said that name she said Bayou Princess, so perhaps she was correcting herself. Next up I'm wondering if either of the two ships with "Florida" in the name was a "correction" of one previously given incorrectly as well, same goes for the two "Memphis" ships. I would imagine that the Saratoga Queen that Andre mentions is one of the newer ships in the fleet being that Saratoga Springs has not been open all that long.

The DVC lines tend to get the newer ships like the one I rode, the Jazz lady.

I've heard that with the addition of the Treehouse villas to Saratoga Springs there will be an additional dock added. There should be one more name on this list if they purchased the next vessel in the fleet that they were planning on, that gets mentioned in the audio.

I'd love to hear about any corrections to this list, and other bits of history for this fleet,

were all of these ships purchased just for this fleet, or were any of the earliest ships transferred here from elsewhere on property?

Are these fourteen the only ships that ever sailed this route, or are their some "retired" ships?

Have any of these ships be re-christened? if so what was their name previously?

How has the fleet size changed over the years, and at what poits did thay add "ports" for instance was Old Key west addded immmediatly when it was built, if so how many ships were added at that time? Did the old Disney village get service by these ships?

Funny, they don't look toxic to me... the Voiceovers

2009-01-06T03:17:38Z

Recently while going through old WDW photos on Facebook ( if you're on Facebook look for me Brian Martsolf ) I ran across a photo of a singer that rang a bell with me, this sent me on a hunt through my own photos first in the October 2002 trip (the honeymoon trip for my wife and I)
http://www.bigbrian-nc.com/trindex.htm#moon

I found a photo on this page of this singer from American Vybe on the following page:
http://www.bigbrian-nc.com/moon/b4.htm

and then these photos from a much earlier trip, September 1998, http://www.bigbrian-nc.com/trindex.htm#09.98 ,

found on this page http://www.bigbrian-nc.com/1998/sept/004.htm .

I found a link to contact the woman singer (in the Red shirt with Vybe and in the Blue shirt wth the group performing on New York Street in the Disney-MGM studios, and wrote her, the message you can see below:

Hi Michelle, I'm a long time fan of the Disney Theme parks, and as I've been fortunate enough to go repeated times over the years I enjoy catching the musical groups, I saw a photo of you with American Vybe, and so thought you might like seeing a few I have taken on my WDW trips that I think have you in them, some are on this page:
http://www.bigbrian-nc.com/moon/b4.htm

also did you ever sing in a group at the Disney-MGM studios back on New York street? If so there are a few that look like it MIGHT be you in them on this page:
http://www.bigbrian-nc.com/1998/sept/004.htm

I also have some audio of Vybe in an episode of my podcast that can be found on my site at:
http://www.bigbrian-nc.com/sn2007-13.htm

if you listen to it bear in mind that the audio in it is from two different recording session, one I did in 2002 that corresponds to the pictures on the first page I sent you a link to, and another set recorded by my buddy Lou Oms of the WDW-memories podcast, and his was MUCH earlier.

In fact here's a "track list" that breaks it down:
* It Don't Mean A Thing if It Aint got That Swing (recorded by Brian oct. 2002)
* Seasons of Love (recorded by WDW Friend/Lou Dec. of 98 or 99)
* 60's medley (recorded by WDW Friend/Lou Dec. of 98 or 99)
* Rosie (recorded by Brian oct. 2002)
* Just A Giggalo (recorded by Brian oct. 2002)
* His Eye is on the Sparrow (recorded by Brian oct. 2002)
* Lean on Me (recorded by Brian oct. 2002)
* Ridin the Chariot (recorded by WDW Friend/Lou Dec. of 98 or 99)

Michelle replied:

I am so thankful for you and all these awesome pics! I saw them all and you are correct. I was in the "voiceovers" back at MGM in 1998. That group is pretty much still together- known as Toxic Audio- and we have 2 shows up in Sanford Florida Dec 26 and 27 this year. OH, I guess you know that already .....www.toxicaudio.com
regardless...thanks a million

Toxic Audio Exploring The Boundaries of the Human Voice

Source: www.toxicaudio.com

I actually hadn't put it all together yet at that point (though all the parts were there, and I now remember enough other refereances that I had heard to the group over the years that I should have) so I replied :

Very Cool I have heard of Toxic Audio from a couple of other WDW folks who are fans of your group, notably Earl of the "Trapped on Vacation" podcast, he is a big fan of your group. I saw that your profile listed your affiliation with Toxic Audio, but I did not realize that the group at the studios was basically an "on WDW property" version of that same group, thanks for the information that is neat to find out, and thanks for the link to the Toxic Audio site, I'm going to check it out now.

After checking out their site I investigated a bit more, I found a podcast by someone involved with the group that gave me a feeling for thier music, and this eventually culminated in the purchase of one of thier CDs from CDbaby.com
http://cdbaby.com/cd/toxicaudio4

Over the recent holidays I finally got the time to listen to it, and so when I noticed the notice in my email box asking how I liked it I wrote the following review:

This was my first purchase of one of Toxic
Audios albums, though I had heard of them a good while back thanks to Earl of the Trapped on Vacation podcast, since then I've learned of a podcast ran by their sound guy (if I understood it correctly), and got to sample a bit more of there work there, somewhere along the line I saw photos of one of these folks and it rang a bell, I went back through my old WDW trip photos and found photos of one of the members of the group singing with American Vybe, and a photo of an early incarnation of Toxic Audio singing on New York Street in the Disney-MGM studios, finally that got me to break down and spend a little bit of my hard earned cash on one of thier CD's I always have lots of CD's and books related to Walt Disney World on my "wish list" and sometimes it takes a while (or events like these discoveries I mentioned above) for items to move up my list but I'm sure glad this one finally surfaced, and it likely won't be all that long before my next purchase of one of their CD's as even as vocal music (which I enjoy) goes these guys rank WAY up there!

Looking at the photos in the CD case (does the term liner notes apply to CDs?) I noticed that another of the faces in the group was also very familiar, from the same Honeymoon trip in 2002 as the photo of Michelle with American Vybe, the same afternoon in Epcot, and even from the same pavilion, and singing for a music group...but NOT American Vybe, yep a Voice of Liberty who is also a member of Toxic Audio

This fellow had already made quite an impression on me on that 2002 trip because we saw him perform with Four for a Dollar at the studios a on the same trip, and on whichever set was the later one we remembered him from the first, it's neat to see talented folks like this playing a variety of roles like this, but rarely do you get to see them in TWO different roles on the same trip ! Unfortuantly I didn't get a photo of him with Four for a Dollar because that was a "film camera" trip and we were running low at the end of the trip.

here's his page from their site: http://www.toxicaudio.com/rene.htm

Having taken all these years to link these performers makes me wonder what else is out there in my photos.

I actually think someone may have mentioned the connection to the group at the studios to me at some point, but I don't see any referance to "toxic audio" in a search of my old emails, so perhaps it was right before one of those crashes most of us have from time to time where some data is lost.

Postcard Collecting Questions

2009-01-02T05:00:47Z

As the guy who has the site that people tend to find when they search the terms "Walt Disney World Postcard" I sometimes get questions about postcards here are a few I have answered recently:

Brian Homenick asked about the postcards with the DASH in the number, in answering him I assumed from the context of the question that he was referring to the Standard size postcards with a dash in the number other than the ones from postcard booklets (as I really had already covered the ones from the booklets printing dates on the site in the chapter on those cards)

Let me ask you, When do you think or if you know when the ( I call them "dash" cards) cards with the - in the middle of the number came out? Because I realized they might have been mixed with the non banner regular cards. Because there are (from what I've seen) 3 different versions of Treasure Island, that park was only open between 1974-1976 but the brown back non banner cards were also out during that time with out a dash.

The earliest "Dash" cards are from 1975 and unlike other black inked dash cards printed later they have the "small castle" or "outline castle" icon at the bottom of the card, it looks like some of these cards appeared with this back until 1977, but I think it might be likely that the cards with this back that still seem to be sold later were little bits of this old stock that was printed in 1975.

A FEW of these dash cards have this script letters "POST CARD" printing on the right hand half of the back, I think the few cases where this appears were mistakes, and I think that part of the reason that this mistake was made was the fact that the same printer who printed the "dash" numbered cards (Dexter Press) also printed the postcard BOOKLET cards which ALL had this script on the back, and I'm guessing some of the press employees used to printing those may have included that lettering out of habit.

Many cards from that 1975 group received a new printing in the very next year, 1976.

Note that not only is the ink blue but the castle icon at the bottom of the card is the "large castle" or "solid castle" icon, it's probably better to go with the "large" and "small" designations since this icon is not entirely solid (it has openings for doorways and windows that are un-inked)
and that could lead to confusion.
Many of these blue backed cards appear all the way up to 1979, perhaps just excess stock left over from the 76 and 77 printings.

In 1978 and on into the 1980's a SOME cards were printed with backs that have Green Ink on the backs the Green ink is dark in many cases it could almost pass for black, and I have one case where I think it is black but still include it with these green inked backs, I include it with them for the fact that it has many other things in common with these Green inked cards, you see these green inked cards have a copyright in the Lower right hand corner (indicated by red arrow in scan above) all other cards in the "dash" series have the copyright in the lower LEFT hand corner under the caption. Another differance between this and earlier cards is the inclusion of the Registered Trademark symbol "®" after the Walt Disney World logo (see image below, for a close up, even though it is from a later black inked card).

In 1979 some of the cards they went BACK to Black inked backs, BUT there is a difference between these and the earlier black inked backs they as these 78 versions had the"Large Castle" icon.

One ODD thing about these 1979 Black inked cards is that they did not yet have the registered Trademark symbol "®" after the Walt Disney World logo.
in 1980 that was rectified and for the remaining years of printing "standard size" (3½" x 5½" cards) they seem to all have that logo.

At 02:33 PM 12/16/2008, Albert Palazzola wrote:

Hello

I was looking at your site (WDW: A History in Postcards). Under Chapter 10 The Animation Gallery Page 2: More Scenes from the Screen, I saw the sketch of Goofy on skiies (the one of him fallen); it is the second to last drawing on the page. I have that exact postcard framed along with a Walt Disney 1968 6-cent stamp. What, in your opinion do you think this is worth? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Although this is a question about value (actually one of the most common types of questions I receive) my answer delved into a lot of other aspects and seems a natural to add here.

Hi Albert
Valuing WDW postcards is always tough, if I find them anywhere other than Ebay they are almost always under $5, even on Ebay where all bets are off I, might BID more than $20 for a card I want particularly badly, but I might get it for under $5 or I might get outbid, there are just not all that many serious WDW postcard collectors, or at least not as compared to Disneyland postcard collectors, and additionally, there are fewer WDW cards that had "short" print runs, for collectors like me who collect ALL variants of a card it is a bit harder as there might be 2 or 3 backs for that card front you described. Sorry I can't give you a simple, firm answer. As for the 6¢ stamp is it on the card? or both mounted in the same frame but two separate items? It might not make much difference in the value.

As for the different backs I was talking about I'll use that Goofy card you have as an example the one I scanned was numbered as 00157-70114 the back has the animation galley logo over on the bottom left side, actually kind of an odd placement for a post card, but that is how all those early cards were first printed, in the early 1990's, when WDW went to having bar codes on all their postcards, many of the cards from this series were re-printed with the bar code in the stamp block, and a new logo, centered over the dividing line (a more typical logo placement). At first these cards bar coded cards had a logo that was a box with the words "Disney Galley images" in it, later, there was yet another printing with a logo that reads "The Art Of Disney" on it. For that Goofy card I don't have a bar coded version, though looking at the cards that do exist in both series I can make an estimate at what the bar code number would probably be if it does exist in a bar coded version. it would probably be 00159 20009 or 00159 20010 if it exists as a bar coded card at all.

Below: although in the email I used the goofy card as an example I thought a better example of "backs vs fronts" would be a card I have in all three versions.

Do you have WDW postcard questions? If so, you can always feel free to email me: martsolf@mindspring.com

Mousefest planning Spreadsheet -updated

2008-12-08T02:38:05Z

I've added quite a few items to the Mousefest planning spreadsheet since I first posted about it, some of them are "informational only" as in they are there to remind me that these are possible things I could do at these times but I may or may not participate, for instance show times for Nova Era at DTD, other things have time conflicts but I'll try to find a way to work around them for instance a friend of mine is in a group that will be playing bells in the lobby of the Grand Floridian at 6PM and 7PM on Wednesday, well we have a 6PM reservation at Citricos I may try to see if I can push that back a little. Also I know i want to take in some live entertainment groups so where some of the meets are duplicate activities, with folks that I will be spending time with at other meets, I may choose between them for instance I have two meets schedules with the "Those darn Cats" crew on here and both of them are dupicates of some activities I also have listed with RADP (Mansion and Splash Mountain) i'm leaning towards doing Mansion with the cats crew, and Spalsh with RADP that will free up time Thursday Morning for Entertainment recording (when the cats will be doing Splash), and Sunday Afternoon while the RADP are doing mansion.

Things I hope to see or wont see at Mousefest

2008-12-06T17:04:48Z

Last week I made a post about the re-purposed Animal Kingdom ships that are now used on the Seven Seas Lagoon and Bay lake for fireworks cruises,
http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/9169.html
I mentioned it was something I'm looking forward to seeing, possibly as soon as Mousefest, but since I don't know how likely there are to be some of these out in the day it's hard to say if I will really see any of them, that said I won't be heartbroken if I don't see them there are similarly a LOT of things I HOPE to experience or see that I don't necessarily know if they will happen, but just by having so many of them I'm sure I'll see some of them,

Missing these things won't necessarily be a BAD thing, but seeing them could be a huge BONUS to my trip, because I know they are out there and if I see, and or photograph, video, or record (audio), it will be one more great thing to share when I get back!

Also, some things are so obvious that I would look forward to them I won't bother to list them here like the Toontown Tuners and the Voices of Liberty, also most things that I have on my Mousefest schedule I posted a while back http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/7584.html are things I won't list here unless additional explanation is needed as to WHY I'm looking forward to them.

The World Showcase Players doing "A Christmas Carol" not only do I want to see this because I have not seen it before but at least one former Adventurers Club cast member is in the WS players.
The Hat Lady, yes I enjoyed Leon Gregory as a piano player at the Rose and Crown Pub and was sorry to see him go, but I'd LOVE to see Carol there too, though if I happen to walk in on one of Pam Brody's two days a week that would not be disappointing either.
Nova Era, this band had appeared in the Italy Pavilion several years back, but this holiday season they are performing at DTD http://pages.prodigy.net/stevesoares/pi.htm , I'd LOVE to see them BUT it probably won't happen unless we were to "add a day".
Gui-Tar-Dan at Camp Minnie mickey in Disney's Animal Kingdom, While I don't anticipate that this singers, guitar players act would be all that riveting because it's probably aimed squarely at keeping the kids entertained, it will be great to see Dean face to face as I really enjoyed his "Singing Cowboy" act at the Diamond Horseshoe, and I enjoy listening to the CD I bought of the Rusty Cutlass pirate band that he performs with at some of the Hard ticketed parties in the Magic Kingdom http://rustycutlass.com/.
Rusty Cutlass themselves I would love to see them perform but I decided to pass of the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party this year.
The Tropicals, this steel drum based band plays at Disneys Animal Kingdom, I haven't seen them yet but I enjoyed their CD.
Beauty & the Beast stage show, not only have I not seen this show in several years, but the latest Gaston is a former Dapper Dan.
The Village Beatniks, yet another AK band I have yet to experience
The REAL Mor Thiam, as I noted in a blog post a while back the audio I used in my AK episodes of the drummer in Harambe in front of the Mombassa Marketplace, was the guy who fills in on Mor Thiam's days off, while the fellow I recorded was great I am rather embarrassed about miss-representing the material I used when I played it on my podcast, until I later learned the truth http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/4790.html
The Boardwalk Entertainment, especially Musicale Mark (who also fills in on piano Man Jims days off at the MK) or the former juggler from the Hunchback of Notre Dame stage show
Flights of Wonder, it's simply been several years since I saw this,and I don't necessarily see time in the schedule for it this trip.

There are many other little things I'd like to catch certain sets or songs by the Dapper Dans, Main Street Philharmonic, and the Spirit of America Fife and drum corps come to mind (The Disney Medley the dans do, Mary Poppins Medley the Philharmonic does, and the sons and daughters of Liberty set the Fife and drum corps do )

How To Subscribe to this blog

2008-11-30T19:40:52Z

I enjoy technology, but I'm not always that adept with it. As in I can usually figure things out but sometimes it takes me a very long time to get around to doing that figuring. One such case has been in figuring out how to subscribe to a live journal blog via and RSS or ATOM feed. I was late in subscribing to blog feeds anyhow, I only discovered a while back while I was trying out Firefox that when I clicked on one of these feed links in a blog I like (usually represented by a little ICON) a bookmarking page would pop up, not only that but it would give me the option to subscribe to a blog in a way that would put that blog in a bookmark toolbar right up there on the top of my screen, then when I hover over that bookmark it will show me a list of posts in that blog with a different symbol fro READ posts than unread one, I REALLY like this part as it makes it VERY easy to see at a glace which blog posts I have not yet read!

Though I have yet to figure out how to do this in MSIE, that will be a project for another day.

anyhow I recently figured out that I can do this On live Journal too, here are links you can click on to subscribe to this blog:

Atom: http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/data/atom
RSS: http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/data/rss

I'll see if I can find a way to add these as a permanent link off to one side or the other of this page if not I'll probably just add at the end of each article swords to the effect of , as always you can subscribe to this blog via the following links:

Atom: http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/data/atom
RSS: http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/data/rss

(and that's the end of this post!)

The Friendships, the Epcot resort areas water taxis

2008-11-30T02:23:46Z

While the attraction known as it’s a small world has been tagged with the description “the Happiest cruise that ever sailed”, perhaps the ships of WDW’s Epcot resort area and the World Showcase lagoon could bear the tag line “the Friendliest cruise that ever sailed”...

Original paint scheme Friendship III

...after all the name of the boats in this fleet are the Friendships, all bearing names with a Roman Numeral following them from Friendship I to Friendship VIII. Despite having almost identical names design and function they have a few Individual characteristics to tell them apart, first off the easiest way to tell them apart is the obvious one, if you are looking at the stern of the ships there is a huge nameplate with the name of the individual ship, also there is a much smaller inscription of the ships name on the "front hood" just below the base of the Windshield, but if you really want to be the ultimate Disney geek you can tell them apart even from a distance and from the side ...how you may ask? well they each have their own Paint Scheme, all following the same pattern, but with a different set of colors for each ship the main body of all of the Friendships is white, they then have an accent color for the roof stripes, and a second accent color for the trim around the windows (this color also continues as stripes across the "front hood" of the ship), these two colors are then repeated as a pair of stripes around the boat, the upper wider stripe matches the roof color and the lower "pinstripe" matches the window trim. . Over the past few years I’ve taken a lot of photos of these ships and I’ve used these photos to make a list of these ships that identifies them each by their color scheme, it first appeared in my Mousefest 2006 trip report, a copy of that chart is further down the page. One thing that original chart does not take into account though is that the Friendships were only painted into these newer paint schemes in the mid 1990’s; before that instead of having the striped roofs that the friendships have today they had solid colored roofs, recently I got in contact with Greg Chin a former watercraft cast member who has a great web site about WDWs watercraft.

http://www.wcdept478.com/WCHomePage1a.html

He was a cast member at the time most of the Friendships were being built and he shared with me some of his memories about them in some emails we exchanged, he also has a couple of pages about them on his site:

http://www.wcdept478.com/AboutWatertaxis.htm

and, you can see some construction photos of them on this part of his site:

http://www.wcdept478.com/Index10.htm

Excerpts from an expert

Below are some excerpts from some emails I exchanged with Greg that shed a lot of light onto many of these subjects for me.

Greg Chin in 1982

Here's a photo of me , and Chris Mohler, (Note from Brian, Gregs photo is above, Chris is not pictured here) taken on Friendship III (the Red one), when it was brand new, in late 1982.

We had just docked, and shut down 2 motor launches.

I saw that Friendship III was there. The new interior and helm console looked wonderful. And I noticed: there was no front AC column duct-work to block the forward view of the bow windows. They got it right, this time.

The watertaxi had recently been lowered into the water, during the noon hours. Since Chris and I were part of the 14 test-pilot crew, I wanted to get some photos of this one, before it was moved over to EPCOT.

I took photos with my 35mm Nikon FM camera, on the watertaxi, as it was docked, in Drydock. Chris and I snapped the photos, of each other, next to the helm console.

This watertaxi was never used in Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon, for hauling passengers. After the trial runs were done quickly, it was taken out of the water again, placed on a large flatbed trailer, and taken over to the Epcot Drydock area, at night.

It was the only time I could have taken these historic photos of us, on the brand-new watertaxi. Friendship III was needed right away, over at the WSC Lagoon.

I should say that it was wonderful to see the first 2 watertaxis being built, in the Facilities - Main Bay area of the WDW Central Shops, during 1980 to 1981. Knowing that we, 14 test pilots would soon be getting the 2 boats, to do the trial runs, on Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon. That gave us a year to test everything and see how they performed.

I would go over to visit the Main Bay, in the Central Shops, and see how the construction was coming along. They built two watertaxis, at a time, with them arranged stern-to-stern.

The Main Bay has a large gantry crane overhead (on guide rails), since the crane was used to pick up the watertaxis, and put them on a flatbed trailer, and then moved over to Drydock, where the boats were painted. Then, their interiors were finished-out with their engines, generators, seating, and equipment.

The Drydock Mechanics are the qualified experts to install all the marine-gear equipment, so they get to do it. They also got to spray paint the watertaxis, using the very best catalyzed - poly-urethane acrylic enamel paint. It's tough spray paint!

I'll tell you, the watertaxis look totally different, once they are spray-painted in their white coat, and color schemes. Being made of 98% aluminum plating, they didn't require any primer coat, at all. The bottom hull is spray painted black. The boats rest on specially-made yellow jackstands, while they are out of the water, in the Drydock Bldg. area.

Original paint scheme Friendship I

The watertaxi seats and interior beige paneling is made of vacuum-formed Kydex plastic sheeting. It's a tough industrial-strength, vacuum-formed, and thermal-setting plastic.
Once it's heated, and vacuum-formed, it sets, and cannot be re-heated or re-shaped again.
It's the same Kydex plastic that's used in the Mexico and Land pavilion boat rides.
I saw the vacuum-forming being done, during the Watertaxi construction. Also, for the interiors of Monorails Lime and Coral, in 1981.
All the beige interior pieces were then trimmed, and stacked on wooden pallets.
The blue seats were being molded and assembled for the watertaxis.
Green seats are used for the boat attraction seats. It has a nice textured finish on it.

Original paint scheme Friendship II

Connecting the EPCOT Resorts to the WSC Lagoon:

For about 2 years, the half-completed hull of the 5th Watertaxi, sat back in WDW's Drydock area, wrapped-up with thick clear plastic coverings, to keep out the rain water. That was during the 1987 slow-down, and the need for them. For a while, the Omnibuses around the Lagoon, and the 4 watertaxis filled the immediate needs for guest transportation. Michael Eisner and Tishman Construction were deciding about the Swan and Dolphin Hotel Resort's ultimate design and location.
Once the decision to connect the EPCOT Resorts' "Half Moon Lagoon", to the WSC Lagoon was made (big changes on the WDW map), they went ahead and completed the 5th and 6th watertaxis. And planned on th 7th and 8th watertaxis, as well. Thanks to the EPCOT theme park, and the EPCOT Resorts, Walt Disney World's watercraft fleet doubled in size,

Original Friendship Colors

Friendship name	Solid Roof Color and around windows	Accent stripe below windows, around bow
FRIENDSHIP I	BLUE	RED
FRIENDSHIP II	RUSTY ORANGE	BLUE
FRIENDSHIP III	RED	BLUE
FRIENDSHIP IV	YELLOW	BLUE
FRIENDSHIP V	LIME GREEN	BLUE
FRIENDSHIP VI	LAVENDER (less certain)	BLUE
FRIENDSHIP VII
FRIENDSHIP VIII

As you can see from the chart above there are two color schemes not accounted for (and one with a discrepancy but more about that in a minute), In the photo below you can see the ship has a solid roof color but, UNLIKE the earlier Freindships that color DOES NOT continue down around the windows, in fact if the roof was striped Teal instead of solid it could pass for Friendship VI.

Greg also pointed out several small details that help distinguish the Friendships from each other than the paint schemes, in the photos in the first half of this article, look at the frames around the windows of Friendship I and II, you’ll see they are a silvery aluminum color, but on all of the later Friendships they have “black anodized aluminum window frames” though nowadays even I and II have changed over to that style also.

Later Changes
Another difference with I and II is that originally the ductwork for the A/C on
these two ships was more obtrusive, but in the later ships the ductwork was ran under the deck, I’m
not sure but I think I recall hearing that had changed on I and II, though if it has I don’t know
weather to think it happened in the mid 1990’s refurbishments that included the re-painting or when
the new A/C systems were installed on the roofs of the Friendships around 2004, that change led to
another thought not right away, in photos I took of the Friendships in late 2004, and late 2005 the
new A/C units were easily visible on the roofs of the ships (well in the 2004 photos it was on just
some of the ships), but by the time I returned in 2006 a new flange had been added around the perimeter
of the roof that is more aesthetically pleasing to view than the asymmetrically laid out A/C units.

Friendship I - 2000
It looks as if that duct work may still be blocking the view for guests in this year 2000 view, but look at he clean lines on the roof of the ship before scrolling down to the later photos.

Friendship IV - 2004

Friendship I – 2006
With the new flange around the roof perimeter, note also the curved windows on the front corners

MID 1990’S REPAINTING

Friendship name	Roof Stripe Color	Window Accent Color
FRIENDSHIP I	LT BLUE	PINK
FRIENDSHIP II	PINK	TEAL
FRIENDSHIP III	RED	BLUE
FRIENDSHIP IV	ORANGE	YELLOW
FRIENDSHIP V	TEAL	PINK OR CORAL
FRIENDSHIP VI	TEAL	ORANGE
FRIENDSHIP VII	RED	TEAL
FRIENDSHIP VIII	YELLOW	BLUE

One final difference that Greg clued me into after he looked at some of my photos...

Also, on Watertaxis I thru V have a one-piece curved-plexiglass window, right next to the helm console.

Apparently Watertaxis VI, Vii, and VIII have an extra vertical window mullion in the same place, to eliminate the need to get specially molded/curved plexiglass window panes for that corner window.

Below is a photo of Friendship VII that shows the later type of window, compare this to the windows on Friendship I in the image above the chart, that one illustrates the earlier type pretty well.

Before closing this out I want to thank Greg for his generous amounts of time he took in writing replys to me as well as the hours he has already poured into his wonderful site, Thanks Greg!

and for anyone out there who can fill in a few more of the blanks as to the original color schemes for Friendships VI VII and VIII, or other details we have not touched on here, please feel free to email me martsolf@mindspring.com

An Unusual Thing I’m looking forward to seeing at Mousefest

2008-11-28T06:25:14Z

When speaking of things to look forward to at Mousefest first, a few obvious things come to mind, enjoying the attractions of Walt Disney world is something almost all of us look forward to on any trip, but at Mousefest you get to take that to another level, enjoying these attractions with lots of other fans who “get it” when it comes to Walt Disney World. Perhaps the most obvious when it comes to mousefest is meeting those folks we’ve met online and in the parks over the years, this is certainly a highlight of any Mousefest trip for me! But, I have a few odd things on my list that, in some cases will overlap with those of others, but in other cases may be less common. For instance since there are so many of us in the Disney Fan community who enjoy sharing our trip photos on our web sites and blogs a lot of us will enjoy taking pictures we can use for just that purpose, and I have many favorite photo subjects, I also learn about new things at the resort form time to time and want to go take pictures of those things when I arrive. I have a lot of pictures of things like the monorails and the ships at WDW, and while I’m always looking for a new good angle on these those can be hard to find, so when something changes a bit it really catches my attention, this year a few of the old Animal Kingdom Discovery Island River Cruise vessels have be moved to the Seven Seas Lagoon / Bay Lake complex and are now being used for fireworks cruises, so I’m not sue how often they are seen out in the daylight but at least a couple of Disney fans caught views of them this year, in fact I first became aware of this change because of a photo by Jason, the Disneygeek of http://www.disneygeek.com, and with his gracious permission I’m re using his photo here:

additionally one of my online friends Denise often takes WDW photos and shares them on her site too http://www.mousesteps.com/ , and I got permission to share her image too:

Now you may notice from their photos that the ships have been re-christened, at Disney’s animal Kingdom the ships were named the Darting Dragonfly, Otter Nonsense, Leaping Lizard, Crocodile Belle, Hasty Hippo, now the Darting Dragonfly was the one being used as a character barge so I would bet that it might still remain at DAK, and I’m not sure as to how many of the other ships have been moved and renamed, but I really like the “retro” names they have given these two vessels, you see MAGIC KINGDOM I, was the original name of the ferryboat now named the Admiral Joe Fowler, while MAGIC KINGDOM II, was the original name of the ferryboat Richard F Irvine, now of course when the Magic Kingdom opened the Admiral Joe Fowler was the name of the dual stacked Steam Engine in Frontierland that resembled the Mark Twain steamship at Disneyland, but after that ship was damaged and retired in the early 80s’s and its companion on the Rivers of America the Single Stack Richard F. Irvine, was rechristened the Liberty Belle in the mid 1990s it was decided to re-name the ferries in honor of these folks who had so much to do with the design and building of the Disney parks (more on each of these men, and General Joe Potter, in some earlier posts on this blog)

Admiral Joe Fowler http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/1706.html

Richard F. Irvine http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/1892.html

General Joe Potter http://bigbrian-nc.livejournal.com/1448.html

. So naming these new fireworks viewing barges with these old names is a neat way to pay homage to the history of WDW itself. Only having those two photos does make me wonder, exactly how many of these barges got moved, and it there are additional ones what their names are, if there is only one more well than the next logical name would be the KINGDOM QUEEN since that was the original name of the General Joe Potter.

Speaking of those ferryboats I think that I had heard they were not there on opening day before, but not any details. Recently I went over to check out a site I had known about for a while but had not checked back in on recently the WDW Watercraft pages at http://www.wcdept478.com/WCHomePage1a.html

After my visit I wrote the webmaster Greg Chin, a former Watercraft cast member of the from at least the early 1980’s (if not earlier), and even into the 90’s, he gave me a lot of information about the Friendships which I’ll put in a later post, but in regards to the ferries he let me know that they didn’t go into service until 1973 (and I believe that would have been just the first two as the KINGDOM QUEEN came later), in those first two years folks had to either take the monorail, or one of the lower capacity, and slower loading (as compared to the ferries) Side-Wheel ships, the Southern Seas and Ports O’ Call, accordingly those side-wheelers didn’t start their “WORLD CRUISE” service until 1973 when those ferries came on line . In addition to that back in those days there was another way for guests to get from the TTC to the Magic Kingdom in Gregs words:

“For years, the Watercraft Dept. and Parking Lot Dept. also manned the extra Trams from TTC side area, to the entrance of the MagicKingdom. Only if the crowd capacity warranted it, the extra Trams were put online. But we keep them warmed up, and idling during the busiest parts of the morning and night, in case they were needed.

Florida has a lot of dew, in the morning hours. It takes a while to go, and suddenly dry off any wet tram bench seating. We use a wide 12" or 16" squeegee and plenty of towels. Same thing on all of the Watercraft boats and Parking Lot trams, in the morning. Once the new MK Bus Depot, and expanded TTC Bus Depot were built in 1986, that problem finally went away.

Postcard Discoveries - Finds on Flickr

2008-11-11T03:39:43Z

Once in a while, as I look over the vast quantity of Disney materials on the internet I'll run into something I've not seen before, recently I saw some Disney World postcards I hadn't ever seen before on a flickr account, there were two different types of cards, and i certainly have seen cards of these types, but I hadn't seen these individual designs. They are all from the collection of a blogger who goes by the name of 9teen87, and her blog is at:
http://www.9teen87spostcards.blogspot.com/

she uses her flickr account to host images of the postcards she uses on her blog:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9teen87/

I got her permission to use here images here too, she has three images from "suvey postcards" these cards are sent to guests after their trip and have an invitation to visit the Disney web site and enter a special number that takes you to a survey with questions, usually about the resort you just stayed at, and she has some really nifty ones of these, Since these are white cards and the edges can be hard to detect on a white background page, like this one, I've added a blue frame around each card. she's got one from The Grand Floridian, and she even included a bit of the text from the back of the card in the description:

Disney's Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - We have selected a small, but significant, cross-section of our guests for an important survey. To complete the questionnaire, please log on to the Internet web site below and enter the password printed on this card. - postmarked in Jan. 2007

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9teen87/345579442/

An unusual card that rather than bearing a hotel logo it bears a Walt Disney World logo, though the bit of text she put in the description hints at the reason, it's more of a contact follow up card:
Walt Disney World Resort - Thank you for recently contacting the Walt Disney World Resort - postmarked 2006

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9teen87/307115891/

Lastly is one that is technically not a Walt Disney World Card but of enough interest to most folks who would read this site that I'll include it here, and it seems to be a bit of a different category as well a "thank You Card she describes as follows:

Disney thank you card for taking one of their cruises - which I highly recommend! - 2006

She has many kinds of postcards in her Flicker account including a fair number of WDW cards that I have, but there is at least one other WDW post card she has that I do not and here is her description of it:

At This Rate You'll Be Dancing in Your Sleep!!

Disney's All-Star Resorts

Just $59.00 Per Night Puts You in the Middle of the Magic!

It's a dream rate at Disney's All-Star Sports and All-Star Music Resorts and it's available most nights between August 22 - September 30, 1999.

This advertising postcard was machine stamped 'Bulk Rate' in 1999

Once again Much Thanks to flickr user:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9teen87/

and visit her blog:
http://www.9teen87spostcards.blogspot.com/

Where to Buy WDW postcards?

2008-11-10T02:01:26Z

I am a member of a number of boards and groups and am not the best participant in any of them but every once in a while I see something in one of them that gets me to write something back that goes fairly in depth, this long response was in reply to a very short question in the earstoears yahoo group.

A lot of the things said in this thread are quite accurate as answers to the question "where can you find postcards", but some of it also depends on what kind of cards you want, the types of cards offered do tend to change over time and there may be certain cards you have seen in the past that you won't see nowadays, also since cards with special elements that people are willing to pay more for have a higher profit margin it seems there have been a lot of those in recent years. Still here's an over view as to some locations and general information about buying postcards on WDW, First I'll go over locations, in the second part I'll talk about types of cards. It also gives me an idea for a photo essay next trip "where to buy postcards at Walt Disney World"

First of all if you are staying on-site there will almost always be some in you hotels gift shop, if you don't see them ask because sometimes they can be hidden away, also if you are staying at a deluxe or moderate resort there is a greater chance that they will have a card that features your resort hotel, but, sometimes it won't be with the other postcards it will be with the resort specific merchandise for that hotel, once again if you are hoping to find a card like this and you don't see one in your resorts gift shop it can't hurt to ask. At the parks there are a couples of places you will find cards, first off, almost all of the parks have a gift shop "outside the gates" the one for the Magic Kingdom is actually at the TTC, in the building to the right of the ticket booths as you get off the trams (as if you are heading towards the TTC bus area if I have my memories in order) the one for Epcot is off to the right of the entrance gates in an enclosed building, but was rumored to possibly be closing at one point, so I'm not sure if it's still there, the one for the studios is quite visible as it is a more Indoor/outdoor location off just past the leftmost turnstile as you are headed towards the entrance, the one for Animal Kingdom is in a Stand alone building outside the gates (I think it may even be before you get to bag check, but I'm not certain). At the Magic Kingdom just after you enter the gates there are a pair of souvenir stands off to each side before you even go through the entry tunnels and these have postcards too. All four parks have a large gift shop in the front half of the park, Emporium at Magic Kingdom, MouseGear at Epcot, Island Mercantile at Animal Kingdom, and Mickeys' of Hollywood at the Studios, though at the Studios for some reason I also remember getting cards across the street (celebrity 5 and 10 I think).
These locations usually have the best selections in each of these parks, but they aren't the only locations that have cards! far from it. There are also many other locations in the parks that have postcards but often the types at those other locations will be much more limited, one exception to this is the gift shop back near the Toontown Country Fair Hall of Fame, I have seen a larger and wider variety of cards there than in most other locations. In most of the parks there is a location where you can get "art of Disney" series postcards, these are a bit more pricey (3.00 or perhaps 3.50 now), but have some beautiful artwork of the characters and icons of the parks, in the Magic Kingdom these are in the new art of Art of Disney Store located in the Main Street Cinema, at Epcot the Art of Disney Store is located just past the camera shop (and before the lockers) to the right of Spaceship earth as you enter the park. In the studios the shop that has art of Disney postcards is at the end of the Animation tour, at the far side of the Animation Courtyard,but you don't have to go on the tour to visit the gift shop it has an entry off the animation courtyard (but don't confuse this shop with the souvenir stand on the nearby building that houses Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Additionally almost all of the parks have some postcards specific to attractions that are in small gift shops at the exits of the attractions, in past years I have seen pirates of the Caribbean postcards in the shop at that rides exit, and Splash Mountain ones at the exit to that attraction, but not on my last few trips, so once it again it never hurts to ask, but try not to be too disappointed if you favorite attraction does not have a card dedicated to it, other attractions on this "Attraction Specific" list I have seen in the past are Stitches Great Escape (buy again not recently), Tower of Terror (this has been more consistent than most attractions), Mission Space, Dinosaur, Mickey's Philharmagic (only back when it was new though), the cart neat the exit to the Haunted Mansion, The Cart across from the Country Bears (That was many years ago), Star Tours has been fairly consistent, though often more of the cards there are Star Wars movie cards rather than related to the attraction, Rock N' Roller Coaster, the cart across from Who Wants to be a millionaire (obviously a while back!), additionally in the past the countries in World Showcase all generally had a card that was available somewhere in each of those countries, nowadays, instead of having cards in each individual country there tend to be a few World Showcase related cards in the "Disney Traders" and "Ports of Entry" gift shops that are near the Friendship docks at the Future World End of World Showcase Lagoon, Another park that has seemed to focus more on having one shop in each land that has cards rather than a shop at the exit to each attraction is Disney's Animal Kingdom, Chester and Hester's Dinosoar Treasures in Dinoland, Mandala gifts in Asia (surprisingly good selection for its small size), and Mombasa Marketplace in Africa tend to have selections of cards that focus on their park and even there specific "land" for some of them, there is also a "land specific" shop in Tomorrowland I THINK that it's Merchant of Venus rather than Mickey's star traders that has the better postcard selection if I recall correctly. Additionally the water parks, and Disney quest have had postcards generally over the years, though I have not spent enough time at those parks to know where the best places to ask for them are, but of course it never hurts to ask. Downtown Disney has two good locations for postcards, one is in the World of Disney store, the other is the Art of Disney Store, there have been times in the past when in addition to the "Art Of Disney" cards I mentioned earlier they have had some of the "regular" postcards sold in the other gift shops.

Now on to the types of cards while the least expensive types of postcards, single photo views of the parks, have become less common in recent years, these have been replaced to some extent by foldout folders or folios of cards, that while they cost more up front are actually cheaper when you break them down to a "per card" cost, additionally a lot of the reason Disney has been able to fill more of the locations they stock with postcards with higher priced cards is that they have come out with some beautiful and fantastic looking cards, there are shiny foil cards, lenticular cards that feature a look that gives a card sometimes much greater depth, sometimes a sense of movement, and sometimes a little of both. They also sell more larger sized cards as compared to the normal 4 x 6 or continental sized cards, there are 5 x7 cards, and there are the oddly shaped die-cut postcards and many of these cards too are lenticualar or foil cards as well. Then there are the "Art of Disney cards" I have mentioned a couple of times now these are 5 x 7 and are embossed to give them the look of matted artwork, I think you really could just pop a lot of these in a frame as is. The past few years there have also been special "boxed sets" of postcards one popping up every year or two, often when I go to WDW at Mousefest new merchandise has just been rolled out in the past few months, and I've even gotten the "next years" card with the year on it at a couple of mousefests, where the cards had either been "just put out" or appeared during my trip, and since I have NOT been at WDW since last December, and have not been tracking down every possible lead on the Internet for new releases this year, I'm expecting my next trip, for Mousefest to be a very good trip for postcards indeed! Though I did just learn about one new release, and this one has the best price of all, it's FREE! If you are passing by a DVC sales kiosk ask them if they have any sample art of the new Bay Lake Tower you can take with you, they will probably give you a postcard!

Why didn't I think of that before?

2008-11-08T20:07:00Z

I have a lot of fun sharing the stuff I see and hear in the parks on the Internet, weather it be through my trip reports, podcasts, or videos on youtube and google video. Now seeing that statement above you might wonder Why on earth would anyone need BOTH a you tube AND google video account, well although I do pay to share some of my stuff on the web I've been trying to limit my videos to free hosting services only, the first of these I discovered was You Tube, it only has one limitation for free accounts the videos are limited to 10 minutes or less, at first this did not matter, every video I have shared has been taken with a camera that is primarily planned as a still photos camera, if fact to take videos with it over 30 seconds in length I have yo use "Type II" or faster SD memory cards, and besides that I learned early on that taking videos with it does something to the batteries that is analogous to taking a bottle of soda and turning it upside down...it does not take long to drain all the energy from the batteries, which is why I seem to have so many seemingly "incomplete" videos, but over time I have learned the tricks to taking longer videos:

1.Try to be aware and plan when I might be taking a video, and before I do
A. change the batteries.
B. insert a memory card that still has a lot of capacity left on it.
2. And even beyond changing the batteries, I've found that those fancy schmancy super expensive lithium batteries really do last longer, especially in that high power drain situation I described above!

But all that may be a moot point now, as I've just bought a new HD video specific camera (though it will take stills also), but that's not what this post is about. My discovery of all this tips and tricks resulted in me taking a 20 something minute video of a set of the citizens of Hollywood performing a shit on Hollywood Boulevard, I was elated to get the whole set, but I was also unsure of how I would post the video, I had seen other folks on you tube with multi-part videos to keep each part under the 10 minute limit, and I figured I COULD try to learn some software to edit my videos, but before I had to do that I learned about Google Video, at the time google was trying to move into the video hosting market and lure folks to its service that might otherwise go to youtube by offering a service that hosted videos WITHOUT a time limit, this seemed like a logical place for me to put my video, and as long as I was at it I went ahead and put ALL of my videos there from that trip (June 2007)...

However, I soon noticed the lack of a google videos "user page" for instance on youtube if you view any of my videos you can then click on a link to my "channel" a sort of home page for my videos on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=bigbrianDASHncDOTcom

on google video the closest thing to that is a tab in a pane next to the video pane that says "more from user" this tab is usually in the back, details for the video that is playing are on top, if you click on that tab view will show you four videos at a time, and a scroll bar that will let you see a total of 16 if you scroll down, just a very minimal bare bones approach when compared you youtubes sort of "community building " approach (that reminds me a lot of Flickr which is another service I use), anyhow there is a page on my site called "other bigBrian stuff on the web" http://www.bigbrian-nc.com/bbrian.htm there is a link to that page in the site in that big coral colored menu bar up at the top of the main page and the other "section header" pages well on that page are links to my flickr page, articles I've written for AllEars, my profile on various message boards, and of course my google and you tube video pages, the link for my you tube page was simple, but how to link to my google videos? Well eventually I figured out that if I did a search within Google video for bigBrian most of my videos would come up, but it also brought in links to a few of my youTube videos, still it wasn't too bad and I figured eventually Google would add something more like you tubes "channels", well after Google bought youTube I realized that might not happen, but figured at some point Google video would make some kind of changes, but up until this point any change has been slow, and in the interim other folks have had their videos start to turn up in my search (like a weight lifter also using the bigBrian moniker). Today I was looking for a video I keep in my google videos and saw the mish-mash of results coming in on that search and I resolved to do SOMETHING better, like so many problems it really wasn't that tough once I focused on it and I'm very pleased with the results, I squeezed out the other big brians by making the new search I linked to one that links to my exact google video user name bigbrian-nc.com, and I even managed to remove my youtube video results by adding the term videos.google.com to the search viola! a search where the number of hits is exactly equal to the number of videos I have on google! It's still not a page like the ones for user of you tube, but for free hosting of my long videos I'm not going to complain!

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=bigbrian-NC&emb=1#q=bigbrian-nc.com%20video.google.com&emb=1

All of which led to the question I asked in the title of this post!

just for fun heres another one of the google videos from there:

Angry (Please don't be Angry)

2008-11-05T04:12:18Z

As a guy who loves to record live entertainment groups at the Disney parks for use on my podcast, I really like to share the names of the songs with my listeners on my web site, however if you've glanced down very many lists of songs on my site over the years, inevitably you will come to a listing that looks something like this one from one of Alan Thomsons sets (this one appeared originally back in Episode 21:

Stormy Weather
Someone to Watch Over Me
Tennesee Waltz
Solace
Disney Medley
- Bella Note
- So This is Love
- Once Upon A Dream
- Someday My Prince Will Come
- Cruela De Ville
- When You Wish Upon A Star
- Wouldn't have nothin if I didn't have you
Unknown
Cheek to cheek
I'm In the Mood for Love
Unknown
"Maybe" welcome cowboys (and friends and neighbors) from the OLD Horseshoe
Coney Island Warshboard
Grim Grinning Rag

Now even though I knew the names of most of those songs, you can see the word "Unknown" twice, and a "maybe" in there, well if you looked at this list six months ago there would have been ANOTHER unknown, as the ragtime version of "Wouldn't have nothin' if I didn't have you" just did not strike a chord with me, UNTIL a "tale of the tune" segment I heard on the Mouse Guest Weekly podcast rung that bell for me, I had accidentally hit the button on my mp3 player right in the middle of that song, and as I put my finger on the thumb wheel and FFwd through the episode to get back to the song, I heard the melody in my head, but NOT being sung by Randy Newman as they had been playing it, in my head as I waited for the MP3 to fast forward, I heard it being played on piano, and had an AH-HA! moment, recently I had another of those AH-HA moments, and this one will take that "MAYBE" off the list and replace it with the real song title (and it wasn't the one from the Horseshoe). I purchased a CD of the Magic City Jazz Band, a group made up of several former WDW musicians and at least one current one, the name of that song is actually "Angry" and on this CD it's sung by Ed Cuneo (pronounced COO-NEE-OH). This CD is one I would reccomend to anyone who thinks they MIGHT like some of this kind of fun jazz, becuse they do seem to capture that fun, most of the songs are instrumentals, but a few (like Angry) do have the lyrics as well, there are also some samples on thier site (though regretably not one of Angry). one side note you can also purchase their CD through CD baby.com, and that is the way I purchased it http://cdbaby.com/cd/magiccityjazz.

Anyhow, it's hard to really capture music with just words, so here's a link to a SHORT companion episode to this blog post
http://media.libsyn.com/media/bbdp/angry.mp3

Postcard Discoveries - Disneyland Jumbo

2008-11-04T00:12:53Z

Once in a while, as a collector of Disney theme park post cards, I'll find out about some little tidbit of Disney postcard information that I want to share with other collectors, sometimes these tidbits don't fit neatly into my existing web pages, and while I'm member of a yahoo group based on Disney postcards using images of cards in posts to those groups used to be impossible and still has its challenges, when I started my podcast I even did a postcard segment at the end of many of the episodes, as it was easy to stick the pictures in at the end of the show notes, still after a while it seemed to me that was not really a good fit (for reasons that are more about my podcast than postcards), with this blog it will be easy to do occasional pieces on postcards here, and I can then place links back to the article here for other groups I tell about the post.

This POSTCARD DISCOVERY came to me from Kevin Hughes, whom I have long corresponded with in regards to Disney Theme Park cards, Kevin has an extensive collection himself, and since as a dealer in postcards (Including Disney pars cards found at his easy to use web site www.postcardguy.com ) he goes to visit many shows where he makes some FANTASTIC finds, like this recent one he told me about:

Been enjoying your articles, podcasts etc. Keep up the good work!

I came across two nice Disneyland postcards yesterday and looking for more info on them...

They are both "oversized".

J-2 Submarine Falls

J-6A Jungle Adventure

I was excited to find them in mint condition in someones 25 cent dealers box!

Now any time you find a Disneyland card in a 25¢ box you probably made a good find, if it is anything other that the most common of Disneyland cards

I would upgrade that to a GREAT find, if it is from a rarer series or type of cards (like the Jumbos!) I would call that a FANTASTIC find, the first of these two cards he found I would put in that category, as the Submarine Falls J-2 card is one of the easier to find cards of a card series that can have very long periods of time between when you run across cards to add to your collection, but the other card? Well that was a find that goes even beyond the power of the word fantastic to describe it adequately, not only is it a card from one of the rarer older types and series of cards, but it is a rare enough view that this card was not even listed in the "nickel Tour" as a jumbo! That said it still may look familiar too you because, like MOST jumbos, it also appeared on a smaller card, and that gives some clue possibility to its rarity, but first let's take a look at it:

Now that card appeared as a regular sized card too, and there were TWO versions of the front side (there were probably more backs depending on how many times it was reprinted over the years). In one that sign read just as it does on this Jumbo size card JUNGLE CRUISE, but in the other version of the card it reads ADVENTURELAND, on that sign, so it is a nice early example of a cut and paste edit on a Disneyland postcard (back in the era when they used real paste!), the fact that the card is numbered J-6A, means it was a replacement for an earlier card, otherwise it would have just been numbered J-6, the original J-6 is listed as THE EXPLORERS BOAT, (same image as Nickel Tour number 0272), which is a card that always struck me funny because right in the center of the card there is a guy who is definitely NOT keeping his hands and arms inside the boat!

http://www.disneylandpostcards.com/aljchippos.jpg

so perhaps that is why the first version of J-6 was retired, and this later version might not have been out as long both because that first card was out for a while, and I wonder if also the difference in how the sign was printed might have played into it being out for a short time too, if the printing on the sign on this card was not the way they preferred that sign to appear that might have caused it to be retired more rapidly, or also just the fact that they rotated in new views more frequently back then than they do nowadays, anyhow I want to thank Kevin for letting me share these images here, and once again suggest his site as a possible source for all you postcard collectors out there. www.postcardguy.com

Mousefest planning Spreadsheet

2008-10-23T01:00:54Z

About a month ago I started my Mousefest planning in earnest, in fact looking back I had my room booked by the middle of September. Not as good a deal as in past years, but $46 a night isn't bad either. This years hotel is Holiday Inn, Main Gate East, we actually stayed at before, it was a ONE night, extension added on to the start of our trip for 2004 Mousefest (or was it 05?) before we moved to another hotel for the balance of our stay, I remember thinking at the time that it was it was a little bit borderline on getting run down, but I don't think it was a Holiday inn at the time and I've noticed driving past it on intervening trips that it looks like it's been spiffied up quite a bit. http://holidayinnmge.com/ anyhow, booking the room only got me more interested in planning for Mousefest, so I kept on checking in on Mousefest.org and when the schedules began to appear I began looking at them, and quickly realized that RADP was not yet on the schedule, so I went over to RADP and asked and they did give me a TENTATIVE schedule as of this writing the RADP site still lists Mousefest 2008 as "coming soon", but the RADP meets are now in the Mousefest.org schedules, so you can verify the times for yourself there, I worked with the tentative schedule to come up with some sort of plan, and have been revising and addding to it almost daily since then.

I soon realized that I would NOT be able to fit everything in, the hardest thing to cut was the Christmas Party, I really wanted to catch the Rusty Cutlass pirate band, and they only play at the Pirate and Princes, and Mickeys Very Merry Christmas Parties, and I knew I wanted to do the DPN Yehaa Bob meet Thursday night, and the Mouseplanet and RADP meets on Sunday night, while getting this post together i looked again at the listings for the Christmas Party and I see that not only is the MCMVP being offered on Thursday and Sunday nights as I had thought but ALSO Friday night as well, so I may have my first change for the revision of the scedule shown above, if so then I will pass on the Ho, Ho, Ho lotta lights.

As you can see from this list I plan on arriving the day before Mousefest starts and enjoying some of Epcot, which has gotten the least time from me the past few Mousefests, I want to catch the World Showcase Players version of "A Christmas Carol" and see some of the Christams around the World stoytellers, catch some of the live entertainment at Biergarden and see an early showing of the Candlelight processional, before going to Ft. Wilderness to catch the Hoop Dee Doo revue, this will be a first for me, heck having two advance Dining reservations the same day will be a first for me too.

On Thursday, if Scott and Tracy of the Disney, Indiana podcast get into WDW early the Thursday of Mousefest then the Piano mans first or second set might be a kind of unofficial meet, then I MIGHT hear over to the contemporary for the chairmans opening, if not then I'll probably get to Aloha Isle a bit before the official opening of the Dole Whip meet, and stick around until just before Clintons laugh floor meet at 3:30. After that meet I go to my THIRD reservation of the trip, and the first where my wife will actually be joining me, dinner at Citricos! and follow that up by hanging with the DPNers at the River Roost at Port Orleans French Quarter to catch Ye-ha Bob.

Friday It looks like most of the meets I attend will be with the RADP, especially since this year All Ears decided not to do the Kilamanjaro Safaris meet. I'd like to go to festival of the Lion King, but if I do I won't have time to catch any streetmosphere at the studios, so that part of the schedule is still up in the air, if I go to the MCMVP that will probably make this a fairly late night for the THIRD night in a row, so I'll just have to leave that off just so I can get some sleep between those LATE nights.

Saturdays schedule is sketched out in Big loose blocks, Mega meet (no plans to helps work any tables yet, but who knows), RADP chat time followed, by LTAD drink around the World, I'm one of the member podcasters and I want to stick around for the whole thing, but if time permits I really want to join my buddy Lou and all my DWT friends as well, I think it is likely much of the LTAD crew may join the "DWT family reunion". Bryan Ripper's great idea to have Jelly Rolls for an end of the night closer should make for a late close to the evening.

Sunday, again there were some hard choices, but it looks like RADP meets will dominate with a smattering of others, which seems to be a running theme for me! I think that mix should make for a very fun day.

Monday will be a special day, my wife has seen probably less than half of Epcot, and many of the things I think she would like the most she still hasn't seen, full days in the park tend to be a bit much for her she likes her Disney parks in small doses, so I'm trying to pick the things I think she will enjoy the most.

Thanks to Will from the Magic Never Ends, as I doubt i would have done a Master planning Spreadsheet without his inspiration.