Donald's Dino-Bash

Donald's Dino-Bash coming to Disney's Animal Kingdom near you.



Zz.

Disney's Animal Kingdom 20th Anniversary Celebration

Happy 20th Birthday, Disney's Animal Kingdom!



Zz.

Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade Trivia

So here is a fun Disney trivia. Which current US Congressman designed and built the parade controller for the Main Street Electrical Parade?

Check out minute 5:50 in the video below for the answer:



And in case you are not aware of this, he is the only physicist in the US congress right now.

Zz.

Paint The Night Parade Opening Night

Opening night of Paint the Night parade at Disney's California Adventure.



Is it me, or does this reminds me of Spectromagic parade at MK that I miss so much?

Zz.

Pandora Conservation Initiative Utility Suit

What the hey.......?





They are taking this waaaaay too seriously! 😂

Zz.

Millennium Falcon Simulator Ride Will Have 8 GPUs To Run

It appears that the new Millennium Falcon Simulator ride being planned at Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studies will have a beast of a processing unit.

Each and every implementation of the sim will be powered by a Boxx workstation running eight Nvidia Quadro P6000 GPUs connected via Quadro SLI, so this definitely won’t be something available to consumers. Disney had to build multi-GPU workflows, which they helped Epic Games integrate into the company’s Unreal Engine which will continue to use that code moving forward.

I know that something like this can be quite thrilling. I've seen how popular the new Flight of Passage at the Pandora land can get. But I can't help hoping that there would be an E-ticket PHYSICAL ride, rather than a simulator. There seems to be a reliance on too many of those lately.

Zz.

WDW Resorts To Charge For Parking

This came out of nowhere.

Disney resorts at WDW will start charging guests to park their vehicles at the resorts.

The amount will vary, depending on the level of accommodations. At what Disney refers to as a value resort, which includes the All-Star hotels and Pop Century, the charge will be $13 per night. For the moderate resorts (such as Port Orleans or Coronado Springs), it will be $19 a night. On the deluxe end of the scale – including Animal Kingdom Lodge, the Yacht and Beach resorts and the monorail hotels – it’s $24 per night.

The report does not say whether this applies to DVC resorts, DVC members, and passholders. I'm guessing that it will not, since DVC members and passholders can already park for free even at the theme parks.

Zz.

Mobile Food Ordering Adds Dining Plan

I reviewed the MyDisney Experience park app's mobile food ordering service at WDW a couple of months ago after we tried it during our December 2017 trip. We loved it, and can't think of any reason anyone would not want to use it for ordering at many of the counter services at the parks and at a couple of places in Disney Springs. The only significant part that was missing from this ability is the use Disney Dining Plan with the mobile service.

Well now, with the recent update of the app this past week, it appears that they have included the ability to use the Dining Plan to order food via the mobile app. I fully expected this because they tend to roll out the app in stages as they figure out its capabilities, etc. So it is not surprising that the Dining Plan is now included. Not that we will use this feature since we seldom get the Dining Plan, but I know that this was a common question and feature request.

So folks, if you have a smart phone, there really is no reason to not download the app, and if you're planning on eating at one of the quick service places at a WDW theme park, you'll be out of your mind to not use the mobile food ordering feature.

Zz.

"Christopher Robin" Trailer

Disney has released the new "Christopher Robin" trailer. Oh, the nostalgia!



Zz.

"Coco" Was Almost A Full-Blown Musical

Lee Unkrich revealed that "Coco" almost became Pixar's first full-blown musical.

Although those half-dozen tunes didn’t make the film, you can hear several of them as bonus features on the DVD/Blu-Ray release of “Coco” that arrived Tuesday. Hearing those artful songs might prompt the question: Why didn’t they make the movie?

“I pivoted for a few reasons, the main one being that the film felt like it was trying to be something different than what we were trying to force it to be,” says Unkrich, who worked on “Coco” for about six years after his Oscar-winning direction of “Toy Story 3.”

And as he has stated, it will be a bit ironic to have musical numbers from the very beginning, considering that any form of music was banned from the Rivera family.

Definitely looking forward to hearing the rest of the tunes that didn't make it into the film. Still, with all the music already written, who is going to bet against Disney bringing "Coco" to Broadway?

Zz.

Wreck It Ralph 2 - Official Teaser Trailer

Disney has released a teaser trailer for Wreck It Ralph 2, which will be released Thanksgiving this year. The trailer is histerical!



Zz.

Disney Easter Eggs at Hallmark

Found these Disney Easter Eggs ornaments at our Hallmark store.

They are ridiculously adorable!

Zz.

The Long Wait Times For "Flight of Passage"

This Orlando Sentinel article highlights the popularity of "Flight of Passage" at Disney's Animal Kingdom, and the fact that the wait times have not diminished, reaching to more than 6 hours recently.

Visitors who did not have FastPasses waited in stand-by lines an average of about 2 hours and 15 minutes in June, according to Testa’s numbers. He bases those on a rolling average, which helps eliminate outliers, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., the busiest time of day, he said.

Through Touring Plans, Testa’s 140,000 paying subscribers (plus half a million who use his website for free) feed him data. He’s collected 20 million data points to guide his analysis, he said.

Fast forward to Dec. 16, a Saturday, about 6 p.m., the wait time hit 6½ hours — the highest Testa has ever recorded, beating the previous 305-minute wait for Soarin’ Over California at Epcot.

Yowzah!

We managed to go on "Flight of Passage" twice during our last trip in Dec. 2017. It is certainly a spectacular attraction. But is it worth a wait that long? It appears that many people standing in line for hours seem to think so.

But the Na'vi River ride? Not worth the wait more than 20 minutes.

Zz.

Contemporary bungalows

The modern Contemporary resort seen from the even newer Polynesian bungalows

Morimito’s

The inside of Iron Chef Morimoto's restaurant at Disney Springs

Gourmet Donald at Festival of the Arts

Donald is sometimes feeling deconstructed so he is having Deconstructed BLT and a DC strawberry cheesecake. The BLT is pork belly, egg and tomato jam.

Donald at the Painter’s Palatte

Don is eyeing a gourmet appetizer at the Festival of the Arts. The egg with candied bacon was especially good.

Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway

More news out of D23 Expo Japan. New details on the attraction replacing The Great Movie Ride at DHS has been released.

"On the attraction, the fun begins when you see the premiere of a new cartoon short with Mickey and Minnie getting ready for a picnic," Disney said. "As they head out, they drive alongside a train and find out that the engineer is Goofy. Then, one magical moment lets you step into the movie and on Goofy's train for a wacky, wild ride."

This is interesting because it will be the first ride at WDW that features Mickey and Minnie (not counting Philharmagic, which is a show and not a ride).

Let's hope it is not another lame attraction such as the Na'vi River ride at Pandora.

Zz.

Epcot's "Guardians of the Galaxy" Coaster Will Be Massive

The big news that came out of the D23 Expo in Japan is that the "Guardians of the Galaxy" roller coaster ride at Epcot will be one of the largest indoor coasters in the world.

With the “Guardians of the Galaxy”-inspired coaster, we’re going big. This one-of-a-kind family attraction will be one of the world’s longest enclosed roller coasters when it’s added to Future World at Epcot. It’ll feature a unique story currently being created by Walt Disney Imagineering and include a new innovative ride system that’s guaranteed to “wow” guests.

OK, wow!

I hope they're not doing to wait till WDW's 50th Anniversary to finish it.

Zz.

Dragon in Blue

Seen somewhere at EPCOT. Inspired by Festival of the Arts.
Part of a treasure hunt type game so exact location can’t be revealed