Disney Challenged!

I read this interesting post over at The Disney Blog. John Frost talks about a nonprofit company going after Disney to clean up some of the chemicals they use. Granted, this is worthwhile, but John talks about the fact that a lot of nonprofits pick a cause and go after a large company simply to get their name in the news.

I like John's comments in the third paragraph:
If the Center's investigation is accurate (and the letter from Disney seem to indicate it is) then there is room for improvement on Disney's part. I'd love to see some sort of pressure put on the providers of these 'toxic' cleaners to offer green alternatives. I'd rather see CHEJ praising Disney for its work so far and going to the government hand in hand asking for better regulations to eliminate toxic cleaners.

Even though Disney can stand up for themselves, it is nice to see someone point the issue in the more appropriate direction.

You can read about Disney's Environmentality on their corporate website.

If you have ever stayed in a Disney Hotel, you probably have seen the little placard that Disney puts out with Jiminy Cricket on it. It mentions that you can reuse your linens instead of having mousekeeping wash them every day. Also, several books I have in my collection talk about how Disney reclaims water and uses it throughout WDW for landscaping.

So...there.

Early Disney Photo's (Part II)

You can read about my first day at Walt Disney World here.

We continue our story with the Disney-MGM Studios. Specifically Star Tours. Besides the Haunted Mansion, this was the ride I was most excited about. Back in the day (1994), the Early/Extra Magic Hour was called Surprise Morning. They rotated the parks on a specific schedule and people really did not take advantage of them. Ah, those were the days. Anyway, Sunday was the Surprise Morning for the Disney-MGM Studios.

We arrived at the Studios a little after 8:00am. If I remember correctly, the park was scheduled to be open at 9:00am. For some reason, I remember the song Mr. Jones by the Counting Crows playing on the rental car that morning. But I could be wrong; it may have been another day we were there. Needless to say, that song reminds me of that time. Warmth. I remember that it was very warm in the mornings in Orlando.

There was no one in the park that morning. To the right and above, you can see my first view of the Star Tours attraction. I vividly remember the kid and his parents walking in front of us. The kid with the baseball hat and blue backpack. And yes, I am wearing a dark blue t-shirt. It was hot (the weather--not me). We followed the kid and his family through the line and rode the attraction. What can I say? It was great. We visited Endor and in the traditional Disney storytelling fashion--something went wrong! When we left the ride the Star Wars fanfare was playing (you know, the music they play over the credits) and it was really exciting. Then we walked into the coolest thing in the world: a Star Wars gift shop!

I know, you're laughing, right? Well, you have to remember that back in 1994, there was not a lot of Star Wars merchandise. Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn had just been published in 1991. Before that, the last Star Wars books, merchandise or toys had been released in the middle 1980's. Needless to say, Teresa let me gawk for a moment and then we went to the front of the building to ride it again.

And again.

And again.

And again. I think we stopped after the fourth ride to meander and shop. At least I did. This is another one of those moments that I remember. Picking out the books, toys and paraphernalia--trying to decide what to get Stacy, Andy and Matthew. And what I wanted. I picked out a book for myself by Stephen Sansweet called Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible. I consider it one of the first books of my collection. When we finally had finished, we had spent over $400.00. Whew! Talk about spending too much! But it was Star Wars.

I do remember that the cast member gave us a lot of attitude about shipping the items back to our hotel room. Which was really weird. We just spent a lot of money...and we were at Disney! Actually, she was the least friendly cast member we ran across during that first trip. I believe that we ended up riding it at least one more time before Teresa told me we had to do something else. I don't remember anything else about the day. I know we rode other things, like the Great Movie Ride and Muppet Vision 3D, but I can't recall exactly.

I have been able to take Connery on Star Tours in 2004 and 2007. It is one of his favorite rides and we tend to ride it two or three times while we are at Walt Disney World. Next time, Sumner should be big enough to ride it. We can only hope! On the left is Connery with a clone trooper at one of the Star Wars Weekends in 2004. The picture on the left is Connery waiting in line for Star Tours in 2006. Two cast members told him that he had on a cool shirt. He loved it.

A Fond Farewell...

Over at the Disney Blog, John Frost has posted about the closing of L'Originale Alfredo Di Roma in the Italy Pavilion at Epcot. He raises some excellent thoughts about why this beloved and cherished restaurant is closing. The biggest? The Disney Dining Plan.

Personally, I experienced this restaurant in 1994, 1997, 2000 and 2001. We didn't visit it in 2004 or 2006 for different reasons. At each dining opportunity, I always ordered the Fettuccine Alfredo, the signature dish. I found it to be absolutely perfect and ruined me for life. (Just like my wife's lasagna.)

We didn't visit the restaurant in 2004 because my mom didn't want to spend a lot of time in restaurants or eating heavy meals (during that May trip, we did eat at Sci-Fi, Prime Time, and Olivia's). When we visited Epcot, we ate at the Electric Umbrella and the Rose & Crown (for my Dad).

In 2006, we did the Dining Plan (DDP). It was just us (me, wife and both kids) and it really wasn't worth it for us. Our kids are very finicky and they had just changed the DDP kid's menus. Honestly, we were shocked. Our first meal was at the Rose & Crown and there was nothing on the menu that either one of our children would eat. I am not kidding. We begged the waitress to make a grilled cheese and they couldn't accommodate us.

The rest of the week, as far as dining was concerned, went very downhill. Sure, we saved money and ate in restaurants we would never have tried. But, we ate way too much and left a lot of food on our plates. We talked about it the whole trip. We looked at the menu and discussed what we would have shared to save money. We decided with the kids, it would have saved so much time and effort to eat all of our meals at counter service locations. Our favorite meal of the trip was at Pinocchio's Village Hause in the Magic Kingdom.

I started this post to commiserate and celebrate Alfredo's. I have digressed, but I always do that when I mention the DDP. Here are some shots of our 2001 visit to Epcot. (the shot at the top of the post is of my mom and dad.)


This is Connery trying to take a nap...or us trying to get him to take a nap.






Here is my youngest brother, Stacy, in front of the fountain.








Connery entertaining himself in the lobby of the restaurant.








Good food, good times. Alfredo's, we will miss you. I do wonder what other restaurants at Epcot might suffer the same fate.

Blog Review

2719 Hyperion

I ran across this blog a few weeks ago after it was mentioned on the belated Mousetunes Podcast. I have spent the past few weeks digesting it. If you are a fan of Walt Disney World, you have to add this blog to your aggregator ( I still like bloglines).

What drove me to the site was the wonderful interview with Jeff on the Mousetunes podcast for January 28, 2007. Jeff and Lou (the host) spent time discussing the Muppet Vision 3D attraction--specifically the queue areas. This is one of my favorite attractions and the Muppet Show was my favorite show growing up. Hearing Jeff and Lou laugh and discuss the secrets, jokes and insider information was one of the best segments of the podcast series.

When I got home, I immediately checked the show notes for the blog site and was amazed at the content.

At first, I was drawn in by the fantastic pictures. Due to the detail, I assumed that Jeff was an Orlando native. When I checked his profile, I was astounded to see that he lives in North Carolina (the home state of yours, truly).

Once I delved into the blog (I started with the first post and read backwards), I was pleasantly surprised to see that Jeff was not just a fanatic, but he cared about Walt Disney World. He didn't gush or lambaste...he was somewhere in the middle. He obviously had done his research and has spent many years following the Walt Disney Company.

I liken Jeff's blog to an online course about Disney. He has articles detailing classic cartoons and characters, extinct attractions and attractions that were never built. My absolute favorite section of Jeff's blog deal with the small details of the theme parks that you might miss as you sprint to Splash Mountain or the Tower of Terror. Whether it is a sign, and architectural detail or a hidden element.

I applaud Jeff and thank him for the work that he is doing.

LibraryThing Rocks!

I have been using LibraryThing with my job and really liked the ease of use. We used it to display new books on our Library blog.

I have been wanting to create a catalog of all of my Disney, Star Wars and other favorite books for several months. I signed up for an account (which had to be the easiest registration ever) and started entering the ISBN's right away. Since a few of my books were only sold at Disney theme parks, they did not have an ISBN or other identifying mark (like a publication date). I was able to enter 60 titles last night and it took me about an hour. That was in between changing a diaper, eating supper and keeping the boys from getting toys everywhere.

I am still exploring the power of LibraryThing. I added a widget to the left hand column of this blog that will display random titles from the books that I have entered. I can tell it to only show books with certain tags (or keywords) or by specific authors.

I hope to start entering my Star Wars titles next.