Hello again everyone. No excuses. Just no time to update. I’ve been bad, I know.
Lets get on with it.
DisneylandNews
Its been awhile so let me catch you up on some of the rumblings out in Anaheim
Plans for July 17th continue to trickle in, but the one constant has been that there really isn’t going to be anything major that day. The governor will be there, along with Disney brass and co-ambassadors Art Linkletter and Julie Andrews. But aside from that, the day’s events will be on the skimpy side. They plan to hand out 75,000 cupcakes along with golden mouse ears for everyone. There will be a ceremony in front of the castle and in town square. At 4:30pm, the time that Disneyland was dedicated, they will play Walt Disney’s dedication speech over the loudspeakers. And that’s it.
Unfortunately, it seems that all the major razzle-dazzle was used on May 5th with little to no regard that Disneyland's actual birthday is July 17th. So what to do? It’s too late to plan anything major now and they still haven’t decided whether or not they will allow people to camp out outside the gates as people are promising to do. July 17th, 2005 may prove to be just as chaotic as July 17, 1955 was! At least we’ll have Space Mountain to look forward to. ;-)
Speaking of which, Space Mountain is scheduled to soft open this 4th of July weekend. Because the 50th Anniversary is such a smash success, the “Rock It” Mountain version of this ride will NOT debut this year. Instead, Disneyland management will hold off until summer of next year to help the second half of the 50th. That, along with a newly reprogrammed drop sequence for Tower of Terror over in California Adventure, should help give attendance a boost next year.
In other attraction news, Pirates of the Caribbean will be getting a facelift very soon. The original plan was to close Pirates in the fall for a quickie 2 month refurbishment as they touched up show scenes and went through the maintenance motions. But now with new management at the helm, Walt Disney Imagineering would LOVE to bring this ride into the 21st Century. But because the extent of the changes planned they need more than a measly 8 weeks. So the plan now is to close Pirates next Winter/Spring for approx. 4 months and really give it a makeover. What kind of changes? They plan to incorporate more of the movie elements into the ride, along with new effects and possibly a whole new storyline. We’ll see how it goes. What wouldbe really cool (But highly unlikely) is if they could do what they are planning to do in the <st1:place>Hong Kong</st1:place> park. That version of “Pirates” will be more of a water coaster type ride, complete with a HUGE drop at the end of the ride (ala SplashMountain). However, a lot of the new effects going into the Hong Kong park will be in the Anaheim version so we’ll at least be getting something here.
Plug time: Don’t forget to “tune” into the Drill the week of July 11th. All that week I will be publishing my multi-part Making of Disneyland tribute. I’ve been working on it for a few weeks and I think you’ll all enjoy it. You’ll read a lot of the official history along with some things you don’t hear about how Disneyland came to be.
So that should do it for today. Hopefully it doesn’t take til July 11th for me to update again! I’ll be back tomorrow with more newsworthy stuff. Until then..
DQ
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