WDW Radio 40 Hour live show from Walt Disney World

THEY DID IT! This weekend the WDWRadio Podcast, hosted by Lou Mongello, performed 40 hours worth of charity work. Those 40 hours were consecutive and tough, but it was for the best of causes..."For the Children". Lou and his friend Beci Mahnken of MEI and Mousefan Travel brought us a live 40 hour show from Walt Disney World. Lou came up with this idea months ago as a Tribute to the 40th Anniversary of the opening of WDW's Magic Kingdom. Lou and company started at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning and went through to Sunday night at midnight. While this marathon of Park Touring was going on, his site hosted an auction of 40 items. People could bid on any of the items and that money would donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America through Lou's Dream Team Project.

These past 40 hours saw Lou, Beci and their band of followers move from the Magic Kingdom, to Epcot and the Boardwalk and Food & Wine, DHS and an nice look at the All-Star Vacation home. This was also a special occasion in that we saw technology allow this event to be watched globally. Through Ustream Lou was able to broadcast live for virtually all of those 40 hours. Granted, there were some issues with bandwidth in the parks and battery life. (Heh, Picked up two new charging spots in Epcot, American Adventure and Lotus Blossom)

There is another group of people to be thanked for this event however and they did not even leave their homes. The Box People who bid on the auction items and watched and talked to Lou and his friends over the last 40 hours are to be thanked in a large way for this event. The Box People came about when Lou first began using his laptop to stream live video from some of the events he gets to go to. The birth of the Box People officially happened at the first ever D23 convention two years ago. Follow this link to a previous Blog post of mine about the birth of the Box People. Ever since then we have been attending all of Lou's events.

This time Lou and the Box People out-did themselves. At the end of the night, Lou announced that they had raised $17, 231 for the Make a Wish Foundation. I would expect that number to exceed $20,000 due to donations outside the auction.

Lou and Beci had plenty of help to stay awake. A number of faces and voices we've heard from the show. Scott, Glenn, Tony, Mike, Vicki, and plenty more.

GREAT JOB GUYS!!! Now how about that 2012 announcement?