The Gray Tray Lottery at Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe

One of the things I really like about WDW is the way they can take the simplest thing and make it great.  This past October we discovered how they can make a mistake magical by doing a thing that we did not have a clue to.  Totally random.
We were eating at Cosmic Rays Starlight Café, this is the place with Sonny Eclipse and his great show.  I ordered my food, don't forget to go on either side of the register, and went up to the counter to wait for it.  Today it was this crazy new creation, pulled-pork on a cheeseburger.  Yeah, that was on the menu and it was great.
So as I'm waiting I can see the tray getting loaded up and then brought over to me.  And at this point it's just a normal everyday tray in my eyes.  I'd have to say I did not even notice it other than to register that I was not carrying the food and drink in my hands.  As I was turning, the Cast Member was holding out a Mickey straw.  You know the type, the plastic straw in the shape of a Mickey head.  Like when you add 70 cents to your drink price at most counter services, you get it.

Well, as it turns out, I had won the Gray Tray Lottery.  Out of the hundreds of brown or blue trays it seems that there is only 1 gray tray.  The customer that gets that tray also gets the lottery prize of one Mickey straw.  Very cool!  It's a small thing but on a hot, long day, it's nice to get that kind of surprise.  I'm thinking probably one of 3 things happened to start this fun play with guests. 

• Just a mistake in the delivery of new trays when they unpacked them. One the wrong color.
• Or, a guest just walked one over from another restaurant.  Maybe from the Lunching pad? 
• Or, the marketing machine is a lot bigger and smarter than we think and this was a directive from upper mgmt. that was determined for $0.00, you have a chance to make a guest smile.

Whichever way it is

May you someday, get the Gray Tray.

The Ice Cream Maker and Star Wars...Yes, Star Wars

We were down in the parks in late June and had a great time checking out the Star Wars Launch Bay.  There were so many things to see in there.  Movie props and costumes and awesome artwork.  The detail was out of this world...literally.  Look at what they use for the legs of the Video Game tables.  Yep, that's a Power Droid.

 

 

As you walk through to the store area on your left is a screened in "closet" that holds a lot of Knick Knacks from the Star Wars Universe.

 

As you let your eyes wander over this area you see the head of one of the robots on Star Tours.  Boba Fett's Rocket pack.  A thermal Detonator, C3PO's arm and more.  What I could not make sense of was the white item on the top right shelf.  Tough to see from the above pictures, but look below.

 

 



 

For those children of the 60's and 70's, that item is none other than a handy dandy electric ice cream maker.  I showed the kids and we had a chuckle about the Imagineers trying to slip one past us.  Well, Quinn just sent me a text that shows that the DHS Imagineers are wiser and greater than we can possibly imagine.  I can keep talking, but watch the video below, it explains how great this prop is.

 

 

Holy S#*T that is beyond cool.  As you saw, that was Willrow Hood running to get that Ice Cream maker to safety.  Hats off to the Imagineers at DHS and to the story writers at Lucasfilms for creating such a complete backstory for a guy we saw for just 2 seconds in a run-by scen.  Well Done..