The Princess and the Frog; A Disney Legend Cameo

We just got back from seeing The Princess and the Frog. It was as great as it was advertised. The animation, backgrounds and story were first rate Disney. Throw that together with a great sound track and I am already looking forward for DVD. I was happy to note that Disney's tradition of head nodding toward history in their movies is alive and well. I don't think it would give anything away to mention this. It'll even make your watching this movie a little more magical. In the finale of the movie, there is a bad playing. On the base drum I read that the bands name was "The Firefly 5 Plus Lou". For those that have followed Disney History, this is a clear nod toward the Firehouse Five Plus Two and Louis the trumpet playing Aligator in the movie. The FFPT was a loose band of Disney artists back in the early 1940's that would get together to just play. They became more popular and in their hey-day, they actually released a couple of albums.

Well, after reading that on the base drum I took a closer look at the band and wouldn't you know it, there was Frank Thomas playing his heart out on Piano. It was a quick look, but it was pretty obvious it was Frank. These are the "Hidden Mickey's" of movies that just let us know that this is never just a 9-5 job for the artists that draw these great animated movies.

Go out and see The Princess and the Frog it was great. I can't wait to see it again.

One Man's Dream Jet Pictures

I had just uploaded some pictures of Walt's Office from One Man's Dream for a friend on The Walt Disney Boards. He's going to design an office around it, but I digress. While looking through the pictures I was going to give him I did a small double take at the picture to the left. On the bottom of the board there are a couple pictures, four to be precise. I had never looked closley at them due to the overwhelmingness of the entire room. But since I was taking a look again I used the zoom control and really took a look. I was expecting pictures of the WDW project or maybe some attraction shots form Disneyland. What I found was pictures of the interior of what must have been Walt's private Jet. The one that is on the Backlot Tour and that Walt took back and forth from California to Florida when he was working the WDW deal. The plane now resides on the BackLot tour with it's easy to recognize Mickey on the tail and the Plane ID known by Air Traffic Controlers at the time; N234MM. That would be N-2-3-4-Mickey-Mouse. The interior looks very luxurious for the time. A lot of wood and what seems like a lot of space.

I would throw this into the category of it's all in the details. And the moral of this story? Take a lot of pictures and make sure you look at them later. you never know what you'll find.

The DisneyShawn Blog, "The Story Behind the Story"

This is one of my favorite things to do with this blog. Being able to share information with readers and fellow Disney Gee..., I mean Disney Ner…, uh, that is Disney Enthusiasts is paramount to my goals here. I was listening to the WDW Today guys and heard a show that will change the way I view the parks from here on out. The name of this episode was ‘The Story Behind the Story’. The guys had a guest on this show and his name is Shawn Slater and his blog can be found here;

DisneyShawn .

Here is a description of Shawn from his site, “Shawn Slater has had a long and varied career with The Walt Disney Company, including stints as a writer for Walt Disney Entertainment and Walt Disney Imagineering. His love for the Disney Parks manifests itself in a passion for their history, heritage, and seemingly infinite levels of detail.”

As Shawn says in his bio, he was a writer for Walt Disney Entertainment and Imagineering. From being on numerous projects he has some great insight into the who’s, why’s and what’s of a lot of various items. The show on WDW Today was about Shawn’s involvement in the creation of Ye Olde Christmas shop in the Liberty Square section of the Magic Kingdom. Shawn goes thru the process he went thru in writing the storyline behind the Christmas shop and into some of the facts behind the story of Liberty Square itself. There is a great story here and it’s only for a retail shop. Not an attraction or ride or parade, but a store that sells Christmas items year round. True to the Pledge of the Disney Company, everything needs and has a story. And Shawn’s blog has plenty. At one point in the podcast Mike Scopa asks Shawn if they should take the story written for Le Olde Christmas store and post it outside the store so everyone can read about the story. Shawn’s answer was that basically Disney didn’t want people to come all the way to the parks just to read. The guest should be part of the story as opposed to reading the story. After listening to Shawn's stories and reading his blog, my first thought was tour book. Perhaps an extended version of the Imagineers Handbook series.

Shawn has a lot of great stories on his Blog and I can’t wait to go thru all of them. This is another of those sites that just adds so much to upcoming trips. Both in keeping myself in the Disney Attitude when I am months away from another trip and as a reference to enhance my trips to the parks. So please check out Shawn's Blog

Contempo Cafe Review - Aug 09

On our most recent trip to Walt Disney World this past August we ate at a new restaurant located at the Contemporary Hotel. The Contempo Café is the newest restaurant to open at the Contemporary and it was a pretty good find. It is a Counter Service(CS) Rest. And we had not even known it had opened until we heard about it on one of the various Disney Podcasts

we listen to. On this trip, our first day was split as we were coming into Orlando around 1:00 pm. So instead of fighting our way to the hotel and then into a park, we decided to make a nice and easy afternoon/evening for the first day. So part of our first day activities was to take a ride on the monorail around the lake and then switch monorails and on around Epcot. Well the Contempo Café fit right in with those

plans. We arrived for dinner around 6:30 and it was not that crowded. This restaurant is located in the Canyon of the Contemporary where the monorails run. The ordering computers are right beneath the

big, beautiful, and colorful Mary Blair mural. And the entrance to the restaurant is right next to the entrance to Chef Mickey’s. We even had a mini character meet as we got to say hello to Donald and Goofy who were hanging out at the Chef Mickey entrance. The Café eating area is as open as the rest of the Canyon at the

Contemporary is. Since the entire canyon area is open, you only have 4 foot walls denoting where you walked into the restaurant. As you walk in, there is a menu posted directly in front of you with all the restaurants offerings. This CS serves breakfast lunch and dinner from 8:00am thru 12:00am. I direct you to the menu at Allears.net as theirs is very complete and accurate. There are many offerings from sandwiches to flatbreads. Burgers and salads and even the requisite kid’s meals, Pizza/Burger/Nuggets. We ordered off of the computerized kiosks and received a receipt with a number on it to pick up at the window when the order was completed. The computers were the only bad part of the experience. We had some issues navigating and getting it to recognize finger touches. I mentioned

this to a Cast Member as I am a computer guy and hate to see a good thing such as a computerized menu ordering system not work to potential. He said they were getting ready to re-load software to these machines to fix some bugs. Not the term to use in a restaurant perhaps, but maybe by time you go the kinks, a much more restaurant friendly term, would be out of the system. The kids had Chicken Nugget and Cheeseburger kid’s meals and I had the

Honey Lime Chicken sandwich served with Green Bean Salad. It was early in the trip and chicken was not a bad word at dinner yet. The entire meal was prepared and out in 5 minutes.

The food was all very good. Moist chicken and a great sauce was all it took for me. The kids had no complaints either. I was about to say we had a very peaceful meal, but in that location it was really anything but peaceful.

As we watched the monorails race by and people running to get to their ressies at Chef Mickey’s our world, at that moment, after a day of traveling, was relaxing. In a nutshell this could be considered just another resort Counter Service restaurant, but with the added attraction of the location, this place was a Thumbs Up experience for us. Next time you might be staying at the Magic Kingdom hotels or taking a break from the parks, the Contempo Café is a great stop to recharge your mind and body.

Thanks to WDWMagic.com, Waltsbasement.yuku.com and Hotels.about.com for help with pics.

Happy Birthday Walt Disney World!!!

To celebrate the Birthday of the Happiest Place on Earth I present a link to a video made by the Disney Parks Blog. I am still exploring this site after hearing about it on the Walt Disney Boards forum. This is a day in the life of the Magic Kingdom presented in a whole other way. They use a process called Tilt-Shift Video that makes everything and everbody look like toy models. By taking, I would guess, thousands of pictures and putting them together they have created a very beautiful look at a day at the Magic Kingdom. There are a couple really nice shots of all of the Disney Transportation and really inspiring video of the Spectromagic parade. WOW!

A Model Day at the Magic Kingdom

Enjoy the video and let others know that it's that good.

Walt Disney, the Great Educator

I have the privilege to digitize interviews of Disney Studio employees and their relationships with Walt. This effort is part of the Walt's People series of books put together by Didier Ghez. By doing this I come across the greatest information. The latest interview was one of Carl Nater. Carl was a production coordinator during the World War II days at the studios. Later on he was President of the Disney Studio 16mm division that made mostly educational films for private companies such as GE and General Motors. He gave a very specific and clear narration of his years working with Walt Disney in this interview. He worked closely with Walt when the studio was spending 90% of it's time making training and public service films for the armed forces. Mr. Nater had many stories about Walt and the beginnings of the Studio's interest in educational films.

In the interviews I transcribe and digitize, there is always a part of my brain listening to the stories I read and trying to see how they fit into the life and achievements of Walt Disney. It's like a jigsaw puzzle that gets more and more complete as you add each piece. Carl's stories were very amusing and more like memories as he was speaking into a tape recorder. This interview was given in 1972. Over all, there was this constant theme of Walt's push to educate as well as entertain. In Nater's words about Walt, "I'm convinced he would have been very, very pleased if he had gone down in history, if he had been known as one of the great educators as well as being one of the great entertainers."

Reading Carl's stories and thinking of Walt and education made me reflect on a famous Walt Disney quote, "I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained." At first look, this quote seems to say that Walt had decided that it was better to entertain than educate. But a story that Carl told says different. In the early days of World War II right after Pearl Harbor, the armed forces were desperate to get good quality training films created to help train the American fighting man making his way from civilian life to a fighting soldier or sailor. The Studio's first project was to work on the subject of aircraft identification. The Storymen working on this project were at the mercy of the military as to how to make these kind of films. After-all, Disney Studio never made a Military training film before. All through the process the Disney guys had attempted to add hints of humor to make this dry information easier to watch and learn from. The military always squashed these efforts relying on the philosophy that since this information would save the men's lives, they would pay close attention even if it was dull. At one production meeting after Walt had reviewed the work on Air Identification, he made an observation. Walt said, "I'm just convinced it will put people to sleep, maybe you could lighten this thing up a little bit by putting Donald Duck into the story". From Carl's description you would have thought the Army/Navy officers were having heart attacks and strokes. Walt deferred to them with the thinking that after all, these military men were the experts on training there own troops. Well the movie was finished and delivered and was a very boring snoozefest. As the war went on the Studio and the military got better at these kind of movies. By 1943 as the war was beginning to turn towards the favor of the allies, the BigWigs in Washington invited the filmmakers that had been working on the war effort to a big dinner banquet to thank them for their help. As the night went on, awards were given out and they had gotten to the time of the night where they showed a reel of the worst movies...as a joke. Well, Carl watched the clip from the Aircraft Identification film they had made and he agreed, it was a bomb. Then one of the two high ranking navy officers that were sitting next to him leans over to him and says, "You guys really should have added a little humor to that. Maybe have Donald Duck or one of the Disney Characters liven it up a bit." Go figure. But it does give some credence to Walt's famous quote. By adding a little humor, or a little action via Donald or Mickey the audience would be sure to watch and most of all, pay attention.

Another item I picked out of this interview was about a term I have heard and I'm sure you have heard over and over but not as much in today's world. Did you ever hear Mickey Mouse used as an adjective? A phrase like, "What kind of Mickey Mouse business is this?" or maybe something that was complicated was this, "Mickey Mouse kind of thing." Carl tells another amusing story that perhaps shows the birthplace of this phrase. In the early 1940's as the studio was working with the military, they would often have crazed officers needing to make films to train a certain skill as quickly as possible. There were times the Writers and Story people would begin working before there was even a contract. Getting that contract was tough and getting paid usually tougher. And even when they did there were issues. Carl goes on to explain how that Disney did their books a little differently and would add expenses on that had nothing to do with that particular project, but costs to keep the company working. You would see a general cost for the administrators in Anaheim and the distributors in NY and the Sales people in South America and so on. It did make sense... Well it didn't take too long before the government auditors were coming in and digging through this odd type of billing system. After a long day Carl was again explaining to the lead auditor, a fellow named Ballinger, how their system worked. After listening and trying to understand, the auditor turns to Carl and says, "That system you've got over here, that's the darndest system of Mickey Mouse bookkeeping I ever heard of in my life. That's really Mickey Mouse bookkeeping." After the meeting that story burned through the studios to big laughs. Everyone was telling that story and adding their own Mickey Mouse ideas. Carl had a pretty good feeling that it just spread to the rest of the world from there.

One last thought I took away from this interview was Walt's true love for Education. As one that had limited formal education, he realized the value of it and felt none should be left out. The problem was there was no money in educational films. In order to make a good film there were certain minimal costs before even adding effects or advertising. Educational films would never make back that initial minimal cost so they were not made as much as they should have been. Walt, due to low budgets could not make them they way he thought they should be made. Some times there are ways around the money though. Walt would try sneaking an educational movie in as a short once in a while. Carl remembers, "A good example of what I'm talking about is 'Donald in Mathmagic Land', which he made. He professed that he was making it for theatres, and he did make it, and it was running in theatres, and it bombed out in theatres. It didn't do very well in the theatres, but it became a classic film in the field of education."

Carl Nater might not be a big name in the history of the studios, but he does have stories to tell. I have not even scratched the surface here. You can read more stories from Carl in an upcoming volume of Didier Ghez's Walt's People.

Thanks to Didier for use of the interview as a source and to Thelostdisney on Youtube for the Donald Link.

Update: Some of you might know that I am working as a Technology Teacher in a K-4 school now. How is this for a coincidence, I was asked to help out with getting a VCR to work. There is a Sub teacher in today and she needs to show...this is great...she needed to show Donald in Mathmagic Land. And I just posted this last night. Holy Crap that's just a little bit of a spooky coincidence.

I went to the D23 expo this Weekend and Never Left my House

Over the past couple weeks excitement has been rising of the D23 expo that is being help in Anaheim this year. I was impressed with the long list of presentations and promised vendors. The only bummer is that I was not going. A trip to California was not in the budget. As I came to grips with this I heard a great one-liner from Lou Mongello on his show, the WDWRadio Podcast. He was going to the D23 expo and he was going to try to broadcast live from the expo. I figured that this would be a couple of minutes here or a couple of minutes there, but from the first test on Wednesday, Lou has been broadcasting live from the Expo floor non-stop from opening to closing each day. I have watched a couple hours of each day and I am watching Day 4 right now and cannot believe how addicting and fun this has been. Yesterday was unbelievable when the Tweets were coming out of the Parks Update Conference and the announcement of Star Tours 2.0 and The Fantasyland makeover. We've been seeing that blueprint that "leaked out" a couple of months ago. Today was the Pixar announcements of Cars 2 and Rapunzel and we are waiting to hear about any Muppets announcements. Right now we are taking a walk to the Lego exhibit. Lou has had a lot of help with Becci M. from MouseFanTravel. Justin Muchoney has been going to presentations and reporting back. This whole WDWRadioLive.com event could not have been better if it was planned. And right now we asked our legs, Marc, to take us to see Push the Talking Trash Can on display and he did. At one point there were 1,800 people all watching at once. This was very addictive and almost like being there. I can only hope, and I will suggest that this become an ongoing broadcast idea for various events. At one point Marc passed Ricky Brigante from the great Inside the Magic Podcast and Attractions magazine. I can also see Ricky doing this next year or at one point soon. Boy did he and his friends look tired at the end of this event. Could we get away doing something like this in the park? A live walk-around with back and forth comments? Must look into and report back.

The online chatters watching Lou's live feed gave themselves, me included, the name Box People. We the Box People are planning more events. There was even a Face Book Group out there for the Box People. GO BOXERS! This was and will be great for the rest of the night. The Imagineers and Pixar in the Parks Presentation is still in the works. I am still watching as I am writing this as I scan and crop the pictures above of Becci and Lou. The first picture is Lou, the second Beci and the third, Big Momma...don't ask. A great Thanks goes out to the Twitter Folks I had followed at the D23 Expo; Inside the Magic(Ricky), Touring Plans.com(Not sure who was there), Otisney(Scott Otis a reoccurring visitor and Of course Lou Mongello. Thank you for a truly great experience.

A Hidden Mickey Goes Away

I have mentioned in the past the fun of looking for Hidden Mickey's is an extra boost to a visit to Walt Disney World. Just in case you don't know, a hidden mickey is a mickey head shape hidden in some part of the parks or resort. Here is something for you to try. It is, I believe, the biggest hidden mickey and it can be seen from Google Earth or some similar satellite picture site. Find the Magic Kingdom and zoom down only a little south of the parking lot. You can't miss it, right inside the racetrack. I think it is a cool connection you can get knowing that the Imagineers have added these items for you to find. We just discovered that even though hidden mickey's are always added, they can also be removed. One of our first hidden mickeys we had found before we even knew what hidden mickey's were is while you are descending the Swiss Family Tree House stairs, you can look over the edge and look down at the families dining table and see the most perfect hidden mickey. If you notice there is a pineapple between the ears. We actually called this a Hidden Minnie. Either way, it's gone. We were there in Mid Aug. and as we were walking down we could not believe our eyes...all gone. No Hidden Minnie or even mickey, just another table setting. So now we need to find where they hid that Hidden Mickey. We can only hope they moved it to somewhere else in the tree-house. So in your next trip to Walt Disney World, keep your eyes open for those hidden mickeys that are there or were there. Thanks to Steve and the Hidden Mickey's Guide for the before picture. I could not find ours.

Walt's People, Volume 8 has been Released

A friend of mine, Didier Ghez of the Disney History Blog, just released the 8th volume in his series of books called Walt's People. Didier collects the best interviews of the men and women that worked with Walt Disney in the studios with animation and in the parks with imagineering. I have transcribed and read many of these interviews and it's as if you are there with them as they tell their wonderful and not-so wonderful stories of working with Walt. Either way their stories and tales are an incredible window into the world of the Disney Studios from early into the years after Walt's death. Check out this series of books, you will not be disappointed. You can purchase volume 8 at the Xlibris web site.