It's all in the Details: Magic Kingdom:Train Bulletin

I was going through pictures from our last trip and came across his picture. This is found in the right tunnel as you pass underneath the Main Street Train station in the Magic Kingdom in Florida. He name Kimball caught my eye at the top. I knew it was Ward Kimball and he really liked trains. So I took the picture thinking I could check it out later how it related to Ward and Disney. Well, it's four months later and as I was going through our last trip pictures i found this one again. I had some time so popped open Google and started my searches.

Grizzly Bear Flats...Kimbal Canyon: Like I said, the Kimball name caught my eye and it just so happens that Ward's private backyard railroad was known as the Grizzly Flats Railroad. Here is another link to a series of posts of Ward and Tom Snyder at Grizzly Flats for the Tomorrow Show. After finding Ward's railroad I pressed on. Hickory...Siddons City: This is a reference to Lem Siddons in the Disney Live action movie, 'Follow Me, Boys!' Fred MacMurray played Lem Siddons a WW1 vet travelling with a jazz band. The band passes through the town of Hickory and Lem decides this is the place he wants to settle down. He ends up as the Boy Scout Troop Leader. Kurt Russell is also in this.

The names of Medfield...Rutledge were real familiar. Medfield is the High School the Absent Minded Professor taught at. Rutledge was the opposing high school the the 'High Jumping' Medfield basket-ball players jumped all over. The next listing, Harrington Hills...Pendergast Plains was another obscure reference until I looked it up. Harrington is the name of the town the Pollyanna came to, to live with her Aunt Polly in the movie Pollyanna. Pendergast refers to Mr. Pendergast the cranky old guy in town with the hidden heart of gold that Pollyanna be-friends. This was a faded favorite from when I was young.

The last set of names on the board are Bullwhip...Griffon Gulch. This was the out of left-field reference of tonight's searches. I found it quick enough but have never heard of the movie, 'The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin'. This starred Roddy McDowall as a gentleman's Butler forced to be polite in the Wild West to survive. This also stared Susanne Pleshette and Karl Malden.

This whole post is another example of why we are able to back to the parks over and over. It seems like you can always find something new to catch your attention.

MICECAST: Candid Disney discussion with an attitude

The Micecast Podcast has been around for a while, but I have only been listening for the last couple of months. I figured they mostly talked about Disneyland so how interesting can it be, I don’t plan on getting out there anytime soon. I was wrong. These guys are great. With Mike, Greg and sometimes Richard, the Micecast podcast is 1.5-2.5 hour discussion about all things Disney but mostly Disneyland. All things are available for discussion up to and including other Disney Podcasts. With 2 former and one current Disneyland employees, they have a lot of credibility in their opinions. The F-bomb gets dropped on occasion in conversation, but it’s almost refreshing after listening to hours of the clean Disney Podcasts I mostly listen to. Some of the last couple shows have dealt with the re-designing of "It’s a Small World", does Disney have a Legacy to uphold, and Disney's 5th Gate in Florida. It's like talking to a couple of friends over beers about anything Disney. So check them out and I am sure you will not be F$%#ing disappointed.

YouTube Gold:The Disney Family Album

Youtube has been a great thing for Disney Fans. You can view videos with all manner of Disney themes. I have seen great ride videos from the parks. Do you remember that Tigger beating incident? Some very cool coming attractions for upcoming Disney movies and a whole lot more. One of the most valuable finds I have made on Youtube is a collection of videos from a show in the Disney Channel past's Vault Disney that interviewed and biographied Walt's Nine Old Men. The shows title was the Disney Family Album. These are broken up into three parts per artist. I had found this a couple of months ago, but Dan and Eric's Mouseguest Podcast show last week was about Walt's Nine old men, hence the post.

This is Woolie Reitherman's part 1. The others are listed below.

I have read some of the Disney biographies and I have read a number of interviews of the artists that helped Walt begin his empire. These videos have given me a chance to see these gentleman and hear from them what the entire experience was like in the earlier days of Disney Studios. As they discuss how they started with Disney and their ever expanding responsibilities thruoght the good and bad, these gentlemen always have a certain smile on their faces when ever their memories come across a story about that talks about Walt specifically.

A big thanks goes out to Loosetoon and Cookedart, who posted all of these videos to Youtube.

Frank Thomas Ollie Johntson Ken Anderson Eric Larson

Ward Kimball Marc Davis Milt Kahl

Do you have a Spare $11, 850.00?

If you do and are a Die-Hard Level 5 Disney fan, boy did I see something on E-bay for you. An actual Ride Vehicle from the long extinct Horizons attraction that was in Epcot. This was posted by MouseSurplus and this is a quote about the product:

"Disney Epcot Horizons Actual Ride Car Vehicle Prop
Yes, this is an actual Horizons Ride Car straight from the extinct attraction
From one of Disney's Fans Favorite attractions
Amazing opportunity to own one of the Ride Cars from the attraction
Ride cars are becoming extremely hard to come by
The value of them is climbing fast
(Just a side note, just last week a fully restored Mr. Toad Ride Vehicle sold for $25,000 at auction)
Very large with all the technical and audio visual pieces left in tact
The doors in the front can be pushed open as well
Comes on a nice easy to roll custom mount with wheels
Measures 92" Height by 84" long by 52" wide"

Here is the link to the add on EBAY. If you do buy this, drop me a line and let me know if I can borrow a couple of bucks, I mean let me know what you do with it.

Pixar's turn at John Carter from Mars

I have read a couple accounts of how Pixar might be bringing this Edgar Rice Burroughs classic Science Fiction series to the silver screen. For those that don’t know, the John Carter character was a Civil War era soldier transported to Mars. As Mars’ gravity is less than Earth’s, John ends up with super-human strength. He then goes on to adventure after adventure fighting martians and helping the Princess. When I say might, I mean I have not seen any articles that have been dated past 10/10/2007. Suite101 reported;

“The rumors are true. After becoming the top name in family-oriented CGI animated films, Pixar has announced that they are adapting the John Carter of Mars series for the silver screen.”

That’s great news, until I read on how this has been tried many times. In 1936 this was to be the first feature length animated movie, but as we know that honor went to Walt Disney and his Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They even had Burroughs on board to consult on the project. It appears MGM did not want to be so serious and they canned the project. The second attempt was when stop-motion animation legend Ray Harryhausen attempted to spearhead a live action version of the book on the heels of his success with 7th Voyage of Sinbad in the late 50's. This however quickly became overwhelming in scale so much that this attempt had to be stopped. In the 1970’s, when Bob Clampett , who had worked with MGM on the 30’s version, took the clips they had animated on a College and University speaking tour. This was incredible work for the era. Time and again we hear in the Disney animation world how hard it is to animate the human form. Based on these clips it looks like Bob and his crew were well on their way to doing a good job.With this tour, there was a lot of new interest, but no film.

The eight legged horse looks a lot like an animal that might have appeared in the Animated Rock'n Roll feature Heavy Metal. Here is another site I found. Take a look at the concept art work created at about the same time Design Conepts . The next attempt to take this to the big screen was in the 1980’s with the Disney Company Touchstone talking about creating a live-action movie. The director connected to this try was John Mctiernan of Die Hard and Predator fame. There was also roles in this version offered to Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts. Rising costs would shelve this project again. The next time this story was proposed for a movie was in 2005. The director for this go around would have been John Favreau. That also fell thru and left the way open for Disney/Pixar to buy the rights. So now it looks like its Pixar’s turn. The reports I have read say that this would be a combination of real life/animation. There was also a comment about how this would be Pixar’s first film taken from an existing work of literature. I look forward to seeing this come to fruition. But we’ll see. IMDB.com has this listed as a 2009 release. A couple of other sources claim 2010 and 2012. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I could not find any information past 10/10/2007. So I will keep my eyes open for further updates.

DisneyLand Dream Suite Podcast

I have just finished listening to the Official Disneyland Podcast. This particular show is pretty cool in that it is all about the New Disneyland Dream Suite that had opened up in the last couple of weeks. There is a discussion with Imagineer Kim Irvine who talks about the design of the suite and some of the hidden secrets that can be found there including a in the suite ‘Good Night Kiss’. The biggest fact that stuck out in this interview is that the Imagineers used the actual drawings that Walt had made for the planned living quarters for himself before he died. We then meet Dream Squad Member Josie and then follow her as she finds and gives out the very first stay in the suite to a family from Oregon. We then follow lucky winner Christine and her family into the suite and hear a lot of oohs and aahs. The link to the Video of this room can be found HERE. Here are two more links, the first is of Christine's family after winning the Dream Suite stay courtesy of the DisneylandNews site. And here is a link over to the Distant Creations Blog and more pictures of the Suite. Very Cool!

Horizons Revisited

I just came across a great post over at the Disney and More Blog. Alain posted an article about Horizons, that great, but extinct attraction from Epcot Center. There are a ton of pictures and video of the ride itself at the end of the article. Just the picture of the Imagineer painting the murals in the attraction is very cool Also look for links to a bunch of other attractions at the end of his post. Spaceship Earth, the Living Seas, and The Land to name a few. So check out this very well laid out post and have fun with the memories.

Scouting With the Mouse

Scouting with the Mouse is a website we came across a couple of weeks ago. It is run by a friend of mine on Disfriends. I had never even thought of this, but what if you can combine WDW with Scouting. Well it has been done and done with style. This is a website that will help you and the Girl, Boy or Cub Scout in your house get ready for a trip to WDW. You will be amazed at the number of activities and requirements you can achieve while in the parks. There are links to buy Scouting and Disney stuff and plenty of news updated daily about both. There is also a feature that will let you become a MouseScouteer. Sign up for free and get some great extra options from the site. I have not signed up as of yet. As soon as we're going to WDW again, we will. My son has just recieved a prize from Scouting with the Mouse. He just had his Pinewood Derby and we had posted a picture of his Car over at Disfriends. Hypermommy(which I am sure is just a screen name) liked it and posted on the Scouting with the Mouse site. The boy received this great pin in the mail this past week.

Walt being Walt...

Jim Hill posted a small article the other day that caught my eye. The title of the post was ‘The Story Walt did not Want You to Hear.’ My first reaction was, uh oh, now what. Based on the title it can’t be good. But I was very wrong. Jim shared a story revealed by Richard Collier of how months before Disneyland had opened Walt had granted what can be called the very first Disney Magic Moment. A 10 year old boy’s mom had written to Walt about how excited she and her son were to hear about the plans for Disneyland. They watched Walt every week on his tv show. Unfortuantley her son had a terminal disease and would not live to see the opening of the park and was there any way her son could see what they had finished. I was still wary based on the this posts title, but for no reason. The boy and mom came out and Walt spent the entire afternoon with him riding the train and talking about his plans for the park. It seems that Walt had made a very definite appeal to all who were there that day that there were to be no pictures or stories about his to get out. It was for the boy and that’s it. Even just reading back over what I have written makes my eyes moisten up. It always feels good to see Walt be who we think he was. Thanks for the post Jim!