Twisney

I was listening to the NetCot podcast and was directed to www.twisney.com. It’s a site that basically uses the Twitter Technology to provide updates about the Disney Theme Parks. I decided to sign up and give it a try.  You can find me as mypalal.  That’s my twitter account.

It’s a really interesting idea.  If you’re at the park, you can document your day. Currently through e-mails, I can indicate what ride I’m on and how long it took to get there.  If there’s an exciting event, I can take a picture with my camera phone and send it to the site.  When you go to the site, it will toggle you through the past updates and show you the notes.

I can also post wait times for rides and I can visit the site on my celphone and get wait times.

The only problem is that there are not a lot of people using the site, so the information is not that useful.  In order for this site to succeed, there has to be more people willing to post updates.  The more updates, the better the information.

For example, I posted yesterday that the line for Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was 30 minutes and Monster’s Inc was 5 minutes.  That’s great, but I rode them at the end of the day when no one is in the park.

There are a few great applications that can be taken from this site.  If they can get enough wait time information, they can use that data to project wait times for the future.  But again, the only way to make this site useful is to get more people on board and use it.

Give it a try. Go to www.twisney.com and in the upper right hand corner, select Disneyland as your park.

Home of the Future - New Innoventions

Laurie and I had a chance to visit the Home of the Future in the Innoventions Pavilion at Disneyland. Apparently Monday was the opening day.  I just happen to be there that day.  I was not aware of the opening.  We showed up at 7:00 pm and the wait was about 20 minutes.  Not too bad.

I’m going to assume that you know how the old Innoventions was set up, so I’m not going to go into great detail about how the mechanics of the preshow work.

The first thing you’ll notice is that they kept the Tom Morrow video opening out front.  It also looked like only one of the four openings is available for entrance, so you are waiting about 10 minutes per guest entrance. We saw two groups go in before it was our turn.

We step on the rotating platform as usual and saw the same video opening, and then we were lead to a very familiar setting.  We walked into the first room and there’s Tom on the right singing and on the left is a kitchen setting. After Tom is done singing we approach the kitchen area.  Now a cast member comes out and begin this spiel about great innovators like Walt Disney, and then goes on to mention two home designers (whose name I can’t remember).  These two designers we’re touted as great visionaries right next to Walt Disney.  I understand what they were trying to get at, but no.

Anyways, this is the preshow section, they way it is designed, you can’t really skip this section, because there’s no where to go until you get to the end.  You have to stand for the talk and pretty much just suffer through it.  It’s a talk and not much else. There was no display of great technology or anything amazing.

During this preshow, you are standing on the rotating platform and it pretty much takes to almost to the full circle.  When you finally get off the platform you’re standing in front of the house of the future.  You see a house façade with three front doors (one on a platform).  You also see a lot of frosted windows.  If you look at the large frosted window, you’ll see the shadow of a great Disney icon (no quite hidden).

Now that you’re standing in the front of the house, you’re greeted by a member of the Elias family.  In this case it was dad and he is celebrating the victory of his son’s soccer team.  They’re going to China for a championship tournament.  The cast member now shows us the features of the front of the house, which utilitizes all of the video screen in the front.  You basically can custom design the front of you house and in this case show fireworks to celebrate the son’s victory.  He also showed up the RFID keys for you and your dog, not really an innovative feature, since that’s how I get into my office at work.

We finally enter the main home.  The common phrase we heard throughout the tour is “dad must still be working on it.” A lot of things were working and a lot of things were not working.

From here, you’re now on a walking tour. You’re free to walk around and go into any room.  You start in the foyer, and you have a choice of the den, daughter’s bedroom, kid’s bedroom, kitchen, garden and game room.  There are panels everywhere that allow you to control the lights in each room and change the music or music in the various rooms.  The rooms have picture frames every that are digital and change images depending on whose in control.  Each room has a member of the Elias family doing demonstrations.

In the daughter’s room, there is a “magic” mirror.  It’s a video screen that acts as a mirror, so you stand in front and see yourself.  The “daughter” comes in and demonstrates the “magic” mirror.  When the daughter stands in front of the mirror, she can select clothes from her closest and then the cloth is overlayed on her “reflection”. We got to see the skirt in action, but the hair accessories were not working.  “Dad must be working on it.”

We then went to the kitchen and the son where there.  He showed us the voice activated computer, which can provide cooking demonstrations as well as maintain inventory of the kitchen.

I think the home of the future is a vast improvement to Innoventions.  At the same time it was pretty underwhelming.  I would have liked to have seen more features working.  There was some cool technology, but nothing that I hadn’t seen before.  The player piano is not new.  Tables with interactive video monitors, cool, but not something that people really need at the moment.  Sure you can read the paper on the table, or view photo with a few cool touch screen feature.  Nice but not new.

My overall impression is improved and hope it will keep on improving.  Definitely worth visiting once in a while, but not worthy of repeat visits.

Toy Story Mania

I had my first opportunity to ride Toy Story Mania at Disney’s California Adventure during the Annual Passholder preview.  My first impression was that it was awesome.  If you ask my wife, she’ll tell you the exact opposite. She absolutely hated it.

Now, I heard a lot of hype from the Disney’s Hollywood Studio’s opening and I was very much looking forward to the attraction.  So here are a few of my thoughts.

Being that my wife is disabled and we have a baby, we got to enter through the disabled entrance and switch pass area.  We got to bypass a huge line and go right on the ride.  One comment about the queue, it’s very boring. Especially compared to the DHS version.  The line has only midway style signs around the queue.  It fits with the theme of Paradise Pier, which is very boring itself.  Many of the elements in the DHS queue are inside the ride.  Mr. Potato Head stands prominently in the front of the attractions and the line does pass him for good interaction.  When we observed him, the line area was empty so I had to yell at him.  It just didn’t feel that interactive, but I willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since it’s a preview day.

The disabled entrance is immediately at the main entrance to the attraction.  They load you directly into your own vehicle and then that vehicle is loaded directly into the ride queue.  The ride vehicle is quite large.  It had two smaller cards which holds 4 people each.  The guns are attached to the lap bars and the left gun is fired by a pull rope which is very reactive.  The right gun has the pull rope and button on top.

We arrived as they just started to let the first group on. So they were letting a lot of empty cars go through.  They soon let my vehicle on and I was the only one in my vehicle and the cars before and behind me were empty.  It was a little creepy.  Then the uncomfortable feeling I get when sitting in the load area while everyone is looking at me wondering why I’m on the only on the vehicle.  Now the ride officially begins.

Your cars moves through this maze, much like a serpentine pattern and you see various Toy Story characters.  The first thing I notice is that it's pretty bright inside the attraction.  I expected it to be much darker like the Men In Black ride at Islands of Adventure. You get to the first screen and you're given instructions about shooting and the score. Very cool.  Then you get into the game and you're firing away.  The 3D technology is amazing.  From the get go I did not even realize that I had the glasses on.  The guns are very responsive and the target is excellent.  What I like is that you're not shooting just to figure out with red dot is yours (like Buzz Lightyear).  I was able to rapid fire without much fatigue.  At first I can to figure out the scoring.  The easy targets are not worth many points.  The goal is to find the hidden targets, which are usually at the edge of the screen or appears in a different color.

This was nice, but when the ride is delayed and you're just sitting in front of a screen, they continue the game.  You just can't earn any points. I was caught in the ring toss section and when you throw a ring around a rocket or alien with a jet pack, you get a nice cool breeze.

In the end, my score was 154,000 and I won a cat.

To me this was a lot of fun.  The graphics and game play was amazing and I would ride this ride a lot.  I'm sure there's going to be a single rider line.

My wife on the other hand was not impressed.  I get the feeling she wanted a traditional ride.  She felt it was merely a 3d video game.  She also got to the reality of the ride.  You go into a room with a lot of movie screens and you shoot things. There are no animatronics to look at and no cohesive story.  It's a video game. I'll try to post some pictures.

EPCOT Fun Fact

Watching "Undiscovered Walt Disney World" on the Travel Channel.  EPCOT's the Living Seas is the largest and most visited aquarium in the world.  EPCOT's Spaceship Earth can fit in the Aquarium and have room to spare.

Funny it doesn't seem that large.  Probably because we only get to walk to a small portion of the aquarium.

Buzz Lightyear will be in Outer Space! For Real!!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/whatsgoingup124.html

Looks like a little toy model of Buzz Lightyear will be accompaning the next space mission on the Discovery.  This is an educational effort to teach young people about space flight.  Buzz will go up on the Discovery, report occasionally and return to Earth.  Once Buzz returns he'll be a part of a huge ticker tape parade at Walt Disney World.

More to come.

Last of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men" Dies

The closing of a chapter…Ollie Johnson passed away today at the age of 95.  He was the last of Walt’s “Nine Old Men.”  They were the first group of animator’s for the Walt Disney Studios and his first big project was Snow White. Reuters

My first memory of Ollie Johnson was the movie Jungle Book.  It’s the first Disney animated feature that I clearly remember watching in the theater.  To me it’s the first and one of the best.

The Nine Old Men invented a style of animation that is distinctly Disney and copied all over the world.  As the saying goes, “nothing lasts forever.”

If you have a chance, watch the movie “Frank and Ollie”, especially if you’re an aspiring animated (which I was in one phase of my life).

Also, check out their book, The Illusion of Life.

• Frank and Ollie Documentary on DVD
• Jungle Book
• The Illusion of Life

Olszewski Main Street Electrical Parade Signing Event

I'm at the Olszewski signing this morning. I don't think this one will be at busy one like the past two. All of the main street collection is out and now we're collecting the accessories. Today is a great accessory. Its the Main Street Electrical Parade. This collection is just the first four floats including Train and drum, Elliott, Wonderland Floats.

7:30 - Arrive at Disneyland.

7:43 - I'm in the ticket line and there's a lot of people but the gate is not open yet, except for hotel guests.

7:49 - Gates open.

7:54 - through the gate. Pet Peeve-please have your tickets ready before you get to the gate. I found myself standing, not moving because guests don't know that they need tickets to get in. You actually have to purchase them before hand.

7:56 - in line. My spot is in front of the Disney Showcase store. Now I'm listening to the Disney Parade music because the park just opened. I love my new cellular phone.

8:08 - line is not moving, as expected. It currently ends in front of the opera house.

8:10 - I was just notified that they are out of wristbands. Distribution stopped about 3 people in front of me. We were told the if you have a wristband you are guaranteed to get a set. In my case thay said I have a chance to get a set, but I'm not guaranteed.

8:20 - I'm confident that I'll get a set but nervous at the same time. The people in front of me are not happy with the way Disney is handling the whole situation in general. They don't like to have to get up early pay admission into the park and not be guaranteed to get a piece. Then there's the ebayer who are ruining the fun for everyone. Oops.

8:30 - Celebrity sighting. Mickey Mouse just walked by.

8:39 - people really hate eBay.

8:47 - the line moved. Good sign.

8:57 - it was not a good sign. Have not moved.

9:02 - ok it has begun. I'm finally around the corner and their letting people in.

9:14 - just rounded the corner and I'm in front of the Magic Store. I'm so glad I have my iPod. Listening to a lot of poker stuff. Called the wife and told her about the situation. Feeling good at the moment. No real olszewski news. There's another tree accessories pack coming out and Dumbo in the fall.

9:26 - News item. If you buy this piece online on April 2nd, the piece will come with a first day plaque.

9:45 - in front of 20th Century Music. This just feels slow. I'm just glad I got here early. Thanks wifey for getting me up way too early. I can't wait to take a nap.

10:03 - getting close. 6 people away. I love the Tinkerbell box.

10:08 - next in line. They tell me I have a chance.

10:11 - an elderly couple with a awristband just got in line in front of me. I'm starting to get worried.

10:20 - I was not able to buy the pieces. I have to wait until 100. Just frustrated that I got in the wrong line at the gate. I'm guaranteed to get a signed set then. So I bought the tinkerbell light box and regular box. And waiting to get it signed.

10:40 - the signing. I finally got to Bob. He's a great guy. We talked about the rocket piece coming in July. I really liked his haunted mansion pokit pal. It the girl on the tightrope and she's stretches to the full image as you open the box.

10:44 - I'm done and I have to wait until 1230 to get in line for the light parade. I'll sign off for now. Thanks for joining in.