Tag Archives: Imagineer

Thank Disney it’s Friday – November 2!

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Hello daydreamers!! As promised…the Friday question is back!! :)

Following my two week trip to Walt Disney World I have loads of new questions to ask you…it feels great to give you a reason to do a little bit of daydreaming Disney at the end of the week!!

 

So…during my recent trip to the World I visited the new Art of Animation resort, which as you know is based on four Disney animated films….what I would like to know is….

If you were an Imagineer for a day and could add another area to the Art of Animation resort….which other Disney movie would you use as a theme and why???

 

But wait….there’s more…. we’re having another Daydreaming Disney giveaway!!!!! Every reader leaving a comment on ANY Friday question posed in November will be added to a prize draw. A name will be selected at random on December 1 to win a selection of goodies picked up during my trip to Walt Disney World!!!

 

Happy daydreaming :) :) :)

 

 

 

That’s a first!

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As I put the final details in place for our forthcoming trip to the World I realise that this visit could yet again be full of magical first time Disney experiences.

It’s clear to see that by simply changing the time of year for our visit it has opened up a number of new experiences and events which I will see for the first time. By visiting Walt Disney World in October I will see Magic Kingdom decorated for Halloween and get to attend Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.

This also means that I will be visiting Epcot during the Food and Wine Festival; I’m looking forward to not only sampling some of the dishes on offer but seeing how World Showcase looks with the addition of the international marketplace booths.

Due to a special promotion I was able to include the Disney Dining Plan for free on my vacation booking which means I’ll be experiencing Disney dining on a whole new level. I’ll be visiting Signature restaurants for the first time and some of our advanced dining reservations will take us into resorts that we’ve never really had the chance to explore before.

After attending the Key To The Kingdom tour on our last visit I knew that I wanted to book at least one tour or special experience on this trip….well, I decided to fit three in! We will FINALLY get to Dine With An Imagineer, we will be taking a unique look at Animal Kingdom on the Wild By Design tour and last but by no means least we will be taking in the detail of Magic Kingdom during a park tour with Lou Mongello.

Something else which will make this trip so unique is the number of friends that we hope to be meeting up with during our two week vacation. A few years ago, before I started blogging and talking to fellow Disney fans across the social networks, I had no idea that I would make friends with so many people who lived close to or worked at my favourite vacation destination.

And lastly…now this could well make or break a vacation….we have unplanned days on our WDW daily schedule!!!! That’s right, I threw out the original daily plan which I had spent so long researching and planning! So the new schedule includes the booked tours, ADR’s and a couple of planned meet ups but that’s it! We are going to decide that morning or the night before which park we feel like going to each day….if we wake up and feel like stuffing our faces at the Food and Wine Festival we’ll head on over to Epcot, if we feel like spending a morning people watching in a busy Magic Kingdom then we’ll head on over there!!! For a mega planner like me this is pretty scary stuff but there’s a first time for everything!! :)

So what about you? Do you like to visit at the same time of year or stay at the same resort because you like to know every detail of your vacation? Do you make sure that you experience at least one new thing during each trip or do you throw caution to the wind and never plan your trips, hoping that magic and surprises come along to make memories that you’ll cherish forever???

 

 

 

 

Three steps to WDW….

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Everyone has heard of the game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ haven’t they?

The game is based on the belief that any individual involved in the movie industry can be linked to the actor Kevin Bacon within six steps…. Well I think that Walt Disney World fans have the same ability to link any everyday situation to Disney in a very small number of steps too!

And here is my example…. I visited the Warner Bros. Studio tour on Saturday to look at the Harry Potter exhibition, it reminded me of being at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Orlando, being at Universal reminds me of being at Walt Disney World…

So there you have it; in three simple steps I have connected Harry Potter to WDW and have completely justified why this blog post is appearing on my Disney blog!!!!

I also wanted to share this experience with you, and write about the amazing amount of magic and talent that I saw as I walked around the studios. It’s the same feeling that I get when Disney announces something new coming to the parks or when I read an interview with an Imagineer and yet again I am amazed by their achievements.

I will try to give you an outline of the exhibition without giving away too much detail, so that I do not spoil it for any readers who are lucky enough to be visiting themselves. If you are overseas and won’t have the opportunity to visit in person then search Google for more details, I’m sure you will not be shocked to see how many people have written and posted photos of this place.  The official website is a good place to start.

The Warner Bros. Studios are located in Leavesden, Watford (just outside London) and for over ten years these studios were used for the filming of the Harry Potter movies. In fact filming started here for the first film on 29th September 2000.

After the filming ended Warner Bros. invested over £100 million into the Leavesden Studios to create ‘Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden‘, a permanent UK film production base for the company. As part of the redevelopment the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London was set up, a permanent behind-the-scenes walking tour which currently holds props, costumes and sets from the Harry Potter collection.

The collection / tour opened to the public on 31 March 2012 and has been received with rave reviews. I had the opportunity to organise a group visit for the staff association at my workplace; the tickets were so difficult to come by that I bought them in November 2011 for a visit date that wasn’t until June 2012!

The tour is self guided and the official notes advise that it takes about three hours to get round everything. We were walking round for about three and a half hours but it felt a lot longer, and we certainly did not rush through anything!!

The first thing that made me think of WDW was the queue. Once you had entered the main building your ticket was scanned and you could join the queue for the next group of guests to be let into the exhibition space. The queue snaked backwards and forwards allowing a lot of guests to queue in quite a small area, just like queuing up for an attraction in the parks.

Groups of guests were then led into a room for a welcome video….again reminding me of a Disney attraction. After the introduction the tour leads into the first sound stage holding The Great Hall (this is the ACTUAL hall which features in the films and is AMAZING), costumes, sets (such as Dumbledore’s office and Hagrid’s Hut) and so many amazing props, designed and built by such talented people.

There are videos playing on screens and boards next to most exhibits, giving you as much information as you want to take in.

After the first sound stage the tour moves to an outside area. Here you find the larger items; such as the triple-decker Knight bus, the Chess Pieces and Number 4 Privet Drive.

This is also the stop for a glass of Butterbeer…something which I missed out on when visiting Universal Studios so couldn’t wait to try…personally, I LOVED it!!!!

The tour then moves into the second sound stage and features the creative department. Lots of masks and creepy crawlies in here! You get to walk along the wonderfully designed Diagon Alley; the detail on these buildings is superb. There is also a display of White-Card Models which were built by the Art Department to assist the director and production designer look at size and scale before the actual set construction began.

And then…..the Hogwarts Castle model. I had seen it in photos and on tv but nothing prepared me for the sight in real life. I just wanted to capture every angle with my own camera. The actual model was used for aerial photography in the films and digitally scanned for CGI scenes. I just can’t get over the skill of the people involved in making this model.

After passing through the ‘wand room’, a room containing labelled wand boxes for more than 4,000 people who worked on the Harry Potter films, you end the tour in the gift shop. Well, it wouldn’t be an attraction if it didn’t end there!! Oh and in true ‘theme park’ tradition there are two souvenir photo opportunities along the tour, for an additional price of course ;)

The exhibition doesn’t look anything fancy from the outside but when stepping through the doors of the Great Hall at the start of the tour you are immersed in magic and make-believe. It just gave me that same feeling which I get walking around the parks and it gave me the opportunity to daydream even though I was still in the ‘not so sunny’ UK!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this review and forgive me for a non-Disney post!!! For those of you in the UK I hope you also get to visit and see the amazing work that went into making these films. I’ve already bought tickets to go back in September….so I guess I’ll see you at Hogwarts ;)

 

 

 

Thank Disney it’s Friday – May 18!

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Well hello Friday!!! This week has been filled with lots of information coming out about the Star Wars Weekends kicking off at Disney’s Hollywood Studios this weekend….one day soon I’ll stop daydreaming and actually attend this event :)

So with all the creative thinking that surrounds Star Wars Weekends this week’s Friday question is going to ask YOU to be creative and dig deep into your imagination….

If you could design and open a shop in Downtown Disney….what would be your theme….what would you sell…and why????

I look forward to reading your answers, and who knows, maybe an Imagineer or two might think our daydreams could become a reality!!!

 

:) :) :)

Orange Tuesday!

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Now I know that there will be many posts on many blogs in the next few days covering the Orange Bird’s return to the Sunshine Tree Terrace at Magic Kingdom but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to take time out of my Walt Disney World planning schedule to write a few words of my own.

Firstly I cannot claim to have been a die-hard Orange Bird fan since the 70′s, I was not one of the many fans that longed to see him and his orange thought bubbles return to his home in Adventureland….in fact I wasn’t even aware of the Orange Bird until a couple of years ago when he started cropping up in conversations on Disney fan message boards.

But over the last couple of years….and this is why yesterday’s events had such a big impact on me…reading about other people’s love for that bird, hearing the history of his connection to Disney and seeing his lovely smiling face on websites, collectibles, t-shirts and even Imagineer doodles, gave me an affection for this cute little orange creature and made me wish A LOT that he was still bringing sunshine to Adventureland.

I commend Disney for yesterday’s event. They just sent a message out on Twitter that this little gathering was taking place for no apparent ‘special’ reason….but you can just tell when Disney have something up their sleeve. And this time it was something for the fans, they had listened and responded. Okay sure it’s about money-making; a stunt like this will bring those of us who are into Disney history and nostalgia flooding into the park to buy an oversized Orange Bird t-shirt or one of those wonderfully plastic Orange Bird sipper cups (please, please still be there for my next trip!) but I like to think that this decision was also a nod to those lifelong Disney fans like us who spend our days reading, writing and planning Disney :)

So, although I don’t remember the good old Orange Bird days I will remember the day that the Orange Bird returned to his perch at the Sunshine Tree and I’m proud to be a new fan of that lovely lil’ bird.

Here’s a link to Lou Mongello’s WDW Radio show from November 2011 reminiscing about the Orange Bird.

Here’s a link to the official coverage of the Orange Bird’s return on the Disney Parks Blog and here is the wonderful merchandise I hope to get my hands on!

So I’ll end this post with a singalong to the Sherman Brothers lyrics, make sure you check YouTube for the wonderful original tune….

“Little Orange Bird in the Sunshine Tree
Won’t you think of something sunny just for me?
Think funny thoughts or sunny words
That will make me happy, little Orange Bird…..”