Showing posts with label Dumbo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dumbo. Show all posts

December 2, 2013

Could Dumbo Drones Deliver Disney Doodads?

Disney Dumbo Drone Amazon Delivery What-If Future Online
Amazon's recently-announced push to offer drone-delivered packages within the next several years had me grinning. If they can pull it off, we'll be one step closer to The Jetsons...and Tomorrowland...and hopefully not an Orwellian nightmare.

What if Disney follows their example and adapts drone technology? Can you imagine ordering your vacation package or latest Disney Store collectible online...and thirty minutes later a little Dumbo drone lands in your driveway with your Magic Bands...or Sven Reindeer mini plush?

Trumpeting "When You Wish Upon a Star"?

Seize the future, Disney! Make it so!

September 2, 2013

Disney Infinity: A Park Fan's Review

Disney Infinity Review
Disney Infinity will delight you, inspire you, challenge you and cheerfully empty your wallet. Its methods for coaxing you to buy more and more of its world could be considered ruthless, except for one important factor: Like a Disney park, it gives you more than your money's worth.
Disney Infinity Review Dumbo Davy Jones
In that respect, you could easily think of Infinity, the company's toys-come-to-life-in-a-video-game juggernaut, as Disney Parks: The Home Edition. If you laid it out in theme park terms, the experience would look something like this:
Disney Infinity Review game map
The game is stuffed with elements geared specifically toward park fans, from actual park music and vintage sound effects to an impressive Matterhorn complete with a working bobsled rail slide. Epcot fans will love the inclusion of Spaceship Earth, plus the game's introductory sequence that casts you in the role of One Little Spark of inspiration.
Disney Infinity Review Alice Tulgey Cheshire Incredible Tron
Mrs. Incredible parks her Tron Recognizer in Tulgey Wood.
The clever design sends you into a vast, anything-goes "toybox" world where you can combine themes and characters in any way you wish, selecting from hundreds and hundreds of parts to build your own games with your own rules--anything from racetracks and shootouts to pinball machines, obstacle courses and soccer fields. You don't have many parts available at the start, however. To get them, you have to venture from the toybox "hub" into the Playset worlds, which are large, scripted film-specific adventures (Infinity's version of E-Ticket attractions).

June 4, 2013

When I See An Elephant Photosynthesize

Dumbo topiary Disneyland Fantasyland plant garden Shining
"Kind of jumpy, aren't ya, Valiant? It's just Dumbo!"

With that line from Roger Rabbit, we're taking a look at the cutest little shrub in Fantasyland. This great topiary sits all by himself a few yards from a whole herd of airborne pachyderms. He dreams of freeing his mother from the greenhouse, where she was locked up as a "mad plant."

And he was the very last thing Jack Nicholson's character saw in The Shining. Okay, that's a lie--but you have to admit, it would have been a better ending.

May 20, 2013

New DL Passholder Freebie Is Just About Perfect

Disneyland Annual Passholders free calendar Ride Posters
Disneyland's customer base includes about a million California-dwelling Annual Passholders, and the free calendar now arriving in their mailboxes sends a pretty clear message: the management understands its most loyal fans.
Disneyland Annual Passholders free calendar Ride Posters
My two all-time favorite ride posters
Instead of generic publicity photos or princess posing, the calendar features excellent little 6" x 9" attraction poster reproductions.

December 7, 2012

The Netflix Disney Streaming Has Begun

DIsney Netflix streaming available now deal contract classics
Attention Netflix subscribers: check out the "Recently Added" section for a very welcome sight.

As mentioned earlier, Netflix and Disney have made a deal, and the result has begun just in time for the weekend. The first wave of selections contains enough gems to make any Disney (and Muppet!) fans happy. I hope this is just the beginning of a huge online library!

October 10, 2012

Classic Ride Review: Dumbo the Flying Elephant

Dumbo Flying Elephant Disneyland Fantasyland
Just look at those awesome elephants. Their wonderfully sculpted expressions of joy and exhilaration carry the whole experience. When you lift off, you instantly plug into the moment at the film's finale when Dumbo spreads his ears and  a miracle happens. That why the Dumbo ride is magical and rip-off clones are not.

Some folks don't "get" Dumbo. They dismiss it as a mere children's ride or a mundane carnival-style attraction not worth a second look. My theory about those folks: either they never rode Dumbo as a child, or else they commute to work every day on a flying elephant and find nothing unusual about the experience.

All I know is, I climb aboard, the ride starts, I push up on the controls, I hear that familiar hydraulic hiss...there's that little bounce as we get airborne...and suddenly I'm seven years old again, with the wind in my face and all of Fantasyland whirling about below me.

Sometimes you don't need the latest technology to create pure and powerful magic.