News

• Jim and I are doing the second annual Gingerbread Challenge in Walt Disney World, starting Friday December 2, 2022.  

• We’re doing a live podcast recording on December 2.  Tickets available at https://touringplans.com/2022-disney-dish-tp
  

• I’m speaking at IAAPA (Int’l Ass of Amusement Parks and Attractions) in Orlando on November 18.

• Disney’s released Galactic Starcruiser dates for 2023, and Jim and I - and Hank Lonely - are doing the voyage on March 30, 2023.  We’ve already got something like 16 cabins booked, and that’s a decent portion of the ship for the Dish.  If you’d like to join a band of stellar misfits on a journey for the ages, visit http://storybookdestinations.com/disneydish/ to get a quote.
  

• Jim, I’d like to start with some culinary news, if I may.  And that news is that I’ve discovered the single best thing to come out of Disney World’s 50th Anniversary: the chocolate pyramid dessert at the San Angel Inn in EPCOT’s Mexico pavilion.  
  
  Jim, this is a 10-inch tall, chocolate-shell replica of Mexico’s pyramid.  Inside the chocolate shell is chocolate ganache.  It all sits on a pedestal of Mexican cinnamon-sugar sponge cake.  And it’s surrounded by scoops of vanilla ice cream topped with caramel sauce and chocolate chunks.  In the vanilla scoops are placed flaming sparklers, because all food is better with fire.  
  
  Jim, it’s amazing.  The chocolate artist who made it is one of the best in the world. He’s a visionary.  He is to desserts what La Cava is to tequila.  Six kinds of chocolate go into this thing, with 5 different tempering processes.  Nothing else is close to this.  I made a special trip over to San Angel yesterday just to try it.  I didn’t even ask what it cost, and I don’t care.  

• In other dining news, character breakfasts are returning to the Magic Kingdom’s Crystal Palace.  Pooh, Piglet, and other friends from the Hundred Acre Wood will be available for photos and autographs starting October 25, and reservations are available now.  
  
  This opening date is pushed back a little over a month, because it was originally supposed to be September 20, so there’s still a tiny chance of a delay.  
  
  Jim, I think getting characters back to Crystal Palace has to be a huge priority for Disney’s Food & Bev team.  If you look at the Unofficial Guide’s guest satisfaction ratings for Crystal Palace over the last 3 months, it’s 78%.  And that’s the number at which we tell people “Don’t visit this restaurant.”
  
  When Crystal Palace had characters, guest satisfaction jumps up a full 10 points, to 88%.  That’s still average as far as sit-down restaurants go in World, but the important thing is that people accept the value proposition when there are characters - nearly 9 in 10 people say they’d do it again.
  
  Jim, what are your thoughts?
  

Surveys

Listener Questions

From Pete:

What villains would you pick rides for and what type if Disney gets smart and either does an expansion in MK? I think a “Yzma’s lair” rollercoaster with Kronk would be hysterical.

P.S If the current head of Disney Parks ever approves a Tomorrowland expansion, I ask everyone to join me in forever referring to it as “A Great Big Beautiful D’Amaro”?

Len: The main thing I like about a Villains land is that it’s adaptable, which means you can update it without spending $100 million.  I mean, you’ll need rides based on classic villains, whether it’s Pete’s idea from Emperor’s New Groove, or a jukebox-style review like, you know, some version of the Great Movie Villains Ride.  

But imagine a restaurant where the waitstaff are the minions of whatever villains are most popular right now, and the menu items are customized the same way.  Same thing with character greetings.  You can do a small space like the one Merida uses, and within a month (okay, three months if you use the TRON team), re-do the entire theme to whatever movie is most popular, and stick that villain in there.

From Alex:

Maybe it’s because Disney’s emphasizing Disney+, but I just got a survey about it.  At the beginning of the survey we had general questions about the Disney+ Service Then a 1-10 rating  and some questions about all of the brands represented with different series and content. (And Alex sent along screen caps of this.)

I am a 37 year old male who enjoys older Disney content. As I was raised on both animation and live action Disney movies from the 60s +70s. They had a few blank spaces about adding what shows you would enjoy that it’s not currently on Disney+ . As a reply I submitted:

I would appreciate more new series that are all ages or adult friendly. Aside from the Disney movies I enjoy there is little regular content for adults.

Please give us a series of skits that mash up Disney/Star Wars or Marvel stories with an  all Muppet cast.

Recordings of vintage wonderful world of color/ Disney. TV specials. I remember watching “vault Disney” on the Disney channel and loving the old  shows.

High quality recordings of vintage Disneyland + other theme Park retired nighttime shows/spectaculars. As an Example original Fantasmic +Main Street Parades.

Have a great day, I love the show!

Len: I love these ideas, especially the Muppets-Star Wars/Marvel mash-ups.  I’d see those as like 8-minute shorts, sort of like the Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse shorts.  And, you know, that led to Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, which’ll be in both Disneyland and WDW soon.

I’m surprised the Wonderful World of Color isn’t yet on Disney+.  I’d guess that 50% or more of domestic D+ subscribers are theme park fans, and fans of Walt.   They’d love to see this stuff.  And it’s already been paid for.  You have to think that it’s either low priority for Disney, or they haven’t thought about it, or there’s some other issue (like maybe the way native Americans were portrayed, and it’ll take a bunch of people a couple of years to go through that), that’s causing it not to happen.  But they have the content, D+ needs new content, so this seems like something that should get done.  Jim?

Disney Patents

Mr. Testa, what have you done to offend the Gods of the Sea? Our “Disney Dish on the Disney Wish” event gets underway this time tomorrow. We only just missed Hurricane Fiona (now in the Western Atlantic), Tropical Storm Gaston is somewhat swirling around the Central Atlantic, and you heard about the storm that’s now on track to attack the Gulf of Mexico next week which the folks at the Weather Channel are already describing as a potential monster.

Len: You know, Jim, apparently the shrimp I had at Sebastian’s for dinner were close, personal friends of King Triton’s.  Not sure.

What part of that pre-departure literature from the Disney Cruise Line – You know, the stuff that said “Please make a burnt offering to King Triton prior to departure. Or – at the very least – go out and buy a lot of ‘Little Mermaid’ merch” – did you not understand?

At least our cruise is still scheduled to set sail. We didn’t have to deal with what WDW Guests did back 18 years ago today did. Which is when all four Disney World theme parks were shut down for the day due to Hurricane Jeanne.

Hurricane Jeanne was no joke. This Category 3 hurricane was one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded. It caused near-record flooding as far north as West Virginia and New Jersey. Before she blew herself out, Jeanne caused $7.5 billion worth of property damage in the continental United States. That’s “billion” with a “B.”

But we’re talking specifically about what happened on the night of September 25th. Which is when Hurricane Jeanne made landfall on Hutchinson Island – which is just to the East of Port Saint Lucie, in Florida. Which was the exact same place where Hurricane Frances – which had preceded Hurricane Jeanne – had made landfall in Florida just three weeks earlier.

So you’re going to have to forgive Florida officials if they seemed a trifle gun shy as Jeanne headed towards the Sunshine State. They’d already heard about what this Category 3 had done in Haiti (leaving over 3000 dead with entire towns being washed away by mudslides & floods). More to the point, Hurricane France – the slow moving, hugely powerful storm that had preceded Jeanne – had just decimated Florida’s citrus crop for this year.

So as soon as it became apparent that Jeanne was going to make landfall in Florida, the folks up in Tallahassee put out a message. Shut her down.

Which was something of a problem at Walt Disney World. Given that the 30+ hotels & resorts on property were full at the time. With many of those Guests having made a special trip down to Florida because their previous travel plans had been disrupted by Hurricane Jeanne.

So what do you do when you have tens of thousands of Guests on property, with a number of your hotels – thanks to Florida’s rather high water table – just above sea level?

Thankfully, this was not Mickey’s first rodeo. Since 1971, there have been 7 hurricanes that have shut down the Walt Disney World Resort (with the most recent one being Hurricane Dorian in August of 2019).

The first of these was Hurricane Floyd, a Category 4 storm, back in September 1999. Given how severe this storm was supposed to be (and given that Central Florida appeared to be right in its path), Walt Disney World's Executive Emergency Operations Team did something that they’d never done before in that Resort’s then-28 year history. And that was declared that all four of the Resort’s theme parks would have to stay closed for the full day. More to the point, that many of Disney’s Guests would now have to shelter in place.

Not all of them, mind you. The folks staying at Fort Wilderness had no choice. Disney insisted that they pack up their tents & evacuate. Many were gifted complimentary rooms at on-site Resorts that had availability. While still others were set up in temporary accommodations in the Grand Ballroom at Disney’s Contemporary Resort.

Also worth noting that some Guests who were staying in especially low lying areas at Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort and Disney's All-Star Resort were then evacuated to Disney's Coronado Springs Resort and Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resorts because of the strong possibility of flooding. Any idea what wings of those hotels / particular room blocks that would have been, Len?

Meanwhile over at the Parks, anything that could possibly become a missile in the 300 MPH winds that are sometime associated with Florida’s hurricane had to be dealt with. This meant dozens of trash cans being lashed together. Chairs & tables being carried off-stage at the Magic Kingdom and then stashed below street level down in the Ultidors. Every single umbrella being folded up & put away. Every flag & banner within reach being hauled down.

Which – by the way – does NOT include removing the turrets off of Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom. That’s an urban myth, folks. I don’t know how that story got started.

A select number of WDW Cast Members were offered double time (also triple time, if you were to work the nighttime hours) to be part of the ride-out crew.

What do I mean by ride-out? These folks were put in set positions around the resort, both inside the parks & out, to keep an eye on things during the storm. More to the point, to report in, if things really started to go south. So that – once the storm passed – Disney could then hit the ground running. Go immediately to the areas that had suffered the greatest amount of damage and then do their damnest to get those parts of the Parks & the Resort cleaned up / repaired / ready for Guests.

Not a surprise to learn that Disney’s Animal Kingdom is typically the slowest park to come back online after a storm. It’s not just the park itself. All of the animal enclosures have to be checked for damaged trees / things that could hurt the animals before. Make sure the path of those troop transports that are used Kilimanjaro Safari are completely cleared. It takes a lot of work.

By the way, what was especially interesting about the 2004 hurricane season was that the WDW Resort was forced to close three times that year:

Hurricane Charley (August 13, 2004): Animal Kingdom was closed earlier that day due to the logistics involved with getting all of that off exhibit and into their backstage barns prior to the arrival of that storm. Guests were allowed to visit the Resort’s other 3 theme parks in the morning, but were then asked to leave around noon. Parks officially closing at around 1PM. The parks reopened the following day.

Hurricane Frances (September 4-6, 2004): Most extensive hurricane-related closure in the parks’ history. All four parks were closed on September 4 and 5. Magic Kingdom and EPCOT reopened on September 6th; the other parks remained closed an additional day, reopening September 7.

Hurricane Jeanne (September 26, 2004): The last hurrah of the 2004 season, at least as far as park closures goes, was Hurricane Jeanne. All four parks closed for one day, September 26.

Hurricane season. Still got a while yet. Runs from June 1st – November 30th. Hurricane Sandy – 10 years ago – late in the season (October 22nd – November 2nd). $70 billion worth of damage. Not even close to being out of the woods yet.

So do your part, Len. Make an offering to King Triton. Or at least go buy a lot of Flounder plush.

BCX      

Bandcamp Exclusive Disney Dish Show

The Road to Cars Land – Part Two

Where we left off:

And the Imagineers took the orders they were getting from Disney’s new CEO very seriously. Which is why – a year to the day after “Cars” first opened in theaters (June 9, 2006) – Cars Race Rally opened at Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Paris (on June 9, 2007).

Mind you, Cars Race Rally wasn’t the most elaborate or ambitious attraction to ever be installed at a Disney theme park. Located in the Toon Studios section of Walt Disney Studios Park, this flat ride was a reimagining of Zamperla’s Demolition Derby. Only in this case, this ride’s vehicles that have been rethemed to look as though they were part of the ”Cars” universe.

But just four months after Cars Race Rally would open at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris (on October 17, 2007, to be exact), The Walt Disney Company announced its $1.1 billion redo of Disney California Adventure. This 5-year-long project will be capped off by the creation of a 12-acre area that would basically recreate Radiator Springs in all its glory at the very center of this theme park. Which – it was hoped – would then give Southern Californians a compelling new reason to go visit the Disneyland Resort’s second gate.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? So how did we go from an area at DCA that was supposed to have celebrated California’s car culture to a land that then recreated Radiator Springs from Pixar’s original “Cars” movie? We’ll get to that on the second installment of this new Bandcamp Exclusive series, “The Road to Cars Land.”

New stuff: