What is it? Delicious summer salad served with only the freshest ingredients.
Where can you get it? Napa Rose, Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa
Photo Credit: by Disney
If you have a Disney Food Confession email [email protected] or let us know on the Disney Food Confessions Facebook page.. He is accepting Food ideas or Photos if you have them!
Emmy-nominee Stephen Colbert and his family vacationed at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA today. Check out Colbert and his family posing with Goofy!
To see more pictures check out The Huffington Post.
From March 3-6, 2011, 100 high school students from across the nation will travel to Walt Disney World Resort for Disney’s Dreamers Academy with Steve Harvey and Essence Magazine, an inspiring event featuring interactive workshops and seminars, mentoring and inspiration focusing on careers and life enrichment.
The event will be convening its fourth class at Walt Disney World Resort, where participants will learn about careers in everything from culinary arts to animation, from set design and show production to the business of sports and more.
Upon creating Disney’s Dreamers Academy in 2007, Disney joined forces with Harvey, a nationally syndicated radio personality, actor and best-selling author, to launch the initial nationwide search for high school students who possess a winning combination of attributes that reflect strong character and an attitude that will enable them to seek and take advantage of opportunities for their future. This year, Essence magazine has joined forces with Harvey to make Disney’s Dreamers Academy the biggest and brightest event yet.
Each fall, thousands of teens have been nominated by parents, teachers, school administrators, church groups and even the students themselves. A distinguished panel of leaders from communications, education, industry and entertainment reviews the applications and selects a Dreamers Academy class of 100 teens in grades 9 through 12.
While at Walt Disney World in Florida, the 100 students will participate in workshops with Disney cast members and executives, hear inspirational stories from entertainment celebrities and professional athletes, and enjoy the Disney theme parks – where they can see, first-hand, the results of people who turned their dreams into careers as “Disney dreamers.” More information can be found online at www.DisneysDreamersAcademy.com.
*Note: Nominations for Disney’s Dreamers Academy with Steve Harvey and Essence Magazine Class of 2011 are accepted July 2-Oct. 31, 2010, with information about procedures at DisneysDreamersAcademy.com.
Continuing with theme of Darlene’s first trip, I want to talk about the things you can do months before your trip begins. For some of us, this is part of the excitement, but to the uninitiated, it can seem a bit, how shall I put it? Well, it can seem like a bit much. I mean, who makes dining reservations six months in advance? But the thing about a Disney vacation is that you have to plan it. I’ve travelled through Europe with nothing more than a backpack and a well-worn travel guide and had a wonderful time, but Disney isn’t like that. Sure, you can plan nothing and have a good time. But if you have a budget, if you don’t like lines, and if you want to maximize your fun, a little planning can go a long way.
The steps you take in the early planning stage are really very minimal, but they get you one step closer to your goal: Disney World. Here’s a few of the biggest ones you’ll want to keep in mind.
1. Picking a room. If you’re staying on site, you’ll want to book early to get your resort of choice. You may book up to 500 days in advance (Disney cancellation policies are fairly lenient, but you’ll want to familiarize yourself with them), but giving yourself a good six months (except for holiday travel) should give you enough time. I could stay anywhere on property and have a great time, but Disney resorts are so beautifully themed they can really add to your experience, so choose your resort carefully. Do you want a casual fun atmosphere?
Something romantic like the Grand Floridian?
Maybe a tropical paradise is more to your liking?
Or maybe convenience or price tops your list? It’s all there and finding the one that suits you best is half the fun.
2. Watching for discounts. Even after you book your room, watch for discounts. If a discount comes out that matches your existing reservation, you can try to apply it (keep in mind they are limited). Disney normally releases room discounts or free dining several months in advance. This year has been a little different, because free dining was released for dates through next fall. This doesn’t mean that the last series of discounts are it for the year. What will likely happen is that new discounts will be released and some blackout dates will be removed. This is not guaranteed, of course. Disney likes to keep us guessing.
If you’re not working with a travel agent, you can look for these discounts yourself. The resort board at Disboards is one of the first places to post news of discounts; I always say, if you want to find out what’s going on at Disney World, check there first. You can also check Mousesavers, but they are usually slightly behind the news at Disboards.
If you have a travel agent, she should keep up with discounts for you. If not, fire her. Seriously. There are too many excellent Disney certified agents out there for you to work with someone who doesn’t keep your interests in mind.
3. Making your advanced dining reservations (ADRs). Park hours usually come out right around when you can also make your ADRs, which is at the six-month mark. The most popular restaurants, like Cinderella’s Royal Table and Le Cellier will fill up before 8:00 a.m., Eastern time on the first day of availability, so if you want one of those restaurants, you’re going to have to get up early. You can either call Disney at 407-WDW-DINE or book online at the Disney website.
4. Buy a good travel guide. The absolute best guide out there is the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, but it’s huge and for some people, it’s intimidating. If you want something smaller that is equally good, try The Complete Walt Disney World, which has gorgeous pictures and is written by a couple who spends a great deal of time in the parks. Finally, for those who like to organize their trips and keep all the information in one place, the Passporter guides are excellent; Passporter also runs a wonderful site with a friendly community forum where you can discuss Disney and how to use the book. You can’t go wrong with any of these guides, so it’s really a matter of how much reading and detail you want to tackle.
On a personal note, I’m not a fan of any of the Frommer’s or Fodor’s Disney World guides. They seem like an afterthought and I find that the information isn’t any more useful than you would find on a site like Trip Advisor; in some cases, it’s far less useful and potentially out of date
5. Finally, learn two of the most important rules for guests: How Disney transportation works and why you need a fastpass.
Next up we’ll talk about what to expect when you’re expecting (to visit Disney World).
Three hundred lucky Disney Parks Blog readers, including myself, got to attend a meet-up event at California Adventure. We got a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to make World of Color come to life. Heather Hust Rivera, a Disney Parks Blog author and public relations for Disneyland Resort introduced us to Sayre Wiseman, Director of Production at Walt Disney Imagineering; Steve Davison, a Disney Parks Blog author and Vice President of Parades and Spectaculars; and Mary Niven, Vice President of Disney California Adventure park and Guest Services. They all shared with us what it was like to work on the show.
After all the behind-the-scenes footage, a Q&A session was held. I did my best to transcribe as much as I could from the Q&A session. Due to my seat in the room as well as other noise in the environment, some words and phrases were not clear and could not be transcribed.
Question: What one thing that Bob Iger cut out of the show at the last second do you wish was still in?
Steve: Basically the show had a lot of creative people working on it and one was the head of the company, Bob Iger. He was very passionate about it. Bob is a great, great creative artist. John Lasseter worked on the show, too; we had Tom Schumacher. Pretty much everyone in the company came out to play because it was such a kind of new piece of media, ‘how do we look at it?’.
Probably Alice, I think, because that’s always been a kind of crazy thing on the internet. ‘Alice is gone! How dare they cut Alice?!’
Mary: She’s still there, she opens the finale for us!
Steve: She does, we actually snuck Alice back in. But that was part of it, was that we decided to put new things in and because we needed time, we started to look at the show going ‘Okay, what sequences do we want to get out?’
Sayre: It was over 30 minutes.
Mary: Yeah, I have to have it 26 minutes because I have to turn it three times.
Steve: There are some operational things but the great thing is, is that we’re always going to be changing, and I vow to do that, I know Mary will support that. And that’s the great part of the show, it is very flexible. There’s some exciting new stuff coming, we’re not going to tell you what it is, but you will see things change.
Question: How much has your water bill gone up since World of Color?
Mary: Actually, the water is completely recycled, so we take the water from the lagoon, it goes up, it comes back down, it gets reused again, it gets filtered throughout the evening —
Steve: Most of it comes back down.
Heather: We actually did a story on this on the blog. It was one of our first stories.
Sayre: About 98% of those fountains actually have individual pumps right in the base of each fountain, so we did it more for maintenance as well and be able to control the fountains individually. It really is taking water right from the lagoon, and then the last 2% [are] used as backsprings, but that’s also taking water from the lagoon. We’re taking no water outside of the lagoon.
Steve: And the company’s very green, the biggest thing we did was even before we started — we took every last drop that was in the lagoon, all 15 million gallons, and recycled them back to the city which was a big, big feat, trust me.
Question: How do you make the glitter effect in the Wall-E scene?
Steve: It’s magic! The glitter effect, I’ll give you a little secret, it was a magical discovery. We were playing one night and all the disciplines were doing everything at the same time — projections shooting stuff and the lasers are going and the fountains were programming — it was kind of mass chaos, like the beginning of an orchestra, and then you look up every now and then and something will catch your eye, you’re like, ‘Oh, what’s that? Do that again!’ and you make everybody stop. What was happening was that the fountains were flying through the lasers that were at an upper level, and I’m like, ‘Wow! That’s really cool! Do it again!’ I think I was like a little kid running around going, ‘Oooh, pretty pretty pretty pretty!’ And it’s what we call ‘discoveries’ that I’ve never seen it before. I have seen a lot of laser shows and stuff but it was kind of this magic thing because the air is so pure here that when you shoot lasers through the sky, and you run water through it, it only picks it up where the water hits the laser, so that’s how a lot of that magical effects stuff at the beginning of the show where you see dots in the sky and the dots move, that’s the coolest thing ever. That’s my favorite part of the show right there.
Question: Compared to all the other Disney shows, where did the idea of doing so much against water come from?
Steve: We wanted to do something different, actually. The park asked us to look at doing a spectacular through that and, since it’s in my job title, everyone in the theatrical division goes, ‘It’s yours, it’s yours!’ I do all the fireworks for us and part of it wasn’t to do that again. We did a Christmas show here, for those of you who saw it, that was a pure fireworks show, because that’s what we knew at the time, and it was just a smoke-out, crazy, crazy, show for Christmas, and we actually stopped doing it, and we started to learn about what would work. Well, the biggest piece of land to work with for a spectacular so enough people could see it was the lagoon. We pretty much haven’t done water shows, we have fountains in some of our other spectaculars but nothing on this scale. We basically just looked at it and said, ‘Hey, let’s do stuff with water like we do with fireworks’. … We’re all fountain specialists now. If you need one for your home let me know. I’m good with pools too.
Question: In the beginning, how long did you think it was going to be before opening day would be, or was it always summer 2010?
Steve: It was spring. Spring 2010.
Sayre: We made spring.
Mary: Yes!
Steve: We did make spring. There was so much debate about that on the internet, ‘They’re never going to open!’ and then people were posting things like, ‘Oh, this happened and now it’s not til next fall’. We always said the spring. The dates moved a little bit based on just construction because it was all new, no one had ever done giant floating platforms, and one platform is literally the size of this room that goes up and down and does stuff. They are brilliant designs. A lot of that took a lot of time, they’re still learning every day about this stuff. It literally was, ‘Here’s the date we’re going to make it.’
Sayre: Once we set the date … when the teams would come back and say, ‘Oh we’re going to need two weeks to do that,’ Steven would go, ‘OPENING DATE IS JUNE 11! WE’RE DONE ON JUNE 11, THERE IS NO QUESTION.’
Mary: We were done on June 11.
Steve: Yeah, there were a lot of dates floating…
Question: What influenced you to bring in so many different kinds of media like the paper puppets and the sand art, how did you think to bring them into this water show and add them to the event?
Steve: I treated the show like ‘Fantasia’ … things just blend into music. I was looking at ‘Fantasia’, we were doing a lot work with feature animation and somebody sent me on Facebook a crazy thing about this paper artist and she had just won ‘So You Think You Have Talent’ or something in Romania, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s cool! You know, we should do paper art…’ Wait, that was the sand art…So I sent her a note and never heard back, so I went online and started doing research into sand artists, and so I found one and then I sent her an email and she lived in Tahoe and basically we met and said ‘Hey, I want you to work on this section of the show’. Same with Megan that did the paper work. It was just kind of, ‘Hey, let’s try this and see what it can do’. Some of it was great, some of it didn’t work as well as it wanted to, but it was great experimentation. It was kind of like…Somebody said to me, I won’t tell you who it was, but they said, ‘Walt would be very proud of what you’re doing,’ which was…I loved, because that meant a lot to me because he knew Walt Disney. What was wonderful was that it was very true, we were just trying new stuff, let’s try some new types of animations, let’s see, because there were no boundaries at this point.
Question: What is your absolute favorite scene in the whole show?
Sayre: This is really hard, actually. I love Pocahontas. Pocahontas was the very first thing in the program, it was actually one of the very first things we developed on the story board in its complete form and has been true from day one. … The fact that there’s a moment where the big sweep in the back, which you’ll see tonight, it’s so encompassing when it moves toward you. … What we found out there is that … it’s so effective when it’s traveling forward. To me, I would say Pocahontas is my favorite moment of the show. I have lots of others but that’s the one that’s most definite.
Steve: Mine’s the wacky one, it’s the Genie moment. We wanted to do the genie early on but we didn’t think it’d work, and that’s why the Genie made a comeback, actually at the very very end. He was added late in the game because we knew so much about the system, it has those fast, crazy runs if you actually watch some of the footage from the sky film, the 1800 film that’s on the blog, you’ll see how some of it’s done. It’s amazingly fast how we’re chasing light and then we’re following with water. It’s just crazy how some of that stuff is done and we knew how to do it at that point. … That’s probably my favorite.
Mary: There’s so many great moments. … One of the things that I love is I actually love the saddest moments in it, which, if you haven’t seen I’m not going to give it away, but you’ll know it by the end of the night because we rarely go that emotional — we go happy-emotional but not the sad. It’s brief enough that it doesn’t take you down, and it comes, right after that fall there’s that transformational message, which is so beautiful, but it’s just that it’s a very quiet, special moment that tells a story with just a couple of words.
Since this post lacked photos, here are some shots I took at a showing of World of Color.
In the next few Quick Tips posts I want to talk about the first day of vacation. One question that comes up is should you go to the parks that day or save your ticket. Let’s first look at it from a perspective that’s easy to get an handle on–how much is it going to cost you.
For annual passholders, the answer is easy: Go when you want. It won’t cost you any more or less, although some people don’t like to activate a pass on a day when they’ll only get a few hours in the parks.
For those holding regular tickets, it’s a little trickier. If you arrive early, say before noon, going to the parks makes financial sense, although you may be in for an early night.
If you arrive after 1:00 in the afternoon, you have to weigh the costs more carefully. If your ticket is over four days long, you’re paying almost nothing per day to visit the parks, so blowing a few dollars on just a couple of hours in the parks isn’t a huge deal. Besides, if you’re like most people, you really want to go!
If you’ve got only 3 days on your ticket but you’ll be in Orlando longer than that, don’t waste that day. There are plenty of fun activities you can do at your resort.
If you’re going to be in Orlando longer than 10 days but you only have a 10 day ticket, don’t burn that day, because while those last five or so days cost very little, you can only purchase a 10 day ticket, which means if you have additional days in town, you’ll want to save your ticket for that day. After your 10 day ticket is used up, you’ll need to start all over again.
Some other things to consider:
Tomorrow I’ll talk about what not to do your first day.
This question comes from Don, who asks: “Do you know when all of the rehab on Main Street is scheduled to be done? I can not find anything on any of the sites when. Thanks, keep up the good work.”
Don, thanks for reading the site and for your question. Unfortunately, Disney wasn’t able to give me a completion time, but rumors from some very good sources say to expect it to continue through the fall. There’s an awful lot of work being done in the Magic Kingdom right now in anticipation of the 40th anniversary of the park and the opening of the first phase of the Fantasyland expansion in 2012. Expect some major closures coming up in the next few weeks, including It’s a Small World and the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Despite these interruptions, we’re hearing from readers of the site that it’s not hindering the overall guest experience.
You can see some great pictures of the work being done in the Magic Kingdom here. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a more satisfying answer. If we hear anything, we’ll put it out here and on Facebook.
Have a Disney question? We have answers. Write us at Chip and Co. We answer every question.
The Disneyland Resort in Southern California has introduced a state-of-the-art kitchen facility to increase its productivity and efficiency for banquets and other group events held in its theme parks.
Meticulously designed for high-capacity production and efficiency, the new 10,000-square-foot facility features top notch equipment and plenty of work space for the chefs and cooks that produce culinary extravaganzas for Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure. The new banquet kitchen allows a quick and seamless transition for products to go from delivery, to cooking and production, on to the event location.
“The new banquet kitchen exemplifies our commitment to quality service for private catered events, and enhances our food and beverage options for meetings and events,” said Robert Donahue, director of resort sales and services at the Disneyland Resort.
Led by Executive Chef Jimmy Weita, the Park Events Catering Team is responsible for all banquet and special events that take place anywhere in the Disneyland Resort theme parks. Events can range from an intimate dinner in a secluded setting like Aladdin’s Oasis, a 100-person reception venue in the Disneyland park, all the way up to an 800-person picnic in Festival Arena or a 7000-person privateevent in one or more of the “lands” in either of the theme parks.
Theme park events are just one in a long line of benefits and amenities available to groups meeting at the Disneyland Resort. Meeting professionals can tap the Disney Institute for keynote sessions, workshops and exclusive behind-the-scenes tours. For complete meetings support, the Disney Event Group offers event concepting and design services, creative and entertainment to full complement of technical services Meeting attendees also have access to a host of other meeting/convention benefits that are notavailable to the general public, including early admission to the theme parks and special meeting/convention tickets that offer exceptional value.
To learn more about hosting a meeting or private event at the Disneyland Resort, call (714) 956-6556 or visit www.disneylandmeetings.com.
Groups can elevate their next event experience at the Disneyland Resort to magical proportions with “World of Color,” a new nighttime spectacular at Disney California Adventure theme park.
“World of Color” is a 25-minute visual symphony choreographed with revolutionary technology that takes attendees on a fascinating journey of Disney stories – charming and adventurous – in a whole new way. Created with groups in mind, the show offers a variety of private viewing locations that can accommodate everything from small executive groups to opening/closing galas of up to 6,000 attendees. Buy-outs are also available, which enables event organizers to customize the show with organization logos and other features.
Presented on Paradise Bay in Disney California Adventure park, “World of Color” is a major milestone in the multi-year expansion of the park. The show combines nearly 1,200 powerful fountains, popular Disney music and an all-new kaleidoscope of audio and visual effects, including both classic and new animation that is projected on massive screens of water. “World of Color” floods the senses and takes the audience on an imaginative, emotional journey into the colorful worlds of Disney classics, such as “The Lion King” and “The Little Mermaid,” along with Disney•Pixar films including “Toy Story” and “WALL-E.”
Presented nightly, World of Color provides a breathtaking backdrop for receptions, dessert parties and other networking events.
“World of Color marks a milestone in the ongoing expansion and transformation of Disney California Adventure,” said Robert Donahue, director, resort and park event sales and convention services for the Disneyland Resort. “The combination of water, light, fire and music makes World of Color a breathtaking extravaganza and showcases the unforgettable experiences Disney brings to group functions and other events.”
The inspiration for the show came from Walt Disney himself and “World of Color” features characters and images that span the history of Disney and Disney•Pixar moviemaking.
“One of our goals was to use this incredible technology – fountains, lasers, fire, integrated animation and music – to take audiences on an emotional journey,” said Steve Davison, show director and vice president, parades and spectaculars for Walt Disney Imagineering.”We want the audience to experience it as a breathtaking extravaganza, but we also want them to be immersed in the show so that they experience the laughter, drama and beauty. The secret to ‘World of Color’ is to create a kind of ‘ice skating’ effect. It has to tell a good story and seem effortless while it’s doing it.”
Disney’s World of Color is a milestone in a three-year expansion of Disney California Adventure. Disney Imagineers launched the expansion in 2009 and are bringing more of Walt Disney, the company’s founder, into the park. Attendees will be immersed in the hope and optimism of California that attracted Walt to this land of opportunity in the 1920s. Other park enhancements include extensive landscaping, and new retail and dining options.
In addition to Disney’s World of Color, the expansion program includes a new Little Mermaid attraction (opening in 2011), and the addition of the 12-acre Cars Land featuring the world of Radiator Springs and three new attractions (opening 2012).
I was talking about today’s Quick Tip in a previous article I wrote earlier this week in Chip’s Animal Kingdom Touring Plan. If you missed it check it out the article above.
Today’s Quick Tip is perfect for single people, parents, or for couples who don’t mind not riding together.If you pair this trick with a fast pass you could easily squeeze out 3 rides in a matter of minutes.
There are 3 rides that a single rider line is available right now.
All you have to do is fine the Single Rider Line and wait to be inserted in an open spot. You don’t need to do anything else. Pretty cool huh?
If you have any Tips for avoiding lines let us know in the comment section below.
The cast of Touchstone Pictures “You Again” sit down for an interview and it turns ugly, quickly. This hilarious video is from funny or die one of my all time favorite sites!
You Again stars Kristen Bell, Betty White, Sigourney Weaver, and Odette Yustman.
About the movie
Successful PR pro Marni (Kristen Bell) heads home for her older brother’s (Jimmy Wolk) wedding and discovers that he’s marrying her high school arch nemesis (Odette Yustman), who’s conveniently forgotten their problematic past. Then the bride’s jet-setting aunt (Sigourney Weaver) bursts in and Marni’s not-so-jet-setting mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) comes face to face with her own high school rival. The claws come out and old wounds are opened in this crazy comedy that proves that not all rivalries are forever.
It is scheduled to be released to theaters on Sept. 24th.
