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I would consider Disney to have had two great "golden ages." The first was the classic Disney era: Snow White in the 30s through Sleeping Beauty, Jungle Book, etc. The second was the revitalization of Disney in the late 80s and early 90s with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the Lion King. Sadly, it wasn't long at all before that Disney era faded.

It's nearly impossible to find (Disney's done a great job suppressing it), but a great documentary is The Sweatbox, shot by Sting's wife on the set of Empire of the Sun, a project which was amazingly tumultuous, eventually resulting in the removal of its director, rewrite of the script, and retooling as Emperor's New Groove. It's a little slanted towards making Sting look good, but other than that, not a bad look at the inner workings of the Mouse House.

I can't *STAND* the TSA. The whole SSSS thing. The whole thing about them telling you to tell the travelers lies in the training book that you have to turn in when you do airport training. Lies and scandals. They are a bunch of fudgep [CONNECTION TERMINATED]

Ahh exxon. If I may reminisce for a moment. Back a number of years ago I went to Disney in FL with my father and brother. We ended up going thru the revamped 'Universe of Energy' (or something). At the time it had narrators of Bill Nye and Ellen DeGeneres. Which I felt was a detriment to the original I saw as a child, which I don't recall being politically charged). However, Ellen brought up the issue of global warming, and Bill Nye *THE SCIENCE GUY* gave a mealy mouthed half hearted, clearly manipulated answer of something like 'That is an important topic and is in need of a lot of study.' Or something, I was too appalled to really remember. However we have him quoted as saying "Call it "global cooking," Nye suggested, or "really hot ... really fast." Even a modest change from "global warming" to "global heating" might spur people to action."

Why such a BS statement at the Disney exhibit? Sponsors: Exxon (later ExxonMobil) sponsored the pavilion from the day it opened in 1982 until early 2004.

In an October 1966 interview, Walt Disney said:
"It's like the city of tomorrow ought to be, a city that caters to the people as a service function. It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In EPCOT there will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees. Everyone must be employed. One of our requirements is that the people who live in EPCOT must help keep it alive."

If you go here and scroll down halfway to "Sleeping Beauty Castle gets a new look", you can see a couple tests that Disneyland did to "paint" the castle. One painting it gold with a ribbon around it, and another one turning it into a US flag.

Bah. Cell shading... That's been used since... since... King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry... Sure they only had 16 colors... but that's really not much more than Poke'mon uses now... ;)

I guess one must ask if this will give all those out of work 2D artists a job... Gotta think the skills are useful for something...

You're just not getting into the spirit of this thing at all, are you?

Audio tracks are also an issue. For the simulation to feel right, they have to be localized to the location of the speaker. A tape recording made in the ride usually sounds like muck, and would probably violate copyright as well.

Fans have been trading source recordings from Disney rides for years, and you used to be able to buy custom burned "Disneyland Forever" CDs at the park. The Adventure Thru Inner Space tracks include the complete lobby soundtrack, the complete ride, and the song "Miracles from Molecules" which played in the exit area.

Here is more info on the Disneyland Forever CDs.

Really, there is no way, either technically or legally, to do a good job without the cooperation of Disney.

You're just not getting into the spirit of this thing at all, are you?

Unfortunately this is out of the prime moderation window so I don't know how many people will read it.

The problem with disney today is that it's run by people that just don't get it. They see films like Finding Nemo doing really well and figure that people want to see 3D instead of 2D.

The truth of the matter is that we want to see beautiful art, but much more importantly a compelling and fun story. Finding nemo was successful not only because the artwork was great, but because the story was really good. Unfortunately for the pointy haired ones "it's the 3d".

Here's a great story that touches on these subjects.

For those that haven't already figured it out (or haven't clicked the links) Disney is dropping 2D animation and going completely 3D. This is extremely sad for those of us who work in illustration and animation, for many of us disney has been a source of inspiration for many years, it's sad to see it all end.

It only ran for a limited time and as far as I know they've never repeated it.

Didney did this at least 7-8 years ago with the Fantasmic show. Back then they had this Fantasia deal going on and they would spray a water curtain in the air and project film/video onto it.

Yes, it's not a fog, but water droplets/vapor. You also could walk through it, but you'd have to swim out into the middle of a lake and get really wet in the process. See here or here for a description.

To reply to myself, the 2 last paragraphs of the "review" of the doll is probably an indication that the doll does have transmission capabilities!

That has to be the most persistent of all urban legends. For more information, see here, here (next to last paragraph) or here. You can view his death certificate here.

'nuff said!