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Shanghai Disneyland Approved By Chinese Government

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:07:49 -0800

The worst-kept secret in Disney history is officially out of the bag (and moving forward):

After a courtship of about 20 years, the Walt Disney Company has won approval from the central government of China to build a Disneyland-style theme park in Shanghai, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said Tuesday.

The initial resort, with a mix of shopping areas, hotels and a Magic Kingdom-style theme park, will sprawl across 1,000 acres of the city’s Pudong district — with the theme park occupying about 100 of those acres. It would be a little bigger than Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., and on par with the parks in Paris and Tokyo. It is expected to open in five or six years.

They're spending $3.5Bn on this puppy - nearly what was spent on DisneySea. I can't wait to see some of the concept art.

Paradise Bay Is (Finally!) Being Refilled

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:52:11 -0800

After being drained last year to install the hardware for "World Of Color" DCA's Paradise Bay is (finally) being refilled -- all 16 million gallons of it. The process will take a few weeks to complete.

The OC Register has some great photos (as well as a video of Goofy and Mickey helping out with the process).

Details On Walt Disney Studios' "Toy Story Playland"

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:42:31 -0800

Disneyland Paris blog Disney and More has a post this week about what to expect from the Toy Story Playland addition to the Walt Disney Studios park, slated to open next year:

Have a look to this closer view where you can see the giant Buzz Lightyear who will stand at the entrance, Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop on the right, RC Racer half pipe coaster on the left and Slinky Dog Zig Zag Spin more or less in the center of the land.

Walt Disney Studios is, without question, the weakest park in the Disney empire - small, under-loved, and a total disaster in the theming department (it makes California Adventure look like DisneySea). I'm not sure that "Toy Story Land" will help much with the theme issues, but new attractions are essential for this park to be viable.

Inside Space Mountain's "Ghost Galaxy"

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 06:29:16 -0800

Space Mountain's "Ghost Galaxy" overlay launched last week, and the reviews are incredibly positive.

The OC Register has some of the scoop and backstory on the project, including some terrific video of the Space Mountain exterior at night.

Ghost Galaxy’s back story is that Disney wants recruits to explore unknown phenomena during a deep-space research trip, but then something goes wrong. Guests are detoured into an unknown galaxy with cosmic phenomena at every turn, Roach said.

The overlay lasts until just after Halloween, and then it's gone for the year. If you're in the Anaheim area, it sounds like a fantastic good time.

Star Tours 2 Coming To Disneyland In 2011

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:13:30 -0800

The long-rumored update to Star Tours is finally official:

In the new 3-D version of the venerable simulator ride, visitors board a Starspeeder and join a high-speed pod race through the desert canyons of Tatooine in a scene from the "Star Wars" movie series.

Awesome, and about damn time - Star Tours has been long in the tooth for a solid decade now. Disneyland and Disney World get the update first; Disneylands Paris and Tokyo are on hold for a bit.

Walt Disney Museum To Open Oct 1

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:44:10 -0800

Looks like the Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco is opening on October 1; the official Web site has been updated, and the LA Times Travel Blog has a great summary of what to expect.

Hours are 10AM - 6 PM, Wednesday - Sunday; tickets are $20, and can be bought up to 60 days in advance.

I'm so totally checking this out the next time I'm down in SF.

Way To Go, Richard & Mel!

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:27:47 -0800

My good friends Richard and Melissa tied the knot yesterday in a beautiful ceremony at a winery just outside Salem, Oregon. Individually, they're two of my favorite people, but they're unquestionably better together.

Long life and great happiness to the new couple! You guys rock!

The Walt Disney Family Museum on KRON4

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:13:54 -0800

Back in May, I wrote about the upcoming Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco. Well, SF TV station KRON4 had a quick, 1-minute clip on it earlier this week - and it's worth a look.

Not a ton of new details, but it's interesting to see how it's all coming together.

"Tron Legacy"

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:51:31 -0800

The trailer for the Tron sequel, Tron Legacy hit the Web last week, and it looks fantastic. A cleaned-up, high-res version of the footage that was shown last year at ComiCon, it doesn't give away any plot ... but does show what an additional 27 years of (compounding) computing power can buy you.

The fun seems to be starting, too - as part of the viral promotional campaign, a replica of Flynn's Arcade got built in San Diego last month. And Disney is running a "Flynn Lives" Web site.

I love that the nerds who grew up on Tron are now in charge of the sequel, and that they seem so determined to do it right.

Disneyland Paris To Get "Ratatouille" E-Ticket In 2012

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:42:49 -0800

Disneyland Paris blog Disney And More has a scoop (as well a big 'ol park photo update) about the forthcoming "Ratatouille" attraction at the Walt Disney Studios Paris park.

The ride will begin inside Gusteau's restaurant kitchen where we will be chased by some of the cooks and especially Skinner, the chef. I don't want to tell you too much about the storyline to don't spoil you the ride, but what i can tell you is that the ride itself will not follow the chronological order of the movie scenes, although WDS visitors will be pleased to find some of the key scenes from the movie

Budget is $150M; opening day is slated for 2012, when Disneyland Paris turns 20. Sounds fantastic, and I love the idea that the ride will be unique to the Paris parks.

"Storm fans' loyalty is as enduring as the team"

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:37:56 -0800

A nice piece in the Times from Jerry Brewer about the loyalty (and enthusiasm) of the Storm's fan base:

Bird, the star Storm guard, remembers losing a home playoff game to Houston in 2005. The Comets pounded the Storm 75-58 and ended its season. After winning a championship in 2004, it was a disappointing conclusion. However, as Bird and her teammates walked off the court, they exited to a standing ovation. It moved her to near tears.

"I'll never forget it," Bird said Friday at Sport restaurant in Lower Queen Anne, during an event that was part of a celebration for the franchise's all-decade team. "It just reminded me how awesome our fans are."

The article's a solid primer on the history of women's basketball in Seattle (for a deeper piece, see "Game On!"), apropos, given the recent 10th anniversary game.

(And if you want to see it in person, we play Phoenix tomorrow night, 7 PM.)

Seattle's Light Rail System Opens At 10 AM Today

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 02:39:27 -0800

Opening day is here!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Real Cities Have Trains. And it's fantastic to see that we've finally joined the party.

Rumor has it that opening weekend is going to be packed (especially true if our opening is anything like the one in Phoenix). The system is free until Monday morning, so feel free to swing on by and take it for a spin.

Some important dates to look forward to in Seattle's rail future:

December 31, 2009. The Sea-Tac Airport station opens.
2012. The First Hill Streetcar should be open for service.
2016. University Link opens, taking the system goes a little farther north to stations on Capitol Hill and Husky Stadium.
2020. North Link goes live, adding stations at Brooklyn, Roosevelt and Northgate. At the same time, East Link comes online, which connects the core light rail system with a line that runs from downtown Seattle to Mercer Island and downtown Bellevue.
2021. East Link extends even further out, connecting from Bellevue to the Overlake Transit Center (and possibly downtown Redmond).
2023. North Link extends all the way to Lynnwood, adding stations at Jackson Park, Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, and Lynnwood.

I'm so incredibly happy right now. This is a great day.

13 Days In Asia, Part 4: The Final

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:39:07 -0800

(Please see: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

The iPhone App Store is a godsend to travelers. There are trivial little helper apps, such as Beijing Subway (which displays the city subway map ... and that's all), language-and-translation apps (Lonely Planet's "Mandarin Phrasebook" is terrific) and even some incredibly handy tourist helpers, such as the Beijing Taxi Guide. This last is my favorite, both for utility and for cleverness; the utility comes from its long list of popular Beijing attractions and restaurants, and the cleverness comes from its "Taxi Card" mode, where you can tap a button that rotates the screen and displays the attraction's address and directions in Chinese. That way, you can simply show your iPhone to a taxi driver and they know where to take you. Super-cool, super-useful.
Friday night's dinner and entertainment took place at the (famous) Lao She Tea House, which is right near Tiananmen Square. Built just 20 years ago, the place is designed to look and feel like it's hundreds of years old. It's packed to the rafters with memorabilia, photographs of famous visitors, and has an almost EPCOT-esque quality to it (at one point, I seriously felt like I was wandering around the China pavilion in Florida). There are guided tours of the various private tea rooms (each a distinct size and style), a gift shop, and an integrated, 100-person theater. We saw a shadow puppet show during dinner ("Tortoise and Crane"), and were then moved to the theater, served fresh tea, and treated to the "Four Seasons" show which tells the story of the Monkey King. The servers do acrobatic tea service; there's face-changing and kung fu; a bit of Chinese opera. It's a definite cultural experience, and I found myself somewhat overloaded and disoriented during the show because I lacked so much cultural backstory. Eventually, I just leaned back and took in as much as I could. (Welcome to Asia, white boy.)
The weekend was our big shot at some real tourism, a chance to get out of the office (and the city) and to see some of the sights that Beijing is famous for. Our Chinese colleagues had organized two different options - Group A would go to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, with Group B heading off to see the Ming Tombs and the Summer Palace. Since Brooke and I had seen the Great Wall on our last trip, we joined Group B ... and then found out there were just 5 of us. In a lot of ways, this turned out to be a blessing - everybody fit into one passenger car, and could pretty much set our own schedule.
The Ming Tombs are incredible. Above ground, the place feels like an elaborate Chinese public park - trees, cobblestone footpaths, old buildings, concessionaires, a gift shop, and the like. However, when you actually descend into one of the Tombs, everything changes and it becomes something out of an as-yet-unmade Indiana Jones film. By the time you enter the first antechamber, you're 27 meters underground and gawking at the height of the cavern, the scope of the building work, the quality of the craftsmanship, and the fact that it was all built a looooong time ago. The whereabouts of the Tomb's entrances were unknown for quite some time, despite the government searching for them; our guide told us that they were found about 50 years ago, shortly after a hard rain caused a sinkhole and revealed them. Chinese archeologists had to figure out how to pick the elaborate, never-intended-to-open locks on the gigantic doors, excavate the site, and preserve its treasures. Over time, the sites were turned into a national exhibit.
(It should be pointed out the Indiana Jones version of this experience likely involved some kind of curse, face-melting, and/or underground mining car chase; I doubt that this happened here.)
In China, you can travel about 400 years in 5km or so; we had lunch at a gleaming, ultra-modern (and huge) mall, slurping down some delicious spicy noodles from a mass-market Japanese chain. After lunch, I noticed a coffee place ("Barista Coffee") near the foot of one of the escalators, and simply couldn't resist. The promise of a decent cup of java was too strong, and I was overdue.
Barista Coffee could be a coffee bar at any newer mall anywhere in the US or Europe. Leather couches and chairs, swank decoration, free newspapers and fashion magazines, free WiFi. The only catch was that they didn't speak English and my Mandarin is pretty much limited to "Hello", "Thank you" and pointing at pictures of things on a menu. In this case, that worked out - the menu is a full-color, laminated jobby that has a very nice table listing drinks, sizes, and prices. Find the intersection of what you want, point at it, pay the nice lady some Yuan. I ordered two drinks - one for me, one for Brooke - and I was delighted to see that they had drink flavors at the bottom of the sheet. I pointed at the "Vanilla" item, at which point the woman behind the counter paused, and gave me the "are you sure?" look. Through mutual smiling and head-nodding, we establish that yes, I want the vanilla, and then our group goes to sit down.
Punchline: they wind up bringing us four drinks. Two of them are the ones we thought we ordered, and the extra two I accidentally ordered with my oh-so-clever pointing routine. Turns out the "vanilla" bit at the bottom refers to vanilla-flavored beans, not extra syrup. She thought I wanted extra drinks for the rest of our group, and, well, now we have them. Turns out they're not so big on the flavored syrup; the flavor goes into the beans, instead. Live and learn.
(I have to say, the coffee was pretty good.)
We head to the Summer Palace, and holy cow is it packed. A weekend day, bright, sunny, hot, and the joint is swarming with tourists and locals alike. The signs at the front of the park say that it's 33 degrees (nearly 100, for those of you back home), and they're expecting 22,000 guests - slightly down from 26,700 the day before. (As a point of comparison, Disneyland does about 40,000 people a day.)
The Palace is a jewel - a flat-out-wonderful public good. We stroll the grounds and watch families playing, old people fishing, Australian and German tourists snapping photos, people practicing English, vendors selling kites and souvenirs and ice cream, and everywhere is noise and laughter and the sound of birds and other wildlife. The fact that the site itself is a priceless historical relic seems beside the point - Beijingers use their city - but the sheer number of people and the delight with which they're enjoying the place makes it a vibrant and wonderful place to be. If I lived in Beijing, I'd spend a ton of time here.
Hours later, we are sunburned, walked out, and totally pooped. We rendezvous with the A Group for dinner (Peking duck), and I find myself crashing hard as I hear their stories of the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and crazy haggling with merchants.
A handful of us take off on Sunday and do a bit of Western spelunking - which meant visiting McDonald's and Wal-Mart. We just had to know.
I'd hit Mickey D's the last time I was in town, and, unsurprisingly, it seemed exactly the same. This one has 2 floors, is open 24 hours, offers home delivery by its battalion of scooter-driving, uniformed help and was totally packed. One of their folks saw us coming up the staircase and slid up with menus that had both Chinese and English translations on them. Everyone tried something new or unfamiliar - I did their chicken sandwich, which had a little too much mayo for my tastes - and, after everyone finished, we broke for Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart in China is, to borrow the Pulp Fiction-ism, "just a little bit different." They have all the same shit there that we have here, but it's just a little bit different. The store itself is big - three stories, with escalators to take you (and your cart) between floors. They sell the assortment of stuff you'd expect, too - clothes, toys, household items - alongside a full-service grocery store (complete with fresh produce, pre-made food, you name it) down on the ground level. The place is laid out like IKEA, guiding you from section to section in a logical way. We saw tons of American brands - and in many cases, the American logo is the only thing on the package in English. Wal-Mart seems to be spending a lot of energy to educate Chinese consumers about conveniences that Americans take for granted - complimentary parking, assistance getting the cart to the car, the ability to use bank cards. The store is also putting an emphasis on customer service - signs everywhere remind people to "send a letter to our President" with their thoughts. Despite how you might feel about Wal-Mart, it's all pretty impressive. And I wonder what the average Chinese citizen thinks of it - are they dazzled? Do they care? (I'll have to ask one of my colleagues.)
Monday was strange - after a week of nonstop meetings and packed evenings, to find myself with a normal, freed-up work day was a bit of a shock. It quickly became routine, and as Monday turned to Tuesday, Wednesday, and, finally, Thursday morning, I found myself back in a hotel shuttle and heading for the airport.
Yes, Beijing's airport has a Starbucks. And yes, I totally got my grande vanilla soy latte on before the flight. (And no, they didn't bring me two of them.)
If you're so inclined, you can buy beer from the vending machine located next to the gate. (You can also get fruit juice, Coke Zero, and a handful of things I didn't recognize.) I can't decide if this is genius (chill out the passengers before takeoff) or just mean to the flight attendants (unruly drunk passengers!).
We land in Japan. No crazy health screenings this time.
"Frost/Nixon" is a fantastic movie. I didn't pay it much attention when it came out theatrically, but it looked reasonably strong against my other in-flight choices, so I gave it a spin. Blew me away. Smart, well-written, engaging, and with some spectacular performances - absolutely rent it.
On the other hand, "Caddyshack" - a movie I've been nostalgically warm about since forever, but hadn't seen in at least 20 years - is not very good. I know it's directed by Harold Ramis and has a cast of people I adore, but ... (sigh). It just doesn't age well. I should have left it alone.
We land in Seattle. Customs is a breeze, the bags are on the carousel in near-record time, and I'm suddenly in the back seat of a taxi heading home. I'm in sensory overload: the sky is fantastically blue, the plants and vegetation are overwhelmingly green, the mountains are gleamingly white-capped and the air is so! freakin'! clean!. I roll down the window, let in the rushing freeway breeze, and breathe deeply.

Damn, it's good to be home.

The Skinny On "World Of Color"

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:46:45 -0800

The LA Times travel blog has the skinny on the new World Of Color show, including a quick description of all the major scenes.

World of Color, which blends the nighttime spectacle of Disneyland's Fantasmic and the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas, is the first major addition of a $1.1-billion makeover planned for Disney's California Adventure through 2012. ... The water show will feature an array of dancing fountains, movie projections and lighting effects all tied to the original Sherman Brothers musical score from Disney's Sunday night television show of the 1960s and '70s.

The show will run 25 minutes, and it sounds awesome. They're gonna pack the house with this one.

Two More Glimpses Into The Future California Adventure

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:36:48 -0800

Another day, another drip of Disney data on the DCA makeover - in this case, a media preview of the World of Color show, and a "virtual preview center" to get people hot n' bothered about the changes coming to the park beyond Paradise Pier.

First, the bit on World Of Color:

The attraction doesn't open for months, but Around Disney will get a close-up look at all the inner workings and how they'll function. ... Surpassing all Disney water productions, "World of Color" will bring Disney animation to life with powerful fountains that become stars of the show as they create the world's largest projected water screen.

Can't wait for video and/or renderings of that to hit YouTube.

For the Virtual Preview Center - part of the official Disneyland Web site - Disney has chosen to offer artwork, video clips, and behind-the-scenes looks at the making of the refurb. For those fortunate enough to live in Los Angeles (Tony & Andrea, I'm looking at you...), the second phase of the real-world Preview Center (located in California Adventure itself) opens to the public today, July 17.

(Which also happens to be Disneylands' 54th birthday, but of course you all knew that already.)