Hey there. It's been a while, hasn't it? Almost three years. At this point, it almost feels good to stretch my wings again a bit on this blog. I want to say just a quick few things and share a particular video with you, if anyone is even still there.
As far as my absence, I do apologize for leaving without any warning and it being so long for me to return. I decided a long time ago that I was going to serve a full-time mission for my church, and that plan came true for much of the time I was gone. Things were in motion from about December of 2011 onward, and I found out in August of 2012 that I would be leaving at the end of October for Colorado Springs and would be away from pretty much all computers, internet, and most technology for two years. Yes, I could have posted here, and maybe I even should have, but I didn't and let it slip past me.
Fast forward to June of 2014. I got home from my mission, a bit early, and tried to get back to life "normally". However, some things were different. For one, I live in Mississippi now with my family. Two, I didn't have as much access to a computer and/or internet (the latter half is still a problem). Three, I had to get a job. I thought about this blog a few times, but with nothing to say, it was on the back of my mind.
Forward even further, into the new year. A good friend of mine left a comment on one of my more recent posts here, trying to get in contact with me. As I read through some of my last posts here, just for fun, I realized I really liked and missed sharing my thoughts on Disney here. It filled me with a large desire to keep preserving my observations and opinions from time to time. I thought a lot over days and weeks about things that I wanted to say here, but time simply wasn't on my side. I'm currently busy with work, I'm going back to school in just over a month, my family and I are traveling back to California for 11 days in exactly a week, and the internet access is still lacking at home.
But yet, I still want to talk. My family and others close to me continually urge me to talk, to open up, to share my problems with others. So maybe that's why I like doing this. Maybe it helps. Maybe I'll actually find something to talk about, or the time to do it one of these days. Who knows? But today, I have time, and so I'm gonna share.
So speaking of sharing, I wanted to post this video from the Disney Parks Blog about AVATAR Land at Animal Kingdom in Walt Disney World. I think it's interesting that the Imagineers have played this one so close to the chest. I mean, if you think about how much we know about whats going on in there we've gotten, what, two pieces of concept art, one of which I don't even think is in the works any more? Maybe I just don't know because I've been out of it, but I at least know very little, as it seems the Imagineers themselves do as well. So I was surprised and somewhat excited by this video of a small glimpse of what is to come.
Color me impressed. If nothing else, those floating rocks/islands/whatever you want to call them will be quite the challenge to pull off construction-wise, but it looks pretty good. And I wonder what context those reacting floors/pad will be used in. I like the inside look.
We can guess what the land is going to contain. The flying E-ticket ride (I imagine akin to Soarin', or something like the rides going into Universal's Harry Potter lands), a merchandise shop, probably some sort of food, bathrooms, maybe even a show or other smaller attraction, but otherwise not much. Still, with as much as the marketers behind Disney love to hype things up for years beforehand (I'm looking at you, New Fantasyland....), I'm surprised at the lack on intel on something they've been constructing for over a year now. Time will tell how long it is before they tell us something other than "We're working on it, we'll have more coming soon."
