I'm Going to do Everything!

And by everything, I mean I've going to ride every ride here at Walt Disney World.  As I mentioned before, I've only been to WDW twice before, and while both trips were lengthy and packed full of rides and fun, I still haven't done everything at the parks.  So I've decided to make that my goal for my time here during the Disney College Program, and to document my progress while I do it!

Well, I'm at least going to have fun, hopefully you like hearing about it.  And if not, well then my name is Clayton and this has been Tarzan's Treehouse.

So, details. I'm posting this right now because if all goes well I should be going into the parks for the first time tomorrow night after Traditions.  I'm going to take pictures and/or videos of my adventures, and probably post there up here one at a time, so not exactly at the same time I necessarily do them. Rather, I expect I'll do several rides on a day off and then spend the next week or so posting about it, but we'll see how it actually goes.

I got the inspiration for this from the two guys who run Parkeology.com.  They did a challenge back in 2014 called the WDW46 challenge. That was an attempt to ride every ride in WDW in one day, using only perks available to all guests, so pretty much just intense planning, Fastpass+, and Extra Magic Hours.  I'm not crazy enough to try and do this all in one day, so I'm just kind of using their ideas about what counts as a ride to give myself a starting point.  I've posted directly from their website below the exact list of what they completed for the challenge.



From http://www.parkeology.com/wdw46-official-record:

"The list of 46 rides comes from Disney’s official attractions list. We count only rides, not shows or exhibits. The attraction must have a vehicle. The current list of 46 rides is as follows:

MAGIC KINGDOM

1. Main Street Vehicles
2. Walt Disney World Railroad
3. Jungle Cruise
4. Pirates of the Caribbean
5. Magic Carpets of Aladdin
6. Splash Mountain
7. Big Thunder Mountain
8. Rafts to Tom Sawyer Island
9. Liberty Belle Riverboat
10. Haunted Mansion
11. It’s a Small World
12. Peter Pan’s Flight
13. Prince Charming Regal Carousel
14. Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
15. Under the Sea — Journey of the Little Mermaid
16. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
17. Mad Tea Party
18. Dumbo the Flying Elephant
19. Barnstormer
20. Tomorrowland Speedway
21. Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover
22. Space Mountain
23. Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin
24. AstroOrbiter
25. Carousel of Progress

EPCOT

1. Spaceship Earth
2. Ellen’s Energy Adventure
3. Mission: SPACE
4. Test Track
5. Gran Fiesta Tour
6. Journey Into Imagination
7. Soarin’
8. Living with the Land
9. The Seas with Nemo and Friends

DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

1. Great Movie Ride
2. Toy Story Midway Mania
3. Star Tours
4. Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster
5. Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM

1. Kilimanjaro Safari
2. Wildlife Express
3. Kali River Rapids
4. Expedition Everest
5. Dinosaur
6. Primeval Whirl
7. TriceraTop Spin"

You may notice I crossed Soarin' off that list.  That particular ride has closed while a third theater is constructed and programming takes place in preparation to switch the film over to one showing scenes from all over the world instead of limited to only California.  This will continue until the new film premieres in summer, long after I am gone in April.  So already I'm down to 45 rides.  As well. I am going to include shows as part of what I experience and document during my time here.  Since no one likes failure, I'm not requiring all of these for myself, but they will definitely be included as a bonus of sorts.

A record of the successful WDW46 run from Parkeology is captured here, and while it is rather lengthy, it's still quite an interesting read.

Hopefully I'll see you back here as I start to record my progress. TTFN!

Hello World! Redux

Welcome back everyone!  And by everyone, I mean the one person who still occasionally stumbles upon my ramblings every once in a while.  But hey, we're allowed to have delusions of grandeur, right?

So there's a reason I've come back (again) to resurrect this long outdated blog.  How 'bout a challenge: guess where I am right now.


Go on, guess.



I'll wait.




Got it?  Okay, good.  Here goes....





I'M AT WALT DISNEY WORLD!!!! *super happy dance*

It has been a dream of mine for many years now to work for the Disney Company (big surprise, right?), and I finally have that opportunity.  I have been accepted into the WDW College Program, and even better yet, I get to work Attractions! This is such a dream come true for me that I can hardly come to terms with the fact that I'm even here.  I only just checked in today, January 11th, which is when I found out that I'll be working specifically in Epcot in Future World East attractions, although I don't know right now if I will later be assigned to a single ride or I will "bounce" around to several attractions in that area.

Now to the sad news.  I only have three months here.  I arrived January 11th, 2016 and I depart on April 7th.  This is because my university has a strange schedule where I have these months off, but then I go to school from mid-April to the end of July, before going back in a more regular September to December semester.  Disney specifically offered a shorter program to me that would fit in my break so my schooling isn't interrupted. The other piece of bad news is that I don't get my cast ID until Traditions, which isn't until Friday.  Yup.  For those of you playing along at home, that means that I have three whole days in Florida, WITHIN ARM'S REACH OF THE PARKS, that I can't even go to the parks in.  Well, unless I want to pay full price for tickets. (Hey, guess who has two thumbs and is pretty broke right now? This guy. )

So yes, I'm really just complaining now because I'm sad.  But the important thing to get out of this is that I'm gonna start posting on here, as much as I am able.  It gives me something to do and perhaps allows a bit of insight into my life.  I really want to do this, and I have a few ideas about what I'm going to do which I like, so I hope that y'all like them too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I drove 12 hours overnight down here and then had a full day of program introduction, so I've been awake for almost 36 full hours at this point.  Hm, maybe that's why this blog is so odd.... Anyway, I'm gonna go crash.

See ya!

A Thought on Things

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."

Rebirth of a Park

Well, I'm about a week late to coming to the party, but that's okay, isn't it?  Last Friday, June 15th 2012, Disney('s) California Adventure park reopened to a brand new experience over 5 years in the making.  If any of you remember, some of my earliest posts were about the changes coming to Paradise Pier.  And now, many many years later (and very few blog posts....), all of the construction walls have finally come down to reveal how Disney has done in rebranding what was originally considered a dud to both public and company alike.

However, this post isn't about the changes that were made, although that is still a possibility for a later post.  Rather, I wanted to spend this time talking about my personal feelings regarding the park.  I have been to Disneyland when there was a parking lot there instead of the way things are now, but I was much too young to remember it.  My earliest memories of visiting Disneyland come from 2003, the year that my family bought annual passes and made the 6+ hour drive down to the parks several times throughout the year.  I think for that reason, I actually have a great nostalgia for the way things were at California Adventure.  I find this to be true for many of the memories of childhood we cherish and hold on to as adults.  The same could be said for the changes to Disneyland in this same almost-decade-long time period, but the changes to DCA have been much more significant and memorable.

Back then I remember pride in the giant letters spelling out the name of our state, thinking that the Golden Gate is much bigger in real life, wonder at Grizzly Peak and not understanding that it was fake.  Back then, there were shows other than Aladdin at the Hyperion Theatre and nothing behind it.  There was a land based on farming rather than Bugs.  Grizzly River Run and the play area across from it were only loosely themed but I didn't care.  I felt so many things much more than I did at home; wonder, excitement, and fear.  Lots of fear at everything.  I don't know what it was that made me so unwilling to try anything (I will say that I was still fairly young at that age), but I hadn't yet realized that Disney equals safe, for the most part.  I was scared of Soarin' Over California, I was scared of the "Giant Orange Swings", I was even scared of It's Tough to Be a Bug (having had bad experiences on Honey I Shrunk the Audience).

However, I was most scared of the giant looping roller coaster that dominated the far edge of Paradise Pier.  In fact, I still vividly remember the scene of telling my mother, while on King Triton's Carousel (because carousels are always safe) that I did not want to go on "that".  At this point, I could barely even go on roller coasters, and Big Thunder, Space Mountain, Matterhorn were all iffy to me.  I was adamant about not being forced onto my first looping coaster.  However, just a few minutes later I somehow found myself going through the queue.  I must have been drugged or dazed in some way and I think it was only as I was strapped in and the train started to move that clarity shot through my mind.  I remember saying "Okay, I want to get off now."  And then the reply from my mother next to me, "It's too late for that now."  I am happy now to report that I survived and developed a love for California Screamin' which, as a side note, has now spread to other roller coasters that are even more extreme, such as those that can be found at your local Six Flags.  It still took until 2010 for me to ride Rock N Roller Coaster at Walt Disney World, but that was only because I chickened out in 2007 after a much more frightening experience with their version of the Hollywood Tower Hotel.

As I grew older and became more integrated in the online Disney fan base, I started to realize some of the problems that the park had.  It wasn't the Disney Theme Park that it was meant to or should have been.  And even though I am extremely pleased that Disney suits have put so much effort forth to correcting this park, and even though I enjoy the new experience and cannot wait until I can see all of the new additions in person, I still was sad when they tore apart my childhood.  I was losing something familiar, like a friend I had had for a long time and only saw once a year.  Those CALIFORNIA letters stood stalwart to greet the guests.  Grizzly Peak roared up at the sky as he always had.  Mickey greeted me from the roller coaster and the sun smiled from the ferris wheel, instead of the other way around.  And the golden sun at the entrance welcomed me back to my second home, just as much as the train pulling in at the station across the way or the gleaming monorail whizzing past overhead.  I don't want people to think that I only remember DCA or that I don't like Disneyland.  Much of the same is true of that park, which is near and dear to my heart.  But it's DCA that has changed dramatically to me, the things that I once took for granted are no longer there.  I love Disneyland and Walt Disney World, I have wonderful memories from all of these parks that I have had the chance to visit.  But it's these pictures in my head of a "broken" park, these are the memories I cherish, despite their imperfections and blemishes.  This is what I remember.  This is what I grew up with.  This is my childhood.

Something Technical

While I was working on my "supermegaawesomefunny" post recently, I noticed that I needed to change a few things on the template so the YouTube video widths would come out nice. Anyway, before long I had committed myself to a complete overhaul of the design of the blog. It'll probably still receive a few tweaks over days/weeks/months/whenever the heck I get around to it/etc. You guys know how fast things get done around here...

Anyway, I'm just looking for a little feedback on the new design. Any comments at all?