Here’s a bit of Olympic/Disney trivia for you: Did you know that the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing actually cost more to produce than it originally cost to build Disney’s California Adventure? It’s true!
Archive for August, 2008
Olympic Trivia!
Friday, August 8th, 2008Congestion in China
Friday, August 8th, 2008Epcot’s China pavilion was overrun on Friday night by tourists hoping to catch the Olympic opening ceremonies. “Sometimes we forget just how like the real China our pavilion is,” said supposed Walt Disney World cultural ambassador Princess Fuzzbucket. “It’s only natural that some people would think that the Olympics are being hosted here, but we weren’t prepared for more than 15,000 guests showing up.”
“I’d just rather go here than off to some country with all different time zones and bathrooms and weird food and some gibberish for language and an alphabet,” said Ed Xenophobe, a Disney World guest from Isolation, Kansas. “Each Epcot pavilion is technically part of the host country — or is that embassies? — but anyway it’s as real as the real place and Disney should have done a better job of having the Olympics here, that’s all I’m saying.”
This isn’t the first time that guests have had trouble distinguishing Epcot pavilions from actual countries. For example:
- It is common to find guests in the U.K. pavilion wandering about looking for the entrance to the “chunnel” to the France pavilion.
- In 1989 a group of protesters smuggled sledgehammers into the park and attempted to bring down a wall in Germany.
- Guests occasionally comment that Norway is “a bigger country than they imagined it would be.”
- Cast members in the American Adventure occasionally have to be disciplined when they forget themselves and attempt to hire day laborers from the Mexico pavilion.
Antimatterhorn
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008After sneaking into Disneyland more than an hour before opening (it’s amazing what you can do when you’re disguised as a planter), our Official DisneyLies Photographer managed to snap a picture of an Imagineering test of the new Antimatterhorn.
This Matterhorn overlay — accomplished in minutes thanks to billions of carefully installed, computer-controlled black-light LEDs — is intended for use during this year’s Halloween festivities. Rumor has it that, when the Matterhorn is in “evil” mode, the mountain will not only look evil, but the cars will also be fitted with super-bumpy wheels and the Yeti will have a really, really bad haircut (sort of an “abominable mullet,” according to an Imagineer).