“Kalogridis spent last Thanksgiving in Disneyland, working as one of the park’s many irreplaceable but oft-forgotten balloon polishers,” says the article if you listen closely enough. “He ended the day with tired fingers, a face bruised by exploding vinyl, and a big smile. It is Kalogridis’s goal to try every job in the park, from ticket seller to Imagineer. ‘I’d like to design a roller coaster,’ said Kalogridis, ‘and then be one of the guys who builds it, and then a cast member who runs it, and then an EMT who helps guests who rode on it, and finally an inspector who chastises me for not building it to code. That would be quite an adventure! Too bad that, as a manager, I’d never hire someone as inexperienced as me to design a Disneyland attraction, and even if I did, acting as a member of HR I’d have to fire myself for incompetence.’ As part of his quest for job experience, guests in Disneyland next week will be able to find Kalogridis playing Mary Poppins in the noon parade.”

Their window reads, “Sherman Brothers Trepanation. You Can’t Get Us Out of Your Head.”

Fortunately, EO is just as wonderful as we remember it — the dancing, the singing, the women fainting in the aisles, were all there just like they were the first time, back in 1969 when the original film premiered in Tomorrowland. True, there have been changes made over the years. We all remember the original classic, which followed the Jacsonnauts 5 from their crash on an alien world to their confrontation with the aliens and “cabin boy Michael” teaching the evil queen her “ABCs”. For the 1986 revival, four of the human spacemen were replaced by muppets and Anjelica Huston had replaced the unavailable /deceased Joan Crawford as the evil queen. But, if anything, the music was even better, the choreography stronger, the lasers more super awesome, and the robot just as relevant to the art of dance as it is today.

The new, third-generation EO is very similar to the 1986 version. The biggest differences are in the special effects, which had to be changed because of how quickly EO replaced Honey I Shrunk the Audience! (known to some fans as Honey, I Shrunk the Audience’s Interest in Visiting This Attraction a Second Time!) So there’s no more opening starfield, no more lazers, no more smoke, but when EO’s ship’s door first opens, you do get the startlingly realistic sensation that your feet are being overrun by escaping space-mice.

The most noticeable change in the film is in the part of EO himself. Due to Michael Jackson’s untimely demise, the part has had to be recast, but Disney is turning this apparent liability into an asset by changing the casting every week to inspire repeat visits. When the film opened at the beginning of the month, it was with the awesome Samuel L. Jackson as the captain — and an inspirational powerful, hard-dancing captain he was! The second week, with Michael’s brother Tito as the captain, was a bit of a disappointment, but it was more than made up for by this week’s portrayal of EO by Walt Disney World’s own animatronic President Andrew Jackson! Believe us when we say that Old Hickory has got the moves!

Current plans are for Captain EO to continue through the summer, with final performances (starring actress Victoria Jackson) some time just before the holiday season.

• Tomorrowland’s Starcade is closed so that they can empty the quarters out of all the machines. (It turns out they get really full over the course of a year.)
• The Jewel of Orleans shop shop in New Orleans Square will be permanently closing mid-April. Apparently last month’s “All-Free Jewelry Day” promotion wasn’t such a great idea after all.
• Rumor has it that the gorgeous DCA Animation Building lobby may be significantly reworked so that a number of Disney accountants can have the pleasure of metaphorically grabbing a large number of Disneyland fanatics, manacling them to a cold steel table, ripping out their still beating hearts with a pair of sharpened salad tongs, and feeding them to a hoard of half-starved wild pigs. Or, possibly, for budgetary reasons.

The cinema was closed while the old floor was torn out and replaced with a new floor (complete with “simulated” flood damage!)

Remember, just because you see a picture of something on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s true!

That’s right, our own Official Disney Lies Photo Correspondent, despite great risk of being caught and ejected bodily from the park, managed to take a picture of Main Street from inside the Partners statue! Talk about unique!!