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Increased ticket prices a boon for social media

Monday, February 13th, 2017

Over the weekend, Disney increased ticket prices for both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. “It’s a tradition,” says self-appointed Disney history historian Ferdinand Bullworth. “It stems from Walt Disney’s nostalgic rememberings of his local movie theater raising their movie prices every year. The company’s decision to continue that tradition is yet another wonderful link to the yesteryear of Walt’s youth.”

Continuing tradition is only one benefit of the annual price increase. “For all of my friends in the Disney fan and blogging community, it saves us a lot of work,” says PrincesMickey1955 via misdirected text message. “Every year, we just dust off our rants and complaints about not being able to afford to visit parks and Disney no longer caring for the average visitor, update the numbers, and re-post them to Facebook, our blogs, Twitter — everywhere. It’s like a little vacation so we can do some extra shopping for Valentines Day. Thanks Disney!”

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2013 in Review: Infographic

Friday, January 3rd, 2014

What were the high and low points of Disneyland over the last year? Read this infographic so you don’t have to bother remembering! (You can click if it you don’t have your super-human micro-vision-magnifier-lense glasses on.)

2013 at Disneyland: Infographic

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Committed to Disneyside!

Friday, November 15th, 2013

As part of its marketing plan for the coming year, Disney has been promoting the #disneyside hashtag and encouraging guests and fans to tweet about how they would like to “end their troubles” Disney style.

A few that we’ve seen and particularly noted:

  • Endless “it’s a small world rides” #disneyside
  • Juse one more churro #disneyside
  • Supercharged teacup spin #disneyside
  • Laughing at my cares until I have no more #disneyside
  • Make like a villain and fall from something #disneyside
  • One too many ticket price increases #disneyside
  • Ride Winnie the Pooh once #disneyside
  • Of course, there’s always my way #disneyside

Tie-in products include “Chose Disneyside” t-shirts, the upcoming tweet-collecting book For princesses who have considered Disneyside when Prince Charming is enuf, and a “how to” manual, Final Exit Through the Gift Shop.

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Disneyland Refurbishment Schedule

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

In an attempt to look more relevant and get more hits, we’re experimentally stealing the Disneyland refurbishment schedule from Mouse Planet and pretending we wrote it.

Disneyland

  • Blue Bayou: Closed in September and November to install an authentic swamp-smell system and even dimmer lights that should make the new, improved prices less bothersome to guests.
  • Disneyland Monorail: Until further notice, not opening until 10 a.m. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday due to pilot’s always waking up with a serious hangover after late nights at ElecTRONica.
  • Haunted Mansion: Closed from late August through mid-September so they can get a skid steer in there for the annual removal of accumulated guest-strewn cremains.
  • “it’s a small world”: Closed October and November so cast members can catch up on their group therapy sessions.
  • Mark Twain Riverboat: Closed September 26 through 28 to rotate the paddle wheel and polish the inside of the smokestacks.
  • Matterhorn Bobsleds: Closed until September because Harold’s “don’t eat the guests” training has apparently worn off (again).
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Closed September through November to replace the scummy old water with nice, fresh mint julep.
  • Space Mountain: Closed for two weeks in September so they can install the Currently Closed for Refurbishment overlay.

Disney California Adventure

  • Baker’s Field Bakery: Closed permanently so that it can be replaced with an ice-cream shop (which the park desperately needs).
  • Bur-r-r Bank Ice Cream: Closed permanently so that it can be replaced with a bakery (which the park was sorely lacking).
  • California Screamin’: Closed September and October so they can take another shot at finding that “g” they lost back in 2001.
  • Engine-Ears Toys: Closed until they can think of a new name that doesn’t have any body parts in it.
  • Francis’ Lady Bug Boogie: Closed until further notice due to continuing gender identity issues.
  • Greetings from California: Closed until mid-2012 on general principles because cast members were tired of trying to explain the “it’s supposed to look like a postcard” theme.
  • It’s Tough to be a Bug!: Closed from late October through early November for installation of One Infested Christmas overlay.
  • Redwood Challenge Creek Trail: Closed through October so the fire department can conduct controlled burns.

Disneyland Resort Hotels

  • Disneyland Hotel Neverland Pool: Largely closed due to construction, but guests are welcome to try out the new Monorail water slides and try to imagine how cool they’ll be once water is added.
  • Disneyland Hotel Guest Laundry: Closed due to nobody in their right mind doing laundry while on vacation.
  • Disneyland Hotel Fitness Center: Closed because of construction. Fitness equipment has been relocated to the lobby and labeled as a seasonal display.

Note: We’re pretty much making this stuff up on the fly. Try not to rely on it too heavily. For more up-to-date misinformation, check out the DisneyLies.com Massive Disneyland Attraction Database.

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Downtown Disney 3D surprise!

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Remember those “magic eye” pictures that were so popular in the 1990s? The ones that, if you stared at them just right, turned from graphic noise into a three-dimensional picture? Well, Ariel — an observant DisneyLies reader — sent us this picture taken from within a Downtown Disney bathroom stall, and guess what she found?

<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0836270207/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wordsonus-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0836270207″>magic eye</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=&l=as2&o=1&a=0836270207″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />

That’s right –although there really isn’t enough resolution in the photo to do it justice,  it’s clearly one of those magic eye puzzles built right into the pattern on the inside of the bathroom doors!

According to the Ariel, in order to see the image you have to stand (or, if you’re too tall, squat) with your nose just four or five inches from the panel. Then cross your eyes ever so slightly, as if you were trying to focus on something about a foot away on the other side of the door. It helps if you don’t blink and ignore people banging on the door asking what’s going on in there.

In three or four minutes, the surprise picture should appear like magic right before your eyes!

Ariel said that after a little trying she was clearly able to see the image of Mickey Mouse in Sorcerer’s Apprentice garb, standing atop a mountain, commanding the waves below! Just like in Fantasia 2000 3D!

Go ahead and give this a try yourself. If you can’t make it work, you are likely not trying hard enough, are in need of a visit to the optometrist, or are trying this in Florida instead of in California. Let us know what you see!

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Tiger moms at Disneyland

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

We intend to begin regularly posting again some time next week, but in the meantime we would like to share with you some tips from Amy Chua’s parenting manual, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. According to Chua, the Chinese method of bringing children to Disneyland is superior to the American or “Western” method. She says that a “tiger mother” sets out rules for her children before a Disneyland visit and strictly adheres to those rules.

The rules Chua had for her daughters if they ever went to Disneyland included:

  • They would attend Disneyland as a family. No friends may be brought along.
  • They would visit Disneyland Resort for one day only. No sleepovers.
  • Children would not get to choose what rides and attractions they experienced.
  • If a show such as Jedi Training offered the opportunity for children to participate, her daughters could neither participate nor complain about not participating.
  • If a child has a book of tickets, they had to all be E tickets (apparently Chua hasn’t been to Disneyland in a while).
  • If a child played a video game at the Starcade or Innoventions, the only game she may play is Guitar Hero and she must keep playing until she played “Bark at the Moon” perfectly.
  • If a child went on Buzz Lightyear or Midway Mania, she must achieve a high score. If she didn’t get a high score, her mother would buy the souvenir the child had begged for and donate it to the Salvation Army.
  • When it came time to hold a place for Fantasmic! or World of Color, children were required to hold the place without getting up for water or even for bathroom breaks.
  • If a child didn’t want to go on Tower of Terror, she would have no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, and no birthday parties for two, three, or four years.
  • If a child does not meet the minimum height requirement for an attraction, it is because she is purposely working herself into dwarfism because she is secretly afraid.
  • If a child doesn’t have a magical time, it is because she is lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

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Prince of Persia promotion problem

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Disneyland and Walt Disney World planned to surprise park guests with a special promotion tied in to today’s release of Prince of Persia, Disney’s third video-game-inspired film (after Tron and Grand Theft Auto: Toontown). The promotion involved special “Sands of Time” tickets randomly distributed to guests who received FASTPASSes. According to the text on the tickets, a guest leaving an indicated attraction could give the ticket to any cast member and “be taken back in time to the point where you entered the vehicle loading area, exactly as if you had returned to the moment before you rode!” This effectively allowed a lucky guest to ride an attraction twice in a row while only standing in line once.

It sounded like a neat idea, something that would generate excellent online buzz, but there was a problem. Guests quickly began to balk when cast members attempted to take their Sands of Time ticket from them. As one guest put it, “If I’m traveling back in time, then I’m traveling back to a time when I had the ticket, not to a time when I didn’t have the ticket yet, so why should I have to give it up? And since I still have it when I get off the ride, why can’t I use it to travel back in time and ride again, like I’m in an infinite time loop? Then when I’m tired, I can just get off the ride and choose not to use the ticket, and I shouldn’t have to give it away when I didn’t use it, so there’s no situation in which I should have to let a cast member take my ticket.”

When guests who had won tickets began using this logical loophole to bring the queue at Expedition Everest (and, soon, other attractions) to a crawl, Disney realized they had to do something. The first thing they did was stop FASTPASS machines from giving out more tickets. The second thing they did was quickly inform cast members not to mention to guests that if the park is closing they could use their ticket to “go back in time” to just before the park closed and take another ride, then do it again, and again, and again, possibly keeping attractions open long into the night.

And the trouble doesn’t stop there. “We forgot to put expiration dates on the things,” said a suicidal-looking member of the team that brainstormed the Sands of Time promotion. “At this point, there’s nothing that can be done. We may have ruined Disney parks permanently.”

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Extreme hotel makeover!

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Disneyland Resort’s Disneyland Hotel is in the midst of a gigantic makeover, significant details of which were recently released to a Disneyland fan base hungry for news that had nothing to do with water shows.

The Disneyland Hotel’s new theme will be “Disneyland Nostalgia” (replacing the current theme, “Things Named After the Former Owner’s Wife”).

As part of the new theme, the current Peter Pan pool overlay will be removed and replaced with a Jungle Cruise theme, allowing guests to, for the first time, actually bathe with the elephants, swim past the back side of water, and shoot at hippos! A “Great Swims with Mr. Lincoln” kiddie pool will be created in between the current pool and the waterfall slash koi ponds before the latter is demolished. The koi ponds will be completely reimagined as a small water park with slides created from the old Mark I monorails that have been sitting behind the Team Disney building for decades. The slides will be almost as tall as the monorails were long — some 60 feet — and will still have their seats and other interior fixtures intact, promising a wild, thrilling ride! For younger kids, a smaller, closer-to-the-ground Viewliner slide will also be available.

Worried about the fish that will be displaced by the new water park area? Don’t be! The koi will have a home in the new attraction. There will even be a fish ladder for those daring fish that want to give the slides a try!

The hotel’s three towers (Bonita, Conchita, and Chiquita) will be renamed for Disneyland lands and appropriately themed. The Toontown tower is being remodeled and redecorated so that the rooms and public areas have no flat surfaces or right angles. The Tomorrowland tower will feature omnidirectional turbolifts instead of elevators, and boast rooms with holographic television, sonic showers, and artificially intelligent lighting. And in the Frontierland tower, guests will be able to “rough it” in rooms with horsehair beds, dirt floors, and no maid service.

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Getting an annual pass is getting easier!

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Disney’s California Adventure has opened an annual-pass processing center in the location of the old Superstar Limo garage in the Hollywood Backlot area, to help take some of the pressure off of Gerty — the woman who processes annual passes at the Plaza Pavilion in Disneyland. Said a Disneyland spokesperson on condition of remaining imaginary, “Gerty has been processing these things all by herself for some 30 years, and we thought it would be more respectful to build another processing center than to risk insulting her by hiring another cast member.”

In addition, the new stroller-rental facility will feature an annual-pass processing center when it opens a little later this month, and pass processing will be added in additional under-used park locations, such as DCA’s “San Francisco” area and Disneyland’s Pooh attraction.

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Going wild!

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Reports are in that new “Go wild in both parks” banners have been unveiled in Downtown Disney, and speculation is running rampant about what they might mean. Current theories include:

  • Introduction of roaming wild animals into the Disneyland Resort
  • An extreme expansion of the Jungle Cruise
  • Something to do with Joseph R. Francis buying tons of Disney stock in after-hours trading last weekend

If you’ve got a theory, we want to hear it!

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