Tuesday, 3 May 2005
11:30pm

H

oly crap, I was in SOOOOOOO many shots in this week's episode of Veronica Mars... in some pretty key spots too, haha. Check it:

Welp, there's only one episode left this season, and I doubt I will be seen as I think I only worked on one scene and I was waaaaaay off in the distance during that scene. But I can't wait for the season finale, I think it's gonna be pretty darned crazy.

Friday, 6 May 2005
11:59pm

S

o on my way up to my parents house in L.A., I decided I would stop by Disneyland -- their 50th Anniversary Celebration officially kicked off yesterday (05/05/05) and I figured if I was gonna go any day this weekend, Friday would probably be the best as most people still have to work on Friday. I'm sure tomorrow and Sunday are just going to be insane. So I spent a few hours there this afternoon, and what a fine afternoon it was. The weather was absolutely perfect... upper 60's and sunny with big, fluffy, white clouds, the last remnants of a rare (for Southern California) May rainstorm that had passed through the night before.
My last few trips to Disneyland left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I've been an annual passholder for well over 10 years now, and over the last few years I've just been feeling like it's been less and less worth the cost. It seems like everything was getting more expensive, and I was getting less for my money. They were slacking off on a lot of upkeep, and a lot of the little details that truly made Disneyland special were falling by the wayside in the name of preserving the bottom line.
Well, maybe it was the fact that I got a kickass parking spot near the escalator (the last couple times I had to park waaaaaaaaaay in the back corner). Or maybe it was the fantastic weather that made me feel differently about this trip. No, actually it was the fact that everywhere I looked, things just looked better than I've ever seen them. Better. Cleaner. Fresher. A lot of those little details that seemed to have been forgotten... were back. New little details were all over the place.
Starting with Main Street. Wow. They really cleaned that place up. It's looking better than it has since they retrofitted all of the fascades with fiber optic lights for that terrible bomb of a parade, "Light Magic" years ago. The Opera House has changed. Once where there was "Great Moments With Mister Lincoln" and a replica of Walt Disney's personal office, there is now something of a museum dedicated to the evolution of Disneyland over the last 50 years.
Sleeping Beauty Castle is looking fantastic with a new color scheme and all new gold foil work that just sparkles. All around the park the number 50 has been worked into a lot of different places.
The new Buzz Lightyear ride (I guess they already had one similar to it in Orlando) is great fun. It's a "dark ride" kind of similar to Roger Rabbit's Car-Toon Spin, except you get a joystick that controls the rotation of your little car... and light guns to shoot at the evil Emperor Zurg and his henchmen. Somewhere along the line, they take your picture, and when you get off the ride there are a series of touch screen kiosks where you can enter in your email address and actually have the photos e-mailed to you... for FREE. Yes, believe it or not, FREE!!!. Hopefully this isn't some stupid limited time only gimmick.
Tomorrowland in general has been spiffed up a bit. It's been pretty dead in there since the abominable 1998 revamping that they did to it. Shoot, most of the "attractions" in Tomorrowland were pretty crappy, and it got pretty dismal with many of them just plain closed down until there was virtually nothing left to do there. About the only good thing to come out of that revamping was the merging of the two Autopia rides into one giant, super long ride. Back then, the old Peoplemover and Circlevision Theater attractions were replaced with the Rocket Rods which closed a few years later. The NASA space exhibit was extremely lame and unpopular. The submarine voyage closed. "Innoventions" opened in the old Carousel of Progress building, but that turned out to be pretty much just a bunch of advertising for "high tech" stuff that hasn't been updated since 1998. The Rocket Jets were removed from their perch high above the Peoplemover loading area and replaced with the less exciting, ground-level "Astro Orbiter". Well, things are looking up for Tomorrowland now.
In the space that used to be the Circlevision theater (and subsequently the Rocket Rods queue area) as well as the stupid NASA exhibit, they've opened up the new Buzz Lightyear ride, and coming this July (on the real 50th Anniversary of Disneyland) they will be opening the completely redesigned Space Mountain ride. And overall they've really toned down the ugly Jules-Vern-ian copper colors around Tomorrowland, replacing it with a much more pleasing combination of white and silver.
All around the park they've thrown up these huge mosaics of images from various films and attractions made up of thousands of photographs from over the years that were submitted by park visitors. It's a pretty neat idea, but good luck trying to find your photos if you sent any in, haha. Some of these mosaics are mounted so high up that you can't even really see the individual photos.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with everything that has been done around the park. All of the little improvements. All of the attractions seem to be running in tip-top shape, along with many new little details around the park that set Disneyland apart as a theme park have been added. I guess the real question for me is... how long will this new attitude last? In five years is everything going to be run down again and attention to detail lost? Who knows, but for now, I'm going to enjoy the new freshness. Things had gotten bad enough that I was really considering not renewing my pass after this year, but I think they've convinced me to give them at least another year's worth of a try.
I didn't spend a whole lot of time there today, only about 3 hours, and I didn't catch the new anniversary parade or the new fireworks show, but I think I'll be going back in a couple of weeks with a group of friends and I'm guessing we'll probably be checking out all of that stuff when we go. Unless I am in Vegas that weekend to catch the BCA Open 9 Ball tournament. Hah. Anyways, I took a ton more pics and wrote a lot of captions for them and you can see them all at the giant repository of pics.