The Fabulous Disney Babe
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I got an email today:
Hello Fab,
I was looking at the great LaughingPlace website, and thought that it had
been quite a while since I had seen one of your columns. So I checked, and
was amazed that there hadn't been a "Fabulous Disney Babe" column since the
end of May. Nearly two months (yup, I can add)!
Will we ever see your columns on LaughingPlace again? I hope that you aren't
ill (which was the case once before, I recall) or whatever, and are perhaps
just taking a break.
Thanks,
Other than a bad case of
the busies and some writer's block, I'm good. Thanks for writing. Six weeks
ago, my daughter Alice fell out of one of the trees she likes to climb while
hunting for bugs (she wants to be an entomologist) and fell face-first onto a
cement wall. I rushed her to the hospital, and upon my parents' arrival while
waiting for the surgeon, sped the 300 feet back home to search for the tooth
that had been knocked out with her best friend Ryan and, upon finding it, tossed
it into a glass of milk and sped it back to the ER, where a nice, calm surgeon
wired it back in. The other front tooth was split open and the rest of her
front teeth were all kapukahi. Her dad flew out, and when she was feeling
better, she and dad showed up for my second class of Manufacturing the Magic:
The History of Disneyland and Growth of the American Theme Park, giving a
lecture on C.V. Wood to my delighted students. When we had our tour the next
week, and brought Ryan with us. We spent the after-tour time playing in the
park, checking off attractions on the guide map as we experienced them. I
couldn't remember the last time I did that. It seems lately that whenever I'm
at Disneyland, I'm working instead of doing what I should be doing there - just
having fun. Alice and I promised each other more days of doing nothing of
consequence at Disneyland.
Two weeks later, we received the LTU catalog in the mail - Manufacturing the
Magic had been renewed for another term! But then I looked at the dates...oh
no. The first class was up against the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Exposition
and the second class was up against the NFFC. I know when to back down, so I
called the students who had signed up for the course and moved it to this coming
Saturday the 26, followed by the second class on Saturday the 2nd of August, and
the tour on Saturday, August 9. There's room left if you'd like to sign up.
Here's the information again:
Manufacturing the Magic:
The History of Disneyland and Growth of the American Theme Park
Course Schedule
Saturday, July 26th: 9 AM to 4 PM, LTU Costa Mesa Campus
Saturday, August 2nd: 9 AM to 4 PM, LTU Costa Mesa Campus
Saturday, August 9th: 9 AM to noon, Disneyland Resort
Instructor: Michelle Smith (aka The Fabulous Disney Babe).
There may be guest presentations during the course.
Cost: $129 (plus you are responsible to pay for your own admission to
Disneyland).
Textbook: Disneyland: The Nickel Tour (Which is not included in the tuition)
To register, call LTU at (714) 427-0588.
Learning Tree University Costa Mesa campus is located near the 405 and 55 merge
at 265 McCormick Avenue
If you didn't take the first online course, you are SO lucky. See, my online lecture files are these behemoth PowerPoint presentations (Made on Windows: You will be assimilated.) and they kept not getting put up. I'd use the course software to pop them up into the class, the software would thank me politely and tell me that my lecture was up, and then students would email me asking where the lecture was. It got so that I put the lectures in a password-protected area of my personal website and just pointed them there. Finally, the extremely helpful person at LTU online had the software changed and those lectures are sitting up there where they should be, with a few more to follow. So, we offered a free retake to the first students, and I'm never going to believe someone when they say running an online class is easier than on ground. It's a lot harder. Today, however, I got one of those essays from one of my students that makes me say "it's worth it." It is worth it. If you want to join the online class, you still may, but you'll have to catch up a week. Go to www.ltuonline.com for more details.