The West Side of the Kingdom
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Dreaming of flying whales, Noah’s Ark and a certain Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Happy New Year, everyone! It’s great that there were no Y2K problems and LaughingPlace.com is still here! And boy, are they here; can you believe the great new attraction ratings area of the site? What an incredible expansion and addition to an already-awesome site! Bravo and kudos to both Doobie and Rebekah for all of their hard work!
I hope that everyone’s New Year celebrations were safe and fun. The West residence in the San Francisco area was relatively mellow. I actually woke up at 2:00 A.M. to watch ABC’s fantastic coverage as the rest of the world started to enter calendar year 2000. It was quite profound, I thought, watching as “Millennium Island” became the first to cross the threshold of this important milestone. Right away, I was delighted to find that the music Disney chose to use for ABC2000 was Gavin Greenaway’s beautiful IllumiNations 2000 score from Epcot in Florida. I have the honor of being acquainted with Mr. Greenaway, and so I immediately hopped up and sent him some E-mail, asking if he was aware that Disney was using his music for the Millennium coverage on their network. He said he wasn’t, but that he was very pleased that they were! I wondered to myself how many other enthusiasts discovered this in the early hours of New Year’s Eve along with me! I watched the coverage throughout the day and ended my viewing at approximately 1:00 A.M. New Year’s Day (yup - 23 hours of coverage). Needless to say, I was burned out on the celebrating - but I will never get tired of that music! In fact, I listened to the Epcot Millennium Celebration CD several times just the other day while working on another piece for Theme Park Adventure Magazine.
As I watched the Disneyland coverage and Walt Disney World shows, I wondered to myself how many LaughingPlace.com or TPA readers were there, having the time of their lives! I have spent several New Year’s Eve celebrations at Disneyland, both as a Cast Member and a guest in more recent years. I thought that it would have been awesome to project a live remote feed onto the Matterhorn of Walt Disney World hitting Midnight - could you imagine the reaction and the crowd that would have been gathered in the Hub and in front of the Castle if they could have done that? Oh well - I am sure that it’s easier to think up than actually do. I enjoyed watching all of the madness from the comfort of my own living room and cringed thinking of how long it took the crowds to lighten up. It can be quite stuffed at Disneyland come Midnight on New Year’s Eve if you’re anywhere on Main Street or in front of the Castle! I hope you all made it out in one piece!
Besides a new Millennium, this month brought my 30th birthday, which was actually this past Monday, January 10th. To celebrate, I went with my wife to the Sony Metreon in San Francisco (computer geeks and techno freaks, this is a must) to see Fantasia 2000, which was absolutely stunning. My personal favorite was the sequence featuring the flying whales - Pines of Rome. Bravo! What a wonderful present - if you haven’t seen this work of art yet, by all means, do so! See it while it’s in IMAX format, and then wait breathlessly like me for Disney to release it on DVD!
Speaking of Disney DVD releases, am I the only one glad that he didn’t shell out an obscene amount of cash to buy the animated features for $40 a pop only to have the Company announce that they are going to come out with “Gold Editions” of the same films with all of the supplemental material they should have had in the first place? One thing I would love on DVD is the Beauty and the Beast Work in Progress laser disc that I have now - if you’ve had the pleasure of seeing this, you can only hope that maybe Disney will release it as a second disc when they come out with Beauty and the Beast. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to know that we’re dying to pay good money for this stuff! Come on, Disney! You should be leading this movement instead of back-tracking and bringing up the rear! We expect more from the Mouse!