The Fabulous Disney Babe - Mar 2, 2001

The Fabulous Disney Babe
Page 2 of 3

Plans for the Third Park have been slowed. Not stopped, slowed, by the less-than-summer-crowds that mysteriously failed to appear in the middle of a cold, rainy February. This makes it almost certain that Pooh and Buzz will go into Disneyland. Will Pooh replace the Country Bears?   I've seen artwork of both the Critter Country and Small World Area locations; it really depends on how well The Country Bears Movie does. Expect to hear quite a bit about this film as work progresses on it. But here's Disney with this prime Real Estate and nothing on it that will make a Guest spend that third day. The space is still being reserved for the third park, but in the meantime, some brainy types at WDI have thought up a good way for the land to pay for itself until then: one of the themed miniature golf courses like the ones at Walt Disney World. It would cost a heck of a lot less to build a Disneyland Fairways than a Ragin' Cajun' Lagoon water park, especially if it's a five-year temporary fix. All I can say is: if they do it, I hope Joe Lanzisero designs it. When I've got a big stick in my hand, I consider the man an Evil Genius.  Especially on the Hop Lo hole.

Buzz, it appears, will take up either the PeopleMover track (a la the Dick Tracy thang at Cast Blast a while back) or we'll get one of the defunct Omnimovers from Florida (they still have a couple of them) and it will go into the CircleVision theatre and preshow area, spilling out into the Premiere Shop. If the Rods come back, they'll enter and exit through the right alcove, which will become queue and exit space. This, of course, is unbelievably wild speculation, but, hey, so was the first time I broke the Buzz Lightyear story to you.

So, that's one side of Tomorrowland fixed. What about the other side? How many times is that danged (Hi, Rebekah) robot going to be on his first mission? The bulletins from Glendale say that Star Tours II will open in 2004, just in time for the release of Episode II on video (thanks, Zane, for figuring out the timeline of that). Back when they were trying to see how many attractions they could get Robin Williams into, a plan for Star Tours II, Mark I was floating around WDI: like Indy, but years before, you "chose" your destination: Hoth, Endor, or Tatooine. Your pilot droid, it was revealed in sector G, (look up to see the initials and phone extensions of the Imagineers who worked on Star Tours over your head, there's one for each basket. But don't bother writing them down - the extension system was changed in the early nineties.) was a battle droid, but its memory has been covered and it is very docile now. Your StarSpeeder gets caught in an ion storm and "lightning" hits your droid, who reverts from Robin Williams as Robin Williams to Robin Williams as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hm, there *is* that Clone War thing....!

Someone Disgruntled IMed me to tell me that Walt Disney's offices are taking a vacation at the Walt Disney World Resort, where they will be displayed as part of the Walt Disney 100th Birthday Celebration. I'm of two minds on this: I think it's cool that there will finally be some Walt in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, but another part of me thinks that they should have gone the replica route and left the offices at Disneyland "as is". I sense a discussion!

As promised, here are a couple of excerpts from my stack of emails, which I am SO glad to get:

First, a reader needs help!

"...I'm a big fan of Jules Verne too, and '20,000 Leagues' is my favorite movie of all time. I have a couple of questions that I considered sending to Dave Smith of the Disney Archives, but since you'll probably respond, I'll hit you with them. Somewhere in my youth (late 60's early 70's) my mother gave me a hard back novelization of 'Disney's 20,000 Leagues'. I remember it having a color cover of the Divers, and woodcut like photo's through-out the book. From what I remember, it followed the movie pretty well, but since I lost it in a flood in 1976, I've never seen anything like it since. Do you have any knowledge/recollection of such a book?

Here's another, When Disneyland first opened they had a display of 20,000 Leagues movie props, including the giant squid. I know the Nautilus prop is in the Studios, and a dive suit is at the Living Seas, but do you have any idea what happened to the Squid? I always hoped it would be put on display again, somewhere.."

I'm reading Alice Around the World in 80 Days right now, a chapter each night at bedtime, hoping she'll become as huge a fan as I am. I was in the Archive working on a 20K story I hoped to do for Persistence of Vision, and asked about the Squid. It is, sadly, no longer around, to the best of Robert Tieman's knowledge. Neither is the original Nautilus. Later this summer, I'm going to do a piece about the late Nautilus Master Tom Schermann, who....well, it's the closest I'll ever get to religion.  You might want to ask Paul F. Anderson or email Tom Tumbusch at Tomart's about the book. Paul's Persistence of Vision site is at http://venus.aros.net/~pov and Tomart's is at http://www.tomart.com.   Good luck!