My Trip to the D23 Expo - TR Complete!

[Wonder2008]

Originally Posted by franandaj

I can’t remember the names of the these gentlemen, but they are imagineers who worked on both the Dream and the Fantasy. They led us through the journey this morning.

They are Joe Lanzisero on the left and Bob Zalk on the right.

I'm glad you went to this presentation - it sounded interesting to me when I was reading about each of the panels before the Expo started.

Robert

[franandaj]

Originally Posted by WDWJonasGirl

I'm all caught up. I love it so far!!

Originally Posted by bangzoom6877

I hope they bring back F&W in CA for you!! Maybe after all the dust clears, they will bring it back and it will be better than ever! Keeping my fingers crossed for you!

Thanks! I hope they do too, that's why i bought DVC at the Grand Californian. However, I seem to have no problems using up my points even without F&W!

Originally Posted by dgbg100106

Sorry to hear about the car, hope you all are ok.

I don't understand the Pez price, but then again, I am not that much into candy!

As for auctions, I go to a few and have bought more than I should but I hate being "worked" like that, I will get up and leave when they start that stuff with us.

We're OK except for the estimate to fix the car!

Interesting to know that it is fairly common practice to get people to bid stuff up. That's why we never raised our paddle!

Originally Posted by Leshaface

I laughed at the sketches, especially the second one! How cheesy/corny!

So wait, for Animator's Palate and the drawings, will they be doing this on the Fantasy?!

This is for the Fantasy. On your TR you didn't mention much about the Animator's Palette and the show. I thought the Wonder was cool, but you'll have to tell me in December!

Originally Posted by Wonder2008

They are Joe Lanzisero on the left and Bob Zalk on the right.

I'm glad you went to this presentation - it sounded interesting to me when I was reading about each of the panels before the Expo started.

Robert

Thanks for pointing out who they were! It was a great panel and now I really want to do a cruise on the Fantasy, but we need to build up our cruise points (as I have learned) so that I can make our reservations earlier than others and we can get the good restaurants on the nights we want.

[franandaj]

So now on to the onboard entertainment about the ship. The first and most exciting thing about both the Dream and the Fantasy is…..



I’m sure most of you are aware of this “water roller coaster”, and some have even been on it. The said that it is a brand new technology like crusher gusher at one of the water parks in Florida. To keep you moving throughout the entire ride (even going upwards) required some engineering.





Like any good Disney ride there is a back story about Donald.



Huey, Duey and Louie are making a water ride and as usual Uncle Donald wants to be the first to ride and something silly happens.





Staterooms



Now on all my cruises, I’ve always had an outside stateroom with a (verandah if possible). However, the enhancements on the Fantasy make me think that I could probably enjoy an inside stateroom if I had to. The inside staterooms have a "porthole" where Disney characters visit your room. They showed at least 10 characters and I tried to snap pictures of all of them, but this is the only picture that wasn’t blurry.



Others included Pooh suspended by a balloon, characters from the Silly Symphonies, and the other pictures are just so blurry I can’t even make out who they were.

They have little Scavenger hunts around the ship. I believe this woman is explaining the concept of how you will locate various things in pictures around the ships.



As usual, towards the end of the presentation, my notes get a little sloppy and my ADD starts kicking in. This is what I have in my notes: “They have art like in HP world. And they are like Kim Possible missions.” I hope that these statements mean the same thing to you as they do to me! What I assume that I meant is that the pictures move, and you have something like a “Kimmunicator” that you take around the ship and it helps you unlock the keys to the scavenger hunt.





Here are some shots of the kids and teens areas. The thing that I remember most about this part was that Andy’s Room is one of the most popular areas on the ships with the young folk.













They expanded the size of the Theater because it is very popular. Walt Disney theater holds 1500



They will continue some of the most popular events, Pirates night and the fireworks



There are Signature characters on the stern of the cruise ships, Sorcerer Mickey is on the Dream. Here is an artist rendering.



The figure before painting, notice how large it is.



But it doesn’t look nearly as large when on the back of the ship. They wouldn't tell us who was on the back of the Fantasy. it was still a secret.



[Continued in Next Post]

[franandaj]

[Continued from Previous Post]



Each hole of the course has a story.

This one I caught mid slide change, so you get to see part of the artist rendering and part of the next slide which all the various angles of the sand castle for hole 6





And here is hole six



And some more of the golf









Then they gave us some gratuitous shots of the Fantasy being constructed



This was kind of funny because one of them mentioned that it was just “wrong” to have a dumpster in Mickey’s head!







Then these are some of the interior pieces, doorways and other fixtures that we’ll see on the ship.









At this point in the presentation they actually talked about the Animator’s Palette, but I already covered what they mentioned earlier, so I’ll move on to the last section which about the bars. Leshaface, help me out with the name of this section, I think it was the same as on the Dream. They are going to have a bunch of different bars here, and some were the same as on the Dream which I recognized from L’s TR.

So I uploaded all of the photos even the blurry ones because they give you a little bit of an idea of the various different places. To tell you the truth, I really don’t remember what a lot of these places were. I have no clue on this one.



This one is like the one on the Dream that various different city skylines show up, so you can be having a drink in Paris, then Chicago, then New York….



I believe this is the French one



No clue…sorry it’s so blurry! I think this is more a pub type place????



This one is the Italian Room



So that pretty much wraps it up for the “Imagineering the Dream and the Fantasy” program. Join me as I wait for 3+ hours in a room that is almost as cold as a refrigerator!

[DizNee Luver]

Your pics of the cruise ships make me wanna go really bad now!!! Just don't see that in our near future Oh well....nice pics to dream over!!

[PrincessInOz]

I can see that I'll have HEAPS of trouble convincing DS to get on one of these and spending time in Andy's Room.

Thanks for sharing. Back to more saving pennies for me!

[Leshaface]

From what i've been reading about the inside staterooms with the animated portholes, is that they can be as expensive as an ocean view stateroom OR as much as even some Verandah staterooms! That's just crazy. If i'm going to be paying that amount, I might as well just get the Verandah vs the animated porthole.

I believe the section where they had all the adult bars, lounges, and clubs was called The District.

That Italian room looks SO neat! Looks so vibrant and fun! Hopefully one day we'll be able to get on the Fantasy.

[Hawleys]

What a cool update! Almost cool enough to make me take a cruise. I'm still not convinced that I wouldn't go crazy on the ship for so many days. Still, the interiors are beautiful and all the little details you showed look FUN! Goofy Golf anyone?

[franandaj]

Originally Posted by DizNee Luver

Your pics of the cruise ships make me wanna go really bad now!!! Just don't see that in our near future Oh well....nice pics to dream over!!

I really want to go on a cruise soon, but Fran wants to wait until she has better mobility (2 knee replacements and a hip in 2009-10), but I figure we can do it now and then go again! We'll see how that works out!

Originally Posted by PrincessInOz

I can see that I'll have HEAPS of trouble convincing DS to get on one of these and spending time in Andy's Room.

Thanks for sharing. Back to more saving pennies for me!

From what I hear, the kids don't end up wanting to leave the kid's areas!

Originally Posted by Leshaface

From what i've been reading about the inside staterooms with the animated portholes, is that they can be as expensive as an ocean view stateroom OR as much as even some Verandah staterooms! That's just crazy. If i'm going to be paying that amount, I might as well just get the Verandah vs the animated porthole.

I believe the section where they had all the adult bars, lounges, and clubs was called The District.

That Italian room looks SO neat! Looks so vibrant and fun! Hopefully one day we'll be able to get on the Fantasy.

That's insane! But it's a great way for Disney to bring up the value of the Inside rooms. I definitely want a verandah.

The District! I think that's what they called it on the Fantasy! It sounded real familiar when they said it. Also I think the French place was the Champagne bar....

Originally Posted by Hawleys

What a cool update! Almost cool enough to make me take a cruise. I'm still not convinced that I wouldn't go crazy on the ship for so many days. Still, the interiors are beautiful and all the little details you showed look FUN! Goofy Golf anyone?

There is sooooooo much to do on these ships! Granted we were only on the Wonder for 4 days, but there was a lot we didn't get to do. I really want to take it to Mexico since we would only have to drive to San Pedro (15 minutes) to catch the ship. It would be so much fun! You wouldn't get bored, trust me!

[franandaj]

Well that three hour wait went pretty fast!




For you folks maybe. As soon as we left the Cruise line panel we inquired as to whether or not there was a line forming for Radiator Springs Reality. There was, so at about 10:30AM we got in line. The line was out in the hallway because they hadn’t loaded the room for the next presentation yet, so they told us to stay with our parties until they got us in the “waiting room” and everyone was counted. I don’t have any pictures, and the nice thing was that if at least one of us stayed there we kept our place in line. Once they put us in the “holding room”, I left first to get my coffee from the lounge. They did have good coffee there, and they even finally got togo cups! Then I headed back to the waiting room where we had our Chef’s Salad for lunch at around 11:30AM.

Since we knew they wouldn’t be loading us into the room until at least 1:30 Fran wanted to take a spin around the show room floor again (read between the lines, more shopping! ) You can imagine that sitting in those rooms all day with not much to do I spent a good amount of time DISing (which ran the battery of my phone down). People were plugging their devices into outlets where they could find them and I was no different! However, it made it difficult to justify making a lot of phone calls because I wanted to save my battery in case of an emergency.

So when Fran was gone for almost an hour and a half and I started to get worried because pretty soon they would be loading us up into the presentation room, I finally broke down and started calling her. Sometimes I wonder why we even got her a cell phone because I can call 14 times in a row and she never hears the bloody thing ringing! She finally heard the phone as she was just outside the door to the room where they queue was waiting. So she pulls up to me on her scooter talking on the phone. Turns out we are the proud owners of two of the Haunted Mansion portraits that I posted pictures of earlier. She made arrangements for me to pick them up later after the Carsland Seminar. I’m not sure which ones as they are still wrapped up like they were from the Expo. We have to move some pictures around on the walls to put them up!

By this point it was shortly after 1PM and they started to move us. We were easily in the first hundred people if not first 50 and when Fran said that she didn’t want to transfer, they directed us to the back of the room. EXCUSE ME? I didn’t wait three hours in a refrigerator so that we could sit at the back of the room!!!!!! She decided to transfer and I ran up to the front of the room and snagged us a couple seats about 6-7 rows back on the aisle (much easier for her to get in and out if she is on the aisle).



So the panel was headed up by John Lasseter, but as a good leader, he really let his people do most of the talking and explaining. I tried to get names where I could, and thank god I took notes or I would never have remembered any of this!



John Lasseter opened the presentation. The blurry thing that you see here is a hat of some sort (hard hat, motorcycle helmet) that was worn during the ground breaking and is now stored in the office of Kathy Megan (one of the imagineers on this panel) who promptly took it away from John as soon as the panel started!



Everyone got these cute little “intro panels” with a particular vehicle representing their personality.



So John Lasseter talked about the big picture at DCA. It really needed “something” and people have been saying that since it opened. All the lands at Disneyland transport you somewhere, but DCA really hasn’t done that quite yet, however since John has taken over they have been working on it. John was raised around cars. Here is a cute shot of him (the one in the back with the doll)



His Dad worked for Chevrolet while he was growing up so cars were a very big part of his life.



Evidently there was some talk of having some sort of Car land at DCA and this idea had come from Imagineer, Kevin Rafferty. Then Pixar came out with the movie cars that was a big hit and that’s when the idea really began to blossom.



California has always had a “car culture” with drive ins, drive throughs, taking a road trip, and not to mention the whole idea of gathering on a Saturday night to show off various cars at the local soda fountain/burger joint.







One of the things lacking in DCA according to John Lasseter was Characters. Some of the transformations that we have seen over the past few years were part of his decision. Changing the Sun Wheel to Mickey’s Fun Wheel, converting Mulholland Madness to Goofy’s Sky School, these were all ideas to get the characters back into the parks. One of the ideas that had been tossed around was a Goofy’s Road Trip Ride. These were some of the artist concepts. I believe this was the queue area.



Then you went through some whacky version of the US.



Followed by some creepy caverns



Not even sure how this part figured into it!



And this was what tied it all together.



I guess this was just one of the predicaments that Goofy gets into on his road trip.



Perhaps this is the bad part of town…



[Continued in Next Post]

[bangzoom6877]

YAY....Radiator Springs!!! I've been waiting for this! Actually, it's one of the draws to going to Disneyland! I just have to either suck it up and travel in the car for 7,000 miles altogether, or get some happy pills from my doctor so I can bring myself to get on a plane again (last time I flew was in 2000).

[DisneyFirefly]

[franandaj]

Originally Posted by bangzoom6877

YAY....Radiator Springs!!! I've been waiting for this! Actually, it's one of the draws to going to Disneyland! I just have to either suck it up and travel in the car for 7,000 miles altogether, or get some happy pills from my doctor so I can bring myself to get on a plane again (last time I flew was in 2000).

You can do it Bonnie! It's not that bad. I'm sure it's a little worse for you being so close and all, but millions of people have been doing it safely. Pretty soon we won't even have to take our shoes off any more!

Originally Posted by DisneyFirefly

Are you sure know which thread you're on?

[DisneyFirefly]

Shut up

(and yes, I was on the wrong thread)

[franandaj]

[Continued from Previous Post]

Eventually they decided to scrap this idea and just go with an entire new themed Carsland. Some of the highlights that they will have and that you can see in this image are Flo’s Diner/Café, the “Cozy Cones” will be QS locations. The organic fuel place will have drinks. Lizzy’s Curios will be a shopping location.



And Carsland at night. You can see Radiator Springs Racers in the in the background.



Sorry these next few are kind of blurry. Here is the artist concept of the entrance to Carsland.



Concepts of the food locations



And some of the shopping areas:



One of the rides will be Luigi’s flying tires which will be based on the old flying saucer ride that was removed from Disneyland back in the sixties.





Mater’s Junkyard is another ride that should be fun, though it isn’t an E ticket ride. The idea is that Baby Tractors will take you around the ride on a specially designed vehicle. In this picture you can see a blurry John Lasseter and one of the other imagineers in the parking lot out in Burbank, testing the prototype ride vehicle. This is a big hoedown with Mader as the star of the Junkyard Jamboree!



This is the Artist Rendering of the ride and if you look close, you’ll notice that all the tracks have circles in them. The Baby Tractors will travel along the circle tracks and your ride vehicle will shift from side to side behind the tractor. John Lasseter seemed to get a real kick out of it!



Here is another shot of them testing the concept



This is one of the ride vehicles that they had in the Parks and Resorts exhibit



Radiator Springs Raceway



This is the largest ride that Disney has ever built. It takes up six acres. The funny thing is that when John Lasseter was in the concept stages of the ride, he really liked the ride vehicles that they used in Test Track, however the “powers that be” told him “NO”. Evidently they had a lot of trouble with the ride systems, but they were finally able to work something out using a very similar vehicle.

The ride starts out like in the first movie, you go on a ride with Sally. You start off in town.



Mader wants to take you tractor tipping, but then you get whisked away. You go to the race. Evidently there is a point that you turn off to either the right or left. One car may go to Ramon’s Car Wash and the other goes to Luigi’s for tires. Depending on which side you go to determines your pole position. You will reach speeds of 40 mph, there are steep banked turns and it should be a pretty exciting ride.



They have been very careful in designing the ride vehicles. Each one is going to be different since these cars are the “people” of carsland. There will be eight different colors of cars, some will be male, some will be female.







This is one of the vehicles from the Parks and Resorts exhibit



This ride isn’t only about the characters though, it’s about the environment, so they have been very careful to create a beautiful western desert scene. The look of the area was inspired by John Lasseter’s trips to Lake Powell where he goes houseboating every year.





Up next the construction and creating the new land!