So once again this was to be an early day. We were to meet at 7am at Twist for breakfast. We both woke up at 5am California time & were too excited to go back to sleep-just like in the commercials. So we talked, watched some TV & tried to relax to prepare ourselves for the busy day ahead.
We went down to our breakfast at Twist which was a very nice buffet breakfast. We were better rested than alot of our fellow travelers even with our early waking time, because they had gone to Jimmy Kimmel & then after that to see Bolt at the El Capitan for the last showing of the day. We had considered seeing that last 9:55pm show as well, but we were just too tired & decided to rest instead. After a nice breakfast, we went back up to our room for a final check to make sure we didn't forget anything. Our luggage had already been collected-we were told to just leave it in our room while we went to breakfast.
Around 8:15am we loaded on to the bus & headed for our destinations.
We saw this sign not far from the hotel--which was exciting because we would be heading to Disneyland that afternoon.
Along the way we also passed a few cool things.
That's Warner Brothers Studio
NBC where we saw people already lined up to get into the Tonight Show with Jay Leno
We also passed the Walt Disney Studios which would be our 2nd destination today
As we got into Glendale, we started to see a few buildings with these Disney cast member name tags on them. This is the only way to identify these buildings as part of WDI or Walt Disney Imagineering.
This unassuming building is the headquarter building for WDI. It is at 1401 Flower Drive in Glendale California. There is a big name tag with 1401 on it which you cannot see in this picture.
Since we had to leave our cameras on the bus for our visit here & we had some time to kill while waiting to be let in, I asked if the guides would take our picture with the sign. This started a trend & everyone wanted their picture with the sign. This is one of the pictures that I am excited to get when we get our photopass info from ABD.
So soon our guide Imagineer Dave met us outside & lead us into the hallowed halls of Imagineering. As we walked in the door there was a big Sully there to greet us & as we walked down the hallways you could see tons of posters & artwork on the walls. It was very hard not to drag your feet as we moved along briskly just to soak up all the artwork. I remember seeing old posters for attractions at all the Disney parks around the world & even a grave yard with tombstones for attractions that have been retired like World of Motion, Skyway etc. We were taken into a room where there was a big screen so that as Dave talked to us about the history of Imagineering & how it got started he could show us pictures & video. I remember one photo in particular of Walt surrounded by his Imagineers & they were all dressed alike in white button down shirts & skinny black ties. Nothing like the Imagineers of today like Joe Rohde who express their creativity freely in their appearance & manner of dress.
Imagineering was known as WED enterprises (our word of the day) back then & was a totally different company formed by Walt outside of the Disney Studios. Walt stole artists from the Studios to make into Imagineers-people like Marc Davis & Herb Ryman. We saw footage of Herb Ryman talking about his weekend with Walt drawing the initial plans for Disneyland for Roy to take to show the bankers. Fascinating stuff. We also saw quite a bit of footage of Walt talking about the "Florida project" & how it would be different from California's Disneyland. We saw different projects that Imagineering had been responsible for over the years & found out that imagineering contains something over 160 different disciplines. Dave talked about taking a project from concept to completion using Expedition Everest as an example & we got to see quite a bit of the concept art & hear the Imagineers talk about the process of doing research to make the STORY-which is the foundation of everything they do at Imagineering-come to life. He spent quite a bit of time talking about the evolution of Audio Animatronics that all started with a tiny bird in a cage that Walt found on his travels & had wound up with the newest & latest projects like Lucky the Dinosaur & the new Muppet Lab with Beaker & Bunson Honeydew that can move around & interact with guests in a new way. He was showing us video of that & then said something to the effect of well he can show you himself "Come on our Lucky." And out walked Lucky the Dinosaur who weighs in at 450lbs, is 9 feet tall & 12 feet long. I was amazed as I never got to see him when he was out & about in the parks. We were able to all gather around while Lucky signed a picture for one in our group-his signature is a 4 leaf clover of course. Then each family group got to go up & meet Lucky. It was amazing to be up close to him & see how expressive his eyes could be. He makes different sounds based on how he is feeling. He almost purrs when you touch him & can make cute little sounds that make it almost feel like he is talking to you. He feels soft to the touch as well which surprised me. The guides were able to take our picture with Lucky & here is a photo of our picture postcard that was left in our room later in the week. It also has a photo taken in the sculputing room at WDI & the exclusive WDI pins I bought.
After that Lucky was getting tired-he is millions of years old after all, so we told him goodbye. They broke us up into our Daisy & Minnie groups. We went to a soundstage next & an Imagineer named Steve talked to us about the use of sound in attractions. We got to listen to a binaural recording that was done by using a dummy head that replicates a real human head with sinus cavities & things that affect the transmission of sound. It was about a new guy on the job's first day at a studio. It was really cool to hear all the different things like the haircut where it really felt like things were tickling the back of your neck & it was all just accomplished with sound. There was a hilarous photo on the wall of the dummy head in a field with real people doing a battle reenactment.
Next we were taken to an area to wait for Dave again & there was a big painting on the floor that was like the Rabbit hole that Alice fell down. It was a really cool piece of art & I was wondering what it was doing on the floor. When Dave came to meet us, he told us that it was for a new photopass idea they are working on where you can have a little device & take your own photos in the parks. So he picked me to demonstrate it & had me go stand on the painting & then told me to do something crazy-which I did & looked very ridiculous I am sure. The camera takes a series of photos & then you can view & buy them on-line at home. Pretty cool-it looked like I was falling down the rabbit hole.
Then, Dave took us into the Sculpture room that is like a storage area for all sorts of things. As you looked around the room there were some amazing things to see. Dave showed us a very small maquette (which is a small sculpture used to visualize and test shapes and ideas without incurring the cost and effort of producing a full scale product) of the Tramp.
Here is a photo I found of a maquette of Mater to show the small scale that maquettes start out as.
That small maquette had been made into a larger sculpture maybe about 2 or 3 feet tall which was more detailed & just the way they wanted it to be. This was then scanned into a computer & could be hooked into a machine that would then break it down into pieces for the structure to built using rebar that the computer can bend & shape to form the structure which they can then turn into the huge sculpture of Tramp at the Pop Century Resort at Walt Disney World.
Photo borrowed from the Internet.
Dave then showed us a head & asked us to guess who it was. I guessed Johnny Depp & I was right. It was done by taking an exact mold of Johnny's head. This was of course used to make the Captain Jack Sparrow Audio Animatronics that have been added into Pirates of the Caribbean at both Disneyland & Walt Disney World. This AA is the new genertation named A100's. This lead us to a demonstartion of new generation AA's using a clear plastic model that is a lifesize human character named Joe Cocker (because the Imagineer that made him really liked Joe Cocker the musician). You can see Joe's working parts. There are also 3 heads that are Joe's back up singers. Dave went behind a curtain just like the wizard in the Wizard of Oz & Joe & the back up heads came to life & performed the song "Doin' All Right" for us. It was amazing to watch how life like his movements down to the wiggling of his fingers in time to the music were. Really cool & I think I may have even danced along. Next we talked about the Snow White marble statues that took up a prominent spot in the room. These are the originals that stood in Snow White's Grotto at Disneyland for years. He told us that the story we have heard for all these years was not true but a pretty story manufactured by John Hench to cover up a mistake. They did not know the real story either until after John died & they found a folder in his desk about the statues. Seems they were never a gift, but something Walt wanted to do at the park to honor Snow White since it was the feature that gave the company such a great success. They were ordered & the measurements were wrong so that Snow White was the same size as the dwarfs & animals. John Hench contacted the sculpture in Italy & found out it would cost $2,000 to redo Snow White so they decided that was too much so they just decided to use forced perspective instead by placing Snow White at the top & the dwarfs down levels. This just goes to show you how Disney myths are born. Great story. The other unique thing we found out is that they decided to take them out of the park because they were showing signs of wear being out in the elements. They wanted to protect them so they were packed up & put in storage, but Snow White was broken in shipping. So trying to protect them turned out to harm them worse than if they had left them where they were standing at the parks. They finally decided to bring them to Imagineering & let them at least be enjoyed there instead of in a box somewhere. You can see the break marks on Snow White's arms but they have been able to put her back together pretty nicely. It was fascinating to be in this room surrounded by all this cool stuff. I remember seeing lots of heads of Presidents including George W Bush, a maquette of the Yeti for Expedition Everest, Ham from the Kitchen Cabaret from back in the day at EPCOT, Julie Andrews head for the Mary Poppins segment in the Great Movie Ride, small world doll head, hitchhiking ghosts maquette & busts from the Haunted Mansion that sing Grim, Grinning ghosts. I could have spent hours in there looking around. But alas, it was time to move along so we could go shopping at their exclusive store Mickey's of Glendales.
As we exited Imagineering we went down a corridor that was John Hench's Imagineer art graffiti corridor where lots of Imagineers had done paintings of Mickey Mouse & dedicated them to John. We saw some amazing art & I was wishing I had my camera to capture the originality of these true artists.
We exited into a courtyard area that had tables with umbrellas. To our left was a comissary area & in front of us was the store. They had some old ride vehicles out there which was cool to see-a Skyway cab, an Autopia car, a peoplemover car. We were given about 40 minutes to shop & a coupon each for 40% off one item. This store called Mickey's of Glendales has alot of exclusive Imagineering merchandise that you cannot get anywhere else. We tried to control ourselves & only buy things that we couldn't get elsewhere. They had lots of apparel, artwork, pins, books. It was pretty easy for us to narrow it down to what we wanted. This was the most shopping we did this trip-more on that later. I am going to include pictures of what we bought because in the past when reading people's trip reports about this shopping excursion I was always curious about what kind of stuff they had at this store.
We bought Eric a polo shirt & a long sleeve t shirt. I got 2 t shirts & a sweater.
Eric bought a large leather portolio & I got a smaller one that I am going to use for a journal. I got a pen & a name tag holder. We bought a John Hench art magnet & 2 pins-one with Snow White that looked like an ID badge & one with Tink & the WED letters.
We also bought a piece of art that is Sorcerer Mickey who is the symbol for Imagineering & then pins that spell it out. Each pin is fashioned after a different character.
After our shopping spree, we went into the comissary to use the facilities-it was really cute in there too!!!!
We then got back on the bus to head to the studios. Ever wonderful our guides had water, lemonade & snacks for us once back on the bus.
Up next...........Walt's chili