TheTXTaylors5
He's the Mickey to my Minnie
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2006
- Messages
- 7,381
April 2010 ABD Backstage Magic : California Here We Come!!!
- Thread starter WebmasterJohn
- Start date
- Status
I need to get all details for this trip hammered out this week. I still am not sure when I am flying out or if I can going to stay an extra day. Work is consumming my life right about now.
A trip chat sounds great.
I cannot wait for this trip!!!!!!!!!
A trip chat sounds great.
I cannot wait for this trip!!!!!!!!!
klam_chowder
<font color=royalblue>Got her own private pool dan
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2007
- Messages
- 1,668
Check out how cute we are in 33 degrees at 4:00 in the morning!My DH must really lurv me!
Wow, you guys look great, Lauren & Jeri.
Congrats! What a magical place to do a half marathon 
cheers,
klam_chowder
<font color=royalblue>Got her own private pool dan
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2007
- Messages
- 1,668
you should NEVER walk in front of the Mickey lightsaber! Wouldn't want you to get scolded!
No worries Matthew, I had no idea of the light saber rule either. Good thing I heard about it now as my bangs don't need a trim!
Sounds great, Dodie. Hopefully it can be early Feb or maybe March? 
I'm heading to the Olympics so won't be around much next month. My last trip before the Big Adventure!! I know scheduling with so many coast-to-coast is going to be challenge. 
Of course if Feb dates work better for others, go for it. I'll know better what my schedule/Internet access is like once I'm there - hard to chat on an iPhone 
- so I still might be able to make it if it's in Feb 
I'm hopeful the our chat will not be as frenetic as the weekly chat sessions. I popped in once and realized there was absolutely no way to I was going to be able keep up with anything that was going on.
Don't count on it with 40 of us in there
cheers,
Tonya2426
<marquee><img src=http://photopost.wdwinfo.com/dat
- Joined
- May 20, 2007
- Messages
- 3,890
Anyone up for a different kinda tour???
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20100119/ap_tr_ge/us_travel_brief_gang_tours
For $65, tourists get peek at Los Angeles gangland
LOS ANGELES Only miles from the scenic vistas and celebrity mansions that draw sightseers from around the globe but a world away from the glitz and glamour a bus tour is rolling through the dark side of the city's gang turf.
Passengers paying $65 a head Saturday signed waivers acknowledging they could be crime victims and put their fate in the hands of tattooed ex-gang members who say they have negotiated a cease-fire among rivals in the most violent gangland in America.
If that sounds daunting, consider the challenge facing organizers of LA Gang Tours: trying to build a thriving venture that provides a glimpse into gang life while also trying to convince people that gang-plagued communities are not as hopeless as movies depict.
"There's a fascination with gangs," said founder Alfred Lomas, a former member of the Florencia 13 gang. "We can either address the issue head-on, create awareness and discuss the positive things that go on in these communities, or we can try to sweep it under the carpet."
Several observers have questioned the premise behind the tours, and some city politicians have been more blunt.
"It's a terrible idea," City Councilman Dennis Zine said. "Is it worth that thrill for 65 bucks? You can go to a (gang) movie for a lot less and not put yourself at risk."
More than 50 people brushed aside safety concerns for Saturday's maiden tour to hear how notorious gangs got started and bear witness to the struggling neighborhoods where tens of thousands of residents have been lured into gang life.
The unmarked chartered coach wound its way through downtown. The first sight was a stretch of concrete riverbed featured in such movies as "Terminator" and "Grease," where countless splotches of gray paint conceal graffiti that is often the mark of street gangs and tagging crews.
After that, it was on to the Central Jail, home to many a thug, past Skid Row's squalor and homeless masses and into South Los Angeles, breeding ground for some of the city's deadliest gangs.
Motoring through an industrial area, the bus enters the Florence-Firestone neighborhood, close to the birthplace of the Crips and current home to Florencia 13, a Latino gang that was accused by federal prosecutors of racist attacks against black residents.
Gray warehouses soon merge with single-story stucco homes as the bus heads south. Few gangsters risk hanging out on street corners, as local rules mean they could get arrested even for congregating, but graffiti on walls, road signs and convenience storefronts betray the presence of Florencia 13 and other gangs.
Sieglinde Lemke, 46, an American Studies professor from the University of Freiburg in Germany, said she enjoyed the opportunity to interact with former gang members.
"It brings to life the class divisions you have in America," she said. "This is an area that's blocked out of my mental map of the States. It's important to get a firsthand account of the area."
Junior high school teacher Prisca Ricks, 37, was of two minds about going on the tour after reading critical blog comments about it being "ghettotainment."
But ultimately, she was pleased she went, and said she appreciated the focus on trying to help the community.
Lomas, 45, a respected activist who has worked with the faith-based Los Angeles Dream Center to distribute hundreds of tons of food to low-income families across the inner city, left gang life about five years ago.
He stresses the aim of his nonprofit company is to bring jobs to communities along the route and to reinvest money through micro-loans and scholarships, though he's not sure how the tour will accomplish that. He also eventually wants to start a gallery and gang museum.
He said the tour will create 10 part-time jobs, mainly for ex-gang members working as guides and talking about their own struggles and efforts to reduce violence. The tour is initially scheduled to run once a month.
No tour quite like this runs elsewhere in the country. Chicago has a prohibition-era gangster tour, and another Los Angeles group buses people to infamous crime scenes, including the Black Dahlia murder.
Lomas faces a quandary as he tries to show the troubled history of the area once known as South Central, before politicians renamed it South Los Angeles in 2003 in an attempt to change its deep association with urban strife.
The tour is billed as "the first in the history of Los Angeles to experience areas that were forbidden." But tour leaders don't want it to be voyeuristic and sensational.
"We ain't going on no tour saying, 'Look at them Crips, look at them Bloods, look at them crack heads,'" said Frederick "Scorpio" Smith, an ex-Crip helping narrate, who helped broker the cease-fire among the Grape Street Crips, 18th Street, F13 and the East Coast Crips.
Out of sensitivity to residents, passengers are banned from shooting photographs or video from the bus. The only place that is allowed is near the end of the trip, when they can step off the bus and film an outdoor area where graffiti is allowed.
Stretches of the tour have almost nothing to do with gangs, but instead exploit famous chapters of violence in the city's history, such as a deadly 1974 shootout between police and the Symbionese Liberation Army and the site of the riots that followed the acquittal of officers in the Rodney King beating.
If done right, the tour could highlight the decades-long struggle to solve the gang problem, said civil rights lawyer and gang expert Connie Rice.
Gang crime has fallen in recent years, but groups continue to grow and gain influence. Over the past quarter century, officials in Los Angeles County have spent $25 billion fighting gangs only to see the number of gangsters double to as many as 90,000 and a six-fold increase in the number of gangs.
"If it is carried out well and carefully and carried out with the consent of the community, it could teach people about the very entrenched culture that gangs now have in Los Angeles," Rice said.
City Councilwoman Jan Perry said she would rather tourists see the development potential in the neighborhoods that make up part of her district. About two years ago, she organized her own tour in the area for about 200 real estate agents and business representatives, resulting in the development of buildings with homes and businesses.
"I'd prefer we focus on showing the community in a positive light," she said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20100119/ap_tr_ge/us_travel_brief_gang_tours
For $65, tourists get peek at Los Angeles gangland
LOS ANGELES Only miles from the scenic vistas and celebrity mansions that draw sightseers from around the globe but a world away from the glitz and glamour a bus tour is rolling through the dark side of the city's gang turf.
Passengers paying $65 a head Saturday signed waivers acknowledging they could be crime victims and put their fate in the hands of tattooed ex-gang members who say they have negotiated a cease-fire among rivals in the most violent gangland in America.
If that sounds daunting, consider the challenge facing organizers of LA Gang Tours: trying to build a thriving venture that provides a glimpse into gang life while also trying to convince people that gang-plagued communities are not as hopeless as movies depict.
"There's a fascination with gangs," said founder Alfred Lomas, a former member of the Florencia 13 gang. "We can either address the issue head-on, create awareness and discuss the positive things that go on in these communities, or we can try to sweep it under the carpet."
Several observers have questioned the premise behind the tours, and some city politicians have been more blunt.
"It's a terrible idea," City Councilman Dennis Zine said. "Is it worth that thrill for 65 bucks? You can go to a (gang) movie for a lot less and not put yourself at risk."
More than 50 people brushed aside safety concerns for Saturday's maiden tour to hear how notorious gangs got started and bear witness to the struggling neighborhoods where tens of thousands of residents have been lured into gang life.
The unmarked chartered coach wound its way through downtown. The first sight was a stretch of concrete riverbed featured in such movies as "Terminator" and "Grease," where countless splotches of gray paint conceal graffiti that is often the mark of street gangs and tagging crews.
After that, it was on to the Central Jail, home to many a thug, past Skid Row's squalor and homeless masses and into South Los Angeles, breeding ground for some of the city's deadliest gangs.
Motoring through an industrial area, the bus enters the Florence-Firestone neighborhood, close to the birthplace of the Crips and current home to Florencia 13, a Latino gang that was accused by federal prosecutors of racist attacks against black residents.
Gray warehouses soon merge with single-story stucco homes as the bus heads south. Few gangsters risk hanging out on street corners, as local rules mean they could get arrested even for congregating, but graffiti on walls, road signs and convenience storefronts betray the presence of Florencia 13 and other gangs.
Sieglinde Lemke, 46, an American Studies professor from the University of Freiburg in Germany, said she enjoyed the opportunity to interact with former gang members.
"It brings to life the class divisions you have in America," she said. "This is an area that's blocked out of my mental map of the States. It's important to get a firsthand account of the area."
Junior high school teacher Prisca Ricks, 37, was of two minds about going on the tour after reading critical blog comments about it being "ghettotainment."
But ultimately, she was pleased she went, and said she appreciated the focus on trying to help the community.
Lomas, 45, a respected activist who has worked with the faith-based Los Angeles Dream Center to distribute hundreds of tons of food to low-income families across the inner city, left gang life about five years ago.
He stresses the aim of his nonprofit company is to bring jobs to communities along the route and to reinvest money through micro-loans and scholarships, though he's not sure how the tour will accomplish that. He also eventually wants to start a gallery and gang museum.
He said the tour will create 10 part-time jobs, mainly for ex-gang members working as guides and talking about their own struggles and efforts to reduce violence. The tour is initially scheduled to run once a month.
No tour quite like this runs elsewhere in the country. Chicago has a prohibition-era gangster tour, and another Los Angeles group buses people to infamous crime scenes, including the Black Dahlia murder.
Lomas faces a quandary as he tries to show the troubled history of the area once known as South Central, before politicians renamed it South Los Angeles in 2003 in an attempt to change its deep association with urban strife.
The tour is billed as "the first in the history of Los Angeles to experience areas that were forbidden." But tour leaders don't want it to be voyeuristic and sensational.
"We ain't going on no tour saying, 'Look at them Crips, look at them Bloods, look at them crack heads,'" said Frederick "Scorpio" Smith, an ex-Crip helping narrate, who helped broker the cease-fire among the Grape Street Crips, 18th Street, F13 and the East Coast Crips.
Out of sensitivity to residents, passengers are banned from shooting photographs or video from the bus. The only place that is allowed is near the end of the trip, when they can step off the bus and film an outdoor area where graffiti is allowed.
Stretches of the tour have almost nothing to do with gangs, but instead exploit famous chapters of violence in the city's history, such as a deadly 1974 shootout between police and the Symbionese Liberation Army and the site of the riots that followed the acquittal of officers in the Rodney King beating.
If done right, the tour could highlight the decades-long struggle to solve the gang problem, said civil rights lawyer and gang expert Connie Rice.
Gang crime has fallen in recent years, but groups continue to grow and gain influence. Over the past quarter century, officials in Los Angeles County have spent $25 billion fighting gangs only to see the number of gangsters double to as many as 90,000 and a six-fold increase in the number of gangs.
"If it is carried out well and carefully and carried out with the consent of the community, it could teach people about the very entrenched culture that gangs now have in Los Angeles," Rice said.
City Councilwoman Jan Perry said she would rather tourists see the development potential in the neighborhoods that make up part of her district. About two years ago, she organized her own tour in the area for about 200 real estate agents and business representatives, resulting in the development of buildings with homes and businesses.
"I'd prefer we focus on showing the community in a positive light," she said.
Dodie
<font color=green>Survived the big crash<br><font
- Joined
- Nov 10, 1999
- Messages
- 6,673
Anyone up for a different kinda tour???
Um. No thanks. I think our venture to the In N Out Burger may be the riskiest part of this vacation upon which I'm willing to embark.
spokanemom
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2006
- Messages
- 769
Anyone up for a different kinda tour???
You know, as much fun as that sounds, I just don't think I will be able to squeeze that one into my busy schedule. Not only that, but I am not sure that I want actual gunfire to be part of my itinerary...
Anyone up for a different kinda tour???
It's either that or a tour of the Bachelorette Mansion.
DisneyKevin
Kelvis
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2005
- Messages
- 10,257
Hi Folks,
I have some very exciting news.
When we planned this Adventure, we actually planned two. One for 4/13 and one for 4/20/10.
The April 13th trip sold out quickly, as you all know. The April 20th date has not had as many folks sign up.
On Friday, we learned that due to the low participation, the April 20th trip was to be canceled. This meant that 3 Diser's that signed up for that date would be disappointed.
Now, you know we dont like to disappoint a Diser. So after much talkling and wheedling and cajoling......we've gotten ABD to agree to let us add 3 more to our Adventure.
Please help me welcome Oscar Jr. (who we go to meet at DAP) and his Dad - Oscar Sr to our Adventiure.
I will announce the third person joining our Adventure as soon as I get her permission to do so.
This makes us a traveling group of 44.
I was worried about the ABD guides before........no I'm really worried.
Welcome to the Adventure of a lifetime Oscar and Oscar.
Oh yeah....we're working on some vvvveeerrryyy cool stuff. Thats the only hint you get.
I have some very exciting news.
When we planned this Adventure, we actually planned two. One for 4/13 and one for 4/20/10.
The April 13th trip sold out quickly, as you all know. The April 20th date has not had as many folks sign up.
On Friday, we learned that due to the low participation, the April 20th trip was to be canceled. This meant that 3 Diser's that signed up for that date would be disappointed.
Now, you know we dont like to disappoint a Diser. So after much talkling and wheedling and cajoling......we've gotten ABD to agree to let us add 3 more to our Adventure.
Please help me welcome Oscar Jr. (who we go to meet at DAP) and his Dad - Oscar Sr to our Adventiure.
I will announce the third person joining our Adventure as soon as I get her permission to do so.
This makes us a traveling group of 44.
I was worried about the ABD guides before....
....no I'm really worried.Welcome to the Adventure of a lifetime Oscar and Oscar.
Oh yeah....we're working on some vvvveeerrryyy cool stuff. Thats the only hint you get.
skunkvette
You have to decide if you’re a Tigger or an Eeyore
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2006
- Messages
- 720
Cool - welcome on board Oscar and Oscar and Mystery Guest!
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2004
- Messages
- 800
Welcome to the new folks, Oscar x2 and the soon to be announced.
Tonya2426
<marquee><img src=http://photopost.wdwinfo.com/dat
- Joined
- May 20, 2007
- Messages
- 3,890
Anybody else want to have fun with Flatties while we are in Cali????
I started a facebook page so we can secretly discuss who is joining us in 2-D - we want our friends to be surprise who shows up. (Already had a few people try to join the facebook group and I had to ignore them)
I started a facebook page so we can secretly discuss who is joining us in 2-D - we want our friends to be surprise who shows up. (Already had a few people try to join the facebook group and I had to ignore them)
katscradle
<font color=deeppink>Left a special sweetness for
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2008
- Messages
- 4,736
Yikes!!!
- Bill
Exactly, now you see why I hate the whole flying thing, and why we drove to WDW for DAP!
It's highway robbery!
katscradle
<font color=deeppink>Left a special sweetness for
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2008
- Messages
- 4,736
Um. No thanks. I think our venture to the In N Out Burger may be the riskiest part of this vacation upon which I'm willing to embark.
I am thinking Dodie it right about this one!
You know, as much fun as that sounds, I just don't think I will be able to squeeze that one into my busy schedule. Not only that, but I am not sure that I want actual gunfire to be part of my itinerary...
I am with you one this one too, no gunfire please!
It's either that or a tour of the Bachelorette Mansion.
If I have to choose between the two, I vote for a tour of the Bachelorette Mansion.
katscradle
<font color=deeppink>Left a special sweetness for
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2008
- Messages
- 4,736
Welcome to Oscar Jr and Sr. 
and to our mystery woman!
and to our mystery woman!
Welcome Oscar Jr & Oscar Sr
corky441
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2008
- Messages
- 2,971
klam_chowder
<font color=royalblue>Got her own private pool dan
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2007
- Messages
- 1,668
to the 2 Oscars! Anyone up for a different kinda tour???
When PP mentioned Fantasmic would be down during our trip, I didn't realize that all of the Rivers of America stuff would be down too - they're draining the river!
So no Mark Twain Riverboat, Sailing Ship Columbia - fun when the cannon goes off!, Davy Crockett Canoes - shucks no ABD racing , or Tom Sawyer Island. 
That's quite a bit not happening but I still don't think that tour is a good substitute
cheers,
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