D23 Expo: The “All Lines, No Rides” Disney Experience! FINISHED at Last!

[lurkyloo]

Then there was something about The Disney Dream cruise ship (I know this, because I have these photos!).

And improvements to Castaway Cay…

"Whew! OK, so far, so good… maybe now I'll pitch yet another DVC property. Everybody loves DVC!"

I don't know what this is, but even the hyperactive Angular Kids don't wanna run toward it!

I think this is (was?) part of the plans for Mystic Manor at Hong Kong Disneyland

Apparently they have Angular Kids at Disneyland Paris too!

Oh good—they're flying in Marty Sklar. He always has something interesting to say!

…Orrrrr they're just going to talk about his window on Main Street…

"Up next is a little something I like to call 'How to Fix an Ill-Conceived Theme Park By Spending More Than You Did to Build It'…"

They showed a clip from the animatic ride-through of Radiator Springs Racers, which was fun.





Uh-oh… Looks like The Empire is about to rain on Rasulo's parade!

Vader to Rasulo as he suspends him in a Force-induced chokehold: "I find your lack of faith disturbing…"

It was pretty exciting to see the sneak preview of the new Star Tours, even though we knew they would announce it. Patrick shot the clip—even though most of it's in 3-D, you can see how it changed in big and little ways between the Expo and the ride's opening this summer.

 

[lurkyloo]

After the presentation, we decided to grab lunch at the Arena Grill instead of the sad counter-service places in the exhibit halls. To our surprise, the food was actually quite good! The ingredients were fresher, and there was more choice of interesting take-away items. (Unfortunately, this location will not be open during D23 Expo 2011, so it's back to water-logged burgers and neon nacho cheese…)

We took our roast beef sandwiches and "Disney" fudge to the D23 Member Lounge again to eat. (Another thing I've found out since I started this report: The fudge sold at the Expo was actually made by concessionaire Aramark, not Disney. Which explains why I've never been able to find fudge that good at the Disney parks since!)

After lunch, as we made our way toward the Collectors' Forum, we passed by the candy stand. Naturally, I was compelled to purchase even more fudge (they had so many different and interesting flavors!).

In the Collectors Forum, we stopped by Patrick's uncle's booth. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing him again at this year's Expo because Disney has raised the price of a booth by 150%!

"These are not the toys you are looking for…"

I guess even Stormtroopers gotta schlep their stuff somehow…

Just don't tease them about it…

By then it was time to head upstairs to wait in yet another line for the Princess & the Frog presentation. Except that after 45 minutes of waiting and finally being ushered in, we discovered we were in the wrong room! (And if we were able to get "Stage 23" and "Walt Disney Studios Theater" mixed up, just think how bad it'll be this year when the latter changes its name to "Stage 28"—the numbers even LOOK the same!).


This might be the line we were supposed to be in

So we dashed upstairs to the correct room and got what we thought was a pretty good place in line. After we'd waited in line for 2 hours, they decided to take our cameras as they let us in. When we finally got inside, we were so far back that we couldn't really see anything, which meant I fell asleep about three times cuz I had nothing to focus on. Eventually I decided to leave early so I could get my iPhone back ahead of the hordes.


We weren't allowed to take pictures, so, uh here's the poster

After that the only thing left was the live auction, which we weren't gonna pay $40 to watch, so we split for the Disneyland Hotel….

…where it was the 1970s!

I totally wish the lobby still looked like this.

Before dinner we went to see what all the fuss was about with the hotel fountains, which were scheduled for removal.

Here's what they eventually replaced them with:

And of course I wanted nighttime shots of the wedding ceremony location, the Rose Court Garden.

 

[lurkyloo]

One thing about the Disneyland Hotel is they have a lot of great concept art in the public areas, some of which you rarely see. Let's look at, oh, ALL of it, shall we?

Oooh! Oooh! Real wedding!

Now where was I…?

 

[lurkyloo]

Then we had a nice dinner at Steakhouse 55 (née Granville's Steak House) with Patrick's aunt and uncle.

Asparagus with Hollandaise; Broiled Salmon

Macaroni & Cheese

Porterhouse Steak

Sauteed Green Beans with Applewood-Smoked Bacon

Filet Mignon

For the last shot of the day, I give you… The World's Sparkliest Stairs!!!

Up Next: Last day of D23 Expo 2009!

 

[lurkyloo]

On the last day of D23 Expo, we woke up and checked out of our mildewed room at the Disneyland Hotel, taking pictures as we went.

One last shot of the bathroom, for some reason…

So long, bland lobby décor!

Sad former fountains in the daylight

Test of the new windows

We did have the opportunity to go swimming in the Neverland Pool the previous day but didn't take pictures. Every other time we'd stayed there, the slide had been closed, so that day I finally got to go down it—eight times!

All this is gone now, of course. To see a photo tour of the new pool area at the Disneyland Hotel, click HERE!


For breakfast, we met Patrick's aunt and uncle at their favorite Anaheim dive, Tiffy's, which has been there since dirt, apparently (dirt also figures heavily in the décor!). It's not horrible—just your standard diner food, plus unremarkable ice cream. The prices are low and the staff is friendly.

 

[lurkyloo]

I don't think I need to label breakfast, do I?

Back to the convention center!

The snoozerific-sounding Disney Corporate Responsibility booth actually had a pretty neat program going on whereby attendees could donate just a few minutes of their time to perform a small task that was part of a larger charitable effort. And they were giving out special un-eBay-resellable ear hats to those who completed the task!

Doing my part for the community

And then we saw this…

"The Princess & the Frog" hadn't even come out yet, but we already knew this toy was off-model!

Well that was a good idea!

The life of a Disney animator

Patrick thought it would be funny to mimic the expressions in the "Christmas Carol" promo portraits, with varying degrees of success.

We really really really wanted to get good seats for The Muppets presentation in the third-floor theater (capacity: 750), so we got there 2 1/2 hours early to wait in line. This also meant we had to miss John Lasseter's keynote presentation, "The Future of Walt Disney & Pixar Animation." I guess it's good we did, because even with 30 minutes in between, people who sprinted out of the keynote ended up getting shut out of the Muppets presentation.

Miss Piggy's Marc Jacobs ensemble

Waiting paid off—we got seats in the front row, off to the side. I was especially excited about this panel because I got to break a bunch of Muppets news (if you can call product announcements "news") on Twitter before anyone else. Never mind that half of it never ended up happening. In fact, most of it was just a recap of what Disney had done with The Muppets since the acquisition, while the new news was almost all about merchandise.

 

[lurkyloo]

So… whatever happened to the 2010 Halloween special?

Apparently "next" means "maybe never"…

Well these did come out but had to be blown out on sale because no one could afford them.

Yeah that totally never happened…

Interesting story here: "The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made" was the name of a script developed by Jerry Juhl, Jim Henson & Frank Oz in reaction to the spiraling budgets of the first three movies. The idea was that Gonzo was going to be directing the movie but would blow half his budget on the opening credits, and then the production values of the movie would get lower and lower until the very end, which would be something like a slide presentation. The idea kicked around for years and was briefly resurrected around the time of D23 Expo in 2009. But when Oz pitched it at Pixar, they realized the script had tons of dated references that would need updating, plus it really wouldn't be cheap to shoot.

So by the time of the Expo, they were just clinging to the title and were going to have Jason Segel and Nick Stoller write a whole new script. The genesis of their script came from a trip to Jim Henson Studios when they were working on Forgetting Sarah Marshall, during which they first learned that the Muppets had been sold off to Disney. You'll have to go see The Muppets in November to see what they did with the idea, though!

We were also kinda bummed out that Sam the Eagle was the only Muppet who made a live appearance. Fozzie, Gonzo, and Pepe the Prawn appeared onscreen and later did a meet 'n' greet/photo op out in the queue area.

The line for the meet 'n' greet was 90 minutes, so we took off for "Imagineering Pixar for the Disney Parks" presentation instead.

Shockingly, and despite the presence of John Lasseter, this panel turned out to be really boring. They basically just listed the various Pixar-based attractions in all the parks and told one or two mildly amusing stories.

"So the secret to what we did is, we took some characters from Pixar movies, and we stuck 'em in the parks!"

"So I said to myself, I said, 'What if we took some characters from Pixar movies… and we stuck 'em in the parks?!'"

 

[lurkyloo]

After that presentations, we ran to the arena to see the Toy Story 3 presentation (which I had a strongly negative reaction to—Andy grows UP? And the toys get FORGOTTEN?! No thanks, I said to myself…) and the double feature of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3-D. Except byt this time Patrick was starving, so after the first movie we bailed and headed for a nice dinner at Catal on Downtown Disney.


So long, Arena!

Released from our D23 Expo shackles at last!

Organic Baby Mixed Lettuce

Ravioli of Caramelized Onion and Comte Cheese

Diver Scallops

The mashed potatoes and some kind of reduction from one of the entrees, as a side dish

We hadn’t even planned it, but right in the middle of our meal, Disneyland's fireworks went off above the rooftops!

It was so nice to sit down to a civilized meal after all that ghastly convention food on the run! And the fireworks pretty much made it the perfect ending to our trip.

To wrap up, I'll show you all the loot we got, some of it freebies from the show floor booths, some of it stuff we wasted our own money on. That Treasures of the Disney Archives Exhibition Catalog was the biggest waste of money—it looked like it had been printed on Shutterfly, and I haven't cracked it once. Actually, I take that back: The spare copy I bought and sold on eBay for $75 was not a waste of money…

So there you have it. Two years later, I finally finish my inaugural D23 Expo report, just in time to attend the 2011 Expo. I'll be tweeting photos starting with Thursday night's media preview of the Walt Disney Parks & Resorts "Carousel of Projects" and Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives exhibits—follow along on Twitter!




(Is it just me, or are the Dancing Bananas now Frozen Bananas...?)

 

[lurkyloo]

Oh dear... this is my punishment for waiting 2 years to finish this report...

 

[NeverlandClub23]

Great finish (and photos!)! (I wonder if waiting 2 years made it funnier...) I need to go back and reread more of your trip reports. Our top contender for honeymoon location is Tokyo (in 2 years) so I'll definitely have to go back and read that one!

So, I guess they just thought they would put the characters from the Pixar movies in the parks? Genius!

I was going to say I can't believe they replaced those gorgeous fountains at the Disneyland Hotel, but the daytime photo isn't very flattering. Maybe it just needed some paint?

Can't wait to hear about the Expo this weekend! Hope the lines aren't too terrible. It is interesting to look back after two years and see what has and hasn't happened/changed.

**I think it's even funnier that a PP has gotten married and had twins since your last update and your finish.

 

[Millie12591]

Thank you for finishing Carrie. I know how hard that must have been to come back to the report after that long.
I love the Cars shirt your hubby is sporting, I wish I could find one for my husband that didn't cost an arm and a leg (they go for 199.99 now).
Where did y'all find it? I seem to never find the hawaiian shirts from Disney until they cost a dang fortune! Do you keep an eye out for those kinds of shirts for Partrick? And if so, where in the world do you find them?!?

I'm hoping you got to see some amazing things at the Expo this weekend, I'm curious about the movie Brave....what did you think of the releases of the movies coming out in the near future?

 

[lurkyloo]

Great finish (and photos!)! (I wonder if waiting 2 years made it funnier...) I need to go back and reread more of your trip reports. Our top contender for honeymoon location is Tokyo (in 2 years) so I'll definitely have to go back and read that one!

So, I guess they just thought they would put the characters from the Pixar movies in the parks? Genius!

I was going to say I can't believe they replaced those gorgeous fountains at the Disneyland Hotel, but the daytime photo isn't very flattering. Maybe it just needed some paint?

Can't wait to hear about the Expo this weekend! Hope the lines aren't too terrible. It is interesting to look back after two years and see what has and hasn't happened/changed.

**I think it's even funnier that a PP has gotten married and had twins since your last update and your finish.

Oh lordy! It really has been a long time, hasn't it?

Yeah, those fountains were kinda long in the tooth. It's just a shame that they were replaced by such a generic-looking river and geyeser—it could be any shopping mall in the country! Originally they made it sound like the replacement geyser would look like the one in the old Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland, but that didn't happen...

As to the Expo, lines were even worse than last time. Actually, I was secretly, evilly smug b/c I've been kvetching about all the crowd-control problems at the first Expo all this time and now everyone else has finally noticed how bad it is!

Thank you for finishing Carrie. I know how hard that must have been to come back to the report after that long.
I love the Cars shirt your hubby is sporting, I wish I could find one for my husband that didn't cost an arm and a leg (they go for 199.99 now).
Where did y'all find it? I seem to never find the hawaiian shirts from Disney until they cost a dang fortune! Do you keep an eye out for those kinds of shirts for Partrick? And if so, where in the world do you find them?!?

I'm hoping you got to see some amazing things at the Expo this weekend, I'm curious about the movie Brave....what did you think of the releases of the movies coming out in the near future?

OK, you're not gonna like this, but he gets his Pixar Reyn Spooner shirts from a pal who works at Pixar. However, his Up Reyn Spooner shirt came from the Disney Store, so I always hold out hope that each subsequent Pixar movie will have a shirt release to the public like that one.

I thought so little of the upcoming releases that I didn't even go to the Studios presentation! Patrick went and was decidedly underwhelmed. We are looking forward to Brave, of course, but most of the Disney movies are like "Meh...." I mean, we'll go see the Avengers, and we'll prolly go see John Carter out of curiosity and with low expectations. But we're through with DisneyNature films, and that one with Jennifer Garner looks really dull...

 

[knewton64]

Am I fallin behind here??

Did I miss a trip report from the very outrageous funny lady who has a hankerin for wearing those "B.A.T." hats??

(ok that spells "BREAKFAST AT TIFFS).

I am jjuusstt gonna have to get caught up on you and whats going on with the D23 Expo.



T.T.F.N.

 

[lurkyloo]

Well if you missed this trip report from ages ago, let me just be sure you've seen these subsequent reports:

A Very Lurky Christmas: Holiday at Bay Lake Tower… of TERROR!


Tokyo Disney on 2 Weeks’ Notice: A Photo-Packed Account of 17 Days in Japan


Trick or Tweet! The Lurkyloos Do Food & Wine, Harry Potter, D23 & MNSSHP @ Walt Disney World & Disneyland!

 

[cdotla]

Thanks for finishing! Great recap!

Not sure I could deal with all those lines and craziness. Much preferred our more quiet and laid-back Destination D event at WDW!

 

[lurkyloo]

Thanks for finishing! Great recap!

Not sure I could deal with all those lines and craziness. Much preferred our more quiet and laid-back Destination D event at WDW!

Seriously! I didn't really know how good we had it at Destination D til I went back to D23 Expo!

At Destination D I was kind of annoyed that we had to continually jockey for position with LineZilla three times a day, but really if I hadn't been so insistent on getting close-up pictures, I could have breezed into those presentations whenever.

Disneyland's Destination D was a bit different because the ballroom setup meant you might not even be facing the stage if you didn't get there in time. But that cavernous space at the Contemporary was the perfect setup for the event because everyone could see (well, the screens, at least).