...Believe...In Holiday Magic fireworks debut in 2000 and A Christmas Fantasy parade debut in 1994. These two shows have been at DL for a long time and it would be a shame if they include these two classic Christmas nighttime shows as part of a party event.
Bret --
I think the Theme Week Countdown will work out okay, because I will announce the theme for the week of the Expo at the start of that week -- so you and Liza will have already posted your photos before you leave for the Expo. And when you get back there will be a new theme soon after. So you won't miss out on anything and we won't miss out on your photos!
Okay, you just stunned me. I knew that the holiday fireworks and Christmas parade had been around for a long time, but wow! I had no clue that the parade started in 1994!! Then again, I remember the reindeer marching down the street back in 1994 -- so I guess I saw that parade and didn't even recall that it was the same one!
And the fireworks have been there for over a decade! I must have seen those too, and didn't realize what I was seeing (I was there in December 2000 and November 2001).
Now that you have told me that and I realize exactly how old those 2 events are, there is
no way they can be made a part of a paid Christmas party without tons of backlash and opposition!! How in the world could
Disneyland even possibly attempt to stick an event that is almost 20 years old and an event that is over a decade old into a party as the reasons to buy tickets? Uh, yeah...that would work for brand new visitors who have never experienced the holidays at DLR, but it would not work for the thousands upon thousands of holiday visitors who have been coming to the parks for years!
Disney would have to put something brand new and big into a party in DL, or have the party in DCA. Either that, or be prepared for people to flood their mail and email with complaints! Otherwise, Disney really will come across as very greedy and stingy!
I think Disney would be better off holding the Candlelight Ceremony for more nights than 2 this year as well. I see where 20 nights was probably too many, but 2 nights are not enough. That's one extreme to another! I will be really surprised if they don't have a back-up plan for the CP beyond the 12/7 and 12/8 Town Square dates.
I am getting ready for the Theme Week Countdown Sherry E has been hinting about. I went on Photobucket to see what Christmas pictures I have and to add more from last year. Boy has that site changed. It might take me a while to get used to it
Liza --
The key to the Countdown is the element of
surprise. As
Bret knows (he has participated in the last 2 Countdowns, which were very popular) I do not tell you guys in advance which themes I am picking, and in which weeks they will be featured/unveiled -- but they are all some sort of Disneyland Resort-holiday theme (including the hotels and everything).
I announce the themes on the same day every week for about 12 weeks, from August to November. I post an intro/background for the theme and some of my own photos to set it up for everyone, and then everyone else posts. The real fun comes when everyone reveals the photos that he/she has for the theme! It's all a surprise because, presumably, there are a lot of people out there who have not experienced the holiday season yet and don't know what to expect. They have not seen our photos. So it's a cornucopia of awesomeness when everyone's photos start a-rollin' in and it makes quite an impact on the people following along!
Some themes seem to yield a bounty of photos. Some themes seem to come up empty. It's always interesting to see what everyone has in the way of photos.
Then, in the final week of the Countdown -- which usually is right before the holiday season begins in November -- I do a mini-theme each day. All tolled, there were about 18 themes in the past...but there may be a couple more this year!
And there will be a small twist to the Countdown this year, which will hopefully add extra fun to it for both people with photos and people without.
Don't get me started on Photobucket. I have lamented on it in this thread, in my TR thread and in the Photobucket Support threads. You probably didn't see their site when they were first forcing everyone over to the new version earlier this year. It was a mess. Features were missing. Nothing was working. All of the photos in everyone's albums were out of order and no one could find anything.
Photobucket kept a couple of threads in their Support forums open for a while, and there were a whole bunch of us (paying and non-paying) customers who were angry and complaining that all of the features we needed and used were taken away. Photobucket's stance was basically, "
Oh, we really didn't know that you guys used all of these things..."
We raised holy...er...hades....and kept at the Photobucket people until they finally started changing things and reinstating some of the lost features. Finally, I can sort my albums in the order I need again. Several months ago it was like looking for a needle in a haystack to find one single photo. And you should have seen the problems I had when trying to resize some photos to post on Page 1 of this thread. It took hours to resize just a few photos at a time because the editor in Photobucket didn't work. It still doesn't work well. It doesn't like vertical/portrait shots.
However, Photobucket wants to make more money off of people so they now insist on storing everyone's photos at their "original" (larger) sizes, even if we
upload the photos at, say, 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 or whatever. (I don't like to post anything larger than those sizes on the DIS because the large photos slow down the threads and make the pages harder to load.)
They tell us that the photos will "display" at the upload sizes, but that the "original" sizes will be
stored in our accounts, even if we don't want it that way. They are doing that so that we will quickly use up more storage space and bandwidth and have to pay more money when we load a whole bunch of photos!
Seeing that I can come away from my assorted day or multi-day trips with anywhere from 700 - 1600 photos, needless to say I am not looking forward to having them all stored in their "original" sizes in my account, while my storage limit exceeds (even though I am a paying customer) and I end up having to pay more. I am now thinking that I may have to pick and choose what I upload to my account, which will be a huge pain!
Really one could not get enough of Disney in my book.
It looks like my fiancé and I may be going to DL again after our Halloween trip, in early December, but it would have to be really short. I was wondering if three days sounds like enough to fully experience the holiday season and see everything there is it see, etc.? It'll be our first trip during the Christmas season so I really want to make it count 
At least someone is on the same page with me!
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