Grrrr...... I had a feeling that would happen. Thanks for letting me know Buckalew! I've copied the HM article and added it below. The gap on the right is due to a text box they had on the web site and I was too lazy to clean it up more than it already was. I'll add the pin article in a few minutes. Enjoy!
Where's Mickey?
07/28/2002
By CHRISTOPHER ELLIOT / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. Next time you're standing in line for a ride at The Magic
Kingdom, notice the walls. Check the sculptures. The landscaping.
Look closer.
Three circles two small, one large. Isn't that ... a mouse head? It probably is.
Hidden Mickeys, as they're commonly called, are everywhere at Walt Disney's
theme parks. But nowhere can you find more of these subliminal rodents than in
Orlando, where the phenomenon is believed to have started. Spotting the famous
logo is becoming a pastime for distracted parents and an obsession for a
handful of park visitors who follow each mouse sighting as if they had seen a solar
eclipse.
The rocks in the outdoor observation area behind Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge
are etched with several hidden Mickeys. Finding them isn't easy amid the other
seemingly random patterns.
The glass in the roof of the Main Street train station is covered in hidden Mickeys.
The best way to see them is to look up at the glass skylight from the ground floor
of the station.
An aerial view of Disney's MGM Studios reveals a giant hidden logo in the
architecture. The only way to get a good look at it is to buy a map or fly over the
park in an aircraft.
The surreptitious symbols aren't usually sanctioned at the corporate level.
Instead, credit the mice to the so-called "imagineers" who design the attractions.
They like hiding the Mickeys as much as park guests enjoy trying to uncover
them, according to Dave Smith, an archivist for the Walt Disney Co.
"A lot of the hidden Mickeys were put there on purpose," he explains. "But many
more were snuck in by the imagineers, and I get the sense that we may be a little
embarrassed by the millions of hidden Mickeys out there."
Maybe that's why Disney is so reluctant to talk
about the hidden Mickey phenomenon. (A
request to interview a representative from the
imagineering department for this article was
declined.) Although the company doesn't deny
the existence of the logos, better known as
"HMs" inside Disney, its reluctance to speak
has given the hidden Mickeys a kind of cult
following. They're supported by a network of
fans that look for hidden messages in Disney's
films. You've probably heard about them
they watch movies such as Who Framed Roger
Rabbit? frame by frame in the hope of finding
Jessica Rabbit sans evening dress, or play the
The Lion King repeatedly in an effort to spot
concealed words that how shall we say this?
don't exactly reflect Disney's family values.
On the Web site
www.hiddenmickeys.org, you
can review every mouse sighting going back
to the mid-1990s. They range from the
obvious (there's a Mickey next to Walt
Disney's name on the ice cream shop on Main
Street at the Magic Kingdom) to the obscure
(patterns in a fireworks show that form the
famous logo). Disney's own in-house
magazine tipped off the mouse-watchers
recently when it published a short sidebar with
photos of park guests with the "hidden" logos.
But only one of the images met the textbook
definition of an HM.
And what exactly is a hidden Mickey? Disney's
concept is relatively rigid. "It has to look like
Mickey Mouse," says Mr. Smith. "It can't just
be a big circle and two little circles. It can't be
placed there intentionally as a design element,
like a Mickey Mouse logo on a manhole cover."
The first Disney attraction to conceal
information was a motion simulator ride called
StarTours, in which designers secretly
scratched their birthdays on the pipes,
according to Disney. In 1988, hidden Mickey
Mouse logos appeared at the Norway pavilion
at Epcot. By the next year, the mice had
infested the Disney-MGM theme park.
But Tom Shaw, the editor of
www.hiddenmickeys.org, believes hidden
Mickeys in Orlando go back to before 1971,
when construction crews placed survey
markers with mouse ears on the property.
What's more, the logos appeared at
Disneyland the California theme park long
before then.
"I've met imagineers, artists, construction workers and cast members [staff] who
have placed hidden Mickeys and other hidden things in the theme parks for
multiple reasons," he says. "It's not that unusual. But now there are just more of
them, and that's attracting attention."
Mr. Shaw, like many other fans of the HM, has adopted a looser definition of what
constitutes a hidden Mickey. Who's right? It doesn't really matter. Having a
broader definition means more opportunities to discover the mouse. Disney's
classification makes more sense as a cultural phenomenon. And it keeps the
imagineers out of trouble.
If you subscribe to the stricter definition, then the rise of the concealed logo
coincided with the "Where's Waldo?" craze set off by a series of children's books
in which readers searched impossibly busy illustrations for a bespectacled
character named Waldo. While the Disney company insists that it doesn't
rubber-stamp the ever-growing list of secret mice, it's likely that Uncle Walt would
have approved of turning his theme parks into an enormous "Where's Mickey?"
attraction.
Mr. Disney always wanted to put more into his attractions than a visitor could assimilate in a single experience.
And if it keeps 'em coming back, what's the harm in hiding a few more logos?
Christopher Elliott is a free-lance writer in Florida.
