I received my
Disneyland Resort planning DVD yesterday. Thats always a happy feeling, when you open up your mailbox and find something from Disney. And the DVD is a good bargain (for DLR or for WDW) ITS FREE in terms of giving you a little dose of Disney magic. It comes in cute folder, with a little booklet enclosed. Now they even have an inside cover flap that is personalized, so it will say something like, Welcome, E Family. Were thrilled to hear youre thinking about a Disneyland resort vacation in October! It goes on to tell me about Mickeys Halloween Party and other things I might enjoy during my October trip! And a special customized page just for me...on the DVD? LOL! Its not that I need this DVD for actual planning I just adore looking at footage of the parks and reading the booklet! Its like a free souvenir!
By the way, I should have pointed this out a couple of days ago, but in case anyone is not familiar with the Catalina Island - Disneyland Resort connection, here are some examples:
A mural in California Adventure featuring the iconic Catalina Casino (the mural has now come down), from December 2009:
The former Wolfgang Puck restaurant, Avalon Cove, in DCA (now known as Ariel's Grotto!):
(Yesterland has a good description)
http://www.yesterland.com/avaloncove.html
(I Googled these images of Avalon Cove)
You can imagine my sheer glee when my two favorite SoCal locations - Disneyland and Catalina - suddenly joined forces and Avalon Cove was born!
Visions of crossover merchandise danced in my head!
Alas, Avalon Cove closed before I ever got to see it or eat there, or find any crossover merchandise - in fact, to this day I wonder if there were any Avalon Cove pins or magnets made during that brief time the restaurant remained open. If it ever existed I have not been able to find any photos of this merchandise.
There are other tucked away 'tips of the hat' to Catalina/Avalon in DCA too, but I don't have photos of them (
mental note to myself catch them on camera if they are still there when I next go to DLR). I know there is a 'vintage' poster (situated among many posters) featuring Mickey & Minnie and some sort of Catalina reference somewhere in the Hollywood Backlot area of DCA. Maybe it was a comic book cover design??
Actually, I think there may be two different vintage posters - one near the Monsters, Inc. ride, and possibly a different poster in the Hyperion area too. I can not find pictures of these posters anywhere on the Internet, but I have definitely seen at least one Mickey/Minnie Catalina poster!
Now to your comments
..
for canceling the Catalina trip for your birthday Sherry!
I wish my poor wrists could just get used to it, but having issues outside of the computer use just doesn't give me that chance. I tell myself everyday I wont spend too much time on the computer since that aggravates it, and type my PTR posts in spurts throughout the week so it's mostly done by the day I post it, but somehow I can't quite log out and leave everything alone until I'm in pain. Smart, huh?
Thanks, Jessica.
Im sure a lot of us dont abandon something until it gets uncomfortable for us, so Im sure youre not alone in that conundrum!
They are. I was born in '95. You also looked cute in the old pictures (from the 70s and 80s). I have never seen the walrus from one of your 1975 pictures. That picture was taken 20 years before I was born
Who is Shaun Cassidy?
Kaitlin
Thank you for the compliment! I was usually quite unhappy having to pose for photos when I was a kid, even at Disneyland, so Im lucky if any of them came out cute at all! Ah yes, the Walrus that was in the photo with Alice and the White Rabbit in Fantasyland. I looked absolutely miserable in that photo, but its funny to see it now because its such a snapshot of that time period, right down to the way the characters costumes looked. Wow that was waaaaaaaay before your time!
Molly/Bumbershoot has already perfectly explained to you who Shaun Cassidy is, but I will throw in that he was a huge teen idol back in the day, shimmying his butt around in satin pants and tight t-shirts! LOL! His half-brother David Cassidy (star of The Partridge Family) was also a huge teen idol before him I mean, like screaming-girls-chasing-after-him-down-the-street-and-whowing-up-in-his-hotel-room kind of idol.
David Cassidys daughter and Shaun Cassidys niece is Katie Cassidy, of the new Melrose Place, Gossip Girl, Supernatural, etc. Shes gorgeous.
David and Shaun have another brother and Katie has another uncle, Patrick Cassidy, who has been extremely prominent in musicals and theater in the past, but he never reached that teen idol status.
And then there is their baby brother/Katies other uncle Ryan Cassidy, who worked behind the scenes at Jim Henson Productions for a while (that was when I went to lunch with him, back in 1993). He mainly stays off-camera and doesnt do anything much in the way of acting.
Bummer about your b-day trip not working out. The shortened time might have been a disappointment. Now I'll never know what clever title you'd picked out for your report. I can't look at a ice cream cone at DL without thinking of you!
Hi, TK!
Yes, for some reason that 7:30 p.m. time frame really bugged me and it was only because it was a Thursday. If my birthday had been on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, there would have been a return time of at least 9:30 p.m., if not later. So if I have to go to Catalina in the middle of Summer, for one day only, risking making myself ill in the heat, I want the latest return time I can possibly finagle. I can do a lot with those extra couple of hours in terms of photo-taking, especially if I want to try to get some after-dark shots!
Oh, never fear, you will eventually know the clever title of the Catalina TR, because I will eventually make a trip happen! Just because the timing was not really right for this particular trip doesnt mean I wont try to go later this year or next year!
Believe me, I cant look at an ice cream cone now without recalling my clumsy Main Street trash can - camera near-disaster!! LOL! Im so afraid that if I try to get another peppermint cone, it will end up flying into someones face or something, with my luck! I cant even imagine how I must have corrupted my subscribers visions of ice cream cones! I apologize for that, everyone!!
I'm sorry to hear that you cancel your birthday trip to the Catalina.
I should consider one day going to Catalina.
The Holiday trip is the big one for you. I always enjoy reading your Holiday TR and can't wait to read your TR for the Holiday season. Just like you, I always love the Holiday season at the DLR. The Holiday season does take a lot of planning especially when you are there for 8 days. I hope you get your dates all set up during the Halloween Time at the DLR.
Hi, Bret!
Thank you.
Yes, I definitely think you would take some beautiful, picturesque shots of Catalina and the town of Avalon if you ever end up going there.
Youre right the holiday trip is the real biggie, especially this year because its much longer than my normal trips and it may or may not involve my friends from out of town. I wouldnt need to plan so much if I were by myself just kind of make a list of all the things I need to do that maybe I missed last time (such as take more photos in California Adventure) and try to follow it. However, if these friends (the I Family) come along, I need to know when they are going to be there and who else is with us, as that will affect plans.
I am sorry you are going to miss your birthday at Catalina.
Thank you, Michele!
You know it meant a lot to me to be able to go, but all of a sudden, when it started to get more complicated and I began to feel like the timing was not right and lose interest, I just had to abandon the idea for now.
Aw, sorry to hear about the Catalina trip. But something I always say....everything happens for a reason!
Jillian
Thank you! I agree I usually think that everything happens for a reason in some way or the other, even if we dont know what that reason is. I just started to not feel it this time around, and rather than push myself to go I felt like Id better listen to those internal signals and skip it. But I will try to plan a bigger and better trip in the not-so-distant future!
Yes you do; in my dang pre-trip report, which has become very focused on Michele, Shannon, and yours truly. Which is fab, but you would be MORE than welcome to come spice up the place for us! You and your sassy scarf.
Sounds a lot like my PTR!
I feel the same way. I have to wait until the 6th or so, b/c that's my statement date...I might only have a dollar coming, but I want that dollar! And then, sorry to say, I'm very likely going to close out Chase entirely. I don't know why they even started the program...they knew that the changes were coming down the pike BEFORE they started it...
Bah! Dang your friends! No understanding of the beauty of a solo trip.
Bah! Darn your friends!!!!!!!!!!
Good gad girl, I'm quite sure that Robert and I could make at least a FEW days happen (R does have to work and can't always work from home and there's no other place to put Eamon) so I could do a solo trip along with you.
To others that might sound confusing...but I think we both get what a "solo trip along with another person having a solo trip" would be like.
You seem normal, LOL. And the common theme that EVERYONE says, and has said since grad school, is "gosh Molly, you're so much nicer than I thought you were"... I've decided that anyone (from "real life") who says it going forward gets to contribute to my Botox fund.
So it would probably be good! And then YOU could invite anyone YOU want to join...if you wanted to. You could have a revolving door of people sharing your room.
Ah, besides the fact that you're killing me, I'm sure I asked similar things of people. Like...who was...no, wait, my mom was a hippie so I knew all the music groups that were in existence long before, plus the ones she listened to before she was a hippie... And we were big "old movie" watchers.
Anyway, Shaun Cassidy was the man who *should have been* my first husband, though since I was only 9 and he never visited my elementary school I guess he never got the memo. Darn him. He was one of the lead characters in the series The Hardy Boys (which were books written for kids and teens way back when about "boy detectives").
Here, from wiki:
"is an American actor, singer, writer, and producer. He is the eldest son of Academy Award winning actress Shirley Jones, and the second son (his older half-brother is David Cassidy) of Tony award-winning actor Jack Cassidy. He is known for acting in TV series The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and Breaking Away, and for producing television series including American Gothic, Invasion, Roar (with Heath Ledger in his American debut), and Cold Case."
Dangit, wiki doesn't even include "and Molly's secret fiance at Jodie's 9th birthday slumberparty"...they are seriously off their game...
Thought of another way to put it, WDWJonasGirl.
Shaun was born in '58 and I was born in '69. OK that's 11 years. But 11 is just as unattainable (especially when one's a celeb and the other isn't) as 8 is, so....
Shaun is to me as Kevin Jonas is to you.
And years from now, when you have your little children, and they say "who on earth was Kevin Jonas?" (assuming he didn't divorce his wife and realize that you are the true meaning of the universe...why didn't Shaun ever realize this about me, why?), you will think back on this post and wistfully smile.
Fun fact...Kevin was born the year I graduated from high school. WDWJonasGirl was born the year I graduated from chiropractic school. I know that this is all part of the circle of the universe, time never stops and keeps going forward, but....aughhhhhhhhhhhh.
OK I'm better now.
Hi, Molly!
I know Ive been bad about posting in your Pre-TR since it began, but never fear, Im still subscribed. I know that doesnt help much when we need people to actually speak up and let us know they are there! I was telling Michele last week that I had kind of burnt out on TRs for a bit that includes my own! I didnt feel like writing too much in my TR or anyone elses, and sometimes I didnt feel like reading too much, but I will still usually pop in to read silently when someone posts an update, just so I can stay in the loop.
I guess I get to a point every so often where I need to step away from writing and reading about Disney trips, recharge, reset and then return to them. It also does not help that my PC is so messed up and I have a hard time loading pages on the DIS most of the time, especially pages with photos. But when I post again in one TR, I usually start posting in all of the ones Im subscribed to. So I will have to mosey on over to yours so that its not only Michele and Shannon posting!
I actually cant believe your next WDW/Universal trip is so soon after the last one. Time just flew by!
Yep, I know what you mean by solo trip along with another person having a solo trip. I still have to get the final, final word on whats happening with my friend and the I Family, but if they are not coming to DLR or if they are coming to DLR but are not staying with me, I could have someone else stay with me on those 2 or 3 nights they would have been there.
Im fairly normal! Jessica (Belle Ella), Marie (mariezp) and Liza (funatdisney) have all met me in person, on separate occasions, and I dont think I did anything particularly abnormal or weird to send them running for the hills, screaming into the night, when I met them!!
I was laughing about how Shaun Cassidy should have been your first husband!! If only he had visited your school! I think hes gone through at least 3 wives, hasnt he? I remember he was involved with a blonde named Ann many, many, many years ago. That was kind of during or at the tail end of his teen idol status. Then he married an actress named Susan. Now he is with some other person altogether! Something about good ol Shaun cant stay married or keeps picking the wrong women! Of course, now I dont get weak in the knees by looking at him anymore so I couldnt care less who he is married to, but its interesting to observe the trajectory of ones favorite childhood teen idol as they age.
Oddly, I think Shaun had an office in my old office building. When I was at my job of 14 years (which is how I met his brother Ryan), somewhere between 1996 and 2000, I recall being at my desk and overhearing a UPS or FedEx guy attempt to deliver a package to the business next door, for Shaun Cassidy! Someone told the guy that they had the wrong office and that no Shaun Cassidy was there. I repeated to myself, but loud enough so that anyone could have jumped in to answer, Shaun Cassidy? THE Shaun Cassidy? Does he have a production office in this building? I am guessing that he did, but that the FedEx/UPS dude tried to deliver it to the wrong suite. I figured I might take a look at the directory in the lobby at some point and see if I could find some telltale traces of a Shaun Cassidy operation on the premises. I had envisioned that I would go in and tell him that Id met his brother Ryan a few years earlier.
Somehow I got distracted and never looked at that directory. So to this day Im still not 100% sure if Shaun was in my office building, and if so, where exactly he was. There were other entertainment offices there, so it would have been a reasonable assumption.
If I had been 10 years old when I found out this possible Shaun Cassidy operation just a stones throw away, I just might have camped out in front of his door overnight!
I felt tremendously sad having to make that phone call. After not having been to the Island in so many years but loving it so, it was hard to pass up a deal on a free boat ride. I am hoping against hope that Catalina Express decides to extend the free birthday offer for another year. The current promo is going on until the end of April 2012. I am praying they decide to carry it to 2013 so maybe I will get another chance to take advantage of it in July of next year.
Thank you!
