Category — w. Most Recent Stuff

Recently this site completed its fourth full year of operation.

Readers of last year’s birthday message will recall I’ve decided that the official site anniversary will be April Fool’s day–it just seems fitting!

(This birthday post would have gone up on Sunday, April 1, 2012, but I had more important news to relay yesterday.)

By coincidence, the site will have its 1.5 millionth all-time visitor tomorrow–and a million of you have stopped by a for a spell over the last 12 months.

Even after four years, you continue to come to the site to get help, to ask questions, to suggest improvements or corrections, and you continue to tell your friends about it, to post about it on message boards, to pin it on pinterest, to recommend it in your books, and to link to it from your own websites.

Some of you–not many, fewer than there are stars in the sky, but a few more than there are planets in the heavens–even donate to help keep it running.

Thanks to all of you, the site is continuing to grow and help even more people.

I’m grateful for and humbled by your readership, your help, and your kind words…thanks!!

Dave

April 1, 2012: Word is leaking out of Walt Disney World that the next country to be added to Epcot’s World Showcase is Minnesota.

The Minnesota Pavilion, to feature mosquitoes and a thrill ride built around ice fishing, will be built halfway between Norway and Canada in Epcot’s World Showcase Lagoon, a location that honors Minnesota’s heritage, thousands of lakes, and general inaccessibility.

For those not familiar with Minnesota, the country is located between the U.S. and Canada. Settled largely by hapless Scandinavians who had been misled into thinking it habitable, its charming folkways have been celebrated in Lake Wobegon Days and other important ethnographies.

Minnesota’s economy is dominated by corn and beans, lovingly cared for during the 6 week growing season, and by strip mining for medical devices in the famous Duluth “Defective Lead Range.”

Its major metropolitan area includes the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which formerly had professional sports, and may someday have them again.

People in Minnesota are famously nice. This makes it difficult to discover what they actually think—a habit of deception engendered by generations of denial about whether its climate is fit for human life.

Floating over this deceptiveness is extensive anxiety.

The one-percenters of Minneapolis desperately hope that they will be mistaken for Manhattanites; the citizens of St. Paul desperately hope to not to be confused for residents of Minneapolis; the farmers of the country are in a constant struggle to ensure that their tractors are bigger than their neighbors’ RVs—an arms race that has no end.

Some controversy has emerged over Disney World’s decision to install Minnesota as Epcot’s next country.

There’s concern among stock analysts that the capital costs of the ice-fishing ride may force Disney to defer its plans for high speed rail at the Animal Kingdom. Brazilians are disappointed, and some are whispering that Minnesota isn’t even a country. Contacted for a comment on this last point, Nancy Pelosi promised to check the Constitution and get back to us.

DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: MARCH 31 TO APRIL 8, 2012

The material below details operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

The same stuff is in the table, but organized by park, not by topic.

(For more on April 2012 at Walt Disney World, click here.)

[Read more →]

(This is the first entry in a new series on Disney World Controversies.)

AFTERNOON PARADES OR AFTERNOON NAPS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD?

Welcome to the first stop aboard Magical Blogorail Teal. Enjoy the ride as we delve into the great Disney controversies, large and small.

I’m working on revising my itineraries, for a couple of reasons:

• To incorporate the Fantasyland Expansion and a few other more minor changes at Disney World
• To simplify them a bit, and
• To do a little better job at targeting lower crowd days.

While doing so, I’m going back to and testing first principles.  The itineraries are designed to show “all the best” of Walt Disney World in one eight night trip.

So what’s not the best?  What can be left out?  Can I leave out the afternoon parades? [Read more →]

DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: MARCH 24 TO APRIL 1, 2012

The material below details operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

The same stuff is in the table, but organized by park, not by topic.

(For more on March 2012 at Walt Disney World, click here.)

[Read more →]

xPASS TO SCHEDULE AWAY ROPE DROP?

Something Jay Rasulo, Disney CFO, said at the 2/28 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference resonated with something Jim Hill said in part of his recent series on the xPASS, and with something I wrote in November about Disney’s 5th gate.

The three items together made me think that the strategy of arriving before the parks open–before “rope drop”–because crowds are so low then, may have a much lower payoff in a few years.

THE END OF LOW CROWDS AT PARK OPENING? [Read more →]