updated  May 2, 2001

This was our first Disneyana Convention...

Saturday Sept. 5

Due to the Northwest strike we had a routing through Chicago and Pittsburgh to Orlando.  I don't recommend it.  It took about 12 hours.

We arrived at WDW at around 4pm.  We told the parking lot attendant that we were checking into the Contemporary and he let us in without paying.  They used to make you pay the $5 and then you would get reimbursed at the hotel.

We had a Garden View room right next to the lake.  We discovered that the metal door marked "STAIRS" let to an exit right at the lake!  This was much quicker than walking through the building.  Now we had a straight shot to the Food and Fun Center and the Convention.

The gift shop at the Contemporary now has pins from each of the Resorts.  They also sold many Fantasmic souvenirs.  They had some limited edition things for sale for the convention.  One item was a monorail "train" set.  It was a simple loop with one monorail.  I think they sold for about $200-300 and they only had about 300-400 of them.  They sold out very quickly.

Our park tickets were not valid until Sunday, so we went to Downtown Disney.  We ate dinner at Planet Hollywood.  The line stretched most of the way down the steps.  I brought the VIP coupon from the Quaker Oat Squares box.  This allowed us to go around the line.  We were seated in about 2 minutes!  The food was very good.

Then we went to the Lego Store. We found the Lego Pirate sets that are no longer being made (or sold elsewhere).  We decided it was worth the extra money to buy these here.  Next we went to the WAY TOO LARGE World of Disney store.  We like to go here before the parks because the Disney Magic Kingdom Club Card discount is good here.  We get 10% off!

Sunday Sept. 6

We went to the Disneyana registration at 10am.  This is where we got our pictures taken for our IDs.  Goofy and Mushu were there and were stepping into some of the pictures.  This ID goes in a holder that you wear around your neck.  It is for all convention activities as well as the length-of-stay pass for the parks.  They also hand out the bags of "goodies".  These contained a Mickey Mouse shaped auction paddle, a bag of convention buttons, the hard cover convention guide, the convention class tickets and two gifts.  They were a Tinkerbell Radko ornament and a Roger Rabbit statue with a clock.  There was  not much of a line for this part of the registration.

Next we got in the line for the logo items.  These are things that we ordered months ago from a brochure that came with a convention mailing.  You can order T-shirts, memo pads, pins, buttons, pens, jackets, briefcases, a water globe, and many more things.  We opted to have our order shipped to us, but they still wanted each of us to check our orders before shipping.  This was a good thing since our order was all goofed up.  We were missing some pins and had about $150 worth of someone else's stuff!  The logo line and the attempt to fix the order took WAY longer than it should have.  It probably took 1-1.5 hours.

We ate lunch at the Contemporary Food and Fun Center.  We bought the mugs that you can refill for free during your stay.

The convention doesn't really start until tomorrow, so we went to Animal Kingdom.
Well, it is about 96 degrees!!!!  This is too hot for Animal Kingdom (for us).  We stopped at Guest Services to find out where the penny presses are.  They didn't have a printout of them, but they marked up a map using the list on the computer.  John bought a safari hat with Mickey ears.  We pressed some pennies and headed for the Tree Of Life.  The Tree Of Life is very impressive up close.  We had seen it on TV and in magazine articles, but it is really neat in person.  We looked at the map and it shows many paths to the tree. We took the one in the back and found that while there are many paths to the tree, the only way in is in the front.  We had to walk all around the tree.  This is a long, hot walk.  It did give us the opportunity to see all of the carvings while walking through the roots and branches.

We were able to go right into the "It's Tough To Be A Bug" movie without a line.  This movie is similar to "Honey I Shrunk The Audience".  It is a 3-D movie with special effects.  I will not discuss the special effects, so I don't ruin it for you.  The movie was good, but it scared lots of the kids.  I prefer Muppets 3D (or 4D?).

We then hiked to the Dinoland area.  We pressed several pennies on the way.  We found a new ride miniature in the store " Chester and Hesters".  It is of Countdown to Extinction.  There is no removable ride car inside like most of the others have.  I will post a picture of this on my ride miniatures page.  The miniature was on sale!  Marked down from $25 to $9.99.  We bought it and some other things and had them sent back to our room (free!).

There was a small line at Countdown.  Luckily it was all covered.  The sun was very hot.  There were many children and mothers sitting and playing in the fountain in front.  Bill Nye is the narrator for the pre-show while waiting in line inside.  We learned something there.  He said that if you dig down deep enough anywhere on Earth you come to a layer of stuff.  You will find dinosaur fossils below this layer but not above.  This is the layer of stuff that was deposited all over the Earth when the comet hit, raising a cloud of dust that shut out the sunlight, thus killing off the dinosaurs.  Interesting.  Anyway... the ride is very similar to the Indy Jones ride at Disneyland.  The ride cars are open jeeps with ride-simulators built into them.  That way the cars can pitch and jump and do all kinds of nasty things.  They can simulate high speeds by manipulating the various pistons that move the car up and down. Most of this ride was in the dark.  Lights would pop on with a big audio-animatronic dino head lunging at us.  It is pretty scary for kids and quite a rough ride.  They take your picture at the scariest part of the ride where the big dino is rushing the car.  They have a really neat 3D lenticular frame for the picture.  We bought one.

It was SOOO hot that we gave up on Animal Kingdom.  We headed for the Magic Kingdom.

We rode The Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride almost without lines.  We left when the park closed at 11pm.

When we returned to our room we saw in the local newspaper (delivered to the room every day!) that Monday is the last day for the Mr. Toad ride!

Monday Sept. 7

We had a character breakfast at Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary.  The breakfast buffet is wonderful.  We got autographs of Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Chip and Dale.
There were four people seated at the table next to us.  They were all wearing Sears T-shirts.  I asked them if they won the Sears Disney contest.  They had!

We took the bus from the Contemporary to MGM Studios.  We decided to try the bus since it was closer than our car and it was ready to leave.
We rode Star Tours with about a 15 minute wait.  We love the Star Wars store at the exit of the ride, but boy is it expensive.  I had just bought some of those toys at home and noticed that the prices are more than double!!!  $9.99 sets at home were $21.99 there.  There was one set we wanted that we had not seen anywhere else, so we paid the premium for it.

We also did Muppet 3D, Honey I Shrunk The Audience Playground, Great Movie Ride and Tower of Terror, each with a 10-15 minute wait.

We  headed for the bus back to the Contemporary.  It is the furthest bus from the exit.  We waited for about 30 minutes.  We watched multiple busses come to each of the other stops.  One would think the the expensive hotels would have their stops nearest the exit and would come at least as frequently as the others.  Next time we will drive.

At 4pm Mickey's Attic opened at the Disneyana convention.  We waited in line for an hour to get inside.  Once inside we could see the line to pay was over an hour.  Mickey's Attic was filled with things taken out of the parks.  There were the 25th anniversary plaques of the castle that used to hang from the light poles.  The banners that hung from the plaques were also available.  Pieces of the birthday cake castle were for sale.  Gumdrops, candles, inflatable icing and the BIG "25" numbers were there.  Most items were $50-$100.  I think the big "25" numbers were a couple of thousand.

At 8pm we attended the Black and White Welcome Party.  Everyone was supposed to wear blank and white.  We were disappointed to see that the only food available was cheese and crackers and fruit.  There were lots of desserts and hand dipped ice cream sundaes.  We were disappointed at how hard it was to find water.  All we could find was coffee and tea.  The show started around 8:20 hosted by "Disney Anna".  She presented a long lost cartoon from Walt named "Little Red Riding Hood".  They said it was the first cartoon Walt did.  Later, Dave Smith said it was actually his third (I think he said 3rd).  They said we were the first to see this restored version.  Some person found this copy in their collection and didn't know what it was.  They thought it looked like Disney so they called the studio.  The animation is very simple and rough.

Back in our room we heard loud music at about 10pm.  We ran outside an watched the Electric Water Parade.  It is a simple parade, but nice to see something from the past.  Simple is good.
 

Tuesday Sept. 8

There were many Disney Institute classes available for conventionEARS.  They count towards the degrees of Ducktorate and Full Mickey.
I took two classes - Principles of the Mouse and Mickey in Motion.

As I walked to the bus at 6:45 am I noticed a very long line for the convention.  It was people in line to find out what limited edition item they would get to buy (each person can only buy one).  I discovered that this convention is not so much about Disneyana, but a means for buying expensive limited edition art pieces.  These are things like goose eggs painted with Disney characters selling for $1600, painted duck eggs selling for $600, ceramic statues of Disney characters for $1700.  You get the idea.  Anyway......

Principles of the Mouse started in the Magic Kingdom at 7am.  We drove into the employee parking lot behind the Expo Hall at the town square.  We walked into Main Street thought a large gate.  The park opens at 9am today.  There were many pickup and delivery trucks on Main Street.  There were cast members cleaning, washing, painting and trimming.  Everything gets cleaned.  Even the drinking fountains were getting the sides and the steps scrubbed.

There is some renovation going on to the Main Street Railway Station.  It was completely covered in scaffolding.

This class was very similar to the other tour we took called "Behind The Scenes at Walt Disney World - Innovations in Action" that we took when we attended the Consumer Electronics Show in 1996.

Here are some highlights:

The buildings on Main Street use forced perspective.  The ground floor is 7/8ths scale.  The second floor is 7/8ths of 7/8ths and the third floor is 7/8ths of that.  The three floors are actually only two.  The main floor is the shop and the second floor is for offices.  The only building that doesn't follow this scale is the Expo Hall.  It is larger to conceal the Contemporary Hotel behind it.  It would be "bad show" to be able to see the modern hotel from the Main Street scene.

Another use of the forced perspective is the view from the town square to the castle.  It looks like a long way away.  But if you walk to the castle and look back, it looks like a short way.  This is done to make the castle look like a faraway "weenie" when you enter the park.  Is it designed to attract people into the park and out of the town square.  But they didn't want the walk to look that long after a day of visiting the park.  The walk out should look short and inviting.  They accomplished this by making the castle higher than the town square.  Also the curb and awnings come out further at the castle end than at the town square end.  These things make the street look long one way and short the other way.  Check it out.

Each part of the park is a scene.  The first scene on Main Street has the credits.  The gold leaf lettering on the upper floors of the Main Street buildings are actually the names of people that developed Disney World.  The names of the real estate companies are the actual "fake" names they used while buying up the land around Orlando and Kissimmee.  The last name and the only one to face the castle is Walt Disney.  It is right over Nestle's Plaza Ice Cream Parlor.
 We walked through the park looking at the details.  We ended with a quick trip through the tunnels, actually called the utilidors.  They are call this because the tunnels are actually above ground.  They built the utilidors and covered them with the dirt from the Seven Seas Lagoon between the Magic Kingdom and the parking lot. The Utilidors are considered the first floor of a very large, squat three story building.  The second floor is the park, "on stage".  The third floor has the offices on Main Street.

  We were not allowed to take any pictures or video in the utilidors.  If you are caught down there taking pictures, they take your film, develop it and remove the negatives and prints that are unauthorized.  You get to keep the others.

After this class I visited the auction preview.  Here are items like ride cars from Astro Jets, Dumbo, Snow White and Disneyland's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.  I think these went for around $10,000 to $20,000 apiece.

In the afternoon I took another class, "Mickey In Motion".  This was about the physics of the rides.  We started off at EPCOT.  We got to drive the entire way around the back of EPCOT.  We saw the GM Test Track cars racing around.  We also saw the backs of all of the attractions.  We parked the bus behind Imagination and walked around the attraction into EPCOT.  We rode Body Wars and then went around to the back of the building and in a door to see the ride in action.  We could see the ride vehicle in a big black room.  It ws held up with many pistons.  The film was routed around the vehicle through many pulleys.  It is a continuous loop.  The vehicle really moves violently.  It was impressive.

Next we went under the large computer controlled fountain between the Innovention buildings.

Then we finished the class at Big Thunder Mountain.  We were given large plastic cups of water with a rubber band attached and around our wrists so we couldn't drop them on the ride.  We were supposed to see who could finish the ride with the most water still in the cup.  Three of us got separated from the main group.  It was me, another class member and an instructor.  We got seated in the FRONT of a car with guests behind us.  To them we are just a couple of idiots with cups of water, they don't know we are in a class.  I tried to explain before the ride started and the guy behind me got quite angry.  The first bump we hit a little water splashed out and I heard a loud profanity from him.  I decided to dump to rest of the water to avoid getting punched at the end of the ride.  There were more profanities at the end of the ride.  The stupid things is that about one hour before this is was POURING at the park.  This was one little cup of water.  What a goofball!

At the Convention there was a kiosk set up to make custom CDs of Disneyland theme music.  There are computer screens with maps of the park.  You touch the land to go into and the map changes to that land.  Then you can pick the songs you want and you can listen to a preview of the song.  We  bought two of these CDs.  They will put 10 songs onto one CD.  We got the complete Carousel of Progress, Pirates of the Caribbean, parts of Haunted Mansion, Tiki Room, the entire Submarine ride and others.  These are very old soundtracks from Disneyland, but similar to the ones that used to be a WDW.  It is interesting to hear how the Carousel of Progress has changed.  Whatever used to be the wife's fault is now the husband's fault.  I have seen in the newsgroups that these kiosks are also installed at Disneyland.

After the classes we headed to The Magic Kingdom to exchange our E-Ride Tickets for the wristband.  They had a line formed in the courtyard between guest services and the Disney Gallery to exchange them. It took 20-30 minutes in that line.   Here is the brochure explaining what rides and restaurants are open.  Since the park normally closed tonight at 7pm, the E-Ride wristbands were good from 7pm to 10pm.

 

There was a Disneyana party at the Animal Kingdom tonight, but we decided we would rather go to the E-Ride Express.  They say they limit the wristbands to around 5000.  The lines were VERY short.  But since the rides are far apart you spend a lot of the three hours trying to get to the next ride.  Anyway, it was worth the $10 and we had a great time.  We will do it again next trip.
We rode Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain (3 times), Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Astro Orbiter and Pirates of the Caribbean.  We ate hot dogs at Casey's..
Exhausting.

Wednesday Sept. 9

This morning my back went out.  I think it was due to all of the rough rides yesterday.

Today we had attended two Disneyana Seminars.

First was Walt's World.  This could have been good, but the speakers were unprepared.  They didn't know what they were going to say and just made it up as they went.  The only monitor in the room was on a low table.  The only people that could see it were in the front row.  The VCR they used could not reverse play and the speakers didn't know how to run it.  So the tape kept shutting off the they to rewind it.  The pause was very bad, with lots of streaks.  It was a poor production.

The next was Love and Laughter Through Animation Magic - Mulan.  The speakers were Mark Henn and Ruben Aquino. Mark drew Mulan and her father and Ruben drew Shang.  They showed clips from the movie and discussed various stages of the animation process.

After the seminars we headed for MGM, by car this time.  We had lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine In.  This is a great place to eat.  The movie and the food are both good.  They did not serve popcorn before the meal.  Maybe they just do this at dinner, or maybe they stopped doing it.

We watched the Mulan parade.  John rode Star Tours a few times.

Back to the Contemporary to rest.  We got room service.  It came very quickly.  We got chicken caesar salads.  They were good, but not as good as Applebee's.
 

Thursday Sept. 10

Today we had attended three Disneyana Seminars.

First was Speakers of the Mouse.  Diane Disney Miller was one of the speakers.  This is the first convention that she has attended.  She is the oldest daughter of Walt.  She answered questions from the audience.  She mentioned that her Dad's last house was just sold and torn down.

Next was How Did They Do That.  The speaker was Jeff Pidgeon from Pixar.  He discussed how Toy Story was made.  It was interesting to see how many changes were made.  For example, Woody was originally a tin toy, then a marionette.  He also used to have a mean temper.

Last was the Backlot Workshops.  There were six areas set up.  Makeup, Costumes, Comedy, Archives, Auditions and Artists in Action.  We attended two of them, Makeup and Archives.  The Makeup session made a nasty looking gash on a girls arm, complete with a piece of glass.  They also gave a man a great looking black eye.  There were lots of masks, wigs and latex pieces to look at and try on.  The Archives session was run by Dave Smith.  He is in charge of the Disney Archives in California and is the author of several books.  He had many original letters and papers from Walt.

We took the monorail to EPCOT.  It was MUCH cooler today.  We rode Spaceship Earth, Journey to Imagination, The Living Seas, Horizons, Universe of Energy, the Mexico boat ride and the American Experience.  We had dinner at the Nine Dragons in China.  In my class I found out the the sponsor of Horizons pulled out a few years ago (GE?).  With the restaurant nearby closed and the GM Test Track not yet open, they decided to leave Horizons open and pay for it with Disney money, otherwise there would be nothing open in that whole section of the park.  This is the only EPCOT attracted funded by Disney.  I think as soon as Test Track opens (it will open, won't it????) they will close Horizons for renovation.

 
Friday Sept. 11

Today Diane Disney Miller was going to sell her new CD-ROM of her father's life story.  There would be 2000 autographed copies of the CD-ROM available and only 200 photographs of her and her father that she would sign in person.  She was going to be available from 10am to noon.  They said we could form a line at 8am.  I got up early and decided to head to the concourse at 7:45 where there were already 125 people in line!  Since you could only get one picture with each CD-ROM set purchased, some people bought five copies.  Others were buying them when neither they or anyone they knew had a computer.  I finally got to Diane at around 11:30.  I would hate to have been at the end of the line when they ran out of pictures.

FedEx had a room setup to ship boxes home.  They claimed they offered a 40% discount.  The line was very long at noon, about 1-2 hours.  I decided to go to the parks and try at dinner time, figuring that most people would have already left the convention.  When I came back at 5, I still had to wait about one hour.

After waiting in line for Diane, we headed for the Magic Kingdom via the Monorail.  We had lunch in Cinderella's Castle.  We rode the Skyway to Tomorrowland taking lots of pictures.  I was also taking 3D Viewmaster pictures with my Viewmaster camera.  We rode the TTA (WEDWAY People Mover), Carousel of Progress and the Tomorrowland Speedway.  There is a new scene in the Christmas part of the Carousel of Progress.  John rode the Barnstormer at Toon Town.  This ride is very short.  We went to the Tiki Room - Under New management.  It starts out the same but a couple of lines into the Tiki Room song Iago comes out of the ceiling screaming "Stop the show!  This old routine is boring!" (or something to that effect).  Then Zazu comes out of the ceiling.  From then on the show is completely different.  It is all kind of reggae instead of Polynesian.  It is also very loud and wild now.  I didn't like it as much, but my son said it was better.

We went to MGM to have dinner at the Brown Derby.  The Cobb Salad is great.  The piano player announced that a guest wanted to play a song with her.  A man got up from a table and played harmonica and sang while she played the piano.  He was very good.  They played Kansas City.  Then he played a Happy Birthday song and they brought a cake from the kitchen for his wife.

We headed over to International Drive to a great Sci-Fi store.  It is across from the Wet 'n Wild.  It is the Intergalactic Trading Co. and is on a cul-de-sac.  They have all kinds of stuff from Star Wars, Star Trek, Dark Shadows, etc.  They have books, videos, models, comics and  toys.

Saturday Sept. 12

The last day.

We had a character breakfast in Cinderella's Castle.  It is all you can eat, but it is not a buffet, they bring it to you.  It was okay.

We went to the Country Bear Jamboree, Haunted Mansion, etc.

I headed back to Animal Kingdom since it was much cooler today.  I rode the Kilimanjaro Safari.  It is WAY in the back of Animal Kingdom.  There was about a 30 minutes wait.  The ride is about 20 minutes.  It is a good ride.  It is not just a safari ride, like other parks have.  It has a story of chasing poachers.  I won't spoil it for you.  It is a nice ride.  There are signs warning not to ride if you have back problems (like I do) etc, but this ride is a just a little bouncy.  It is NOTHING like Body Wars or Countdown to Extinction.  I don't know why they have these warning signs posted.

Back to the Magic Kingdom for an ice cream cone at Miss Potts (great soft-serve twist cones) and a final ride in The Haunted Mansion.  Then off to the airport.

It is wild to be in the Haunted Mansion at 6pm and then be home at 10:30.

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Did anyone really read all of this?  Sorry it is so long.

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