Disney Bucket List

I recently learned that Disney Bucket Lists are a thing, after Pink Bunny posted her and her humans' Disney bucket list, and encouraged others to do the same. I guess I'll give it a try, and here I am, using the old, neglected blog to do it. I've had some fun looking at #DisneyBucketList on Twitter, and searching the Web for the same.

As someone who has been going to Disneyland for years, there's little I haven't done there--I've been to Club 33, circled the park in the Lilly Belle, and experienced almost all of the attractions. I am not particularly interested in exclusive experiences--I am grateful to have had the chance to go to Club 33, but it probably would not have been on my bucket list. I've also had many other Disney experiences, such as visiting the Walt Disney Family Museum, visiting Walt Disney's Barn, riding the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round, visiting the Walt Disney Studios, attending the D23 Expo and various other D23 events, and running through the parks in several RunDisney events. There are definitely advantages to living in Los Angeles!

As I ponder what's left to do, I'm mostly coming up with items that I just need to take the time and/or money to plan and do, such as visiting the other Disney parks. I'm sure there are countless specifics that could be on my list for each park, but, with a few exceptions, I'm going to avoid falling down that rabbit hole. (I'm sure Pink Bunny and her kin appreciate that.)  I was trying to think of other types of Disney experiences, but perhaps this list is enough, as there is a big, beautiful world out there. I have considered trying to visit all the locations in Soarin' Over California, but, over the years, have never felt strongly motivated to plan that trip. There are many places I want to visit--a golf course in the California desert is pretty low on my list.

• Walt Disney World -- I've never been; I need to go. (I'm currently planning on Fall 2015!) I'm a bit overwhelmed just by this one, because I feel like I'd need to see everything while I'm there. A few items I definitely want to experience on one trip or another:
  
  • Try the Grey Stuff (I hear it's delicious.) Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite Disney princess films, based on one of my favorite fairy tales, so I need to eat in the restaurant inspired by it.
  • EPCOT Food & Wine Festival
  • Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress -- I fondly remember America Sings, the attraction at Disneyland that replaced the Carousel of Progress. I look forward to going back in time even further.
  • Country Bear Jamboree -- I hear this one isn't as good as the former Disneyland show, but I'm sure the show is better in my memory than it ever really was, anyway.
  • Drink around the world at EPCOT -- I'm not much of a drinker, but I love this idea. I'll just have to share drinks with a friend.

• Japan:
• Tokyo Disneyland
• DisneySea -- After EPCOT, this is the Disney park I'm most excited to see.
• Studio Ghibli Museum -- I love the work of the "Japanese Walt Disney," Hayao Miyazaki. Disney is the American distributor of Miyazaki's films.

• Europe:
• Disneyland Paris  -- Third on my most-wanted Disney parks list, after EPCOT and DisneySea. Or... maybe it's second, because, you know, PARIS.
• Tivoli Gardens -- This is an amusement park in Copenhagen that's been around since the mid-1800s may have been an inspiration to Walt Disney.

• Back home at the Disneyland Resort:
  • Spend a day at Disneyland just watching the street entertainment. I keep saying I'm going to do this.
  • Watch Fantasmic! I've only seen snippets of this show, when I've mistakenly been caught up in foot traffic while trying to maneuver through the western section of the park at night. I may have to buy the overpriced cheese tray that guarantees a chair, because I cannot deal with those crowds.
  • Stay at the Grand Californian. I just stayed at the Disneyland Hotel for the first time, and there was something magical about a hotel with a channel that plays twenty-four hours of princesses telling bedtime stories. I was also lucky enough to get a room with a balcony, and that alone may have ruined me, not just for other hotels, but for my own apartment. I should be sitting on a balcony right now! The Grand Californian just seems so... grand, and it's even closer to the Parks than the Disneyland Hotel. I love walking through that hotel to avoid Downtown Disney crowds.
  • Take one of the tours.

• Literally at home:
  • Read all the books about Disney that I've bought. (This will never happen.)
  • Play Epic Mickey. I own the game. I own a Wii. I don't know what my problem is.

A Quick Easter Trip to the Park

I had a thought that I might head down to Disneyland early on Easter morning, and enjoy breakfast and a few rides with very light crowds.  Waking up at 10 a.m. altered that plan, however, and I arrived for a 2:30 lunch, instead.  The park wasn't too crowded; the two levels of Southern California passports were blocked, and I would think many people were spending the day with family.  I watched the Soundsational parade, which had plenty of good seating, due to the light attendance; got on Big Thunder in less than five minutes; and practically walked onto Winnie the Pooh, though that attraction rarely has much of a line.  The biggest crowds seemed to be waiting for the train, which I took on a Grand Circle Tour when I arrived.  I did see Brer Fox today, which is rare.  I tried to have a man take my photo, but as I walked away, I discovered that no photo had been shot.  I didn't want to wait in line a second time to try again.  I somehow came home with three new t-shirts.

The real point of this post:  I renewed my passport today!  I'm starting on year four of being a Disneyland Resort Annual Passholder. 

Next week, I'll be taking my sister to Disneyland.  It quite possibly has been twenty years since she last visited.  It should be interesting.  I have a friend who seems to enjoy all the facts, rumors, and news I spew out as we walk around the Park; I wonder how my sister will take it.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

This book is subtitled "A Novel in Words and Pictures," and was the first novel to win the prestigious Caldecott Medal for children's illustration.  It was published by Scholastic in 2007.  It also holds the distinction as the book that piqued my interest in automata.  There was renewed interest in Selznick's novel in the last year, as it was made into a wonderful movie by Martin Scorsese, simply titled Hugo.  I reread the book last year, after enjoying the movie.  Selznick is primarily an illustrator, not a writer, but he has created a brilliant story.  His writing is not as elegant as some other authors', but it is more than sufficient to tell his story.  The magic of his storytelling lies in the illustrations, which are inserted into the text as single, full-page images or blocks of storyboard-like sequences of pages, wordlessly revealing action and emotions or providing close-ups of objects or scenes.  The book is a whopping 532 pages, but is so full of illustration, that it can easily be read within a day or two.

Hugo Cabret was published several years ago, and the movie was quite popular last year, so I won't describe the plot.  I want to explore why I am so fascinated with this book.

First of all, I appreciate Brian Selznick's attention to detail.  He must be a man who is fascinated by details himself.  His illustrations either show crowded scenes, full of people and/or architecture, or they are close-ups of faces, hands, or complex objects.  His illustrated scenes draw the viewer in; I can hear the bustle of the train station and feel Hugo's loneliness.  Selznick also shows characters' emotions so beautifully; close-ups of faces reveal joy, surprise, loneliness, and fear.  I cannot help but study each picture.  I love comic books, which also tell a story through their pictures, but comics rarely pull me into the illustrations like those in this book.  The subject matter--a highly complex mechanical figure and the history of a filmmaker who painstakingly created magical worlds with hand-cut film and no CGI--are perfect for such a detailed package.

The other thing I love about this book, of course, is the story itself.  I enjoy learning history, and here is a historical novel that weaves actual events and people into its narrative.  I was unfamiliar with the early filmmaker Georges Melies, though like many people, I had seen the famous image of a rocket hitting the moon in the eye, from his film A Trip to the Moon.  I am happy that Brian Selznick introduced me to Melies, and the inclusion of some of Melies' work in the book appeals to the fantasy-lover in me.  It was the picture-drawing automaton at the center of the story, however, that fascinated me even more than Melies.  I was vaguely aware of automata before.  I'm very familiar with theme park animatronics, of course, and everyone has encountered wind-up toys that work without electricity; I knew that toy makers used to make much more complex wind-up toys than the simple walking animals one encounters in bins at check-out lines.  But the automaton in Hugo Cabret is so complex, I couldn't imagine that such a thing could really have existed.  It amazed me to do a bit of research and find out that automata could really be so complex.  Most were not as intricate as that in the book, but there are famous examples from the last couple of centuries of automata that could draw pictures or play instruments.  (There's a featurette on the Hugo blu-ray that even shows some of them!)

I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret around the time I was becoming obsessed with Disneyland.  The mechanical man in the book seemed to work its way into my subconscious, along with animatronics, carousels, and band organ music--all forms of entertainment implemented by the melding of technology and artistry.  The simple shifting of gears together, to create movement or music, is somehow magical.  Brian Selznick's story, based on history and showcasing real technology and real human relations, is absolutely magical, too.

Musee Mecanique

So... Let's pretend that this post is merely a month later than the last, rather than a year and a month.  Reading the previous post, I see that I told myself I would write about San Francisco's Musee Mecanique.  Despite visiting San Francisco several times throughout my life, I was unaware of this fantastic museum on Pier 45.  I don't even recall now what brought it to my attention, but I was eager to visit, once I learned of its existence.  The Musee is a warehouse filled with orchestrions and other mechanical music machines and many antique arcade machines, such as fortune tellers and animated dioramas.  One can (and I did) spend hours walking around the room with a pocketful of quarters, listening to music, watching odd little scenes like bodies writhing in an opium den or a hanging, and delighting in a farm full of moving animals or a carnival full of rides and barkers.

I bought three CDs of music recorded from the Musee's orchestrion collection.  I rock.

Yes, really.

Would you like a Disney connection?  How about two?  Mechanical toys, or automata, have been around for centuries.  (I have a couple books on the subject I'll get around to reading someday.)  A mechanical bird, owned by Walt and Lillian Disney, was supposedly the inspiration for the development of audio-animatronics, as seen first in Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room.  Disneyland is also home to three automated music machines on public display.  There's an orchestrion in the Main Street train station, a wall-sized orchestrion in the Penny Arcade, and a band organ next to the Dumbo ride.  These antique instruments are often overlooked, but their familiar music adds to the pleasant, nostalgic atmosphere of a turn-of-the-century American Main Street and the fantastical carnival inhabited by a fleet of flying elephants and that old stand-by, the carousel.

On display in the Walt Disney Archives

"Designing a Contemporary Classic: The Art and Process of 101 Dalmatians" panel discussion at the Walt Disney Family Museum (February 12, 2011)

Well, I'm off to a great start with this blogging.  I thought I'd better get another post in before a month passed.

This past Saturday, I attended a program at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, with Don Iwerks, Disney animator Andreas Deja, and Disney storyboard artist Floyd Norman talking about "101 Dalmatians."  Deja is younger than the other two, did not work on that film, but is apparently a bit of a historian.  Iwerks did not work on that film, either, but he was working for the company at the time, and it was his father, Ub Iwerks, who developed the process that made "101 Dalmatians" a revolutionary film for Disney.  Prior Disney films were made by an animator drawing the action, an inker tracing the drawings onto cells, and a painter coloring those cells.  With this film, the animators' drawings were Xeroxed onto the cells, which put a lot of inkers out of work, but probably saved Disney animation by lowering the cost of production.

I had seen Floyd Norman speak at a prior event, and was eager to see him again, because of his easy-going style.  He comes across as genuinely nice, and seems to have many stories to tell.  So, when I saw that he would be at the WDFM, I planned a trip up to San Francisco.  I had to get up at 5 a.m., but I was able to sleep much of the way, because I brought my personal driver.  We arrived about two hours before the 3:00 program, so we ate a snack, looked at a small exhibit of live-action Disney movie posters, and browsed the gift shop.  Andreas Deja acted as moderator, showing slides of production art and asking questions of his two fellow panelists.  I was very interested to learn about the Xerox process, but I found myself nodding off when Don Iwerks described the process in detail.  It was too technical for me!  Instead of using actual Xerox machines, the studio worked with Xerox to create a three-room, human-powered Xerox machine.  Floyd Norman spoke a bit about Bill Peet, who was the sole storyboard artist for the film!  Norman said that Peet read the original book, adapted the screenplay, and storyboarded the entire work in about six months.  Deja showed some production art next to Peet's storyboards--the animators stayed very close to Peet's vision.

One of the audience members asked how the animators felt about the Xerox process.  Looking at the post-"Sleeping Beauty" animated Disney films, there is a noticeably different style.  The artwork in "Dalmatians" and "Jungle Book" has a scratchy style, not seen in previous animated works.  This is the result of the Xerox process.  Both Deja and Norman replied that the animators were very pleased with the process, because, for the first time, they got to see their actual artwork on the screen.  In the previous process, the inkers would have smoothed out any imperfections.  I had noticed the scratchy style in some Disney films, but I had never thought about what would have caused that.  I think I just assumed that it was the artistic style that Disney had decided to go with during a particular era.

Another fun, behind-the-scenes revelation during the program--the vehicles and other large objects were models that were photographed with stop-motion, and those photos were Xeroxed.  The models were really neat looking, white with black lines where lines would have been drawn if the object was 2D.  The models were used so the objects would keep their proportions when they were moved.  This was another money-saving technique--the animators would not have to struggle to keep drawing the objects consistently from panel to panel.

The program was only about an hour and a half, but I learned quite a bit about the animation process--both the Xerox process and what was done before.  Now I just need to get a copy of the movie and watch it again.  I haven't seen "101 Dalmatians" since I was a child!  I wish the drive to San Francisco wasn't so long.  I would love to be able to visit the WDFM frequently.  This was my second visit, and I didn't buy a ticket to go into the galleries.  On my first visit, I spent seven hours at the museum, and there are probably things I overlooked.  It's truly an amazing place.  There are programs every month, but I doubt I'll see any more for quite some time.

On Sunday, I visited another San Francisco museum, the Musee Mecanique, but I'll leave that for another time.  (There is a Disney connection!)

Peter Fish, "The Case for Disneyland" Sunset, February 2011, p39

I wasn't going to start my blog writing about a three-paragraph magazine article about "The top 100 ideas, people, places, and things that are making life in the West better right now," but I couldn't believe what I read last night.  I picked up the Sunset habit at an early age, due to my parents' having a subscription as long as I can remember.  I have a subscription of my own now, though I occasionally wonder why, as the magazine has apparently been taken over by yuppie hipsters.  (They were just yuppies before, but at least they had some nice vacation destinations I could daydream about--now everything involves spas and learning how to farm.)  So, I was quite surprised to read a defense of Disneyland, one of my favorite places.  (Obviously--in case you didn't pick up on that, it's the "Park" in the title of this blog.)

I went to Disneyland occasionally as a child, of course, growing up in Los Angeles, but not frequently.  I remember visiting Disneyland's neighbor, Knott's Berry Farm, more often.  In recent years, however, I've become downright obsessed with the place.  This is, perhaps, a sign that I need to travel more, but it's awfully convenient right there in Anaheim!  Many adults don't seem to understand how other adults can love Disneyland so much.  What's not to love?  There are fun attractions, delicious things to eat, and friendly people everywhere!  Where else can you walk down a clean street, full of happy people, humming a jaunty tune?  The cleanliness and friendly staff seem to be part of what some people feel is wrong with Disneyland--it's too artificial.  I say, that's the whole point!  It's a place to escape reality for a while--you don't have to move in!  I appreciate the effort Disneyland employees put forth to create a pleasant environment that can be enjoyed by a diverse group of thousands, everyday.

So, here, in much more eloquent writing than mine, is "the case for Disneyland," from Sunset Magazine:
"So give in. Brave the lines. Let yourself go. Because somewhere, say on Nemo's submarine, you'll feel gratitude for pop culture that exalts rather than demeans. And you'll grasp the essential Disneyland secret: All the pains the park takes are taken just for you."