Travel don’ts for the solitary urbanite

From the “posting just to say I’m still alive” department: Last weekend I tagged along with some friends to Disneyland and it was, despite United Airlines’ best efforts, a great big ton o’ fun. One of the many things I like about Disney parks is that you can go hundreds of times, covering every inch [...]

So there’s a good bit o’ hoopla on the internet (at least among those of us who follow this sort of thing) about Disney’s changes to the “it’s a small world” ride at Disneyland. In brief: characters from popular Disney and Pixar movies have been inserted into their “home” countries, bits of Disney theme songs [...]

I wanted to say congratulations to my friends at Disney Imagineering for completing the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure at Epcot in Orlando. The attraction went into “soft opening”/preview mode last week, and everything I’ve seen online says that it’s a big hit so far. One of the quotes from this article about the attraction [...]

Disney has added models and textures for Walt Disney World to Google Earth. While the blog entry describes it as “the second best thing to being there,” it’s a little slow and fuzzy, and it’s more like walking through a papercraft version of the parks and hotels than it is like exploring a new virtual [...]

Last year when I was stationed at Epcot, I wrote about the promotional video that runs in a constant loop on the TVs in all the Disney hotels. It’s hosted by the annoying and yet inexplicably alluring Stacey, who guides you, talking incessantly, through all the theme parks, water parks, golf courses, and stores of [...]

I’m starting to regret all that stuff I said earlier about videogames being non-union, because a writer’s strike would be pretty sweet right about now. Not because I have anything in particular to protest, but because it’d be nice to get a little break. Yet another problem with doing exactly what I want to be [...]

Matt sent me this link to a really, really well-done fan video. It’s The Walt Disney World Tower of Terror in a Half-Life 2 mod. All it’s missing is the fog in the courtyard and a few of the effects in the ride.

I went to Disneyland over the weekend, and it was fun. There’s not a ton of new stuff going on at the park, and we’ve gotten pretty ritualistic with our trips — get up ass-early, drive down, eat at the Apricot Tree, check in at the hotel, sleep, get up and drink, get up ass-early, [...]

The Disney Blog posted links to two videos recreating the Test Track ride at Epcot using the game Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. My favorite of the two is below. Test Track isn’t a roller coaster, and the other video looks a little bit more like the actual ride. But this one gets my vote for including [...]