| News and Views
This week's park update is going to be relatively light while we put together a complete recap of the premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and a walkthrough of the new ride experience at Pirates of the Caribbean for tomorrow.
Just a quick recap for now
Just to quickly recap how things went on Saturday, here are a few details. Disneyland did close as announced at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday though this just meant that nobody was allowed to enter for the first time after then; reentries were allowed to continue. The red carpet portion of the evening ran longer than expected and some regular guests in the park reported not being cleared out until almost 9:30, more than 90 minutes later than expected.
The projected attendance for Disneyland on Saturday was around 35,000 (pretty low for a summer weekend) and proved to be pretty accurate. The projection for Disney's California Adventure was a similarly low 14,000 but the extended hours for the park seemed to work in drawing guests over as the actual number ended up being around 26,000 with approximately 16,000 of that being parkhoppers. Management must be pleased that few guests seem to have left the resort after 5:00 p.m. when Disneyland kind-of closed. On Sunday the numbers were a little more "normal" with Disneyland getting to around 50,000 and DCA topping 20,000.
The ride itself
The photos and details will have to wait for tomorrow but as expected the ride did open to the general public on Sunday at 11:00 a.m. (allowing media to ride throughout the morning without having to wait in long lines).
Cast members did not allow a queue to form until about 10:50 and by shortly after 11:00 the queue extended through Frontierland and beyond the loading dock for Mark Twain Riverboat and Sailing Ship Columbia. Despite the length of the line, guests were reporting that it moved quickly and they were getting through in less than an hour. The same was not true of the accessible entrance through the exit of the ride.
This has always been the worst special access entrance of at Disneyland and nothing was done to change that during the refurbishment. The problem is that it a narrow walkway in half-lit conditions and has a steady flow of people trying to go the other direction. So Pirates of the Caribbean remains one of the few rides where special access passes will likely take longer than the normal queue.
Unfortunately for a lot of locals making a trip specifically to try the ride (and a fair number of regular tourist visitors on their final day) the "soft open" only lasted about three hours before a mechanical problem forced the ride to close. As of this writing it was not expected to open again before this morning.
We'll share the reactions of MousePlanet staff who have experienced ride in our coverage tomorrow, but the reaction from everybody we've seen has been mostly positive.
Today marks the official reopening of Blue Bayou. Yesterday, they held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Cafe Orleans, even though the area around there was so crowded because of Pirates of the Caribbean and the traffic flow problems caused by the risers that it was kind of hard to tell that there were cast members in front of the restaurant tossing beads into the crowd. Both restaurants were taking limited standby reservations but they will quickly begin to fill with guests who made advance reservations with the Disney Dine Line (call 714-781-DINE to make your own priority seating reservations).
Pirates, pirates everywhere
Pirate merchandise has been appearing throughout Disneyland for the past several weeks, but the campaign moved into high gear this weekend. We've been told that the Disneyland Resort merchandising team has been challenged by senior management to sell as much pirate-theme merchandise over the next 18 months as they sold 50th Anniversary merchandise.
The 50th Anniversary display windows at the World of Disney store in Downtown Disney have been replaced with pirate-theme windows, and nearly every store in the resort has a conspicuous display of pirate merchandise. There are four main collections of pirate product to choose from—one based on the park attraction; one based on the film; a character-filled collection aimed at children, and a group of generic, non-Disney "pirate" merchandise like you might find at Hot Topic and other pop culture stores. Click here to see just a small sample of the pirate merchandise offered at Disneyland.
And then there are the pins. Over 30 new trading pins were released this weekend during the launch of the "Legend of the Golden Pins" promotion, and another dozen pins, three framed pin sets and assorted accessories are scheduled to be released through August (for more information see here or here to see (almost) all of the pins. Disneyland has re-dressed the pin board carts and is offering collectors the opportunity to trade for pins hidden inside replicas of the Dead Man's Chest. The carts are deployed around the resort at different times and locations during the day.
If you'd like to buy some Pirate-related stuff without having to leave the comfort of your computer chair, you might want to check out Disney Auctions (link) where several experiences will be put up for auction, many of which will go to a donation to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
First up are two tickets to the June 6th "Moonlit Voyage" Pirates of the Caribbean merchandise event (link). This package has a retail value of $685 (it comes with one room at the Disneyland hotel making it essentially equivalent to one purchase of the Wicked Wench package and one of the basic Black Pearl package). As of writing, the auction is up to $1,370 and there are three days left to bid.
Upcoming are opportunities to win a ride on Pirates of the Caribbean with Disney Imagineers, an opportunity to make your mark on the ride (probably something like the auction for Haunted Mansion that got your name on a tombstone), or even be a pirate in a performance of Fantasmic.
How will people get their music now?
Cast members tell us that the "Wonderland Music Experience," formerly known as the "CD on Demand" system, will be discontinued at Disneyland sometime in September, probably when the 50th Anniversary celebration comes to an official end. The system allows customers at 20th Century Music Company to choose from a catalogue of nearly 60 out-of-print Walt Disney Records titles, and have them burned to a CD while they wait. New titles were last added to the system in December, 2005, and an unofficial Disney music discussion board, MagicMusic.net, has a multi-page list of titles that members would like to see made available in the future.
Unfortunately, it looks like that music collectors may have to wait for another incarnation of music-on-demand to hear more from Disney's record archives. Cast members were told to suspend sales of the CDs last week, in part because they were running low of the raw materials (blank CDs and empty jewel cases) needed to produce them, while the fate of the system was discussed. Then CMs learned that the system would remain in place through September, and a new shipment of materials arrived over the weekend.
The "Wonderland Music Experience" is also offered at Walt Disney World, and we have not yet heard if the Florida version will also be removed. Disneyland CMs tell us that it is possible that the most popular titles from the program will be offered in the future as regular packaged CDs, and that the entire catalogue might wind up offered for download through the Disney Music store at iTunes.
This and that...
...As part of the renovation, the kitchen for Cafe Orleans was significantly expanded. In fact, it expanded into the space formerly occupied by La Petite Patisserie. La Petite Patisserie has been closed for many years (and the signage was removed almost two years ago) but this is the final knock-out for any immensely slim hope of it ever returning. This is also a good time to mention to readers why it is still listed as a Disneyland dining location in our Disneyland Resort Park Guide. Even though it hasn't been open for years and everybody knew it would never reopen, it is still listed by Disney on their Web site (link). So, until they officially remove it we'll leave it in our listing with appropriate notes about its real status so that readers won't get confused as to why we missed a place that Disney says still exists. This is also the case with several dining locations in Disney's California Adventure that are essentially permanently closed but still appear at the Disneyland.com Web site.
...When it happens twice it is a tradition. Shortly after being sold, the Anaheim Angels officially changed their team name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. And now, shortly after being sold, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim are officially severing their ties to a classic Emilio Estevez movie and are becoming simply the Anaheim Ducks.
...If you have a summer trip booked this year and have already been planning out your days you might want to take another look at them, particularly if you're an open-to-close-commando type when visiting the parks. Beginning July 9 Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure have lopped an hour off the end of the posted operating schedules for the parks on Mondays through Thursdays. Disneyland will be open from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and DCA will be 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Previously posted schedules had Disneyland open until midnight seven days a week and DCA open every day until 10:00 p.m. We do not know why this change was implemented (and has some reminiscing about the era when summer at Disneyland meant closing at 1:00 a.m. and shopping until 2:00 a.m.) and some are speculating about continuing staffing problems. It is, however, at Disney's discretion to change hours even once they've been announced and it may still be the case that many of these dates will see the park open that extra hour and just not be announced until that day.
Please CLICK HERE to login if you would like to add a comment to this article.
Article Comments:
There are no comments on this article at this time.
|
