Collected Short Subjects

MouseStation 395 – Collected Short Subjects

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Show run time 0:38:22

Circling with altitude, a Toontown Fair Tip (while it lasts), a guest appearance by The Kid, listener attraction makeover suggestions and more in this week’s collection of short subjects.

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Tip of the Week

This week’s tip comes via email from listener Mike from Voorhees, NJ, who suggests:

Short lived tip. Just prior to closing the store in Toontown has all the charaters come out into the store for a quick goodnight with the guests in the store. Night we were there they played music and the characters were dancing around with the kids. It was a great deal of fun. Wonder how much longer it may go on? Hope similar surprise is available in the redesigned fantasy land.

Mark hopes that he can get down there one more time before they close Toontown to check it out, and hopes that they have something similar in the new Fantasyland.

Mike agreed, then brought up the organic pressed fruit strip thing again. Mark said that Mike can’t keep making that complaint after Toontown is gone.

Featured Attraction

This week, we look at the Astro Orbiter at both Disneyland Park and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom.

Mark talked about the history of Disneyland’s version of the attraction and how it was moved from an elevated location to be a roadblock at the entrance to Tomorrowland. He also described the Walt Disney World version and the views from up there, as well as how the loadping procedure includes a pair of elevators.

Mike said that it’s his favorite hub-and-spoke type ride, and he likes watching Wishes from the Astro Orbiter even more than from Dumbo.

Mark wants to get up there at around 9:15 to be able to see Illuminations from up there. Mark talked about seeing the fireworks at Walt Disney World from an airplane because Florida was so flat, and Mike brought up Mark’s photo of the space shuttle lifting off from an airplane flying home last November.

Review System Spotlight

This week we take a look at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. MousePlanet readers like the resort, rating it 3.6 out of five planets. Our featured review this week is by ElizaJames of Texas.

ElizaJames had a previous visit to the resort that was not very impressive, but loved her trip with her family this time. She really loved much about the resort, especially the proximity to the Magic Kingdom. She wanted a little more decoration and patios or decks for garden wing rooms. She was impressed, leading to her giving it a 4-planet rating.

Mark talked about the original construction of the resort as a “chest of drawers” that eventually locked in place due to settling. He then discussed some of the amenities and some of the recent changes to the resort. He loves the short walk from the resort to the park.

Mike really likes the resort, especially with the new room decor. This is one of his top deluxe resorts.

Mark would prefer to stay in the tower rather than the garden wings, but would probably go with Bay Lake Tower before the main hotel, since he’s a DVC member.

Mark & Mike talked about ElizaJames’ issues regarding the pool during the winter.

You can also find Disney’s Contemporary Resort in our Park Guide.

Last Week on MousePlanet

Andrew Rich, down at MousePlanet Global Headquarters recapped what you may have missed on the MousePlanet site last week if you’re not visiting regularly.

Listener Feedback

John Papas shared a nice poem that was an ode to Mickey’s Toontown Fair, which will be closing down soon. Mark noted that, during last Friday night’s D23 event, it was noted that Mickey and Minnie’s home will not be eliminated. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.

George wanted to pass along the fact that Bluetinis are available at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at the 50’s Prime Time Cafe. He also noted that the glow cubes used can be purchased online, usually for about a dollar a piece. Finally, George asked again if we could please stop singing. We can’t promise that, since it’s kind of spontaneous, but we’ll see what we can do.

We had lots of suggestions for future Extreme Makeover: Attraction Edition episodes.

Via Twitter, Brian Kolm asked that we do a make-over of Disneyland’s Tomorrowland. That could take an entire series of episodes.

Via email, Dale Lee suggested The Great Movie Ride.

Also via email, William Tate suggested some changes to the Tomorrowland Speedway at the Magic Kingdom based on the Disney-Pixar movie Cars. He had some interesting ideas, but Mark thought that they were kind of similar to things that are going into Radiator Springs Racers at the new Carsland coming to Disney’s California Adventure. He suggested waiting until Carsland is done before considering what to do to the Tomorrowland Speedway. The Kid walked over during this segment while Mark was walking and suggested redoing cars to make it easier for shorter kids to reach the gas pedal, and also suggested changing the shell of the cars to make them look more like rocket ships to fit more with Tomorrowland, maybe calling it Space Chase. Then Mark sent him back to finish his homework.

Sharla Manglass wrote to suggest The Great Movie Ride. With two votes for the attraction, Mark thought that we should move the attraction forward in our priority list. Mike agreed that it is ripe for a redo, including more recent films. Mike suggested changing the Alien scene, Mark pointed out the Tarzan scene.

Sean Boundy wrote in with many ideas that Mark and Mike reviewed separately.

Sean’s idea for Imagination was to build on Mark and Mike’s idea and have Dreamfinder (as right brain) and Dr. Nigel Channing (as left brain) with Buzzy trying to coordinate them to make the imagination work. Mark suggested putting it in place of Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.

Sean suggested that Spaceship Earth also include a cave man’s invention of flint tools and weapons, as well as Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. Mark and Mike thought it may be hard figiruing out how to squeeze them in and suggested adding the moon landing audio to the star dome scene.

He’d like to see all World Showcase pavilions have its own movie or attraction, and they all should have information about the country.

Sean thought that it might be a good idea to add weapons to Space Mountain. Mike and Mark were adamantly against this suggestion.

He suggested changing Cosmic Ray’s to Pizza Planet, and Mark and Mike agreed that Sean’s idea was a non-starter, and that the current Pizza Planet location at the Studios should be fixed up, but not moved to the Magic Kingdom.

Finally, Sean suggested including teens, adults, seniors, and maybe babies singing at “it’s a small world.” Mike suggested that it might even be even worse than changing the Carousel of Progress to be WALL-E themeed and show people getting fatter from decade to decade.

What do you think? Let us know!

March of Dimes

For the second year in a row, Mark has been named top walker for the March of Dimes in New York’s Capital Region, and second overall in Northeastern New York (above the counties of Westchester and Rockland). MousePlanet readers and MouseStation listeners have helped Mark to raise over $15,000 for the worthy charity over the last four years. This year, his goal is to raise $5,000 again. But that’s not all! This year, you can walk with Mark, either in person or virtually, by joining Team MousePlanet! Mike has already signed on to walk as well. You can go to Mark’s fundraising page to sponsor him, Mike’s fundraising page to sponsor him, or the Team MousePlanet page to join in and walk yourself! Help us to provide a better chance to prevent prematurity and to help those babies that are born prematurely!

Wrapping up

We’ve put together a new listener survey to help us learn more about you and what you like most about this podcast. This one is much more targeted than the old Podtrac survey. Please take a few minutes to fill it out and let us know what you think.

Don’t forget to go to the iTunes podcast directory and give us a good rating for the combined feed!

You can get your MousePlanet (or MouseStation) swag from the MousePlanet CafePress store and the MouseStation CafePress store. If you’ll be running the Walt Disney World Marathon, the Disneyland Half Marathon or any other endurance event, or even just trying to keep fit, you can also get your Team MousePlanet running wear from our Team MousePlanet Zazzle store!

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Thanks to our audio engineer and sound editor Steven Ng and to announcer Andrew Rich.

Thank you for listening!

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