A real feast for your eyes

For many years, books about the parks were relegated to souvenir books filled with glossy photos and phrases or technical volumes produced solely for the most dedicated of fans, but not books that could be appreciated by everyone, including those unfamiliar with Disney’s collection of theme parks. In recent years, however, there has been a movement to make books more accessible, the culmination of which is the recent release Poster Art of the Disney Parks.

This oversized book was written by a pair of Imagineers, Danny Handke and Vanessa Hunt, who clearly have a passion for the parks and the art created by and for them. Poster Art of the Disney Parks divides its 146 pages amongst nine chapters with dedicated sections for the various lands of the Kingdom style parks (Main Street, U.S.A., Adventureland, New Orleans Square and Liberty Square, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland). Additional chapters focus on Tokyo DisneySea, Disney California Adventure, and an introductory chapter exploring the process and history of the Disney posters.

A majority of the book’s text comes from in the first chapter where everything from Walt’s park design mentality to the how a poster progresses through the printing procedure is given due page space. What I love most about this section is the study of where and how attraction posters have been displayed in various parks, including the coming attractions area of the Kingdoms, in marquees in front of their respective attractions, and even in Disney films! From there, each individual chapter introduces the land they are responsible for with quotes from Walt Disney, Michael Eisner, and Bob Weis, the thoughts behind some of the poster designs across the parks, especially where attractions are based in several parks, and the rationale behind the need for the posters at all.

The true meat of the Poster Art of the Disney Parks, however, is the posters themselves. Each chapter is a stroll through the parks, both past and present. There are posters included here that I haven’t seen since my childhood, such as this one for the Grand Prix Raceway, that have been burned into my memories and are even more beautiful than I remember and I am so happy to see them again. Handke and Hunt do an excellent job of including as many posters as possible, only allowing for one poster where an identical poster, save the park’s name, is used in multiple parks. These dedicated Imagineers arduously uncovered and credited the artists where available and even showcased concept posters that never came to fruition or the concept to reality process for some of the posters they do have.

If I have to find one complaint of Poster Art of the Disney Parks, and believe me when I say this is splitting hairs, it is that I’d love to see each poster given the full page treatment. Of course we’d then be looking at a 500-page behemoth instead of the perfectly sized 146-page volume we have today. That’s only because I would love to be able to pour over the minute details in each poster, and not really using common sense.

This art and history book has something for everyone. It can be used to ramp up the anticipation of a family preparing to make a trip to a Disney Park. It is an introductory lesson for artists looking to get into media advertising. It is a treasured walk through the parks for those of us who have spent so much time in and around the parks’ and their history. In the opening of Poster Art of the Disney Parks we are told that the posters are utilized to “entice, excite, and educate Guests with a preview of the adventures and experiences inside the Park.” If this is the goal of the individual posters, than this collection from Hunt and Handke is exponentially successful.

I highly recommend everyone rush out and pick up a copy of Poster Art of the Disney Parks just as soon as you can!

Disney This Week - 23 September 2012

I feel like I may say this quite a bit, but the must read piece of the week comes from FoxxFur at Passport to  Dream Old & New, where she has a masterful dissertation on the success of Storybook Circus.

George Taylor reviews Poster Art of the Disney Parks for Imaginerding. (Look for our review tomorrow!)

Enchanted Tales with Belle is critiqued by Melissa Sue Sorrells Galley at Mouse on the Mind.

 

AJ Wolfe dishes out the awards for Best Burgers in Walt Disney World at The Disney Food Blog.

The construction of the Magic Kingdom is explored by Imagineering Disney.

Matt Hochberg explains at Studios Central why the news about Fantasmic! park benches matter, this is a sentiment I can totally agree with!

The booths have come out for the 2012 Epcot International Food & Wine Festival and Andy Jackson is getting all tingly over at Eating (and Drinking) around the World.

Shane Lindsay discovers that illiteracy is running rampant throughout Spaceship Earth for Parkeology.

DesignerLand and Richard Terpstra offers up the idea of a revamped Trader Jack’s Grog Hut for the Polynesian. I’m in! What petition do I have to sign to get this thing rolling?!?!

Corn Fritters from BoardWalk To Go, you can thank Sarah Holodick and Eating WDW for turning you on to this tasty walk-around treat.

Rich Tobin at Mouse Troop has the perfect escape for those times when an attraction has a technical difficulty, create your own whale of a tale.

Where would you sleep, if you could, in an attraction? That question is handled by Adam and Andrew at the Disney Hipster Blog.

Melissa Loflin is in search of the symbol of Kilimanjaro Safaris at Makin’ Memories.

With Epcot’s 30th anniversary just around the corner, Estelle Hallick gives us a shopping list to bring Epcot home with us at This Happy Place.

In the ‘I’m trying to make Ryan jealous by going somewhere we just talked about that he hasn’t been able to get into’ category, Suzannah DiMarzio drops in on the Siemens corporate lounge for Zannaland.

I really want the part of his job where Nate Rasmussen gets to show off great photos from Walt Disney World’s past on the Disney Parks Blog. This week he prepped for the upcoming 29th birthday by showing off Horizons in all its glory.

Silent Saturday - Davy Jones' Organ (June 2012)

The seventh did him in

There are plenty of graves scattered about the grounds of the Haunted Mansion. Some are funny, while others hold grotesque secrets. Take, for example, the tomb of Bluebeard, which tells us that Bluebeard had six wives that died in six consecutive years, but that the seventh killed him. There is a lot to uncover here, who is Bluebeard, how did his wives die, and did he deserve to be done in?

Bluebeard is the French folktale that was finally written down and published in 1697 by Charles Perrault. In the story Bluebeard marries one of his neighbor’s daughters. Eventually he has to leave the country, and leaves the keys to every room in the chateau to his wife. She is told to enjoy herself while he is away, but not to venture into a locked basement chamber. Eventually curiosity gets the best of her, and to her horror she finds the room filled with the blood and bodies of Bluebeard’s previous wives, with the bodies left hanging on hooks around the chamber. Bluebeard returns, finds the key stained with blood, and sets about to behead her. In the end, Bluebeard is killed by his wife’s brothers before he can murder her, and everyone lives happily ever after.

While Bluebeard is not a real person, a Marshal of France, Gilles de Rais, is believed to be the primary inspiration for the character. He assisted in pushing the British out of France and served under Joan of Arc before retiring to Brittany. Here he would kidnap local boys, sodomize, decapitate, and bury them. While de Rais’ power and influence kept many from looking too closely, eventually the Duke of Brittany investigated de Rais and found the bodies of 50 boys buried on his estate. Gilles de Rais admitted to the murder of 140 boys, but that number could have been as high as 300. He was burned and hung at the same time in 1440, which matches the date on Bluebeard’s tomb at the Haunted Mansion.

Personally I think we should set Bluebeard up with Constance in the attic, they seem tailor-made for each other. Whether or not Gilles de Rais is the inspiration for the baron with a ghastly blue beard who murders the innocent, Bluebeard certainly deserved all that befell him and the Haunted Mansion collected another chilling spirit to roam the halls of Gracey Manor. I certainly hope his six brides, also buried here, have more fun in the afterlife than Bluebeard!

If ye be brave or fool enough

Yesterday on the Disney Parks Blog, Jennifer Fickley-Baker sent a shot across the bow and let the world know that Pirates of the Caribbean will be receiving a new addition, and that this new element will come from from Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides. The rub is that readers weren’t told what it would be or which scene(s) it would appear in. Jennifer only let slip a single clue to the buried treasure, that the attraction would remain open during regular park hours and that the changes would be installed overnight, although no timetable for the change was given.

The prevailing winds, even before this article set sail, were that a mermaid element was coming to Pirates of the Caribbean. This idea has merit, after all mermaids played a pivotal role in the last feature film, and would likely appear in any subsequent sequels, but something about it just doesn’t sit right with me. I am hard pressed to believe a mermaid Audio-Animatronics could be installed overnight, even as wonderful as Imagineering is. In fact, I’m not even sure they could drop in a physical effect of a tail splashing in the water in a single evening either. So the mermaid angle seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

Does that mean I don’t want to see the mermaids in Pirates of the Caribbean, not at all. In all honesty, I think the dichotomy of supplying a dangerous mermaid in Adventureland with a sweet, lovesick mermaid in Fantasyland is too rich an irony to pass up. For one it shows how tales and mythological creatures can be interpreted differently by different folks. And another thing, mermaids are just bloody cool!

So, if I don’t believe that it is mermaids swimming their way into the adventures of Pirates of the Caribbean, what do I think could be coming? Blackbeard and Barbosa? Already in the attraction. Angelica? Again we run into the problem of Audio-Animatronics and timing, so in what capacity could she conceivably show up? The Fountain of Youth? It’d take too much time to construct, and what scene would it appear in? The silver chalices Ponce de Leon used for the Fountain of Youth? Now, we’re talkin’ treasure!

With a treasure room already stocked with plenty of glittering jewels and enough gold to buy the Spanish Main, it only makes sense that these two chalices could be placed in the scene quickly, without disturbing too much of what is taking place around them. They could be placed prominently so that guests could see them, but not so much as to attract the attention of the scallywag Jack Sparrow who is relaxing in the treasure room.

Of course, the treasure room also allows for my personal favorite theory, the Black Pearl. The ship Barbosa utilizes in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction is the Wicked Wench, not the Black Pearl. In On Stranger Tides, the Black Pearl has been miniaturized by Blackbeard and placed into a bottle. Placing the Black Pearl in a bottle, along with other ships in bottles, in the treasure room would be a great way to tie all of the films together and finally find a way to incorporate the most famous of the Pirates of the Caribbean vessels, the Black Pearl, into the attraction.

There are certainly any number of possibilities, from the aforementioned mermaids and chalices, to new dialogue from Jack Sparrow, Barbosa, and/or Blackbeard, Blackbeard’s sword, even costumes from some of the cast. There are as many potential items to add into Pirates of the Caribbean as there are tales of daring and dangerous pirates. While we await this new treasure, it is only fitting that we concoct as many fanciful and far-fetched tales as possible, right?

Did I ever tell you the one about the sea turtles?

Embrace these bats

October 31st is Bat Day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, but that doesn’t mean the celebration has to wait to October to get the party started. Last week a new cupcake flew into the park just in time for the celebration.

This batty creation can be found in the Discovery Island area of the park at Safari Coffee, the coffee and pastry kiosk near Disney Outfitters. It is a chocolate cupcake, with cream cheese frosting, chocolate sprinkles, and a dark chocolate bat lollipop. The bat pop is so large that the cupcake is actually served in a cup so that it doesn’t topple over and ruin your entire dessert.

If there is one word for this cupcake, it is rich. From the dark chocolate bat to the cream cheese frosting, the components of this cupcake will continually send you for a beverage to cleanse your palate before you dive back in for more. The cream cheese frosting is very smooth, and is easily my favorite part of the cupcake. The chocolate cake itself is moist and a great vehicle for the frosting and bat lollipop.

Attaching pops to the top of cupcakes has become a tradition in recent cupcakes from Disney’s Animal Kingdom, from the White Elephant to the Cottontop Tamarin, but this one really takes the cake. It is huge and very thick, to the point where I barely got through a single wing myself. While dark chocolate is not my favorite, I can see dark chocolate fans being in heaven with this cupcake topper!

It may not seem as fancy as some of the cupcakes we’ve seen in recent years, but the beauty of this batastic cupcake is in its simplicity. For those of you taking part in the Cupcake Crawl from AJ Wolfe and The Disney Food Blog, this may be off the beaten path, but it should also be right up your alley!