26 posts tagged “disney”
Went to a going away lunch for my co-worker and friend, Aaron, at the Kona Cafe at the Polynesian Resort.
For some reason, we only go to 2 different places for going away or welcome lunches. Awhile back I decided that I was just going to go down the menu. The last entree that I had on the list was today's entree. There was a reason I was leaving it for the end and I didn't care for it.
So I had room for dessert and played dessert roulette with that menu. The Kona Cone came up and this was it. The person across from me heard me order it and got one too. She foolishly thought that I knew what it was.
A waffle cone with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, suger mickey sprinkles, a dark chocolate mickey head emerging from the top, surrounded by a cloud of blueberry cotton candy, and a handful of M&M's.
Way too much sugar for any one person... my stomach is aching now. Good, though.
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For the past 60 some years, the company has been heavily involved with Toys for Tots. In my building, each dept. is given a collection box to decorate and be judged. Each year, our box is usually horrible because we do not have any time or resources to devote to decorating.
We had a bit more time this year. Not as much as we would have liked, but 90 minutes is 90 minutes. Disneyland's "Small World Holiday" was what we were going with.
I was volunteered to do the clock face. I was told (or thought I was told) that judging would be on Mon. I thought I had the weekend. Come in this morning to find out that I was wrong... and had 20 min or less.
After a mad scramble of photocopying, scanning, outlining in Illustrator, and running into way too many "printer failed" errors for no reason, I got something together. A co-worker taped the 2 halves together and was in the process of cutting it out when I heard voices coming down the hall. It was the judges. She ran out and slapped the face on to the the front of the main box just as they rounded the corner.
I think the group did a pretty good job with the limited time and resources we had. There are several things that I would have done differently, but that type of stuff takes more time than any of us had. I kind of like that it isn't a direct copy of the clock facade, but more of an interpretation or "inspired by" look. That makes the odd scaling, and crooked lines look OK.
I'm actually happy that I didn't do much work on the face prior to this morning. I was going with a 19" diameter. That would have fit the main part of the box, but would have been totally out of scale with what they actually did with that part. 10" worked much better.
The thing lit up and someone hooked up their iPod with a loop of the Small World Holiday music in the background (alternates between the classic Small World song and Jingle Bells). It is driving us a bit insane.
Well, actually, it has come to Orlando. But they did make it to Lake Buena Vista to snap pics through the main thoroughfares of Walt Disney World.
Here is the Magic Kingdom Toll Plaza
Child too small or too scared to ride a ride? That's OK. Just leave them alone out in the sun while you go do it.
That must have been the logic behind 2 idiots who did that to their kid. It is freakin' hot here right now. Really hot and humid. So much so that I hate even going outside in the afternoon.
Two Orange County parents were arrested on child-abuse charges after telling authorities they accidentally left their 3-year-old daughter in a stroller while they rode Pirates of the Caribbean at Walt Disney World.
A Magic Kingdom patron alerted park management about 4:45 p.m. Saturday after spotting the girl in a stroller parked in the sun, according to a report released Monday by the Orange County Sheriff's Office.
The girl was hot, turning red, covered in sweat and appeared to be "lifeless," the report states.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-pirates26_207jun26,0,7241396.story
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-bk-disneybrawl052207,0,3582906.story
Three teens and two adults were arrested at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom after deputies said they spat on guests, cursed and brawled with an Orange County deputy, according to a report released Monday.
The arrests took place at about 11:15 p.m. Sunday, after Rose Dipietro, 20, Brian Guilfoil, 19, and three teens, all of Shirley, N.Y., were detained by Disney security for being unruly and possibly drunk, according to a sheriff's report.
The group threatened the security officers, who called for help from sheriff's deputies. When one deputy tried to intercede, Guilfoil pushed the deputy while his companions rushed into the fray, the report states.
Security guards and deputies rushed to the deputy's aid, and the deputy used his stun gun against a 17-year-old girl.. The five suspected brawlers were arrested for felony battery on a law enforcement officer and other related charges.
Dipietro and Guilfoil were booked into Orange County Jail, where they were released Monday afternoon on $2,300 bail each.
The teens -- girls 17 and 16 and a 14-year-old boy -- were taken to the county's juvenile detention facility.
A Jacksonville news station ran 2 segments on "hidden places" at Walt Disney World.
The first segment talks about the Utilidors underneath the Magic Kingdom. These really aren't a secret since they are discussed in every Travel Channel special highlighting WDW.
The next segment talks about the massive wardrobe department and how thousands of Cast Member costumes are issued and cleaned each day.
Both videos are linked at the top of the article (the text is a transcript of the Utilidor segment). The video is much more entertaining than the text.
Hidden Places: Beneath Walt Disney World
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/spotlight/news-article.aspx?storyid=81978
Went to the Magic Kingdom yesterday to get my haircut. The barbershop was packed with people. Sometimes the crowds are due to first-time hair cuts (all members of extended families must view these I guess). Other times it is a bunch of little kids who only want colored gel in their hair and have no interest in getting an actual cut. Anyway, the line was out the door (which kills me because people can wait inside) and there really wasn't anyway to tell if the people were outside were with people inside, if they had actually queued up, or what.
I just walked around the park and took some pictures- jumped on Peter Pan with a 5 min wait as well as The Haunted Mansion (I almost had a stretch room to myself, but 3 others ran in just before the butler closed the door).
I also wanted to experiment with the "Match Color" with famous paintings technique recently featured in MAKE (I've used this before, just not with the famous subject matter) and pairing it with some Lomo actions that I've been tweaking for years.
I like the results.
As for my hair- I went back this morning and then walked the loop of the park before heading over to Epcot to ride "Living with the Land" (haven't been on it since they automated the spiel) and the rehabbed Mexico boat ride with the Three Caballeros.
As luck would have it, one of the R2-D2 mailboxes is across the street from me. Doug, Lipman, and I had to go over to inspect it during lunch.
Some little kid kept trying to mail postcards while we were trying to take the pics. What was he thinking?
I know I haven't blogged too much about it, but I have a baby on the way. I'm pretty excited. Scared too, but that's all normal.
Anyway, the wife is letting me theme the nursery to "it's a small world". Some hate that attraction because of the earworm song. As for me, I love the colors and shapes. I'm a big fan of Mary Blair. Also a big fan of Rolly Crump. This project is a nice little test for me. I generally push pixels around all day. Pushing paint is a nice change.
I also decided to document the project. Whenever I do something like this, I always forget to document the steps. The colors are off in the pics. I also had to adjust the contrast. So what looks like a mustard yellow is really a very light yellow. Almost white.
So I started this project this past Friday. Actually, I intended to start this project this past Friday. I thought we still had paint rollers and didn't bother picking some more up. I thought wrong.
Day 1 - Saturday
I got the room cleaned out and my work/paint station set up. I painted one wall a very light yellow. I was finishing everything up when Doug called and told me that I had to go to his house. Finished painting. Cleaned up my brushes and mess and headed over to his place for bourbon and to watch "See No Evil" (I had no expectations for the movie and I was let down).
Day 2 - Sunday
The wall was dry and now it was time to draw the design. I couldn't use a projector due to the size of the room and the fact that the drawing wasn't exactly to scale to the wall. Earlier in the week I had measured and scaled everything. Easy, right? Not so much. I discovered that my walls aren't straight. The width that I had measured at the bottom of the wall is about 1.5 inches shorter than the width at the cieling. They aren't load bearing walls and I'm sure this is common, but still... my walls should be straight.
Eileen helped me get a straight line approx 63 inches from the floor (it is straight and it is level, but the height fluctuates too). This was serving as my base line and I measured everything off of it.
I eventually got the main outline (or skyline) drawn out. It wasn't too difficult. Just took some time.
Then I roughed in the blue.
Day 3 - Monday
Work was work. There was an accident on the off-ramp that I use to head towards my house off of the highway and traffic was backed up (damned rubberneckers). My 15-20 minute drive home was a little more than an hour.
I broke out the small brushes and started filling in the rest of the blue areas. I know that I'll eventually need to go back and touch it all up, but this really defined the shapes. It also motivated me to see that I can actually do this.
Learnings so far
1) My walls aren't straight
2) Someone should make a ladder with rungs that are 13/14 inches deep to accommodate people with big feet like me. My feet started to cramp standing on it.
3) This isn't all that hard. It just takes some time. It would be nice to have help, but the room is too small for more than a few people and I'm too much of a control freak.
The Service Trades Council Union that represents a good portion of the Cast Members at Walt Disney World were out celebrating/announcing a labor settlement. Cars/trucks were honking in support.
Most of their signs read "Stop Disney from Outsourcing jobs".
This was taken during lunch.
