Well that three hour wait went pretty fast!
For you folks maybe. As soon as we left the Cruise line panel we inquired as to whether or not there was a line forming for Radiator Springs Reality. There was, so at about 10:30AM we got in line. The line was out in the hallway because they hadnt loaded the room for the next presentation yet, so they told us to stay with our parties until they got us in the waiting room and everyone was counted. I dont have any pictures, and the nice thing was that if at least one of us stayed there we kept our place in line. Once they put us in the holding room, I left first to get my coffee from the lounge. They did have good coffee there, and they even finally got togo cups!
Then I headed back to the waiting room where we had our Chefs Salad for lunch at around 11:30AM.
Since we knew they wouldnt be loading us into the room until at least 1:30 Fran wanted to take a spin around the show room floor again (read between the lines, more shopping!
) You can imagine that sitting in those rooms all day with not much to do I spent a good amount of time DISing (which ran the battery of my phone down). People were plugging their devices into outlets where they could find them and I was no different! However, it made it difficult to justify making a lot of phone calls because I wanted to save my battery in case of an emergency.
So when Fran was gone for almost an hour and a half and I started to get worried because pretty soon they would be loading us up into the presentation room, I finally broke down and started calling her. Sometimes I wonder why we even got her a cell phone because I can call 14 times in a row and she never hears the bloody thing ringing! She finally heard the phone as she was just outside the door to the room where they queue was waiting. So she pulls up to me on her
scooter talking on the phone. Turns out we are the proud owners of two of the Haunted Mansion portraits that I posted pictures of earlier. She made arrangements for me to pick them up later after the Carsland Seminar. Im not sure which ones as they are still wrapped up like they were from the Expo. We have to move some pictures around on the walls to put them up!
By this point it was shortly after 1PM and they started to move us. We were easily in the first hundred people if not first 50 and when Fran said that she didnt want to transfer, they directed us to the back of the room. EXCUSE ME? I didnt wait three hours in a refrigerator so that we could sit at the back of the room!!!!!!
She decided to transfer and I ran up to the front of the room and snagged us a couple seats about 6-7 rows back on the aisle (much easier for her to get in and out if she is on the aisle).
So the panel was headed up by John Lasseter, but as a good leader, he really let his people do most of the talking and explaining. I tried to get names where I could, and thank god I took notes or I would never have remembered any of this!
John Lasseter opened the presentation. The blurry thing that you see here is a hat of some sort (hard hat, motorcycle helmet) that was worn during the ground breaking and is now stored in the office of Kathy Megan (one of the imagineers on this panel) who promptly took it away from John as soon as the panel started!
Everyone got these cute little intro panels with a particular vehicle representing their personality.
So John Lasseter talked about the big picture at DCA. It really needed something and people have been saying that since it opened. All the lands at
Disneyland transport you somewhere, but DCA really hasnt done that quite yet, however since John has taken over they have been working on it. John was raised around cars. Here is a cute shot of him (the one in the back with the doll)
His Dad worked for Chevrolet while he was growing up so cars were a very big part of his life.
Evidently there was some talk of having some sort of Car land at DCA and this idea had come from Imagineer, Kevin Rafferty. Then Pixar came out with the movie cars that was a big hit and thats when the idea really began to blossom.
California has always had a car culture with drive ins, drive throughs, taking a road trip, and not to mention the whole idea of gathering on a Saturday night to show off various cars at the local soda fountain/burger joint.
One of the things lacking in DCA according to John Lasseter was Characters. Some of the transformations that we have seen over the past few years were part of his decision. Changing the Sun Wheel to Mickeys Fun Wheel, converting Mulholland Madness to Goofys Sky School, these were all ideas to get the characters back into the parks. One of the ideas that had been tossed around was a Goofys Road Trip Ride. These were some of the artist concepts. I believe this was the queue area.
Then you went through some whacky version of the US.
Followed by some creepy caverns
Not even sure how this part figured into it!
And this was what tied it all together.
I guess this was just one of the predicaments that Goofy gets into on his road trip.
Perhaps this is the bad part of town
[Continued in Next Post]
Oh well....nice pics to dream over!!
That's just crazy. If i'm going to be paying that amount, I might as well just get the Verandah vs the animated porthole.
That will be so exciting. Been waiting for DCA to get some new, fun stuff.
