The five best things Disney has done

Cafe Society
61

  1. I don’t think anyone else has mentioned the Disney cruise line. I’ve gone on other cruises, but Disney far exceeded my expectations. Everything was clean clean clean. The atmosphere was 100% Disney–upbeat, kid-friendly and yet captivating for adults. The programs for kids and adults on board were excellent. The shows were the best I’ve ever seen on acruise. And the food and dining experience has to be rated on an entierely different scale–it was so much better than other cruises. Yipes! I sound like a commercial.

  2. The simpler rides–Winnie the Pooh, Snow White, Small World.

  3. The **movie themed ** “rides”–Great Movie Ride, Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, Catastrophe Canyon, Star Wars…

  4. Listening to their customers and adjusting–for instance, restoring the character **Figment ** to the Imagination ride.

  5. And Cranium Command “Don’t mind me, I’m just the hypothalmus, breathe, breathe, pump, pump, blink, blink.”

62

It’s on the soundtrack to the documentary Moog. (If you don’t use iTunes/Apple Music Store, here’s a link to the soundtrack on Amazon.com). The original song is called “Baroque Hoedown.”

Other Chuck

63

Great. I got all misty reading that. Same thing happened with my oldest daughter. We packed her off to college last week. I miss that little kid.

64

Pictures for Club 33 exist here:

http://snopes.com/disney/parks/club33.htm

As for the OP:

  1. First talkie animated cartoon and birth of Mickey Mouse (Steamboat Willie, 1928).

  2. Pioneer of color in cartoons (Flowers and Trees, 1932) and invention of multi-plane animation camera (first used in The Old Mill, 1937).

  3. First feature-length animated cartoon (Snow White, 1937).

  4. Invention of the modern theme park (Disneyland, 1955) and introduction of the first steel roller-coaster (Matterhorn Bobsleds, 1959).

  5. Replacing Michael Eisner, 2005.

65

I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Disney’s uncanny talent for herding people.

Whether it’s making a 45-minute wait for a ride feel more like 5, thanks to the entertainment built into the queue itself, or studying people’s actions to determine exactly where things like trash cans and restrooms need to be, Disney’s taken it from guessing, to a science and onto an art.

Every other park just plops down an interminable zigzag of 4-foot high fencing in the hot sun and posts “Wait from here: xx minutes” and sticks a trash can wherever they have a bare spot. Disney watches people leave a snack stand and wherever people are done with their snack, that’s where they put the cans. Sounds simple enough, but the concept appears lost on the likes of Six Flags, where the trash cans are right at the snack stand, forcing people to either gobble it down right there, or carry the empty cup/wrapper until they reach the next snack stand.