TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: DISNEYLAND'S 50TH

Howdy, y'all, and greetings once again from deep behind the orange curtain in beautiful Irvine, California, the safest city in America.

No, really. I know I make a lot of stuff up about Irvine [like saying it is the national beverage of Denmark] but this one's actually true. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation recently rated my beloved home towm of Irvine the safest large city in America. Check out http://tinyurl.com/ct6mv if you don't believe me. Go Irvine! :)

Related News: http://www.internettourbus.com/irvine-california-news.html

Disneyland's 50th Anniversary Audience: Everyone

The last time we talked [see http://archives.tourbus.com for my last post] I mentioned I was fortunate to attend the kickoff of Disneyland's 50th anniversary celebration last month. There are two wonderful websites that pretty much captured everything that happened at Disneyland on Wednesday, June 4th, the day that Disneyland was closed to everyone except invited guests, media, and your fearless bus driver. The first site is DizHub.com and you can find their 50th anniversary report at

http://www.dizhub.com/dh50threport.htm

Related News: http://www.internettourbus.com/disney-news.html

"Tach" and "Macabri" at DizHub posted some magnificent pictures of Disneyland's new Parade of Dreams, the new additions to the Jungle Cruise, the gold carpet arrival ceremony [which we'll talk about in a bit], and the crowns that were added to the recently repainted Sleeping Beauty's castle.

The second site, MousePlanet.com, had a team of reporters crawling around the park on the 4th, and you can find their "Continuous coverage" pages at

http://www.mouseplanet.com/more/mm050504asa.htm

MousePlanet has four pages of live news, commentary, and photos from the celebration, although their pages follow the old accounting rule of "LIFO" or "last in, first out"--the oldest news is on the bottom of the pages and the newest is at the top. So you have to read each of the four pages from bottom to top to truly follow along. I think.

MousePlanet's coverage even includes a really cool picture of me. Well, of my back. While most of the media spent the day interviewing Disney dignitaries or photographing all of Disneyland's new or updated attractions, since I was covering the anniversary for the Steve and Johnnie show on WGN Radio in Chicago [a show which doesn't begin until after 9:00 PM Pacific time], I spent most of Wednesday exploring Disneyland and riding the rides. In fact, if you take a look at the first picture on http://www.mouseplanet.com/more/mm050504asa.htm , that's me riding the Jungle Cruise with Pixar's John Lasseter. I'm the one with the blue polo and baseball cap. I'll never wash that baseball cap again. :P

Related News: http://www.internettourbus.com/pixar-news.html

If you want to see Disneyland's new parade or fireworks, I strongly recommend you pay a visit to Anaheim. The parade is okay, but the fireworks are downright awesome. A hint, though: The best place to see the fireworks is in front of the castle to the castle's center or center right. If you can't make it to Anaheim, two sites recently posted amateur video of Disneyland's new fireworks. The first site is at

http://www.visionsfantastic.com/visions/dlr/main/shows.html

Be aware that Visions Fantastic's videos are absolutely *HUGE* [they're approximately 40 megabytes each]. And their fireworks video was shot to the left of the castle, which you'll soon see is not the best viewing spot. The second fireworks video site is at

http://www.laughingplace.com/Lotion-View-72.asp

Finally, I guess I should talk about the gold carpet. As I said earlier, Disneyland was closed on Wednesday, May 4th, to everyone except invited guests and media. Later than night, Disneyland held an invitation-only party along the banks of the Rivers of America for Disney executives, VIPs, Hollywood celebrities, and invited guests. To welcome the party's guests, Disneyland laid out a *HUGE* gold carpet that stretched all the way down Main Street to Adventureland. You can see a picture of the gold carpet at

http://www.dizhub.com/4th/g02.jpg

The west side of the gold carpet [the right side of the picture] was reserved for celebrities and there were literally hundreds of media four-deep all the way down the west side of main street. The east side of the gold carpet was for invited guests and there were HUNDREDS of Disneyland cast members on this side to welcome the guests and make them feel like stars.

I spent about an hour over on the media side of the street when it finally dawned on my that I'M IN RADIO, and only peripherally at that. And arrival ceremonies make really boring radio! So I snuck down to the beginning of Main Street, picked up a pair of gold Mickey Mouse ears, and walked down the gold carpet. :)

Everything was going great--the cast members were all clapping and saying "welcome home" -- and I walking down the gold carpet shaking hands and giving high fives at a rather brisk pace. So brisk, in fact, that I didn't realize that Art Linkletter had crossed over to my side of the carpet and had stopped directly in front of me.

Fortunately, an accident was averted. But I can honestly say that in the same day, I rode the Jungle Cruise with John Lasseter and almost knocked down Art Linkletter on Main Street.

Related News - http://www.internettourbus.com/art-linkletter-news.html

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