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Fire Makes a Phoenix Out of the Enchanted Tiki Room
by Jonathan Strickland | August 18, 2011
Let’s get this out of the way first: I’m a Disney fanatic. I’m a fan of the films, the cartoons and the theme parks. Growing up in Georgia, the theme parks were a fairly accessible summer destination. Every few years, my family would pack up the car and make the eight-hour drive down to Orlando, Florida. One attraction I loved as a kid was The Enchanted Tiki Room. For the uninitiated, the attraction is a round theater. The performers consist of tropical birds, exotic flowers and Tiki totems. And all of these performers worked on a technology that serves as the foundation for many classic Disney attractions: Audio-Animatronics.
There’s a lot going on in tech news this week. Among the items I thought interesting include a report in The Wall Street Journal that Google is looking to introduce its own social networking service. I mean besides Orkut, Friend Connect and Buzz. Amir Efrati wrote that Google has been talking to social gaming giants Playfish, Playdom and Zynga about the possibility of bringing their wares to a Google-based service.
This week on TechStuff, Jonathan and I talked about a topic lots of people asked us about, the iPhone 4. As it turned out, it’s a good thing that we didn’t race to get this one done as soon as it released, because there have been a lot of developments surrounding Apple’s latest smartphone.
How do you feel about the title of this post? Are you immediately turned off, or do you want to read more? And if you’re in the first camp, are you male?
Back in March, the L.A. Times reported that Disney’s new animated film would be titled “Tangled” instead of “Rapunzel.” The reason? Boys wouldn’t want to see a movie that alluded to a female character in the title.
Inspired by listener mail, Jonathan and Chris discuss the philosophy behind Disney’s Imagineering program, how Imagineers set the standard for amusement park attraction design and Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride.
Over the last little while I’ve picked up on some interesting information that, on their own, aren’t really enough for a post each. Put together, though: look out!
1) Most of the wildlife photography I’ve ever seen was probably faked. Disney was long ago exposed for staging the lemmings running off the cliff scene in the nature film White Wilderness, which forged the lasting idea that lemmings are suicidal. As I learned recently, that tradition continues in the form of game farms. Most of these farms were initially established as wildlife preserves in states like Montana. After awhile, wildlife photographers started turning up looking for perfect shots of what had become tame animals — shots they could never get in the woods.
I just got out of the Nintendo press conference at E3 and am trying to process what I just saw. It was like seeing ghosts from the past come back to haunt me. Mario? He was there spiking volleyballs and shooting hockey pucks in Mario Sports Mix. Link? He was swinging his sword and raising his shield in Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Even the legendary Kid Icarus made an appearance (okay, I admit it, I kind of let out a fanboy squeal of delight at that one).
If you have been to Disneyland or Disney World, and if you have kids, you know it is a big deal to meet the characters. These are human actors dressed up as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, etc. Here is a typical interaction with one of these characters. Note the eyes, the mouth and the voice: [...]
With every Pixar movie, I have a “how’d they do that?” moment. For “A Bug’s Life,” it was the blades of grass. “Finding Nemo?” The water. “Monsters, Inc.” and “The Incredibles”? Hair. It’s animating the little details that seems so cool to me, perhaps because I can’t imagine taking the time to manage it.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Today Disney and video streaming site Hulu announced a partnership that will put Disney and ABC programming onto the site. And, according to John Paczkowski at All Things D, Disney isn’t just adding programming, it’s becoming a partner in the venture. In fact, it’s taking a 27 percent stake.
Paczkowski said that no ESPN material will show up on Hulu as a result of this agreement. And nothing was said about Disney animation, which bums me out. I’d really like to be able to view classic animated shorts online. Though maybe that’s what the press release says when it said “popular library titles from the Walt Disney Studios.” Somehow I doubt it.
What will you see? You’ll be happy if you’re a Lost or Gray’s Anatomy fan. Also, Desperate Housewives, Private Practice, Jimmy Kimmel Live and other ABC shows. There’ll be soaps, ABC Family programming and some Disney Channel original programming.
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