Something On A Sunday

Along Main Street, Breckenridge - 02.06.10

A Sign It's Saturday

I wish I could either bring this store to where I live, or put my office in this store. I love being surrounded by toys.

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I Want To Be Like You

I grew up with The Jungle Book being one of my favorite films. I remember this as one that my father took me to see. I have several memories of this film but three in particular that I'll share here, now.

I love the song King Louie sings, I Wan'na Be Like You. Louis Prima gave a phenomenal performance. Even now, I'll be walking through the house and every now and then break out with a rousing "Ooh-ooh-ooh, I wan'na be like you-ooh-ooh."

I also like the line that Baloo speaks during the song, once he has gotten caught up in the beat, "I'm gone man, solid gone."

And finally, the vultures. "What you want to do?" "I don't know, what do you want to do?" "Oh, now don't start that again."

While Devon and I were strolling through Disney's Animal Kingdom, walking from Asia to Africa, I spotted King Louie walking along a path to our right. I just couldn't help introducing my grandson to these old favoritesMore to follow...

Disney World After Dark: The Darkroom

I was once asked what was my least favorite park in Walt Disney World. Without having to give it much thought, I answered, Disney's Hollywood Studios. And truly, it isn't that I didn't like it the least, I simply liked the other parks more. Now having shared that I will add that DHS is growing on me.

It is growing on me but not for the rides or attractions; though any visit to the park is not complete without a spin on the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith, a run through the arcade fun of Toy Story Midway Mania and a nostalgic journey through film in The Great Movie Ride. It is also not about the food; though a trip for me is certainly not complete without PB&J shake at the 50's Prime Time Cafe and Carrot Cake Cookie from The Writers Stop.

It is growing on me and it is for the architecture! The Studios are filled with spectacular examples of Art Deco architecture along Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards and these facades have become a magnet for me whenever I am in the park - especially at night. The Studios also offer up a few examples of "California Crazy" or Programmatic architecture. Programmactic architecture is also known as "mimetic" or "mimic" architecture in that its design mimics something not usually associated with buildings. One example of this greets you as you enter the park and begin to make your way down Hollywood Blvd. It is The Darkroom.

The facade of The Darkroom in DHS is fashioned after The Darkroom camera shop once located at 5370 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The shop was built in 1938. To learn more about this architectural gem, visit PreserveLA.

In the weeks to come, Disney World After Dark will explore some my favorite nighttime shots inside Disney's Hollywood Studios.

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Something On A Sunday

Red Rocks Trading Post - 02.05.10

A Sign It's Saturday

Once upon a time you would ride through a room called the Art Room. It was like entering a dream filled with rainbows of color and a carousel of origami animals. It was magic and It was one of my favorite places to be in Epcot.


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The Women In My Life

When I was a child going the movie theater was a big deal. I was seven years old in 1964 and there was a new Disney film out. My dad stayed home with my baby sister and my mom took me to the movie. The movie was Mary Poppins.

I wouldn’t say that I developed a boyhood crush for Mary Poppins, or for Julie Andrews. No, that honor was reserved for Vera Ellen. But the character of Mary Poppins was magical. What child would not want a nanny, or a babysitter, who could take you on adventures through a chalk pavement drawing, or serve tea from a tea setting floating near the ceiling. With her charming, but firm disposition, her practically perfect ways and a spoon full of sugar, she managed to transform the Banks children, the Banks household and finally, Mr. Banks himself.

As for Dame Andrews, Mary Poppins was the first in a long line of film successes. Walt Disney was so taken by her performance as Guinervere in the Lerner and Lowe production of Camelot, that he waited until after the birth of her daughter to begin filming. Her performance earned her the 1964 Academy Award for Best Actress. This was only the second time in Academy history that an actress was awarded for their first motion picture role. It happened previously with Shirley Booth in Come Back Little Sheba. It has occurred since with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl and Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God.

Something else forever linked to the success of Mary Poppins, is the musical score. In the years since the film opened, two songs continue to hold a special place in my memory. Feed the Birds is quite simply one of the greatest songs ever written. The Sherman Brothers crafted a song with a simple, yet profound, message. With 146 words they expressed this truth: it doesn’t take much effort to be kind and to genuinely care for another person. Add to that the image of Jane Darwell sitting at the foot of the stairs of the majestic St. Paul’s Cathedral, spreading her love, mixed with a bit of seed, and you have a beautiful moment in film.

The other song is A Man Has Dreams. The opening two lines could very well serve as an anthem to every man who ever dared to dream.

“A man has dreams of walking with giants

To carve his niche in the edifice of time.”

What man hasn’t dreamt of becoming something more than they are. I have dreamed and continue to dream. But I do so with the understanding that it is matters not what I become, if along the way, I lose the one’s I care most about.

I aspired to greatness and found it. It is, for me, to be a good husband and son, a good father and grandfather, a good brother and uncle, a good man. I have had my whole life to understand that this is who I am and to become perfectly content in that understanding. But, looking back over all these years, I can look to a time when I was seven and an English nanny came into my life and taught me a few things about what it means to be good.

Thank you Mary Poppins.

Whatever You Call It

What do you say when you're closing in on the next trip to Walt Disney World? Some say they are doing the "Single Digit Dance". I like to refer to my walk through Orlando International as doing "The MCO Shuffle". And we may recall the commercial that has the little boy saying, "I'm too excited to sleep!" Whichever you choose (and there may be other expressions you use), it all says, "I'm going to Disney World!"

And I am! I am preparing for my fourth trip in the last 176 days.

It is difficult people who do not share or understand the passion that some of us hold for Walt Disney World to grasp why we take so many trips to The World, and then start planning the next one the minute we get home. And sometimes it is hard for us to express why.

On this occasion, my reason is simple. I am flying down to visit with a friend and his family. While I lived in England I played in band and became great friends with a guy named Dave Steer. I got to know his family and we would take the occasional road trip down to London together.

It has been a long time, too long in fact, since Dave and I have seen each other. So when I heard he was bringing the fam to the U.S. I jumped at the chance to visit. It could have been anywhere in the country and I would have made the effort. But as luck would have it, he felt it was a good idea to share Walt Disney World with his wife and sons. Frankly, I can't argue with the man's logic.

So, beginning today I am doing the "Single Digit Dance". On 02.25.10 I'll be laying awake in bed crying out "I'm too excitied to sleep!" Then at 8:35 p.m. on 02.26 I'll be doing "The MCO Shuffle" on my way to spend time wth Dave, Sue, Ben and Jake.

More to follow (I'm sure I'll Tweet a few updates)...

Where In The World: 01.31.10 Revisited

We've had one guess on our 01.31.10 installment of Where In The World, and sadly, it was not the correct one. Care to try?

Where in the world would you find this?

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Something On A Sunday

My Buddy - My Valentine - My Wife - My Heartbeat!

A Sign It's Saturday

A Sign It's Saturday is something new here on The Disney Obsession. Here I'll highlight a photograph of some of my favorite rides, attractions, or places to be in Walt Disney World. And what better way to start than with my all time favorite ride.

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Something On A Sunday

Adventures at 12,000 feet.

"Adventure is out there!"

This weekend, Mrs. Doc and I are in Denver, Colorado visiting my son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. The slogan for this weekend comes from the Best Picture Academy Award nominated, "Up".

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A Night at The Pop: The 90's

Here we are. We have arrived in the 1990's. The last decade of an old millennium and the last section of the classic years of the Pop Century Resort.

The 1990’s, like the decades that came before, was filled with it share of historical and cultural events that mark the decade. But since you are reading a blog, I thought I would use this paragraph to highlight the technological aspects of the decade. In particular, Microsoft Windows became the operating system for the IBM PC and in the decade released Windows NT 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98. Web browsers, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, were developed and released allowing for ease in using the Internet. Advances were made in on-line connectivity bringing a drastically increased usage in e-mail and instant messaging. Digital cameras became commercially available and mobile phones virtually replaced the need for pagers. Taken together, this enables us to visit Walt Disney World (or your Disney Park of choice) and chronicle your adventures instantly to others back home.

Oh, and one other item of interest, I remember stepping outside my flat in the Midlands of England in April 1997. For several nights I would look up and marvel at the Hale-Bopp comet. Mark your calendars. The next time we can look up and see this particular comet will be 4385.

In the music world, the Grammy Award for Best Song went to Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler (1990), From a Distance by Bette Midler (1991), Unforgettable by Natalie Cole with Nat King Cole (1992), Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton (1993), A Whole New World by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle (1994), Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen (1995), Kiss from a Rose by Seal (1996), Change the World by Eric Clapton (1997), Sunny Came Home by Shawn Colvin (1998), and My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion (1999). Sadly for us dyed-in-the-wool Beatle fans, not a single former Beatle had a nomination.

During the decade, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to Oscar Hijuelos for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1990), John Updike for Rabbit At Rest (1991), Jane Smiley for A Thousand Acres (1992), Robert Olen Butler for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain(1993), E Annie Proulx for The Shipping News (1994), Carol Shields for The Stone Diaries(1995), Richard Ford for Independence Day (1996), Steven Millhauser for Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1997), Philip Roth for American Pastoral (1998), and Michael Cunningham for The Hours (1999). One of my favorite writers of history, David McCullough, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography for Truman in 1993.


In motion pictures, the 90's provided films of epic proportions beginning with the Academy Award winning Dances with Wolves in 1990. This film, I believe, was one of the first that made audiences ask themselves the question, "Do I see this on the big screen or wait for the home video release?" The Michael Blake script/novel demanded being seen on a big screen as many others of that decade did. Other Academy Awards winners for Best Picture were The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Unforgiven (1992), Schindler’s List (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), Braveheart (1995), The English Patient (1996), Titanic (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998) and American Beauty (1999).

Disney Animation was experiencing a renaissance; some say a second Golden Age. The studios released its first sequel to an animated feature with The Rescuers Down Under on November 16, 1990. Beauty and the Beast had its general release on November 22, 1991 and captured the hearts of many, becoming the only animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. The score and the original song Beauty and the Beast did win Academy awards. Just over one year later, Disney released Aladdin on November 25, 1992. As Beauty did the previous year, Aladdin won Academy Awards for Best Score and Best Original Song with A Whole New World. Then on June 24, 1994 the county was given The Lion King. The film also won Best Score and Best Original Song Academy Awards. Before we continue, let me just interject that these three films had a combined production budget of $98 million. The worldwide gross of $1,665,242,549.00. A testament to their success and their popularity.

This decade in Disney animation continues with Pocahontas opening to general release on June 23, 1995 following a premier in New York's Central Park on June 16, 1995. The bells of Notre Dame rang with the release of The Hunchback of Notre Dame on June 21, 1996. On June 27, 1997 Hercules taught us that we too can go the distance. Mulan premiered on June 19, 1998 and Tarzan swung into our lives on June 18, 1999 accompanied by a Phil Collins soundtrack, that for me, was incredible. I still crank it up every now and then.

The success of the decade was not limited to the animated film division. In the early 90's, Michael Eisner proclaimed "The Disney Decade". The decade saw the opening of Disneyland Paris (opened as Euro Disney) on April 12, 1992. Construction began on Disney's California Adventure in 1998. The second gate in Paris was originally schedule to open in 1996, but plans were halted until after the Disneyland park financial picture improved. It subsequently went back into development and Walt Disney Studios Park opened in 2002. A fourth gate in Florida opened on April 22, 1998 with Disney's Animal Kingdom. And it didn't stop with parks. In Walt Disney World alone 10 new hotels were opened adding an estimated 12, 735 rooms to the resort.

Something else was happening about 360 miles north of the Burbank studios in the small city of Emeryville. Pixar, founded in in 1986, was hard at work perfecting its technology and processes. On November 17, 1995 it released Toy Story, and the revolution in computer generated animation was under way. Pixar followed with A Bug's Life on November 25, 1998 and Toy Story II on November 19, 1999. Again, let's do the numbers: three films with a combined production budget of $180 million take in a worldwide gross of $1,210,372,480.00. Not to bad day at the office.

On the sports front, let's end our examination of the decades with football. Specifically with my favorite team, the Tennessee Titans. The Titans were the 1999 AFC Champions and played in Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta. It was arguably one of the greatest Super Bowls ever played. With a 1:54 left in the game and down 23-16, the Titans drive the ball to the Rams 10 yard line. Then with :06 left, McNair hits Kevin Dyson at the 3. He is tackled at the 1 with an outstretched arm reaching for the goal line. As a Titans fan, it was heartbreaking. As a football fan, it was an amazing game and what a Super Bowl should be. By the way, that year, Disney produced the half-time show. The theme: Tapestry of Nations.

I hope you have enjoyed our trip back to the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's. I may see if I can dig up some concept art for Pop Century Legendary Years and can reach way back and take a look at what was happening in the years between 1900 and 1949.

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To Infinity and Beyond

If you have just taken your cruise through the Gamma Quadrant and helped protect the universe from the Evil Emperor Zurg, don't be so quick to set off on other adventures. As tempting as they may, your adventure through Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin may not yet be complete. Upon exiting that universe, be sure to look slightly to your right and ahead. It may be possible that you'll see Mr. Lightyear himself there waiting to congratulate you on a job well done.

Be sure to have your Photopass card handy.

Oh, and just so you know, Devon and I both scored 999,999 on our journey.

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