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Posted on May 17th, 2010 by Valarie Sukovaty, Disneyland Public Relations, Disney Parks Blog
Balloons have been a guest favorite since day one, literally. Disneyland has been selling balloons in the Park since 1955. So, how does that cool Mickey Mouse-shaped balloon get inside that clear balloon? It takes skill. And how do the vendors hold all those balloons without letting them go? Again, it takes skill and a special technique. Check out this video and see how they make balloon magic. By the way, if you ever pop a balloon while you are in the Park, just bring it back to the vendor and they will give you a new one!
Disneyland’s main waterway has always been called the Rivers of America, but it wasn’t clear what the name meant.
“We’ve never even named the rivers,” said Kim Irvine, art director of Walt Disney Imagineering.
For the first time, the body of water around Tom Sawyer Island will have distinct sections designed to look like four U.S. river regions: the Mississippi, the Columbia, the Potomac and the Rio Grande.
Crews are finishing up a four-month rehabilitation project mostly done while the Rivers of America was drained; this week, the Rivers was being re-filled.
Disney last upgraded scenes on the shoreline in 1991 when crews installed the Fantasmic! show, Irvine said. Disney showed the new features to employees and an Around.Disney.com reporter in a behind-the-scenes tour recently (We were not allowed to take photographs; look back next week when we will have them).
After the river was drained in January, Disney crews:
Put in a new paddle wheel on the Mark Twain Riverboat.
Replaced nine of the 11 docks.
The new features are visible from the riverboat, sailing ship and Davy Crockett’s Explorer Canoes and rafts to Pirate’s Lair on Tom Sawyer Island. All but the riverboat are set to re-open Saturday.
See a video about the Rivers of America in the previous post.
When the riverboat comes back as early as May 21, a guide will read a new speech that will explain at the beginning of the ride that guests will explore the four rivers on the journey.
New scenes include: deers drinking from a creek, Indian braves on Tom Sawyer Island, raccoons spied by a skunk, mountain lions hiding in the grass and an osprey on top of the winch beam close to the riverboat dock. Some old animals, including a group of moose, were repositioned in new scenes.
Disney attraction creators, called Imagineers, consulted original sketches from Walt Disney collaborators Marc Davis and Sam McKim for the river to come up with new ideas. Some scenes, including the raccoons, were from those old plans.
The previously burning cabin got a new theme: Mike Fink, Davy Crockett’s rival and later friend, is the new resident. His keel boat, the Gullywhumper from the previous Disneyland ride, was placed in front of the cabin. Visitors will hear Crockett and Fink arguing from the boats.
“We had the Gullywhumper available, and we had the story,” Irvine said. “We kind of like to go back to our history.”
Along the 25,000 square feet of river’s edge, crews added new trees and rockwork to define the regions. In the Columbia area, for example, horticulturists planted evergreens and ferns to make the region appear similar to tree scenes in “Twilight,” Irvine said. Along the Rio Grande, red rocks on the shoreline blend in with the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad nearby.
The old version of Rivers of America was “just sort of a mish-mash,” said Karen Hedges, Disneyland Resort’s horticulture director.
The empty river gave horticulturists a rare opportunity to do landscaping along the river from the ground floor and during the day time, said Nicole Hill, a Disneyland Resort horticulture manager. Usually, gardeners must trim trees and spruce up the shoreline from river rafts, taking everything in and out from the boats overnight.
“I think everybody will notice the difference,” said David Berrio, a Disneyland Resort horticulture manager.
The cool article above is courtesy of ocresort.freedomblogging.com.
When you wish upon a star, dreams do come true…especially if you are wishing for FREE downloads of 50 Disney tunes over 50 days. Walt Disney Records is offering the deal to those who follow Disney on Facebook or Twitter. The promo started Monday and continues for 50 days. Tunes come from Disney Channel original flicks like “Camp Rock” and “High School Musical,” Disney Channel TV hits including “Hannah Montana” and “Wizards of Waverly Place” and favorite Disney films such as “Beauty and the Beast,” “Toy Story” and “Bambi.” Thanks to our sister site Houston on the Cheap for the head’s up.
With the help of what looks like a fire company’s hose, Disney began re-filling the Rivers of America on Monday.
“Look, they’re refilling it,” said one mother to her daughter as they peeked through the temporary fence Disneyland set up in front of New Orleans Square around the famous waterway surrounding Tom Sawyer Island.
The hose, set on the dock of the Mark Twain Riverboat, had by the afternoon raised the water level to near the top of the paddlewheeler’s guide rail at the river’s bottom.
While some Disneyland guests peeked through the cracks of the fence, others caught a view of the slow-moving process from atop the bridge near the entrance to the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.
“The ducks are already swimming in it,” said a daughter to her father from the bridge.
Rivers of America had been empty for four months so that workers could make improvements, including the replacement of the entire track that guides the Mark Twain Riverboat and the Sailing Ship Columbia on their trips around the river. Read more about the Disneyland river refilling in a previous story.
Crews turned on the water shortly after 9 a.m., said Betsy Sanchez, a Disneyland Resort spokeswoman. The river is scheduled to re-open for visitors on Saturday.
When emptied over seven days, the Rivers of America’s 6 million gallons of water went to a recycling facility instead of being dumped into the ocean, as Disney used to do. The last draining of the rivers was in 2003. This time, most of the water was sent to holding ponds, where it seeped into the groundwater for future use.
“They are theoretically getting some of this water back,” said Mike Markus, general manager of the Orange County Water District. “There’s a certain cycle to it. They drained it, we treated it, it became part of (the) groundwater basin, and they are extracting it.”
(Disney first used the recycling process when it emptied Paradise Bay in Disney’s California Adventure for the installation of the upcoming World of Color show.)
While the riverbed was dry, crews replaced the boat tracks, rehabilitated attractions and added a few features to the shoreline. Blue construction walls obstructed most of the view for visitors.
One of the new features is a keel boat near the settler’s cabin on Tom Sawyer’s Island. The keel boat will belong to Mike Fink, a character from Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett television series. Fink is supposed to take up residence in the cabin that used to be known as the Burning Settler’s Cabin. “It’s good that he purchased that old burned-out property and fixed it up,” said Werner Weiss of Yesterland.com, a website devoted to past Disneyland attractions, playing along with the tale.
The river will also get some new deer and Indian figures, as well as new landscaping depicting areas of four American waterways: the Mississippi, Columbia, Rio Grande and Potomac.
The following attractions have been closed since January: Mark Twain Riverboat, Pirate’s Lair on Tom Sawyer’s Island, Sailing Ship Columbia and Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes. All attractions, except for the riverboat, are scheduled to resume Saturday. Visitors are expected to go back on the riverboat May 21. Sarah Tully helped report and write this story.
Here's a video that takes us inside the control booth as Walt Disney Imagineers work overnight testing lights, fire and nearly 1,200 fountains for the new nighttime spectacular “World of Color.” You’ll also see some exclusive footage from their time lapse camera and more glimpses of the show. “World of Color” is set to debut on June 11. Enjoy, courtesy of Disney Parks Blog.
When you wish upon a star, dreams do come true…especially if you are wishing for 
