China pavilion

- Meglio un giorno da leona che cento da pecora.
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Dividends

My mom and dad bought me one share of Disney stock for Christmas several years back and it is the gift that just keeps on giving year after year.



Xtencio

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getting to the magic kingdom early

one thing i love to do when visiting wdw is to wander the resorts on the magic kingdom resort loop prior to opening of the park.  this is a time when having a car with you at wdw comes in handy. i am usually one of the first cars in the parking lot on that day and get to park like i'm a vip.

so what i do is park at the ticket and transportation center, the ttc as it is often called, and then head left to the Polynesian resort.  early morning right after sunrise is a  great time to snap pictures.

you can wander through the Polynesian and then follow the trail on the far side which leads to the wedding pavilion and then onto the grand Floridian resort.

once you've wandered around the grounds here you can go upstairs in the lobby and catch the monorail over to the contemporary resort.

during recent renovations they added a great little place to grab a quick pick-up bite to eat next to chef mickeys. now as time grows near to park opening and you've snapped your shot of the five legged goat you can take the short walk over to the magic kingdom.  now you could get back on the monorail to get to the park but usually by this time families have gotten ready and are also headed that way, so i like my quiet time in the morning and try to avoid the crowds for as long as possible and its not a very long walk at all.

Where I'm coming from

Let me step back from my first two posts and give you a better idea where i'm coming from disney wise.

growing up my family never had the means to take that disney world vacation so my early disney development came from the movies my family rented in the early 80's.  friday night my dad would take us up to the video store to rent a vcr (thats right people use to rent vcrs) and a few movies, which were almost always disney films. so during those early years i watched and fell in love with many of disney's live action films.  i remember one particular tape we rented that was a video tour of wdw. that video and show like "disney world inside out" kept the fascination with disney world in my heart for years. 

in the summer of 1994 i went on a trip with a buddy down to key west where we were going to camp and just chill for a week or so. in the office of the campground we were staying at they had several brochures for wdw. i knew this was my chance to get to wdw and so at the age of 20  i dragged my buddy up to wdw for my first trip.

since that time i've made  another dozen or so trips at different times down to the world. i love the parks.  people watching and picture taking are my park past times.  i could spend hours just walking the parks passing the time not going on a single ride. 

i am a believer in the disney magic.  there is something about disney that a lot of people just can't feel and don't understand.  a certain feel of comfort and familiarity that is great in this ever changing world.

so i know that my first couple posts may have had a anti-disney feel but i definitely am not.  i just believe that if disney isn't doing something to the standards they have set for themselves that they need to be called on it. 

hey disney! where are the movies at?

so this is a long time problem i have had with visiting disney resorts; where are the disney movies?

i can hear many of you now along with the cast members calling out that almost every shop on disney property sells movies.  while true i am not talking about the latest disney channel made for tv movie now available on dvd or the one movie currently released from the disney vault.  where can i find a selection of the vast disney movie library?

i can go to my local electronics super store or mega-bookstore and find a thousand times more disney films then i can actually at disney. why is that?  the one place on property i was able to find a good selection of disney movies was the virgin mega store which sadly has gone away and wasn't really a disney store.

i recently went to disneyland and the upcoming release of tron: legacy was everywhere; t-shirts, hats, toys, even a street party, but where in the hundred shops selling tron products can i find the movie tron? no where! that's where.

the first time i went to downtown disney in california i was very excited to see a store called the disney vault.  all right a the place where disney tells us all the disney classic films are kept only to be released once a decade for limited times and now here it is the repository of disney movies.  ARRRGGH! the disney vault while a cool disney store holds not a single disney film. why not?

in the disney vault concept the disney company has the perfect retail outlet for their fiilms.  imagine the extra incentive of traveling to a disney resort of getting to visit the disney vault an chosig any film from the disney past even the ones that are "in the vault" as the commercials we all see on tv say.  imagine this, disney imagineers have recently discovered walt's plans for the repository of his vast film archive and now that vault is open to the world.

please disney let me buy your movies from you.  let me come home from my trip to the beach club with a copy of condorman and the last flight of noah's ark.