Laura's Disney Lines

The Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough at Disneyland, which opened late last year, requires guests to climb stairs and navigate some rather twisty, narrow passageways. ("A twisty maze of passages, all alike" for those of you who remember Adventure!) But it's a problem for those with limited mobility.

Disney offers a virtual experience for those who are unable (or don't wish) to climb around inside the castle. I was able to experience this on a couple of visits this year and I was very pleasantly surprised - there's a few things I like better about the virtual experience than the real thing!

The virtual experience takes place in a room in the castle (where one of the shops used to be). There's a tapestry on the wall, a bench to sit on (though as you can see in the pictures below on my first visit this was some nice "throne" type chairs and not a metal bench), and a display case of Sleeping Beauty knick-knacks. There's also a magic mirror...

As the virtual experience begins, this mirror transforms into a high-definition television screen. The trip through the Castle Walk through starts at the entrance as a narrator begins to tell the story of Sleeping Beauty. There's some musical accompaniment, also. (And there are captions on the display itself, though I found those distracting.)

The virtual trip provides visuals of the entire attraction, including going up the steps and through the passageways (which are, fortunately, not really all alike!). It stops at each of the scenes inside, and shows you the entire scene including any special effects there might be. I thought it was a lot easier to see those on the screen than it was in the attraction!

It also visits the Corridor of Goons and allows the viewer to see those effects (and some of those weren't working in the real walkthrough that I did afterwards).

As they all "live happily ever after" the Magic Mirror closes and the virtual experience comes to an end.

I thought the narration was a really nice touch - though the entire video isn't narrated - mostly at the beginning and at the end.

The entire virtual experience takes about seven-and-a-half minutes. It starts to repeat within a minute or so.

Looking up at the ceiling, written on the beams were the gifts from the three Good Fairies.

I haven't seen any Cast Members monitoring the room when I've been there - the door was open and anyone could come and go as they pleased - the video was set to auto-repeat once it finished.

The "it's a small world" attraction at Disneyland underwent a long rehab
in 2008 - it closed in January and didn't reopen until November. When it
did reopen, it was in the holiday configuration, so some of the changes
were not yet in place. The most controversial change seemed to be the
proposed addition of Disney characters to the attraction - a lot of Disney
fans were very vocal in their opposition to that idea..

After the holidays, the attraction went into rehab again, the holiday
overlay was removed, and the remaining changes were put into place. Today
the attraction was open to members of the media and to Annual
Passholders (the attraction opens to the public on Friday, February
6.). As a representative of AllEars® I was invited to do a ride-through
of the attraction with Imagineer Kim Irvine, which was quite an
honor!

But before the ride-through with Kim Irvine I was able to ride
twice, and get some idea of what the updated attraction was like.
Up front I have to tell you that I'm not a huge fan of "it's a small
world" - That Song really gets to me, and I can usually only stand
it in it's holiday configuration (though I love the holiday edition!).
So it's probably been almost 10 years since I was in the non-holiday
version.

I was very impressed with the new attraction. It looks just gorgeous -
lots of vibrant colors, and the lighting is much improved. And the
characters? They aren't in-your-face at all - they have taken
characters who fit into the various scenes (like Cinderella in
France, Mulan in China, Simba in Africa), and given them the same
stylized "small world" look. For the most part, if you didn't know
they were new, you wouldn't know they hadn't been there all along.
I actually had a hard time finding them all, and only found two of
them because other people told me where to look. I think that part
of the fun of the new attraction is going to be trying to find the
characters - I think that's something that will appeal to kids and
adults - I know I had fun with it. It would be nice if Disney would
hand out a list, though.

The other big change is the addition of the "Spirit of America"
scene. It's a western scene with a farm on one side, and hills
with some cowboys and Native Americans on the other side, Woody and
Jessie from Toy Story make an appearance as well. The scene was
based on original concept art by Mary Blair.

The soundtrack has been augmented with short snippets of themes from
Disney movies, such as "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. This is very
subtle, and I have to admit that I never could hear them, even though I
knew they were there.

I will have more on the ride-through with Kim Irvine after I have a
chance to listen to my audio recording - with That Song playing at a fairly
high volume it was hard to hear her sometimes. It was interesting to
hear what she has to say.

There are supposed to be 29 characters in the ride - here are the ones
that I found. Let me know if you think I got any wrong.

UK:
Peter Pan and Tinker Bell
Alice in Wonderland and the White Rabbit

France:
Cinderella, Jacques, and Gus

Italy:
Pinocchio

Middle East:
Aladdin, Jasmine, and Abu - and I think the Flying Carpet should count
as a character.

China:
Mulan, Mushu, and Mushu kite

Africa:
Simba, Pumbaa and Timon (I really like how they used the same hot pink
and purple color for Pumbaa that they use on the hippo in the same scene.)

Mexico:
Donald, Panchito and Jose Carioca (Donald is the only member of the Fab
Five to appear)

Under the Sea:
Ariel and Flounder (Ariel sings That Song as a solo)

Down Under:
Dory and Nemo

Hawaii:
Lilo and Stitch

Spirit of America:
Jessie, Woody and Bullseye

That's 29...does that mean I got them all? That's not counting the
flying carpet, and I'm not sure if the Mushu kite counts or not.

***Friday morning update:

AllEars reader Carol tells me that I missed Jiminy Cricket, who is in the Italy scene with Pinocchio. We think that he is just barely visible in the upper right hand corner of the Pinocchio photo posted further up. Thanks, Carol!

Jeanine Yamanaka toured the newly reopened Sleeping Beauty Castle Walk-through and shares this description and photos.

The Sleeping Beauty Castle Walk-Through, dormant since October 7, 2001, has reopened at Disneyland with some shiny new effects, and artwork more in keeping with the Eyvind Earle style of the movie.

For those who remember the old walk-through, some things are fairly familiar, such as the storybook pages that narrate you through the Sleeping Beauty tale.

These pages are essentially unchanged from the previous versions, although nice and vivid with newness.

The bulk of the walk-through is basically passing through dimly-lit corridors and staircases to reach 10 different tableaus illustrating various scenes from the movie. While the last version had three-dimensional dolls enacting the parts (a little like Barbie Aurora!) this retooling opts for a more animation-cel-like appearance.

The movement in most of the windows is largely due to an effect which seems similar to the Pepper’s Ghost illusion used in the Haunted Mansion. Photos are a little tricky with the combination of the darkness and the reflective glass and the 100 people in back of you waiting impatiently to see what’s going on.

The passageways are pretty narrow and twisty, so people unable to navigate them or the couple of stairways are apparently able to view the whole thing from a special room on the ground floor of the Castle.

A significant amount of excavation was done in restoring the attraction, which had been revised in the 1970’s to include more movement and dimensionality, but which lacked the characteristic Earle “look” that permeated the film.

One of the things found during the refurbishment was the original Corridor of Goons effect. Previously, for a short time, there were doors where you could look through the keyholes and see Maleficent’s henchmen…henchthings…marching around. Unfortunately, the amount of time it encouraged people to spend there created a logjam that slowed down traffic through the attraction enough where the whole thing was eventually boarded over.

In the new attraction, however, you may see something of them once more.

This diorama has an impressive metamorphosis effect that takes a little while to cycle through—in general, each window requires stopping and watching for awhile to see all the changes that occur.

But it all ends happily ever after…Or does it? A last intimation that the reports of Maleficent’s death have been greatly exaggerated, may leave you with a mild “sense of foreboding…”

The attraction, while certainly not an “E” ticket, or even a “C” ticket, is very well done and worth a look, even just for the fun of clambering around inside the Castle. Lines stretched around the side and almost to the front of the Castle on opening day, but moved fairly steadily. Once inside, it took approximately 30 minutes to complete.

I'm just back from a short overnight trip to Disneyland - we went up to attend Taste - the final signature event of this year's Food and Wine Festival. Taste was fun - I'll have more information and pictures up later.

We stayed at the Paradise Pier - the last time I stayed there was almost 11 years ago, when it was still called the Pan-Pacific. We had a room with a view of the Paradise Pier area of DCA - it was really pretty at night:

And in the early morning:

It also gave us quite an interesting perspective for viewing the Pixar Play Parade, which has changed (again) from what I saw a couple of weeks ago, as I reported in this blog entry. Lightning McQueen and Mater were back at the beginning and end of the parade. And the stilt-walking chefs of Ratatouille also returned - though there were only three of them.

From the room we could see many of the floats on the parade route

The biggest change, though, is the return of the "bug's life" parade unit - Heimlich and his many parts plus the float. The float was modified significantly - only the front part with Flik and Atta on the swing is there now. It looks a little odd when you compare it with the size of the floats for all of the other units.

Even with the "bug's life" float back, the weird Toy Story Tinker Toy creature is still part of the parade (but don't get me wrong, I think it looks pretty cool):

The acrobats have not returned to the Toy Story float - it's still just the monkeys hanging on the bar.

A while ago I talked about the Prince Caspian Pre-Parade that was coming to Disneyland at the end of April, and I had a chance to see that. I didn't notice any swooning females, but Caspian looked pretty good. And the horse was quite beautiful, and BIG.

He had quite an entourage - the banner bearers in front, the standard bearers, plus the courtier leading the horse - but it was his final attendant who cracked me up - The Royal Pooper Scooper. :-)

During Magic Morning I had a chance to get a close look at Jingles, the lead horse on the King Arthur Carrousel, which was dedicated to Julie Andrews last month. If you look closely you can see Mary Poppins' umbrella on the rump. Her initials, JA, the number 50, and Mary Poppins' boots and flying silhouette are on the saddle. It's really beautiful - so detailed!

The sparkling/chasing lights that are on the floral Mickey at the entrance to Disneyland cooperated with me a lot better than they did when I was there with Lisa Berton back in March - this time the light show was running almost continuously. It's more impressive in person when you can watch the lights as they move and twinkle, but hopefully you get the idea.

And now that I'm back from Disneyland I'm leaving for Disney World, where I'm planning to blog live this week. A little bonus trip for me - but I'll be writing more about that in my next blog entry.