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This past Friday night, visitors to the Adventurers Club got to see a brand-new artifact added to the wall in the Main Salon : A video projection screen. Photo by Max Schilling Given that this piece of Pleasure Island is supposed to be a recreation of a gentlemen's club from the 1930s, one might wonder...

Will you be visiting Walt Disney World over the next week-to-10-days? If so, keep a close eye out for any cast members clutching clipboards. Who may want to hear your opinion on WDI's recently revamped plans for Disney's Night Kingdom . That's right. WDW's answer to Discovery Cove has undergone a rethink...

It's still hard for all us Adventurers Club fans to fathom that -- just seven weeks from now (give or take a day or two) -- that Pleasure Island will be no more. That on September 28th, WDW will permanently pull the plug on PI . Having spent many pleasant nights at the Club, I just can't imagine a Disney...

This past Friday, the Disney community lost one of its celebrities. Harriet Burns passed on at the age of 79. She was the first woman hired by WED as an artist. She was born in San Antonio and remained in Texas for most of her young life, venturing only to Dallas to pursue a college degree in art in...

Judging by the long lines at " Toy Story Mania " as well as the brisk business that "Hey Howdy Hey!" & the gift shop across the way have been doing, it would appear that Pixar Place has already proven to be a very popular addition to Disney's Hollywood Studios . The only problem with the studio theme...

Did you catch that story late last month about Shanghai Disneyland? Wen Wei Po , a Hong Kong-based newspaper, reported that " ... after 10 years of tough negotiations ..." the Walt Disney Company had finally cut a deal to build a theme park in China's business hub. What was fascinating about this particular...

It's one of the main reasons that people just can't stop talking about " WALL-E ." And -- no -- I'm not talking about the opening weekend grosses for this new Andrew Stanton movie (Though -- now that we've broached this subject -- while "WALL-E" didn't earn the $70-million-plus that Mouse House officials...

Like most old guys, I tend to get my brain stuck in a certain time frame. So I didn't immediately recognize the man sitting in the limo. For some odd reason, I expected to see the guy I remembered. The slender, dark haired young man with the horn rimmed glasses. However, this older gentleman didn't exactly...

Christy S. writes in to say: Jim When I was a little girl, my father and I flew down to Walt Disney World . This was just a year or so after the resort opened and I distinctly remember taking a boat ride with my father out to some island. Once we got there, these pirates led us on a treasure hunt which...

Do you remember that story that JHM ran back in January? You know, the one where we talked how -- in response to guest complaints about somewhat gruesome gags like "Please drag your wretched bodies to the dead center of the room" and "Please follow the blood red carpet into the Foyer" -- the Imagineers...

Picking up where we left off yesterday ... Despite the two MCA lawsuits, Disney continued to develop plans for the Disney-MGM Studio Backlot in Burbank . At the helm of the Disney project were two Imagineers: a young Joe Rohde (then 32-years-old) and Rick Rothschild . Their mission was to seamlessly...

Picking up where we left off yesterday ... During the first five months of 1987, Burbank city officials worked toward an agreement with Disney to build a theme-park-slash-shopping-center in their downtown district. At issue was the money: Disney wanted to buy the land for next to nothing. Disney also...

In God's Waiting Room (AKA Florida), you're bound to run into a few blue hairs over the course of your day. Though -- that said -- one wonders what the AARP would make of the bunch pictured below. Photo by Nancy Stadler Believe it or not, the multiple Marges that you see above aren't actors. They were...

Remember back in October of last year, when the Walt Disney Company announced that it would be spending over a billion dollars to redo California Adventure ? The word coming out of Burbank then was that -- as soon as the Christmas decorations came down at the Disneyland Resort -- the bulldozers would...

It's as predictable as the tides. First a new attraction soft-opens at one of the Disney theme parks. And then someone online declares this new ride or show is " ... the worst thing that Imagineering has ever designed." Which is why -- on the heels of "Spaceship Earth" 's torturous test-and-adjust period...

By now, you've probably heard about the Mr. Potato Head that's been installed in the queue area of " Toy Story Mania ." How this 5 foot, 2 inch AA figure (Which reportedly cost a million dollars to build) will actually address individual quests as they stand there, waiting in the attraction's queue area...

Have you seen that clip on YouTube ? The one that shows how the Mr. Potato Head AA figure that you find in the queue area of Disney's " Toy Story Mania " can actually pull off its own ear? Well, that's nothing. Wait 'til you hear about how the Imagineers are now pulling out their hair as they try &...

Hey, folks -- Jim Hill here. Before this month's Floyd Norman column officially gets underway, I thought that I'd take a moment to let JHM readers know that Mr. Fun recently launched his very own blog. Appropriately titled Mr. Fun's Blog . So if you want more than just the usually once-a-month dose of...

For Disney's Animal Kingdom fans ... It's one of those bad news / good news kind of day. The bad news is ... Plans for DAK's long-in-development nighttime parade -- "Rivers of Lights" -- have been tabled. Not because Animal Kingdom management lost confidence in Steve Davison's original concept. But ...

When " Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! " re-opened last month after a three month long rehab, Disneyana fans were hoping that some significant changes would have been made to this DCA dark ride. But with the exception of some new safety gates that had been added to this attraction's load...