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So where will you wind up spending MM’s b-day? It’s tomorrow, you know. November 18 th . That’s the date that The Walt Disney Company officially acknowledges as being this iconic character’s “ birthday ” (i.e. the day that “ Steamboat Willie ” – the first Mickey Mouse cartoon with synchronized sound...

For the better part of five years now, I have been waiting on “Wally Boag: Clown Prince of Disneyland” (August 2009, Disney Editions). Ever since I first learned that this project was in the works, I have been dying to get my hands on Gene Sands & Wally ’s book. So imagine my surprise last week when...

Long before Walt Disney dreamed of turning an Anaheim orange grove into the Happiest Place on Earth , there was this berry stand in Buena Park . Courtesy of the Orange County Historical Society During the depths of the Great Depression, Walter & Cordelia Knott kept their 20-acre farm afloat by selling...

You already know this story, right? Richard M. & Robert B. Sherman , the house composers for Walt Disney Studios while Walt was still alive. Academy Award winners for their work on “ Mary Poppins ,” Dick & Bob (aka “the boys”) had a gift for producing eminently hummable tunes. As is demonstrated...

Last Tuesday night, I traveled down to one of the cities I most dislike in all of Southern California: I went to Hollywood . Good ol’ Tinsel Town, with its sidewalk hucksters wearing eBay costumes of Bugs Bunny and SpongeBob , with its endless food courts and faux-trendy boutiques. Hollywood, that theme...

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...

As a kid I'd tune in the Wonderful World of Color every Sunday night. Most of the time Walt would introduce some western or historic feature - or some story like "Melvin, the Manic Marmoset" - and I'd switch over to watch Ed Sullivan . He had ventriloquists ! On a good week, there'd be an animated feature...

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...

Folks who visited Disney's Animal Kingdom late last month got something of a treat. In that -- for a while there, anyway -- most of " Expedition Everest " 's effects were actually working. The scenic mist that's supposed to drift off of Forbidden Mountain top actually did that. The fog bank that your...

Now THAT'S Dedication... Shortly after Disneyland opened in 1955, someone found an unpaid bill in a desk drawer amounting to thousands of dollars. When Walt heard about it, he is supposed to have said, “Well, when you do big things, you make big mistakes.“ Here's another example of this phenomenon, from...

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...

It's a lonely business, being the devoted fan of a theme park show that closed 22 years ago. Or so I thought until last Saturday's Golden Horseshoe Revue Dinner Show and Celebration, presented by the grand folks of Ape Pen Publishing and The Magic Makers. The evening grew out of the friendship of Ape...

My apologies, folks. I know that JHM has been somewhat erratic lately when it comes to maintaining our usual Monday-through-Friday publishing schedule. It's just that -- in order to score new stories for this website -- I sometimes have to do a little traveling. That's what I'm doing today, anyway. Flying...

Today, the "Special Edition" version of " The Aristocats " DVD goes on sale. Copyright 2008 Disney. All Rights Reserved And while it's hard to find fault with this 1970 Walt Disney Productions release itself (Which remains just as charming as ever. With Duchess the filthy rich feline falling for Thomas...

Last month, theme park fans the world over rejoiced at the news that the Walt Disney Company would be spending more than a billion dollars to redo DCA . With a large chunk of this cash being committed toward the retheming of the entrance portion of this troubled theme park . Which will soon be turned...

It's been a little over a week and I'm still trying to deal with reality. Sometimes, reality is hard to take. Although much has already been said and written , I feel there is still a little more to say about the loss of Disney Imagineer Bruce Gordon . It's difficult to believe that only two weeks ago...

What's in a name? Well, as Universal learned the hard way back in 1998, when it decided to rename its recently expanded resort " '>Universal Studios Escape " and thus confused hundreds of thousands of tourists ... Sometimes picking the wrong name for your theme park and/or resort can prove to be disastrous...

Are you familiar with the old adage that "Good things come to those who wait"? Well, Disneyana fans have been waiting a long time for " Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park ." And a lot of folks are now wondering why it's taking so long for this Disney Editions...

First up, Michael R. writes in to ask: I was wondering if there was any specific reason why there has not been a release of the " Disney-MGM Studios " version of (the " Imagineering Field Guide ") series? They've released books for the other three parks and I understand now they're working on the CA...

If you've been reading JHM for a while now, you already know that I'm a very big fan of Didier Ghez 's "Walt's People" books . So -- that said -- is it really all that big a surprise that I enjoyed reading " Volume 5 " of this ongoing series. Mind you, at 443 pages in length, this paperback is the heftiest...