Michelle Valladolid
Michelle Valladolid
Michelle Valladolid aka The Fabulous Disney Babe has been a Disney and theme park fan since birth. Her parents were regulars at Date Night at Disneyland.
She spent her early childhood in Southern California, with regular visits to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. She lived in Yokohama , Japan for a short time, starting a lifelong love of Asian culture and classic Anime. In her early teens, she moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where she spent her formative years.
In January 1987, her parents took her to Walt Disney World. EPCOT Center changed her life. Michelle is autistic and her special focus is all things EPCOT Center to this day.
In 1993 she married Jim Hill of Jim Hill Media and settled down in Florida, eventually settling down with their baby Alice in Lake Buena Vista, steps away from the Hotel Plaza gate into Walt Disney World. She would put Alice in the Emmaljunga Stroller of Death and walk to the nearest hotel bus stop, take a bus to Epcot 95, then spend the afternoon walking around World Showcase Lagoon while the baby napped. She and her friends David Schiller and Thomas Taffinder started the Orlando Florida chapter of the NFFC (National Fantasy Fan Club, now Disneyana Fan Club) and served as President until 1996. She took part as press in the Walt Disney World 25th Anniversary in 1996. Later that year, she and Jim split and she and Alice moved back home to Hawaii. She briefly visited Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando in 2000. Upon returning to Hawaii in 1996, then back to California in 1997. During this time, she became involved in Usenet group alt.disney.disneyland, which led to her being a founding member of MousePlanet with her friend Al Lutz in 2000. She later moved to LaughingPlace.com then MouseInfo before starting FabulousDIsneyBabe.com. Meanwhile, she was attending college, where she got Microsoft teaching certification. She taught computer classes for people coming out of military service and prison before teaching at a small university in Orange County. She noticed that the university was hiring her former students to teach her classes and brainstormed a class only she could teach there: Manufacturing the Magic, a history of the American theme park. There were three class sessions, the third taking place at Disneyland itself (with permission from then Disneyland president Cynthia Harriss) the tour included a stop for lunch at Club 33. The class was a success.
She was working with Jim Hill and she and her friend Jon Nadelberg started JimHillMedia. She also wrote for Disney Magazine.
In 2004, A job with the NMCI-ISF (Navy Marine Core Intranet Information Strike Force) brought her back to Hawaii, working in a building on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor that still had bullet holes in it from the December 7, 1941 attack. She started fabsboards.com which split into MiceChat in 2005.
She moved back to California in 2009 to look after property they had inherited and decided to finish getting her Associates degree in Fine Arts. She met Noe Valladolid while working in the school’s specialized computer lab. Michelle and Noe, whom Michelle found out after they started dating was also a Disney expert, married in 2010 and Michelle earned her degree in 2012, picking up a certificate as a chocolatier along the way.
Michelle went on a Disney cruise in late 2012 and rejoined Dusty Sage at MiceChat soon afterwards, writing about history and Asian parks and doing obituaries. She remains there til this day.
She and Alice finally made it back to Orlando in 2015, spending time at Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando. In 2018 she launched the Pink Monorail podcast with Alice. They again visited Orlando and went on Alice’s first Disney Cruise in 2019.
Alice and her show partner Frankie started a Twitch stream, so Noe joined Michelle on the Pink Monorail podcast, bringing back and vastly expanding upon Michelle’s Ma
nufacturing the Magic class and much more to come.
