Very nice to see everyone, and yes, Jim Hill really does exist. Or if not, those folks at WDI really do know animatronics!
I tagged along with Jim and Chuck on their three Disneyland tours. Hope you enjoyed them. Heck, even I learned something new along the way as well.
The Meet ‘n’ Greet went well also, but we all missed Michelle and Alice who were both home with one of the many colds making the rounds. Thanks to better living through modern chemistry, I managed to enjoy the long weekend, if not the airline flights. Sinus troubles are just plain no fun at altitude.
Some observations from four days at the DLR:
1. DCA was busier than I have ever seen it. Aladdin may cost a bunch of money every day, but the 6:30 show on Friday was packed with a full house. Michele and I had seats in the rear of the orchestra level and enjoyed it. Give props to the Genie as he steals the show with all of the best lines. And despite what others have said, for the average guy and gal, the show does work. As well as any touring company of numerous Broadway musicals I’ve seen, the cast and crew did just fine.
2. We took the time to enjoy the wine tasting in DCA also on Friday afternoon. For $7 each, we got to sample four California wines with Elizabeth as our host. She was not only informative, but also entertaining. The cost was comparable to a single glass of wine, and the four in our group all gave her and the experience high marks.
3. “Flik’s Fun Fair” was also well received, and while we didn’t have any six-year olds as testers, we all gave in and did the Tuck & Roll Bumper Cars. For the younger crowd, the speed is just fine. The same for Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train. Cute, and even flavorful with a spritz from the watermelon.
4. Cheerleaders. Like Indiana Jones and Nazi’s. Maybe it was all raging teen hormones or ego’s out of control, but I was bumped, jostled and just plain assaulted by the gaggles traveling Disneyland with events held in the Festival of Fools and Fantasyland Theater areas. To quote Stan Lee, “’nuff said!”
5. Add me to the folks who like the restored soundtrack for “Small World.” Nice touch.
6. Once again, Al Lutz is going on about the possibility of a Dinner Train operation on the Disneyland Railroad. Riding and observing the railroad in operation just continues to show how and why a Dinner Train will never be profitable. You just can’t feed enough people and keep them comfortable aboard the Disneyland Railroad. Building an entirely new passenger train with modern heating and air conditioning along with proper onboard sanitation facilities and food handling will cost way too much. Hiring an outside consultant to run the thing is a bad idea, and one Walt would have laughed long and well over. Come on Disneyland management; let this idea just die quietly before throwing good money after bad. I’m not just blowing smoke here; I do have some practical knowledge on the subject. Better to spend it on something practical like renovations to the exterior on the Tiki Room instead…
7. Spring break should be a time when more attractions are opened than closed. As this was the quote beginning of that period, it was amusing to note everything down for rehab or just plain closed.
8. I managed to actually eat relatively healthy for a change and somewhat enjoyed it. Who knew? Everything from the Breakfast with Chip & Dale at the Storyteller’s Café in the Grand Californian to the Rancho De Zocalo in Frontierland offered something tasty and healthy.
Anyway, that’s the end of the major notes from the trip. One of the nicer four days I’ve spent there in a while actually.
Here’s the topic for this week’s column: Pins. From the consumer side of the story…
Let me start by saying, “Hi, my name is Roger, and I am a pin collector.” I’m addicted.
It started innocently enough when Disney was giving away “free” pins.
“Come on, kid! Try it! The first one is free!”
Now, I know that the concept of Disney giving anything away for “free” must seem somewhat unusual. If the truth were told, it was not “free” after all. You got something by buying a Disneyland admission.
Back in the day (1985), it was Disneyland’s 30th Anniversary. To promote attendance at the Park, some of the better minds in Marketing had come up with a good idea that would offer prizes to every 30th guest.
As guests entered at the gates, everyone received a ticket from the machine indicating what prize they had won. There were lots of folks with a “Sorry – not a Winner” tickets, but there were many different levels of winners. Minor prizes included these pins and free Disneyland passes. (In 1986, prizes included popcorn and ice cream, so that every guest was a winner.)
If you were very lucky, your ticket read “Gift Giver Extraordinare” and you got the chance to head down Main Street to the hub where an oversize birthday cake sat. (Right where the “Partners” statue is today.) Once your ticket was verified, you went up on stage with the event host and got your chance to pull the lever and see what you won. I don’t recall all of the prizes, but I do know that one was an oversize plush classic Mickey and Minnie set. (Two friends managed to win those. I never got more than the pins even though I went over 30 times to the Park that year.)
Once a day during the yearlong promotion, Disneyland gave away a brand new GM Geo automobile. (The cars were small enough that they fit inside the big cake and came up from below when the winner was chosen.) One woman I saw as the winner mentioned that she really needed a new car, as hers had literally died that morning on the way into the Park!
Back to the pins… In 1985, the pins given away were one for each of the lands of the Park. They were Main Street, Adventureland, New Orleans Square, Bear Country, Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. And so, pin trading began. If you already had one, why not trade another guest for one you did not have?
The pins were not without controversy. Some had sharp points that might hurt younger guests, and were replaced with rounded, friendlier versions. (Specifically, Tomorrowland had Donald with a spaceship with a pointed nosecone, and Frontierland had a sheriff’s star badge with points.) And over the two years, designed were slightly changed with new characters and or colors. (New Orleans Square featured both Mickey and Brer Fox with saxophones as an example.)
I’m not exactly sure when Disney started selling cloisonné pins. I do know that for the longest time, friends and I lamented the dearth of new pins as well as the limited variety on sale. Long before the Super Traders made it the fashion; we bought photographers vests (sold at the Adventureland Bazaar for all of $13 dollars as compared to $48 last weekend) and loaded them with our pins and buttons. At one point, I stopped wearing it because it was just so heavy!
When pin trading really and officially took off, I already had a fair sized collection of Disneyland Cast Member and special event pins, along with everything else. The trip to Florida in 1999 added a bunch more. Family and friends visiting various parks and stores helped with their contributions. When pin bags came along, I got a nice one with the DCA logo on it. Held all of my pins, some 500 or more of them. (You should get that I’m leading up to something here…)
It almost came to an end on one morning in March of 2001.
I had taken my pin bag to work the day before. And when I came home, for reasons that I will never remember, I left it in the car, in front of my home, along with a backpack. And I committed that most unpardonable of sins… I did not lock one of the car doors.
When I came out to the car to go to work that morning, I spotted a box of compact discs on the ground outside my door. Recognizing several of them as Irish music from my collection, I immediately became apprehensive. Those had been in the back seat last night. Going to the car, it became obvious. Someone had opened the door, taken the pins and the backpack (that along with a CD player, had about a dozen of my Disneyland Forever CD’s).
I give the thief some small credit. He or she took one of the Irish CD’s out of the disc player and left it with the others. I guess they liked Disneyland music more than Irish music. I filed a police report, and the responding officer mentioned that there had been a recent rash of auto and home burglaries in the area where doors were just checked to see if one was open. If they found one, they took what ever looked like it could be sold quickly.
In my case, the pin bag probably looked like a computer laptop bag. And the CD player was a cheap model, maybe $35 bucks. I posted a Lost Item and Reward poster all over the neighborhood, but never got any responses. I still check shops around town from time to time, but imagine the stuff ended up in the trash or at a flea market. I have a small hope that it’s in some kid’s bedroom some place.
Naturally, I was devastated. The loss represented some 15 years of my life and well over $2000 in value.
I could not think about buying new pins for some time. A search of eBay showed many of the pins I had lost were out there and available, but many were at an inflated price. (I also looked for someone in my area selling pins that I once had. No such luck…)
In the end, it was all just stuff, and it really was not the end of the world.
It had just seemed like it at the time.
What got me back into it was my nephews. I started them collecting pins on a visit to DCA a couple of months before the loss. They were collecting just for the fun of it, and really liked trading with cast members as well as with me. I see it more through their eyes as their passion now. And I must admit that I do get a kick out of seeing them descend on an unsuspecting CM like a roving pack of hungry wolves as they look for that new trade!
Thanks to them, today I have a small and yet interesting collection. There will always be the memories associated with those lost pins. Perhaps that’s the best way to think of the pins. After all, they are more souvenirs than they are collectibles; something I wish more people would remember…
Two of my favorite pin moments involved children and their parents, with both new to pin trading. The first was a daughter and mother who saw me trade with a CM on Main Street. They asked if they could look at my lanyard (How’s that for polite?), and then traded for three pins. They said this made their day as their experiences had been with several rude pin traders before. No one wanted to trade for any thing they had, saying that all they had were common pins. I didn’t mind trading with them as the pins on my lanyard were there for that reason. In the end, we all went away feeling better.
The other trade involved a family who had just gotten their lanyards about thirty minutes before I met them. Pins were neat, but they didn’t understand about trading with anyone. After a short introduction, we traded a few pins, and then were off in search of cast members to trade with. That just made my trip.
However, pin trading is not all smiles and sunshine. It’s got it’s own share of gangsters. I hope that there is a special theme park in hell with a corner just for pin sharks or the aggressive traders. My idea of pin trading is not badgering some child to get that collectible pin to fill in the gap in your bags. Another irritation are the clowns who wear multiple lanyards, and won’t trade anything. Some people just never got the concept of trading versus hoarding. That social part of pins is something we are all supposed to enjoy. It’s just too bad that there are a few folks out there who have forgotten that.
This last weekend I enjoyed trading with all kinds of folks from guests new to pins to CM’s to even a few traders with books. Sharks are still out there including one bozo with an entire page of the recent Surfboard Jessica pins he was looking to make big trades for. I almost wanted to call security and have him escorted out of the park as a scumbag pin dealer rather than a trader.
My wife even managed to make a final trade as we were waiting to catch the plane home. In the terminal at Long Beach a family was looking over it’s lanyards and she took the time to make a trade with one of the children for a Shere Khan pin to add to her Disney cats collection. She did well over the weekend adding to her collection of travel related Disney pins along with Winnie the Pooh and holidays.
I’m happy to admit there are new pleasures for me as pins are being added now and then. A recent obsession was Lilo & Stitch pins, and the new Disneyland Railroad pins. And on eBay, I finally managed to replace the complete set of those “free” pins that started it all.
Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to be addicted to after all.
And darned if the folks at Disney don’t keep coming out with interesting new pins…
Now if they would only come out with the T-shirt that says “Will Trade Wife For Disney Pins!”
Two weblinks for pins:
Official Disney Pin Trading Web site
Dizpins, unofficial site for news and information for Disney pin collectors
Roger’s wife also collects travel related and classic Pooh pins. She owns (and wore it last weekend!) the “Will Trade Husband For Disney Pins” T-shirt. He bought it for her.