Today is my Dad's 63rd birthday.  Last year, we had the fortunate opportunity to spend a week at Walt Disney World during the holidays and celebrated his birthday on Disney's BoardWalk. (Note the unique Disney trash can in the background of this video!)

If you recall, back in 2009 Disney was running their "What will you celebrate?" promotion where you got free admission to the theme parks on your birthday.  Since we already had park tickets, they offered Dad other benefits.  We chose the "Birthday Fastpass"

Dad shows off his Fasspass Birthday Card

This allowed the birthday recipient and 5 other guests to get what was basically a universal Fastpass to any attraction, selected from pre-defined groups at each park.

Continue Reading…

If you were to take a look at my iTunes collection, you'd notice two genres that are substantially larger in song quantity when compared to an "average" person.  The first is "Christmas", which isn't a surprise for anyone who has participated in my annual Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music countdowns.  The other is "Disney Theme Park", which features songs, area music, soundtracks, and other related audio from Disney-owned theme parks around the world.

The Official Album of Disneyland (2008)

Thus, you have to understand my excitement when I'm able to add some new audio to this collection.  There is quite a bit of Disney theme park audio out there, and to be honest, most of it is unofficial and obtained via "underground" means.  However, since 1980 Disney has released what they termed "Official Albums" for their parks, eventually growing from a single LP into multi-CD sets that cover Disneyland or Walt Disney World.  Other special sets have also been released to compliment this genre, such as 2009's 5-disc Walt Disney and the 1964 World's Fair set or 2005's elite 6-disc release to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Walt's original park, A Musical History of Disneyland.

Continue Reading…

My latest eBay purchase:

Anti-Disney's America Button

Yes, it has to do with the failed Disney's America project from the early 1990s.

Disney theme parks will often repurpose music and themes among properties on opposite coasts. For example, as I've already written, in 1985 Disneyland's 30th Anniversary Parade soundtrack was tweaked to be used by Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom as the tune for Mickey's Street Parade.

Recently, we've seen this type of repurposing in soundtrack once again with Disney's promotion for Summer Nightastic. This seasonal event started in Summer 2009 as an all-encompassing theme of pre-exisiting shows bundled under the same brand name ("Nightastic") to help Disneyland push their summer activities, as they didn't have any new rides or attractions to promote.

Continue Reading…

I recently got a new hat, thanks to my friend Branden who visited Walt Disney World not too long ago. I had seen this hat show up on some theme park blogs, so I asked him to track it down while at the Magic Kingdom.

My new Monorail Hat!

It's orange and black and features an iconic Spanish phrase on the front: "Por favor manténganse se alejado de las puertas." As any Disney theme park fan will recognize, this is the safety spiel that plays when boarding the monorail.

Can you say this?

I've written about this spiel before, ironically when I tracked down a t-shirt with the same phrase. Here's the audio for the safety spiel, recorded by "the Voice of Disneyland", Jack Wagner:

Audio: "Please stand clear…"

Jack passed away in 1995, but he still is the "voice" of the monorail safety message at the parks. I also use this audio on my phone as my ringtone. Yes, I'm a dork.

Hi Mickey!

Incidentally, the hat is part of Disney's "Vintage 1928 Collection", which has a worn and distressed look… thus the built-in rips and tears on the hat. Very cool!

This is a photo of the family riding Test Track at Epcot over the holidays.

Test Track PhotoPass Photo

I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, but it isn't really a great location of a photo opportunity like this. There's nothing really happening… other than my sister and bro-in-law pretending that they each have a steering wheel!

My Dad looks like he's sleep, my Mom is squinting in the backseat, Amy looks bored, and I think I'm trying to read the text off the dashboard from the front passenger seat.

Talk about Disney thrills!