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Notes on a Time That Was Not Happy
Sometimes it requires incredible amounts of devotion, of faith, and of mental stamina to be a fan.Al Huffman / DisneyFans.ComAs a Disney fan, my first real crisis came in 1998. In the short span...
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All About Western River Expedition, Part One
Disney history has lots of "one that got away"s. There's Lake Buena Vista New Orleans Square. There's the Asian Resort, the Equatorial Africa pavilion, Dick Tracy Crimestoppers, WESTcot Center,...
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All About Western River Expedition, Part Two
Okay, let's finally go inside Thunder Mesa and dig into the meat of the show. Last time we looked at a model of the Thunder Mesa complex...Let's look at what was going on inside that thing.Okay, now,...
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All About Western River Expedition, Part Three
VI. MARC DAVIS AND THE WESTERN RIVER EXPEDITIONLet's talk about Marc. Whenever I've spoken to or heard from somebody who worked directly with Marc Davis, the most common way I've heard him described is...
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Seeing/Not Seeing the Parks and Fan Typology
There's a really funny story in Patton Oswalt's new book, Silver Screen Fiend. In it, Patton and a childhood friend go to a movie theater to see the 1996 Bruce Willis film, Last Man Standing. Last Man...
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The Theme Park Trope List
(Updated April 8, 2015 with three new tropes) Theme Parks have been at it for a long time now. Technically for about 60 years, but theme park-style experiences go back even further, to the Chicago...
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Song of the South: Disney's Loaded Gun
"Don't you know you can't run away from trouble? There ain't no place that far."In 2012, two books were published within two weeks of each other, each with dueling viewpoints but which come to similar...
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The Early Music of Tomorrowland
Looking Back at TomorrowThere's some things, in terms of theme park music, that you can pretty much rely on. The specifics may shift, but they're always gonna be playing Japanese-sounding music at the...
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The New Age Music of Tomorrowland, and Others
The New Age Era, 1983 - 1993The year was 1983, and Tomorrowland was looking a little bad.EPCOT Center had just opened the year before, and compared to the friendly new face on tomorrow WED had achieved...
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What's in A Sign?
Let's get detailed. I think that until the opening of Disneyland Paris in 1992, Magic Kingdom was the theme park with the most interesting, unique collection of...... signs.Signs are interesting things...
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The Age of Not Believing: Week Four
"The Age of Not Believing" is a movie review series tracing the history of Disney in the years following the death of Walt Disney. It covers three films a week in an effort to see all theatrical Disney...
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The Age of Not Believing: Week Five
"The Age of Not Believing" is a movie review series tracing the history of Disney in the years following the death of Walt Disney. It covers three films a week in an effort to see all theatrical Disney...
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The Age of Not Believing, Week Six
"The Age of Not Believing" is a movie review series tracing the history of Disney in the years following the death of Walt Disney. It covers three films a week in an effort to see all theatrical Disney...
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The Age of Not Believing, Week Seven
"The Age of Not Believing" is a movie review series tracing the history of Disney in the years following the death of Walt Disney. It covers three films a week in an effort to see all theatrical...
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The Age of Not Believing: Week Eight
"The Age of Not Believing" is a movie review series tracing the history of Disney in the years following the death of Walt Disney. It covers three films a week in an effort to see all theatrical Disney...
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The Age of Not Believing: Week Nine
"The Age of Not Believing" is a movie review series tracing the history of Disney in the years following the death of Walt Disney. It covers three films a week in an effort to see all theatrical Disney...
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The Age of Not Believing: Week Ten
"The Age of Not Believing" is a movie review series tracing the history of Disney in the years following the death of Walt Disney. It covers three films a week in an effort to see all theatrical...
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Ten Big Design Blunders at the Magic Kingdom
Well, nobody's perfect.I spend a lot of time talking about Magic Kingdom on this blog because I believe it's a remarkable place. Walt Disney was right; you can only do Disneyland once, and Walt likely...
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The Contemporary Resort in the 1970s
I get a lot of questions about the Contemporary Resort. It makes sense; the amount the hotel has changed since 1995 is insubstantial compared to how much it changed between 1971 and 1995, and for those...
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The Contemporary Resort Through the 1990s
You didn't expect me just to stop at 1981, did you?While I was doing my photo gathering and my fact checking for The Contemporary Resort in the 1970s, I noticed something that was sort of funny....
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