Thread by @cabel

🌠 Notes on a trip to Disneyland

• First, COVID. Masks weren't needed if vaccinated. Three of us are very lucky to be, but Violet is too young so she kept her mask on and we masked indoors with her. Seeing nearly zero masks freaked me out big time! Soon, it felt 100% normal? 😵‍💫

• It's an AMAZING time to go with very little waiting. Why?

✅ Reservations only. No walk-ups.
✅ No FastPass. Just smooth-flowing standby lines. 😍
✅ Virtual queues for the biggest rides. Easily got "in line" at 7AM.
✅ No APs, limited capacity.

I hope some of this stays.

• This was my first time on Rise of the Resistance. I was going in spoiler-free (at great effort which was worth it), so I'll just say as a dark ride fan I was a physical electric vibration the whole ride. Imagineering at their peak.

No spoilers so here's Violet + Blue Milk

• Another thing I hope never changes: for physical distancing, characters are kept separate from guests. It's way better and leads to great scenes like Chip & Dale in the woods of Grizzly Peak. People are still taking selfies, there are no lines, and it's a lot more fun.

• Oh, one other Galaxy's Edge note. It's a minor (retail?) spoiler but we were all obsessed with this little friend in one of the shops. I'd like to take it home???? I feel like Zwardo would get along with them

• And if you’d like a brief moment of zen: put on your headphones and experience the phenomenal transition from Critter Country to Batuu.

Think of all the separate creative endeavors, from landscaping to sound design, firing together to make this work

• On to Disney's California Adventure. Nicole was waiting for us to ride Junkyard Jamboree. The whole time she was waiting, she kept hearing someone with a HORRIBLE loud hacking cough nearby. It was making her incredibly nervous. Eventually she found who was coughing: Mater.

(Maybe they can remove the engine rev and hacking cough from Mater's audio program for a little while, lol)

• WEB SLINGERS: A Spier-Man Adventure® (these names) just opened up and was super fun. But all I could think about was the set dressing in the pre-show.

So authentic! 100% exactly Dave's desk when he was designing the Playdate! And a real Tektronix scope! 😍

• Also in the Spider-Man pre-show set-dressing was a crane game in the corner, just packed with easter eggs.

But seriously though, a crane game with capsules containing boards and resistors and an Arduino is a great idea!

Ok I've nerded out enough

• The new Avengers Campus was nice, but a little barren/hot, and was visually dominated by a giant building that was essentially empty — it's rumored to be the entrance for a future E-Ticket ride that was cut due to COVID budget problems. Sigh.

But still, how beautiful is this?

• Oh, and the Spider-Man conceit is that you're in an educational facility that was once a Stark Motors plant, so I thought they did a great job making these very real ride control panels look like old automobile manufacturing control panels.

• There's a Doctor Strange show that I think is real unique — it takes place in a small, intimate, standing-room-only courtyard that fits ~200. I can't think of another Disney show done this way. It was a great setting

(Good thing I was used to the lack of masks at this point.)

• But a cool part of the Doctor Strange show for me is that the courtyard was strung up with PHYSICAL BELLS overhead that could ring as part of the show audio. It's hard to explain how unique this sounded — more three dimensional than speakers! Here's a small vid:

• The Pym Test Kitchen restaurant at Avengers Campus is Ant-Man-themed, so they play a lot with scale. Giant chicken with a tiny bun. Enormous meatball* with an extra-small fork. I love it when the food has fun.

* And it's Impossible meat! 99% of guests will never know

• But I was absolutely delighted with this show effect in the Pym Test Kitchen lobby. I keep wondering what it took to so perfectly sync the physical belt with the pre-rendered footage. 🥰

Can you tell I really love these parks

• Wrapping up, I swear. It's the best that this Tiki Room sign is not only hand-painted, but the faint guidelines for the type are still on there.

• But I thought it was also cool that even a brand-new mural for Jesse's Critter Carousel is still hand-painted! Ya just can't beat the classic techniques.

• The ceiling in the extended queue for Space Mountain tells me that it's impossible to source classic 60's ceiling tiles anymore. They did their best, but…

(Joby thought they should make a cool pattern with old/new tiles to hide the difference. I agree!)

• Speaking of Space Mountain, this room is still cool as hell

• And Cars Land remains maybe the most beautiful, photogenic piece of theme park work in history, I think.

That's it for now. Thank you for tolerating this thread and I hope to see you at Disneyland someday!

PS: if you go to Avengers Campus and see Spider-Man goofing around on this building, stick around. You’re not going to want to miss this moment. (Can’t beat the combination of creativity and technology.)