First Time Fridays: "Pirates of the Caribbean" 3D Sneak Peek

The special leaflet you get when you arrive at The Resort (in any of the parking areas)

One of the great things we've recently discovered (and we play it to the hilt as much as we can) about being Annual Passholders is that there is very little that goes on at The Park these days that we can't be one of the first to do, if we so have a mind.  That's not to say that we necessarily have to be there and do it on the very first day (although there will be a few exceptions to that rule in the coming months), either.  But many of the things that The Park does these days, we're usually able to find some time on the first weekend to go and check it out.

This past weekend was no different as the Festival Arena re-opened in Frontierland, where it will be playing host to a very special "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" 3D Sneak Peek for the next couple of months.

We were huge fans of the 3D Sneak Peek of "TRON: Legacy" that Disney California Adventure did as part of their ElecTRONica offering, so when we found out they would be doing something similar in Disneyland Park, as huge "Pirates" fans, we knew it was something that we just had to see.  

We did not, however, feel the need to see it on the first night, or the second night, or when it first opened on Sunday night when we actually were in The Park.  We're patient people (about most things), and having heard that the lines were approaching one or two hours at some points on the previous two evenings, we decided to wait as long as we possibly could on Sunday evening to see it for ourselves.  So come 11:00PM on Sunday evening (after Fantasmic! and a quick stop for cocoa) we finally began meandering our way back to the Arena for the show.

We suppose we should begin by saying that we didn't really snag a lot of photos; we had been told (or read) earlier that cameras weren't being allowed into the Arena, so we didn't even bother to bring one in.  That said, the area was decorated much like you would have expected it to be: very pirate-y!  The Arena itself looks about as close to the deck of a Pirate ship as they could get it I'm sure (considering the ground was made of concrete) and there is netting, look-out points and any manner of other Pirate-ship paraphernalia and decor all around the place.  They really did a top-notch job with the atmosphere.  Our favorite, though, would have to be the mounds of skulls all over the place with torches and flames at the top.  Skulls and fire; two of our favorite things.  It basically is just one big pre-show to the sneak peek of the movie.  Cast Members run amock all over the Arena, dressed like Pirates (yar!), pumping up the crowd (and drawing them into the show in some instances), and yelling a lot.  It really was a lot of fun to watch.  The preview itself did exactly what we're sure they meant for it to do; it got us pumped up for the movie which releases soon.  It was basically (like the one for "TRON: Legacy") about a ten minute look at some never before seen footage from the "Pirates" movie.  There was a ton of action, a ton of Johnny Depp (and Penelope Cruz!), and even a look at old Blackbeard himself, who we have to admit, looks just as deadly and dangerous as Davey Jones ever was.  Just our opinion, though.  The sneak peek is indeed in 3D, which was kind of fun, but we're not entirely sure it sold us on seeing it in theaters in that form.  We'll have to give that some more thought, but it definitely got us itching to see more, whether it be in 3D or 2D.  

The only drawback to seeing the show is perhaps the seating.  It's on the ground, and it's not soft ground, either.  We're talking concrete of the finest caliber here.  If you're like us, and you don't do well with being stuffed like sardines into a can while your butt slowly but surely goes numb and there's little wiggle-room, then that's probably something to take into consideration.  That said, there is seating in the back and a bit on the sides, but it's primarily for the disabled.  However, we went so late in the night that were was no line and fewer people there, and we had a Cast Member tell us we were more than welcome to sit there if we wanted to.  We didn't ask to, we were just pointed in that direction.  We can't guarantee this is policy, or would be the same with any Cast Member, but it might be something worth remembering all the same.

Our friend the "Chatty Parrot"

The show doesn't necessarily end there, either.  As you're leaving the Arena (and exiting through the Big Thunder Ranch BBQ area) Jack Sparrow stands off to the side talking to the crowd as they walk by.  The outter area in front of Big Thunder Ranch is no less busy, either.  Cast Members, excuse us, Pirates, can also be seen running around the outside of the Arena as well.  We saw one we particularly enjoyed exclaiming over one laughing youngster that he needed to see a doctor immediately because his head was shooting lightning (referring to his TRON ears which were happily lighting up).  Upon removal of the ears, the pirate yelled out, "It's a miracle!", and hugged the youngster who, if he had been smiling any bigger, his face might have cracked in two.  We also very much enjoyed the "Chatty Parrot" (no idea if that's what he's called or not, but we heard someone call him that) who, along with his CM Pirate friend, interacted with all of the people who had gathered around.  He fielded questions, called out to us, and generally ensured a good time was had by everyone who stood around.  It was one of our personal highlights of the whole experience.  When our friend parrot saw us taking his picture (he spotted our flash going off) he tweeted, "Oh, my goodness.  Someone is taking my picture.  I must show them all of my good sides.  Left (head turn).  Right (head turn).  Middle (looking straight ahead)".  People all around, us included, really got a kick out of that.  

Not enough?  There are also merchandise carts set up where you can buy various pirate accessories for your own little Capt. Hooks such as hooks (go figure), rifles (colored green and orange), eye patches and more.  Thirsty or hungry?  Buy yourself some Pirate Booty (we got a big laugh at that) and wash it down with some Pirate "grog" (non-alcoholic).  No idea what it tasted like, though; we were full of cocoa.

One of the merch carts floating around the area - Arrrrr!

We were really impressed with the Sneak Peek.  We've heard a few people were pretty non-plussed about the entire thing, but leave it to The Parks to take something that could be fairly "blah", if the preview was all they had shown, and ramp it up to an 11 on the amp.  We were honestly only in the area for about a half hour total, but there's little doubt in our minds that we'll be back at some point or other.  We've been saying all along that we hoped The Parks continued to come up with new and clever ways to use the Arena area, and if the crowds and people we came in contact with Sunday night were any indication, they've done just that.

If you get the chance to see this special sneak peek, we certainly urge you to do so.  All our thumbs are way, way up on this one.  We had a lot of fun!

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KILT (Karacters I Love Thursday): Mulan and Mushu

With this picture, we are completely done with all of the pictures we took at the character meet and greets going on during "Family Fun Weekends".  This one was taken during "Happy Lunar New Year Festival".  

So glad we got to meet Mulan and Mushu.  We love our rare characters and this one was a lot of fun to take.

Enjoy!

Mark, Chad and Bryce with Mulan & Mushu - Happy Lunar New Year Festival 2011

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KILT (Karacters I Love Thursday): Off To Neverland!

And thus we hit the end of our "Karacter" photos from Family Fun Weekends and Character Fan Days.  Man, these were fun!  Some of our favorite Park photos since we began the website were taken on this one day.  Hope you've enjoyed seeing them as much as we've enjoying sharing them.

Amy and Chad seem oblivious to the fact that Mark's life is about to end

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KILT (Karacters I Love Thursday) Friday Edition: King Louie and Baloo

Still making our way through Character Fan Days!  Another of our favorites:  King Louie & Baloo*.

Enjoy!

*Right before Amy hugged Baloo a little too vigorously and his chest fell off

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Family Fun Weekends: Happy Lunar New Year Festival!

Happy Lunar New Year!

Happy Lunar New Year!

As anyone who's read our website over the past few weeks will no doubt know by now, The Park has been hosting "Family Fun Weekends" over the course of the past several weekends.  They're a unique opportunity for families to gather over in the Festival Arena in Big Thunder Ranch and participate in a different "themed" weekend each and every week.

For the past two weekends, the Arena has been decked out and participating in what was called "Happy Lunar New Year Festival".

The Park hits you up for a visit as soon as you enter

Happy Lunar New Year Festival is meant to give families a glimpse at how Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese families celebrate the Lunar New Year, and was done so in a variety of different ways.  First, like in weekends past (with the other "Family Fun Weekends") there were plenty of on-stage activities for people to watch and enjoy, including a "Celebration Party", Kung Fu demonstration, and Dance Impressions (which we saw). 

A listing of the day's activities

Dance Impressions

We also spent some time looking at all of the signage around the area.  One particular one which seemed to draw a lot of attention was the "What Year Are YOU?" sign, which gave a listing a birth years (accompanied by a picture of a cute Disney character meant to symbolize your year) so you could figure out which year you were.  As can be seen, this year is the "Year of the Rabbit" which also occurred in 1975, which is the year that Chad was born.  Good thing he actually likes Thumper.

It's the "Year of the Thumper"!

Once again, as in weekends past, the middle area of the Arena was really busy with activity.  There were once again children's activities they could participate in (we're going to assume more coloring activities and the like as in past weekends) and there were plenty of carts to wander around and see.  We were particularly impressed with the inclusion of a cart with assorted teas.  We're not really sure why we were (it makes perfect sense after all), but it was just another nice little touch that we thought brought the entire atmosphere and area together nicely.

Customized artwork was available for purchase...

...as was an assortment of Asian teas

And once again, as in each of the other three weekends before, "Character Meet and Greets" played a large part of the activity.  Of course, with it being "Happy Lunar New Year Festival", we were treated to some of our favorite Park characters with a bit more of an Asian flair than we normally see them with, which made it all the more fun for us.

In addition, some of the more rare characters did make an appearance, in the guise of Mulan and Mushu.  We did get a picture with them, which we'll be using as a KILT post in a Thursday in the near future, so stay tuned for that!

They made us to do this

Mickey and Minnie prepare to greet some guests Asian-style

All in all, it seemed as though everyone was enjoying themselves again this weekend.  There were plenty of families in the area (though not as many as for "Character Fan Days") and people were able to experience The Park in a way they might not have before.  It kind of makes us want to visit the China Pavilion at Epcot in Walt Disney World.

Next week The Park will begin the last of its "Family Fun Weekends" over in New Orleans Square with its "Mardi Gras" weekends, which will run over the course of the next three weekends.  If you haven't had a chance to make it out for any of the weekends yet, we urge you to do so.  They're a lot of fun and well worth a trip out.  The Park has really done a fantastic job with these, and you don't want to miss out!

Doing what we do best.  Now, if we could only figure out what that is...

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Family Fun Weekends: Character Fan Days!

One word:  Awesome! 

A little background, though.  Ever since The Park announced that they would be doing Family Fun Weekends over the course of the next couple of months, the weekend we've had pencilled in as a "must-do" was "Character Fan Days".  In a weird twist of fate though, it wound up being the one weekend out of the entire bunch that up until the day we went, we weren't sure we were going to be able to make it at all, and certainly not all of us at the same time.

Chad had car trouble, Mark wasn't sure he'd be able to make it out by himself, and Amy's weekend was pretty full up as well.  For a while it didn't look good one little bit.  Fortunately for us, we aren't afraid to do "Banzai Runs" (see yesterday's post) and a small window of opportunity opened up on Saturday afternoon for the three of us to meet up.  Mark was able to go out a little earlier on Saturday in case the rest of us couldn't make it, Amy was able to find some free space in between a bridal shower and family dinner, and Chad was able to eat up the road between Rancho Cucamonga and Anaheim in such a fashion that around 3pm (with just about an hour left until the 4 o'clock character stoppage) all three of us were together in Big Thunder Ranch doing our line dance.

We wrote a little bit last week about "Kickin' Country Weekends", but in case you missed it, for the past three weekends The Park has been hosting "family-oriented" weekend activities in the Festival Arena at Big Thunder Ranch.  Each week has had a different theme and different set of things designed to draw families into the Arena to spend time together and have a great time.  There's been crafts, stage-shows, food (Amy's Sour Balls have had our mouths watering all weekend), merchandise and all sorts of goodies going on.  We've really enjoyed both weekends we've gone.  This weekend was very special, however, in that about a month ago The Park announced that for "Character Fan Days", the fans (us!), would be given an opportunity on Facebook to "vote" for the characters we'd most like to see in the area this past weekend for meet and greets.  They had some awesome ones to choose from!  We weren't especially ecstatic with the people who voted for characters that were typically out and about anyways, but there were some rare ones that made it into the show that hadn't been seen in The Park in years (literally).  You can probably infer for yourselves why it was such a huge draw for people, and for us!  With our new KILT articles on Thursday, we were just itching to "collect" some hard to find characters for our website.

Esmerelda and Clopin dance on stage before meeting their fans in their Meet And Greet line

We should probably go on record as saying that we didn't really spend a whole lot of time experiencing anything other than the meet and greets, as much as we would have liked to.  With so little time available to us, and with characters switching in and out every half hour, we basically just flitted from line to line taking pictures.  It might in fact be one of the funnest things we've ever done, however.  That said, we were able to spend quite a bit of time in line watching the festivities taking part all over the Arena, and if the people around were any indication, everyone was enjoying everything (not just the characters), thank you very much!  The entire middle of the Arena was filled with "hands-on" activities such as coloring books/pages that plenty of kids were enamored with, as well as free cartoonist on hand to sketch pictures of your children for you.  As with the other weekends, there was also plenty of activity on stage as well.  Before appearing in their respective meet and greet lines, each character made an appearance on stage with a Cast Member on hand to explain the character's origins (year, cartoon or movie appearance, etc.)  In addition to the characters, other bands from The Park (such as "The Dapper Dans") also appeared on stage to play for the audience and hung around to meet folks afterwards.  It was a very friendly and welcoming environment, and even the Cast Members seemed to be truly enjoying themselves as they met people and were able to interact with them concerning all of the characters around.  They seemed almost as excited as us, to be honest, and we even overheard one Cast Member talking about how excited he was to have been picked to work the Arena this weekend, because he "couldn't wait to see the Seven Dwarfs again".

LOTS of people enjoying all facets of the Weekend -- including coloring and cartoonist sketches

The real meat and potatoes of the weekend, though, were obviously the character meet and greets.  The characters on hand, as much as we can remember were:  Donald & Daisy; the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts & the Mad Hatter; Frollo, Esmerelda & Clopin; The Seven Dwarfs; The Country Bears; Baloo & King Louie; Peter Pan, Wendy, Captain Hook & Mr. Smee; and Clarabelle Cow & Horace Horsecollar. In point of fact, the desire to do this all started when we heard The Hunchback of Notre Dame characters would be out.  We just had to have our pictures taken with them.

Each meet and greet line rotated out every half hour as new ones rolled in, and we were able to move from line to line very efficiently.  And that is literally what we did our entire time there; we basically just made a big circle all around the Arena.  In fact, we'd like to go on record as saying that we think the whole thing was handled very well.  We can only assume the fact that we were able to get every character we wanted in just under two hours was just as much due to The Park handling all the people well as it was to our fanaticism.  The only characters we did not get were Donald & Daisy, and the Alice In Wonderland gang, and that was only because they're out a lot of the time anyways, and we have already have pictures with them.  We'll be sure to get them all posted for you in the near future, as they'll most likely make up the majority of our KILT posts in the coming weeks.

The Days In The Park and Hunchback of Notre Dame gangs

It was a lot of fun!  Like we said last week, we really think that The Park is onto something here with the Family Fun Weekends and we're really looking forward to the next few weekends and what The Park has for us in the future.  If you haven't made it out for one of the weekends yet, we really encourage you to do so.  The activities and weekends are extrememely well thought out and are a lot of fun; there's something for everyone back there, so be sure to take advantage of it if you can.  We're already looking forward to "Happy Lunar New Year" (we hope we said that in the right order) next weekend and can't wait to see what characters are around then.

Mark clowning around with a sombrero

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Family Fun Weekends: Kickin' Country Style!

Rejoice!  After having missed out on "Fiesta Disneyland" on the first Family Fun Weekend, we were finally able to make it to The Park during a weekend (daytime) yesterday, so we made sure to set some time aside to go check out all of the happenings in Frontierland at Big Thunder Ranch.

A proclamation of future (and past, apparently) events

We didn't get to spend a lot of time in the area, but one thing we did learn was that it's not meant to be an all day place to hang out, but rather a nice little aside and a fun way to kill a couple of hours just hanging out with families and participating in activities.  They have plenty to choose from, and both kiddies (and parents) really seemed to be enjoying themselves.

A look at scheduled activities for Sunday

When we were in the area, it was just in time to see the "Bon Family Cloggers" do their thing on stage.  We kind of hung out in the back just watching things while Chad put on a little show of his own, singing along with John Michael Montgomery's "Grundy County Auction" at the top of his lungs.  Signs of an old country phase we really no longer wish to discuss.  Forget we even said it.  We were also able to see the "Street Party" and "Fort Worth West" perform, and even got to see Mickey and Minnie perform on stage and dance as well.  We genuinely enjoyed everything that the atmosphere provided.

As you can see, there were plenty of other things going on, too.  Craft-making (quilts earlier in the weekend we heard) and plenty of snacks galore.  They were even selling bottles of BBQ sauce at one booth!  There seemed to be quite a few people checking it out as well.  Not too crowded, not too slow, but just right!

The Festival Arena of Festivities

But the thing that was easily the biggest draw for us, and seemed to be for many of the families too, were in fact the "Character Meet and Greets".  The Arena had five (if memory serves) booths set up just for characters.  The Park did an excellent job, at least in our minds, of keeping the characters fresh as they rotated them in and out every half hour or so.  But there was always someone in each and every booth almost the entire time we were there (save Minnie and Mickey while they were on stage clogging away).  We didn't get pictures with all of them, because many of them we already had, but in the hour or so we were were there we saw:  Clarabelle, Cowboy/girl Donald & Daisy, Cowboy Pluto, Cowboy Goofy, Cowboy/girl Mickey & Minnie, Woody, Jessie, and Cowmunks Chip & Dale.  Quite a haul for such a short amount of time!  We had really been hoping for a picture with Clara Cluck, but she was a no-show yesterday.  Still, we got some good ones and we'll be rolling most of them out in the coming weeks for Thursday's "KILT" posts, so keep checking back.  

All in all, even in the short amount of time we spent in the Arena, we really enjoyed ourselves.  I don't think we stopped smiling the entire time.  We just hung out, watched the families interact with everything The Park had set up for them (no way we were gonna get up on stage and clog, though), and took it all in.  

We really hope that The Park will continue to do things like this in the future after all of these weekends are said and done.  We think they have a good thing here and we'd love to see them back on a more frequent basis.

Next weekend:  Character Fan Days!

Good times with Minnie and Mickey

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