Odds and Ends: Weekly Cap-Off (6/6 - 6/12)

Visits to the Park this week:  1

It's been a down week for us!  After all the excitement of the new attractions opening up this week, only Chad made it into The Park this week on Thursday to ride a few attractions and take some pictures.

Still, any week with a visit is a good week, and we always enjoy our Days In The Park, whether they come in singles or great big batches!  

Last Week on Days In The Park:

On Monday, we treated you to a "Magical Mystery Monday" location featuring Innoventions

It was our usual Park picture randomness on Wednesday with our "Almost" Wordless Wednesday

Friday, we hopped back on board the Magical Blogorail Blue Line and gave you our "Must-Do" attraction if you are ever in The Park

And lastly on Saturday we gave your our weekly Vinlymation Domination article with not one but two Vinyl of the Week: Kevin Flynn

This Week At The Parks:

With "Soundsational Summer" already here and this month's big openings (Star Tours and The Little Mermaid) happening last weekend, the next couple of weeks are going to be the status quo around The Parks.  With summer finally officially here, and the last of the nation's schools finally closing down for the break, we expect the crowds to really start flying high.  And speaking of flying high, it's less than three weeks until the all new Paradise Pier opens up in Disney California Adventure.  We can't wait to see how it all shakes out with the new restaurants and park.  Two new restaurants, Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta and Paradise Garden Grill will be opening.  New food to sample is always a good thing to us.  Not only that, but the all-new Goofy's Sky School (where Mulholland Madness once resided) is set to open on the same day.  It should be another big one as the construction around this Park continues hurtling towards the debut of Cars Land, now officially set for Summer 2012. 

A couple of big announcements were also made this week regarding ElectTRONica.  The Resort announced this week that the weekend show that has proven so popular since last fall (when it opened to highlight and pump up interest in "TRON: Legacy") will remain open until Spring of 2012.  Also, one of its most popular denizens, Laserman, will have an all-new show debuting this Friday, June 17th.  His show has proven very popular up to this point, and it's awesome to see him bringing all new material to the party.

Video of the Week:
As noted on the Disney Parks Blog this week, World of Color, the nighttime show and extravaganza which has to this point had more than 700 performances and 3 million guests in attendance, turned one year old yesterday.

World of Color has been one of our favorites since the first time we saw it (we've seen it several times at this point, of course), and as such we felt it deserved a place in our Video of the Week segment this week.

We hope you enjoy this snippet as much as we did!

Here At Days In The Park:

We're always kicking around ideas here at our offices in suburban Rancho Cucamonga, and we think we have some pretty exciting and fun things lined up for all of our readers during the summer.  We can't blow the whistle on all of it (what would be the fun in that?), but we can tell you that we're working on a new "Pathing Around The Park" article for you, we plan on giving you a little Disneyland History lesson of sorts, and we ate at Tangaroa Terrace (one of the new eateries at the Disneyland Hotel) this week so we're anxious to report back on that.  We're also anxious to write our perspectives on both of the new attractions (The Little Mermaid and Star Tours) so those should be coming in the very near future, as well.

We'll also have our usual weekly articles like "Magical Mystery Mondays", "Almost Wordless Wednesday", and "Vinylmation Domination" all ready to go.

And no, we haven't forgotten that we also have a podcast here at Days In The Park!  We're also hard at work on a new Days In The Parkcast which we plan on recording at some point this week, so we all have that to look forward.  Some fun things to do and write about are coming, and we can't wait to share them all with you!

We hope that you'll keep coming by and spending an occasional Day with us.  We love having you around!

Odds And Ends: Weekly Cap-Off (5/30 - 6/5)

Visits to the Park this week:  2

Our streak of multiple-trip weeks continues!  We really should start keeping track of these.  It might be fun to see just how many we can string together in a row.

On Friday we were out for the Opening Day of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue at The Park, and this evening we will be making one of our world-class Banzai runs into The Park for some fun with friends.

Sounds like a great way to cap-off the week to us! 

Last Week on Days In The Park:

It was Star Tours/"Star Wars" Week here at Days In The Park, as every single one of our posts had something to do with the two in honor of the new attraction's official opening this past Friday.

On Monday, we introduced our Star Tours week to you

Tuesday, we let you know all about Star Wars Day At Disneyland 

We took you along with us for the Annual Passholder Preview of Star Tours in our "Almost" Wordless post on Wednesday

Thursday, it was Vinylmation Domination with our "Vinyl of the Week" from the Star Wars Series #1 set: Boba Fett

On Friday, we blogged several times from inside The Park as we stood in line waiting for our first "official" trip around the galaxy in the newly enhanced StarSpeeder 1000

And lastly, we gave you a recap of our entire Day In The Park as we attended Opening Day for Star Tours: The Adventures Continue as nothing more than the rabid "Star Wars" fans that we are

This Week At The Parks:

It's here!  "Soundsational Summer" has arrived!

Mickey's Soundsational Parade opened up in Disneyland Park last Friday on May 27th, The Little Mermaid and Star Tours opened up this past Friday on June 3rd, and the all new pool and restaurants Tangaroa Terrace and Trader Sam's at the Disneyland Hotel as well.

Sounds like the perfect time to be in The Parks to us! 

Video of the Week:
This video came out earlier in the week on the Disney Parks YouTube Channel and is just the perfect video to go along and cap off this week's theme.  It's been making the rounds a lot the last couple of days, and with good reason.  It's epic!

Without further ado, Darth Vader visits Disneyland!

Here At Days In The Park:

As much as we loved doing all of these "Star Wars" posts, next week we'll revert back to our normal state of things around the blog.  We have a few cool posts lined up to do, and we'll be at the ready again with our "Where Are We?", "Almost Wordless Wednesday", and "Vinylmation Domination" segments.

We promised a surprise as well for our Star Tours week; we haven't forgotten!  We're running a little bit behind on it, but we're getting everything ready to go with that and should be able to break it out this week!  We won't say exactly what we'll be doing, but does the word "giveaway" mean anything to anyone?  

We're also hard at work on a new podcast which we plan on recording at some point this week, so we all have that to look forward.  Some fun things to do and write about are coming, and we can't wait to share them all with you!

We hope that you'll keep coming by and spending an occasional Day with us.  We love having you around!

Lightspeed to Endor! Star Tours Week Is Here!!

Picture, if you will, yellow words scrolling by on a black screen.  You know you've seen this somewhere.  You sense something.  Words you've not seen since...

Not so long ago, in a Park not so far away...

For a while when visiting, we had one attraction that we needed to ride every single time we were there: Star Tours.  The idea behind Star Tours was very simple.  We had one destination we were planning on going, the forest moon of Endor.  Oh, many was the time we wished we could swing with the Ewoks, ride our Speeder Bikes through the forest trail, and maybe if we had time destroy the shielding system around the second Death Star.  Those were some good times for sure, even if we never did make it to that blasted moon.  "Rex" did his best, and we're eternally grateful for it.  If you never got to ride the original attraction for yourself, we're pretty positive it will live forever on sites like YouTube.  We'll even throw it in here for good measure if you haven't ever seen it.

Then it went away.  It was a dark time for our empire.  We walked by the building and saw the construction taking place.  The doors were closed to us and the tours stopped.  But we always held out hope that another would rise from the ashes, bringing balance to our trips to The Parks...

And then word came down from on high.  The Masters had spoken.  The team of Disney and Lucas were readying an entirely new experience for us and brand new tours for us to take.  No longer tied down to one tour for all eternity, there were now to be fifty-four possibilities for us to explore.  We can't choose for our ourselves which one we're going to get, but who are we to quibble about such a minor thing?  From Kashyyyk to Coruscant, Hoth to Naboo, and Tattooine to Geonosis, we'll now have chance to be randomly shot into space and fly whereever the Force may take us. So don't be disappointed if you packed your scuba gear hoping to fly to Naboo, and ended up on Hoth. It's a short back in line and you can do it all over again, never knowing what you're going to wind up with.

We've been excited about this week for months!  Ever since the attraction in its last iteration closed down so that they could begin it anew, we've been champing at the bit for it to be all finished, opened, and waiting for us to ride.

We've been able to ride a couple of times now, but there's just something about knowing that it's officially open (and not going anywhere anytime soon) that we've just been pining for.  Yep, that's us, geeky fanboys (at least where "Star Wars" is concerned) to the extreme.

We've been waiting and planning for this week for so long, in fact, we've decided to dedicate an entire week on our blog to both Star Tours, and "Star Wars" goodness.  Not only will we be dedicating our articles to our favorite attraction every day, but we also have a big surprise coming up we'll be announcing on opening day, June 3rd, so you'll want to check back here then for sure to see what we have up our sleeves for the attraction's official opening.

Not only do we have articles and surprises up our sleeves, we're also issuing a challenge to ourselves and to anyone else out there willing to step up to the plate and take it.  We plan on being in The Park all day on June 3rd to ride Star Tours.  The challenge is easy.  See how many times we (and you if you'd like to take up the gauntlet) can ride it in one day.  We're not entirely sure how this will all work out yet, but we plan on being there as early as we can be that Friday, ride it over and over and over again, and report back here on how many times we ended up riding it in what amount of time.  Sounds fun, right?  If you're going to be in The Park yourselves that day and want to participate too, you can!  Just keep track of how many times you ride it, how much time you spend in The Park that day, and let us know!  We'll be happy to post your results right alongside ours if you do.  Can you stand it?  Can we stand it?

We plan on doing a lot of tweeting, blogging and reporting on our status (and quite possibly how many times we've tossed our cookies) all throughout the day on Friday.  You can follow us on Twitter if you're not already @DaysInThePark, and keep coming back here throughout the day for new updates and status reports.  Maybe even a picture or a hundred!  We know that we've played the game quite a bit differently than many others blogs.  We've held our tongues about all the little details, pictures and what-not from the attraction so that people won't have anything spoiled too much before opening day, but rest assured, when this thing is officially opened, we plan on blowing the roof off of the speeder!  We hope you'll be around to see and read it all. 

Now that we've filled you in, when do you plan on shooting through the stars yourself?  Where in the galaxy would you like to fly?

Above all else remember, the Force will be with you, always...