Even MORE Darth Vader Goes To Disneyland!

Since we'll actually be at the Disneyland Resort today with little time to write, it seemed like a great day to do a video post!

We were amazed at all of the detail that went into promoting the newest attraction in Disneyland Park, Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, just before and after it debuted back at the beginning of June.  We heard it said on many blogs that people couldn't remember the last time that The Resorts (both Disneyland and Walt Disney World) put so much effort into advertising an attraction.  While we have no idea whether that's actually true or not, there's no doubt we were hearing about Star Tours everywhere; radio, television, blogs.  It was everywhere!  Not that we're complaining or anything...

One of our favorite nuggets to come out of the media blitz was a commercial entitled "Darth Vader Goes To Disneyland".  Most people have probably seen it at this point, but we still watch it a couple of times on a weekly basis (we just can't seem to get enough), so we're posting it again here just on the off chance there's still someone out there not familiar with it.  It's epic!


But they've gone and upped themselves with a new video that came out just a couple of days ago on the Disney Parks YouTube Channel.  They've reintroduced the whole "Darth Vader Goes To Disneyland" phenomenon in case you missed it the first time around with several "extended" scenes from the original.  We started off with a scene of Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers at ElecTRONica, but once it's done you can jump around to any other scene you'd like to take a peek at.  We hope you get as big a kick out of these as we have.  And really, Darth Vader and Disneyland Park together; how can you go wrong?

Days In The Park podcast Episode 6 - It's A (Parent) Trap!

Episode 6 of our podcast is up and primed to be listened to!

In our latest episode we recount our recent trip to the Walt Disney Studios for our first D23 event - the "50 and Fabulous" screening of the Disney classic, 'The Parent Trap'. We also head out to The Park on a recent Sunday to hang with some of our favorite fanboys for Star Wars Day at Disneyland. And food is on the menu! We spend some time lamenting the passing of an old friend as well as digging into some quality corn-doggage. Oh, and there's a Hidden Mickey, too!

Stop on by our podcast website and give us a listen. We'll be happy you did!

"Almost" Wordless Wednesday: ¡May Rewind!

We've been kicking this idea around for a while and figured today would be the perfect time to implement!  We were gone (Vegas, baby!) last week and had our Star Tours articles we were right in the middle of doing, so we couldn't do it then, but we thought it might be good to use the first Wednesday of every month, since we're doing pictures anyways, for a picture "rewind" of sorts.  We take a lot of pictures during the month, and we tend to go week by week with what we post, so many of them never see the light of day and feel quite left out.  This is their chance to shine!  Hope you enjoy them!

You can never have too much Vader

The King and his deliciousness are back!

The audio-animatronic wildlife at The Park is astounding. It's so life-like!

He's late because his clock never moves. We've noticed it's always at 12:15!

Pleasure Island, a.k.a. the Village Haus Restaurant

We love our pyro!

Pictures from Innoventions. The crowd was bustling!

StarSpeeder 1000

We love our THX 1138 references!

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!

Star Tours: The Adventures Continue Opening Day!

It seems only fitting that we end our week's worth of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue and "Star Wars" articles with a piece on the very attraction that inspired us to do so in the first place.  We've literally been talking for months now about how excited we were for the new attraction to debut, and it officially opened for the very first time yesterday.  Even though we were lucky enough to have ridden it several times before it was officially opened to the public, we were nonetheless extremely excited to get to The Park and be a part of the insanity of seeing it open to everyone.  We haven't been blogging long now, and we've never been to another attraction's official opening day before, so when you put the two together we just knew we had to be there for this one!

Our plan had originally been to be inside The Park when rope-drop occurred, but we ultimately decided to take it easy in the morning and go into The Park a little bit later than planned.  If you read our "challenge" in our post earlier in the week, you'll remember it was also originally in the plans to basically just "run around the mulberry bush" all day long and ride Star Tours over and over again until we collapsed, either from exhaustion or heart attack.  Well, you know what they say about best-laid plans, but we'll get back to that in a minute.  We wound up getting to The Park around 9:30 in the morning to this...

Greeted with madness!

It might look like it's just a mass of people moving through The Hub near the Partners Statue, but we can assure you it was not.  When we arrived the line began at the back of the statue, wound around in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle a bit, weaved towards Pixie Hollow, back into The Hub, into Tomorrowland and down towards the entrance to Star Tours, back out into The Hub again, along the front of Plaza Inn, past the entrance to Star Tours and back near the Star Trader, back towards and into the overflow room, and finally into the Star Tours building itself.  Sound convoluted enough for you?  Yeah, we though pretty much the same thing.

Several things were already kind of working against us at this point.  First, the attraction wasn't set to open until 10:30 so a long line had already had time to form.  Second, the Fast Pass system for the attraction wasn't in operation yet.  We had kind of counted on that to get us a few extra rides during the day, so we pretty much knew immediately that the number of times we were going to be able to ride were going to be drastically reduced.  But, ever the intrepid adventurers and gluttons for punishment that we are, we jumped into line and prepared to wait.

Making our first pass by Star Tours

Amy had made it out to join us by this point so along with her and Chad's son Michael, the waiting commenced.  We wish we could candy coat it and make it sound like it was the most exciting thing we had ever done, but there's really not much to say.  We wound around the area for the next three and half hours before we were finally able to board.  We spent the time tweeting, blogging (some of which you may have read), talking with some people around us, engaging an awesome Cast Member named Sam who was running part of the line at the time, and just enjoying the atmosphere.  Even though we can't really say moving through the line was exciting, the atmosphere was very much so, if that makes sense.  We loved listening to people, chatting it up, and the excitement in the air was palpable.  Even though the line was huge and the wait was long, people were genuinely excited about riding Star Tours for the first time, and it was an awesome experience to be waiting alongside them, excited just like they were.

Some of our favorite art in the overflow room - The StarSpeeder 1000

Even now we long for a trip to Alderaan!

They promised Rex and delivered. Too bad the poor guy has been labeled "defective".

Mark, Amy and Michael get ready to board!

We didn't get to spend a whole lot of time in the queue taking pictures yesterday (once inside the line moved very quickly), but we did notice a few things we hadn't before.  Rex talked!  Well, sort of.  Since he had been labeled "defective" he kind of stuttered a lot and repeated himself over and over (just like a broken droid would), but it was definitely a nice touch!  We also got a big kick out of the droid in charge of checking the luggage on the left as you move through.  As the luggage moves along the conveyer, he inspects the inside of each piece with an x-ray machine and there's some pretty funny stuff going on in some of those bags.  We won't spoil it for you, but be sure to keep an eye out for it!  And there's a Hidden Mickey in this room as well!  We'll say more about it when our friends from FindingMickey.com have had a chance to see it for themselves, but it's really cool so keep an eye out.

We made it through, got our glasses, watched the pre-flight video and hopped aboard.  Amazing atmosphere in the cabin during that first ride.  People were obviously truly excited to be on board, and there was a ton of clapping, yelling, screaming, and laughing going on.  It was awesome to be a part of it all.  Unfortunately, other than seeing a different "Rebel" on this ride (we saw Admiral Ackbar finally), we didn't get to see any new planets or sequences.  Well, Amy did, but Chad and Mark have been stuck waiting to see Coruscant or Tattooine for a few rides now.  Ah well, another excuse to ride it lots in the future!

Once we were done with that first ride, we had a decision to make, though.  Were we going to see our own "challenge" through and hop right back in line again, or move on to greener pastures?  It was already around 2:30 at the time, and after weighing our options, and given the length of time the line still was (still 2 hours plus), and thinking about how many times we'd really be able to ride the rest of the day, we decided to move on and try to catch it again later in the night.  We talked about it some later and came to the conclusion that with food being a necessity, we really would only have been to ride it one, maybe two more times than we did, so we're pretty happy with the decision that we made.  We moved on to the Tomorrowland station, and railed it on over to New Orleans Square for lunch at Cafe Orleans.  We weren't in line for Star Tours, but we had an awesome time hanging out, enjoying some fantastic grub, and watching 8-year old Michael really put the moves on Amy in some "Kids Meal" competition.

Days In The Park gets all competitive, Kid's Meal style!

Gumbo, Pomme Frites and Mac at Cheese at the Cafe

Amy's Monte Cristo and Mint Julep

Splash Mountain awaits

After an awesome lunch, we met up with another friend of ours and hopped into line (it was day all about lines) for a ride on another of our favorite attractions, Splash Mountain.  We hadn't had a chance to ride it yet since it reopened on the 27th, so we waited the hour or so it took (seemed like a drop in the bucket compared to Star Tours) to ride and get soaked.  And we meant, we got soaked.  We've never been so drenched coming off of this ride, ever.  Even when we rode it around 5 times without leaving our boat, we weren't as wet as we got yesterday.  Amy swears (and she used to work at Splash Mountain) that she's never seen a wall of water as big as the one that nailed us yesterday, so we figure that's really saying something.  We remember seeing the water rise up and over Michael's head and just making it way back along the boat.  It was seriously frightening and fun at the same time.  If you get a chance to ride Splash soon, we recommend it big time.  They seem to have ramped the water up to an 11, and it's always a good time!

Before the soaking

Hoisting the R2 popcorn bucket - Michael was so happy!

We're happy to say that we did in fact ride Star Tours just one more time before we went home.  By this point, Amy had had to mosey on but we still had a nice little group going and we decided to ride it one more time.  We hopped back in line and waited another two and half hours to ride it once more.  Saw nothing new this time, either, but had a fantastic time yet again.  There was a huge group of "Star Wars" fans on our final flight of the night that were just loving being on board, and that made it all the more fun.  Plus, riding with friends who had never ridden it before (and their little 4-year old son) made it just that much more special for us.  We left The Park around 10:30 or so, only having ridden twice, but loving every minute of our day out.

Yeah, it was longer than that...

So there you have it, the official opening of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue from the Days In The Park view.  The Day didn't really pan out the way that we had originally envisioned, but that's okay!  We had a fantastic time (we really hope that came through), and that makes it all worthwhile.  We're definitely ones that understand the importance of going with the flow while you're in The Park, and not getting stressed out or locking yourself into one thing, so for us the Day went exactly the way it was supposed to.  No regrets, no sense of failure, just an overwhelming sense of "Yeah, that's what it's all about!". 

How about you guys?  Were any of our other readers in The Park yesterday?  How many times did you brave the lines to ride?  Let us know because as always we'd love to hear from you.  Thanks for coming along with us!

We went to Star Tours Opening Day and all we got was this AWESOME shirt!

Ride #1 Is Complete...

... and we have to wonder if we've not hit a limit! With lines currently over 2 hours long (we waited 3 1/2 for our first) its crazy busy. We had originally hoped Fast Passes would help us along but right now they're closed and food is calling!

We'll see how tonight goes and hope lines filter out a bit or FPs open up so we'll see where we go from here.

It was fun though! Awesome atmosphere, genuine excitement even in such a long line and on the attraction people were screaming, cheering and clapping. Too much fun!

Keep everyone posted as we go along! We still need to see Tattooine and Coruscant so we still have a reason to ride!

Wish us luck!

Inside At Last!

In the building and as excited about the air conditioning as anything. Where will we be going this time? Can't wait to find out!

Inside A Building!

Almost 3 hours in! Still a ways to go but we have shade, air circulation and Star Wars theme music now!

Walt said "Keep moving forward", so that's what we're doing, slowly but surely...

The Desert Of Star Tours

We kind of feel like the Israelites during The Exodus right now!

We're just over 2 hours into our wait in line and still so far to go. We'd have to guess at least an hour still but who knows. At this rate we'll ride twice today.

But Amy is with us now, people are still excited and as crazy as it seems, we're having lots of fun!

More to come as we get into the building!

This Line Is Crazed. And So Are We!

Here we are! In line for our first ride of the day!

The line is nuts, people are excited and we've actually started moving!

We'll post more as we move along but right now we're 15 minutes along and Heaven only knows how far to go.

 

Keep ya posted! Meantime enjoy this pic of the crazy line!

Star Tours Is Back!

June 3rd is finally here, and with it, Star Tours: The Adventures Continue.  We've been writing about the attraction and "Star Wars" all week and had an awesome time doing it, and now it's time for the attraction itself to take center stage for a day.

We mentioned on Monday that we would be heading to The Park on opening day and riding as often as we could, so by George (does anyone know who George really is?), that's exactly what we're going to do.  Chad, Mark, Michael and Amy plan on meeting up a bit later this morning to begin their own little Star Tours adventure.  It should be fun seeing exactly how this goes.  With the crowds that are expected, we might be there 10 hours and ride it twice.  Or two hours and ride it 16 times.  Who knows?!  But it's sure going to be fun finding out and being a part of that excitement, a.k.a. insanity.

We'll be blogging from The Park throughout The Day and letting everyone know about our progress, and like we said earlier in the week, we'll be back tomorrow morning with our final results as to how long we were in The Park, and how many times we made the trip around the galaxy.  So stay tuned!

If you're in The Park today, stop by and say hi!  Shoot us a message @DaysInThePark on Twitter and we'll be sure we do our best to meet up.  Better yet, come out and ride with us!  We'd love to see you.  

Off we go!  May the Force be with us!

Vinylmation Domination: Boba Fett

When keeping in line with an ongoing theme such as a week of Star Tours and "Star Wars"oriented posts, if the topic of the Day is going to be Vinylmation, what we're going to be writing about should be pretty obvious.  The two come together in a cataclysmic explosion (much like both Death Stars) and the result is an article about what was one of the most highly anticipated Vinylmation releases to date, "Star Wars Vinylmation Series #1".

We loved our case of Star Wars Vinyl!

The tale of how we got our own set of these little beauties is one we'll tell on another day perhaps, but suffice it to say it involved a banzai run to Downtown Disney early one Wednesday morning (for more information on "Banazi Runs" see our past article on the matter) to make sure we beat the crowd out to get one.  We had already missed out on one release of the series (they sold out at D-Street in a matter of hours), and we were determined to do everything in our power to get a case this time, even if it meant getting out of bed early.  We were, of course, successful in our mission as there wasn't another soul in sight to purchase any.  Maybe they didn't get the memo?  At any rate, Amy and Chad both got half of the case (or two full sets), Amy kept the Chaser for herself, and they're now proudly on display in our own personal collections.

For today's Vinylmation Domination post (you can check out last week's article to see exactly what we're doing here), we've decided that this week's featured Vinylmation should be none other than everyone's favorite bounty hunter: Boba Fett!

Say cheese!

Why did we choose Mr. Fett?  He's one of a kind!  Okay, that's not true, actually.  Since we've in recent years found out he's just a clone of another guy and that there were in fact countless thousands of them running around, it's kind of taken the luster off a bit.  But he's still pretty darn cool!  Jetpack's blazing!  Wrist rockets that shoot out high-tension cable (see "Return of the Jedi"), and we're assuming actual rockets!  Adorned in a full suit of Mandalorian body armor!  It's enough to make a grown "Star Wars" fanboy cry.  We mean, who wouldn't want to fly around in a horizontally-challenged spaceship called "Slave I"?  We honestly have no reason why that's so cool, but it is!  And if you're looking for a Star Tours: The Adventures Continue tie-in, we have that, too!  We won't give away the scene in too much detail, but Boba now makes a cameo in the new Star Tours attraction, and it is easily one of our favorite parts of the entire ride.  We've only seen him once in our three rides (our first time out), but he's left us screaming for more (picture "The Beatles" on "The Ed Sullivan" show).

We love the amount of detail they've put into this little guy, and he's easily our favorite from the entire set.  We kind of knew he would be going in, though.  When a character that was originally intended to be a secondary one in the movies goes on to become of the most sought after action figures of all time, you know he's going to be big.

Even the Mandalorian skull on his armor remains intact. Sweet!

Rocking that jetpack!

So there you have it; this week's Vinlymation Domination "Vinyl of the Week"!  Even though we've picked Boba to be the star of the week, there's no doubt that we love the entire set of Vinyl from Series 1.  If you're a fan of Vinylmation, and a fan of "Star Wars", you owe it to yourself to pick some up if you have a chance.  They make a fantastic addition to anyone's collection. 

May the Vinyl be with us!

Chad's set of Star Wars Vinylmation minus the Chaser

"Almost" Wordless Wednesday: Star Tours AP Preview

On Sunday we were invited back into The Park by our friends Jason and Jen over at Disney Day Trippers to ride Star Tours again before the official opening.  We were fortunate enough to be able to ride it twice, and these are just some of the many pictures we took we'd like to share with you.  There will be many more from the official opening on June 3rd, but these should tide you over in the meantime.

Enjoy!

Show offs...

What happened to E, F and G?

R2 and 3PO checking that all systems are go

Predator-vision

The best gate that there is

The return of "Bun Lady"!

Really? Noble? Home to the one of the most powerful Sith ever? Noble?

Dad (Chad) and Michael getting ready to board

Star Wars Day At Disneyland

This is what we want...

©Disney

...but so far not what we've gotten.

We know scores of people that go each and every year to Walt Disney World for what can only be described as a "Star Wars Bonanza". In fact, one of Chad's best friends went last year and that's how we have a copy of the map from Disney's Hollywood Studios about the event.  One year we hope, really hope, to go for ourselves.  And we know that there's a lot of back and forth all the time between Disneyland people and Disney World people about which Parks get which attractions, shows, events and what-not.  It can get downright crazy sometimes!  But we've never really gotten too involved in things like that.  We figure if they want to hold it in Orlando, that's fine.  Just one more reason for us to get there one summer so that we can experience it for ourselves.

But did you know that The Park, our Park, has its very own "Star Wars" event of sorts?  Okay, so it's not officially endorsed by The Parks, and it's in much the same vein as "Bats Day In The Park" (which if you've never seen you simply must!), but it's nonetheless a lot of fun and a great way to connect with other "Star Wars" fans from all over southern California.  It started out as a "protest" of sorts to Star Wars Weekends being only in Orlando, but is now a big get-together of like-minded geeks with a hankering for Jawas and droids, and is now in its fifth year and has a lot of people coming out each and every year. 

Last year's was a really fun event for us as it was our first time attending, at the behest of the same friend who went to Star Wars Weekends in Orlando last year (and all we got was a crummy map - bazinga!).  Since it is an "unofficial" day that The Park really has nothing to do with (other than having a photographer take our picture but more on that in a minute), it's basically just a free-for-all to do whatever you want to do as the day goes on.  We basically just strolled around and rode attractions all day long, meeting other Fanboys all over The Park and getting into all kinds of interesting conversations and debates.  And of course, riding Star Tours.  This year's should be extra special because of the re-opening of the attraction, and we'll hopefully get to ride with a lot of our fellow fans (men and women) this year as well.

Also, even though it is officially "unofficial", there are a couple of events that are "scheduled" (enjoy the way we're putting darn near everything in quotation marks?) every year.  "Star Wars" Fan Clubs such as Fan Force, The 501st and Rebel Legion meet annually at Redd Rockett's Pizza Port in Tomorrowland for lunch at noon (anyone who wishes to come is invited to attend), and there is also a large group photo taken in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at 2 o'clock, which is probably the big "event" of the day.  We are in fact in last year's photo in the back row.  Extra points to anyone who can spot us!

Photo courtesy of Star Wars Day At Disneyland

So there you have it. It might not be an "official" extravaganza the likes of which (at least to this point) only Disney's Hollywood Studios has seen, but it is a great way for a whole lot of "Star Wars" fans to hang out, ride some attractions, debate and argue, enjoy a meal, take a picture, and ride Star Tours together.  We're thankful for the opportunity to go again this year and happy that others cared so much as to start this whole thing in the first place.  It's a lot of fun and we can't wait!

This year's Star Wars Day At Disneyland will be held on Sunday, June 26th.  You can find out more information on the Star Wars Day At Disneyland website.

So what do you think?  Did you know about this Day At The Park?  Planning on attending this year?  Let us know, we'd love to meet and hang out with you.  We'll be there with our Fanboy shirts on and our blasters at the ready.  Hope to see you out there!