Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Pretty much all the male dolls look like women, this one if probably the most exaggerated version. Are they that hard to make, or that out of touch with reality?
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Pretty much all the male dolls look like women, this one if probably the most exaggerated version. Are they that hard to make, or that out of touch with reality?<< Who's out of touch with reality? Here's the Barbie market's ideal man, circa 2013: <a href="http://www.vibe.com/sites/vibe.com/files/styles/article-bounds-718/public/photo_gallery_images/vibe-justin-bieber-side-eye.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.vibe.com/sites/vibe...-eye.jpg</a> And, just for the record, circa 1977: <a href="http://auntiefashion.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/shaun-cassidy.jpg" target="_blank">http://auntiefashion.files.wor...sidy.jpg</a>
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones "Al has undoubtedly been a major force in shaming the WDC into changing their ways in relation to their parks." His updates were interesting to me when I used to be interested in Disneyland news, but his influence is overblown even in Anaheim. At Disneyland, 98% of park goers probably do not even know who he is. Disneyland ticket sales probably have much more to do with business cycles and ticket offers than his updates. The way I see it, his updates were about preaching to the choir to a built-in audience of Disneyland obsessives. He's not Bob Woodward for crying out loud. We didn't need an Al Lutz to know that DCA was bad, and the general public does not care about whether or not the fireflies are working on Pirates, sadly.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones To put it another way, what Disney has done with Disneyland influences what Al says, not the other way around. When Lutz has spoken to the press on Disneyland issues, he has been able to articulate well what has been going on and his opinion on certain matters, and he's a good pundit. But I don't believe that Disneyland executives then took that information and changed their plans in any way. Disney will rely on their own market research more than what any blogger has to say.
Originally Posted By Manfried Agreed Spokker with both your posts I do. I would go further to say that Al and micechat seem to listen to their own folks and have convinced themselves they are THE DISNEY EXPERTS.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones To clarify, I do think Al Lutz is as close to a Disneyland expert as one can get. He is very knowledgeable and I agreed with a lot of his opinions. His updates were interested to me when I was interested, meaning that his updates have not become less interesting but I have become less interested. But to say that Al Lutz/Mouseplanet or Al Lutz/Miceage was an important watchdog group? I don't buy it. Everybody from the ADD days until now were just people with a shared interest and big mouths.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>But I don't believe that Disneyland executives then took that information and changed their plans in any way.<< While I would generally agree that DL doesn't pay too much attention to Al, one notable exception comes to mind. About 7-10 years ago (I really can't remember when it was), the Twain went down for a regularly scheduled refurbishment for a couple weeks. When it emerged, Darkbeer (remember him?) took photos of the newly-repainted boat that featured a lot of wood around the bottom rails on the lower level that had rotted through and/or had serious wear and tear from use through the years. Al posted those photos in his next weekly column, and a couple days later, the Twain went back to the drydock, and spent a couple more weeks fixing what should have been fixed during the first refurb. Obviously, this is an extreme example, and hardly his normal type of reporting, but it should be noted that his columns from time to time have made an impact on what was done in the parks. >>To clarify, I do think Al Lutz is as close to a Disneyland expert as one can get.<< I agree, but with a limitation. He seems to know a lot about the ins and outs of the business side of things, and the history of the resort, but in recent years he has seemed to be increasingly unaware of the normal park experience. His comments, while half truthful, often just don't make sense with what is actually happening on a daily basis. The example that sticks out in my memory was when they announced the closing of the Mission Tortilla factory at DCA, he made a comment about how guests would no longer be able to get "half a tortilla" for free. While apparently that was the standard operating procedure when the park first opened, they had been giving out full tortillas at least since my first visit to the park in 2005.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder You're really going to try and discredit him over half a tortilla?
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I'm just saying, if you're going to try and make a sly comment about the park's operations, you might want to make sure you're not referencing something that's at least 7 years out of date (and likely longer than that). For someone who is supposed to be such an expert on these things, he seems to enough errors to make me question him. The half a tortilla comment is just one that stands out in my mind as clearly being very out of date. There have been other comments through the eyars, but that's the one that sticks out in my mind at the moment
Originally Posted By Manfried I remember a good one (that has since disappeared off of micechat) where Al claimed that according to a highly placed source there would be a new dark ride on Main Street that would be entered through the Main Street Cinema. Al never owned up to that being fed to him by someone at WDI to try and get a project approved.
Originally Posted By TP2000 Manfried, I've read Lutz for years. Religiously. And I have never heard Lutz, nor anyone else, ever claim a "dark ride" was going into the Main Street Cinema. The only thing I can think of, and what I assume you think you remember, is the Cinema plan several years ago that Lutz said Tony Baxter was working on. It was the "Mickey Initiative" where the Studio was going to re-launch Mickey Mouse via DVD and online presence. Lutz's angle was that Tony Baxter wanted to remake the dusty old Cinema into a more cutting edge experience, with plenty of gilt-edged help from Kim Irvine's decorating talents no doubt, to help give the "Mickey Initiative" a snazzy new presence in a re-launched attraction on Main Street USA. It wasn't a dark ride, it was just a spruced up version of the Cinema tied in with a marketing campaign from the Studios. The Mickey Initiative never showed up from the Studio (Lutz was talking about it a year in advance), but the Cinema did get a nice rehab and cosmetic update later that year. A 10 second Google search led to this Al Lutz column that discussed it in January, 2010. <a href="http://miceage.micechat.com/allutz/al010510a.htm" target="_blank">http://miceage.micechat.com/al...510a.htm</a>
Originally Posted By Manfried No, this was after that and was in 2011. That post, like I said, magically disappeared.
Originally Posted By phruby Are you saying Miceage edits Al's past articles to keep them in line with how things turned out? That way Al looks correct every time.
Originally Posted By Manfried Haven't you ever noticed that you can't post a comment about how Al is wrong on the site? Oh you can't, it gets deleted on their pages.
Originally Posted By phruby I haven't posted at Mice Age since they kicked me off ten years ago for saying People Mover is never coming back.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "I haven't posted at Mice Age since they kicked me off ten years ago for saying People Mover is never coming back." Funny.
Originally Posted By TP2000 Another Google search came up with nothing for Al Lutz mentioning any sort of dark ride in 2011, accessed via the Main Street Cinema. All the rest of his 2011 articles are still available online. And there are no LP threads here about such a rumor, nor does any rumor exist on any of the other Disneyland fan sites. If Al Lutz had said in 2011 that a "new dark ride" was going in off Main Street through the Cinema, the fan boards would have exploded in conversation and chatter. That never happened, and you are the only person who has ever mentioned this rumor (you've brought it up before here as an Al Lutz error). But there's nothing on it anywhere, and no one but you seems to remember this concept ever existing or being introduced in an Al Lutz article. With all due respect Manfried, are you sure you might not just be mistaken and you have combined a couple of Al Lutz rumors from the 2010-2011 timeframe into one concept? Specifically, I'm talking about the Pixie dark ride once rumored for the Motorboat Cruise (that never happened) and the Main Street Cinema makeover for the Mickey Initiative (that only half-happened). Perhaps those two things combined in your databanks and created a "dark ride on Main Street through the Cinema", and you've attributed it incorrectly to an Al Lutz article? I can get the mists of time fogging up my databanks sometimes too, and it happens to everyone. But I really think you are just mistaken on this Main Street Dark Ride thing. ;-)
Originally Posted By Manfried I don't think so, but we all have the fog of time some times. Next time I will take a screen grab as he has deleted things in the past, as have others on other Disney fan sites. With all due respect.
