Originally Posted By Mr X No character would be on set from 10:30 - 2 anyway, they normally work in shifts of 20-30 minutes... Either this weird time issue has to do with giving the stage managers a lunch break (and if so I dunno why they'd bother with such weird times), or else there's another character greeting elsewhere necessitating the special event characters to get off the stage during that time (more likely, I would guess...is there a day show these days?).
Originally Posted By tashajilek "The characters are wearing Canadian like clothes!" Lol, yea i guess he stole my wardrobe. Im not a huge fan of the fake Disney snow. I dont really like the nasty bubble taste.
Originally Posted By MamaTinkAz There is no snow for kids to play in as they announced and all you get is soap I mean snow bubbles and Donald and friends. Sorry not very interesting to me.
Originally Posted By TP2000 Constance>> "That's all I got." That's all WDW has got too, so everyone is even. Universal Hollywood has a real snow making machine for their annual Grinchmas promotion, and it's real snow. They refresh it daily as it slowly melts in the weak December sun. But this is just a snow-bubble machine from the Christmas parade set on top of a nearby lamp post. Spitting bubbles out over the characters, but not really enough to be fun or even show up on video. Just one machine valiantly spitting out some bubbles over Donald and Daisy Duck in Canadian flannel shirts. Limited Magic! They really just need to stop trying this marketing promotion in WDW if they can't come up with anything better. It's embarrassing for them.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros It's embarassing that a multi-billion worldwide corporation really thinks that a promotion like this will pull anybody into the parks. It makes the parks look bad because they have to come up with stuff to fill the promotion, and it makes the corporate folks look bad because the whole thing was so poorly thought through (like many of the recent promotions...YOAMD, free birthdays, volunteer days, etc). I walked past it yesterday (there's a picture on LP Live), and it was a total non-event. I managed to capture the entire experience in a single shot on my cell phone. It's kind of neat that there were 4 characters (Donald, Daisy, Chip, Dale) greeting guests together, but other than that there really isn't anything to get excited about. And the loop of Christmas music was just strange on an 80 degree day in January. During the Marathon on Sunday morning, there was a photo stop around mile 11 that featured Christmas stuff. They had 'snow' on the ground, several full-size trees, giant candy canes, Santa's sleigh, and a reindeer, gingerbread man, elf, and something-else-that-I-can't-remember-at-the-moment-but-is-in-the-Christmas-parade posing for pictures with runners. It's kind of sad that they were able to pull off a much better random short-term Christmas-themed-in-January photo stop for the marathon (literally in the woods in the middle of nowhere, along Bear Island Rd which is never open to guest traffic) than for a week in the parks. Go figure.
Originally Posted By MamaTinkAz Kindof makes you wonder what they are thinking. Seems like you have to go to a special event, ie. marathon, D23, or media to really get the good stuff. Like the whole dragon thing, it was only for the media event, Even though they really hyped it up on the Disney Blog if you weren't at the event, you wouldn't see it. And to think if I didn't get to go, I wouldn't have seen one of the coolest things I have seen at Disney. Plus no more 20% discount for APers at WDW. What up with that?
Originally Posted By leemac <<Btw, Leemac. I am hearing rumors that Phil Holmes is getting ready to retire. Have you heard anything?>> Sorry - missed that. I haven't spoken to him since November but others have said that his retirement is temporarily on hold due to the recent moves. I gather he should be out by easter.
Originally Posted By leemac I've yet to see a park veep make any real difference - except in terms of cast management. They have limited ability to do anything productive. I know folks on that WDW Magic site are fixated about people like Holmes and Cockerill but they really are just there to management day-to-day operations. Their influence is pretty limited even in TDO.
Originally Posted By leemac <<Universal Hollywood has a real snow making machine for their annual Grinchmas promotion, and it's real snow. >> Wow - I didn't know that. I bet it looks a whole lot more impressive than soap suds!
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Just for reference, -em posted a photo from the random Christmas spot on the Marathon course (turns out the other character I couldn't remember was a toy soldier!). It's nothing overly impressive, but having a setup of this scale in the middle of nowhere was pretty neat (you can only see about 1/3 of the props in the picture). It's kind of sad that this one photo stop (of probably 20-30 that morning) puts the advertised one to shame. Scroll down about halfway to see the photo. Lots of other great photos on her blog too! <a href="http://hyphenem365.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://hyphenem365.blogspot.com/</a>
