Mark Twain Riverboat Articles
14 Venues, Show Temporarily Close In Disney Parks
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Disneyland Resort parks have 14 venues and one show that are temporarily closed during May, mostly for major makeovers or special events.
Many of the projects are ending this month as the two parks -- Disneyland and Disney California Adventure -- prepare for the summer season.
Along Disneyland's Rivers of America, four attractions and the Fantasmic! Show are shut down for preparations of the ...
Disneyland Closes Attractions For Pirates Premiere
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Disneyland this week temporarily closed five attractions as the park prepares for next week's celebrity-studded premiere of the upcoming "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" movie.
Crews are building a screen and seating along Rivers of America for the outdoor viewing May 7 of "Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides" for celebrities, invited guests and ticket holders. The screening follows "black" ...
How To Actually Be Happy At The Happiest Place On Earth
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School is out, the kids are full of energy and expectations and parents across Utah are making summer plans. Gasoline prices have driven many Utahns to choose Disneyland as their summer destination. Here are five tips and little-known secrets for making your Magic Kingdom visit more memorable.
1. Know when to go
The crowds at Disneyland are often a concern for parents. The serious vacationer ...
As Disneyland Turns 56, Walt Disney's Daughter Reminisces
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Imagine growing up in a family surrounded by cartoon characters, a miniature steam train, Academy Awards and theme parks.
Diane Disney Miller did. Her dad was Walt Disney.
"He was always fun to be with him to walk around with him was fun," Miller said.
While their father was a workaholic, one day a week was her and sister Sharon's day.
"He would pick us up at Sunday school, then ...
Disneyland Tour Follows Walt Disney's Journey
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A tour of Disneyland from the perspective of Walt Disney ends with the guide quoting a newspaper article describing Disney's success as a "product of luck."
The 180-minute tour, titled "A Walk in Walt's Footsteps," shows that Disney's rise from a struggling animator to Academy Award-winning filmmaker and creator of the most famous theme park in the world had little to do with luck.
The guided ...
Disneyland Resort Offers Plenty Of New Attractions
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The self-proclaimed "happiest place on Earth" is about to become a whole lot happier.
When Disneyland Resort's new 12-acre Cars Land opens in time for next summer's tourist blitz, it will represent the latest achievement in the world of "imagineering" a word that was coined to emphasize the imagination of Disney engineers.
Presently under construction in the Disney California Adventure park, ...
Disneyland It All Started With A Mouse
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Who wants sugar in their tea? The Mad Hatter asked. Everyone cheered. It is at this moment when I realised the greatest thing for the 'little traveller' was the parks unique way to bring treasured favourites to life, such as a favoured classic, Alice in wonderland.
Many years on from its opening on 17 July 1955, Walt Disney's theme park has sparked the imagination and captured the hearts of thousands ...
Walt Disney King Of Fantasy
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Walt Disney and friends.
Walt Disney, whose Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck brought laughter to the world and whose Disneyland is a playground for the world's people, calls his home at Smoke Tree Ranch, "my laughing place."
Whimsical, as always, he refers to the Uncle Remus story where Brer Rabbit oh-so-casually mentions his "laughing place" and makes it sound so intriguing that Brer Fox insists on ...
Disney Temporarily Closes 8 Attractions, 1 Show
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Eight Disney parks attractions, one show and some hotel pools will be temporarily closed for at least part of February mostly because of maintenance projects.
Disney traditionally conducts most of their big renovation projects in the winter months following the busy holidays when tourism slows down.
On Friday (today), Disney is reopening two of those attractions -- Redwood Creek Challenge Trail ...
5 Disney Rides Temporarily Close Fantasmic! Show Returns
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Five rides in Disneyland Resort parks will be closed for at least part of March as the park prepares for spring-break crowds.
Four of the rides are set to re-open within the week after undergoing routine maintenance projects: Grizzly River Run in Disney California Adventure and the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Disneyland Monorail and the King Arthur Carrousel in Disneyland.
The Matterhorn Bobsleds ...
Machine Tooled Happyland
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The wondrous devices of Disneyland take on startling importance in the mind of a science fiction seer
Two thousand years back, people entering Grecian temples dropped coins into machinery that then clanked forth holy water.
It is a long way from that first slot machine to the "miracles of rare device" created by Walt Disney for his kingdom, Disneyland. When Walt Whitman wrote, "I sing the Body ...
Disney Adventure Without The Kids
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When I told a New York friend I was heading to Disneyland to explore its appeal for adults, his immediate retort was that it would be a very brief visit. And when our group, not a person under 35, walked through the gates of Disneyland on a warm Saturday and contemplated the crush of elbow-high humanity before us, I wondered if perhaps he was right.
Yet seven hours and eight attractions into my first ...
Insiders Guide To Disneyland
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If I could live anywhere, I would live in The Haunted Mansion, like all year long," director Guillermo del Toro said last year at Comic-Con while discussing his upcoming film featuring Disneyland's iconic haunted house. And he's not alone.
Hollywood is full of filmmakers and talent who are addicted to Disneyland, which opened in 1955 and now averages 40,000 visitors a day. Zachary Levi, Gwen Stefani, ...
12 Unique And Magical Memories To Be Made At Disneyland
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When visiting Disney, many families head straight for the E-ticket rides, from Space Mountain to the Matterhorn to Dumbo. But in doing so they not only spend a whole lot of time in long lines, but they miss out on so many magical moments and memories that can be made at the "happiest place on earth.' Though these attractions are less popular, they are just as special and endure in family memories far ...
10 Disney Attractions Closing For Rehab
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Indiana Jones Adventure and two Fantasyland rides will close for most of the fall to undergo renovations as summer crowds dissipate at Disneyland.
That park and neighboring Disney California Adventure will shut down 10 venues in September for refurbishment, after the record-breaking summer season wraps up with Labor Day.
The longest closures, which begin Tuesday, will be Indiana Jones Adventure, ...
A Guy A Girl And 366 Straight Days At Disneyland
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If, like Jeff Reitz and Tonya Mickesh, you go to Disneyland oftenvery oftenyou know that asking for a roast beef melt made without horseradish, as opposed to a roast beef melt with horseradish removed after the fact, will require a ten-minute wait at the Jolly Holiday Bakery Cafe. You know that, if conditions are right, you may ride in the wheelhouse of the Mark Twain Riverboat and help steer. You know ...
Disney Begins 4 Million Dollar Big Thunder Overhaul
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Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad will undergo its biggest project in more than three decades when the ride closes Monday for at least nine months.
The Frontierland ride, which mimics a runaway mine train through an Old West canyon, will close so crews can begin a makeover that will last until fall. A reopening date has yet to be announced.
The renovation will cost $4 million, according ...
Disneyland Day Every Day For This Couple
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At 8 a.m. today, Tonya Mickesh and Jeff Reitz were to go through the entrance turnstiles to Disneyland for the 366th day in a row. It's a journey that's seen them spend 24 hours in the park for the 24-hour Leap Day, watch baby ducks grow up, and go from unemployed to full-time jobs while becoming nationally known as the "everyday Disneyland couple."
"It was a way to keep ourselves occupied because ...
California vs. Paris: Rivers of America
I learned something today.
My comparison article for January 2013 was always going to be about the Rivers of America in Anaheim's Disneyland Park, and its counterpart in Disneyland Paris.
However, until perhaps five minutes ago, I had assumed that the Paris equivalent was also called Rivers of America. Turns out, it's the Rivers of the Far West.
Whilst it has been made clear which rivers ...
Disney Couple Seal The Deal With Pirates Gold
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They worked, met, had their first date, and got engaged at Disneyland, with proposal coming in a dreamy location.
Ride operator Andrew Salter met Alyssa Allinson on her first day on the job at Disneyland.
Five months later, Salter asked her out for a first date at Disneyland.
Four years after that, Salter bent down on one knee to propose marriage to Allinson at Disneyland.
"I ...
Disneyland For Dads
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In the land of Disney, princess always reigned supreme. However, though Sleeping Beauty's Castle, the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and those ever-popular princesses may get a lot of the attention, Disneyland and California Adventure offer a pixie dust-less world for the guys in your life too - all in time for Father's Day in June.
Cars Land
Route 66 comes to life for plain-old cars and animated ...
Make The Most Of Disneyland Anaheim California
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It's known as the Happiest Place on Earth. And judging by the wide-eyed look on my daughters' faces as we walked through the front gates of Anaheim's Disneyland Park, the statement is spot on.
Wandering up Main Street USA, the central thoroughfare at the world-famous theme park, one of the first things we see is Sleeping Beauty's castle. It looms before us like a scene from a fairytale with its ...
Captain Takes You Inside The Wheelhouse Of The Mark Twain Riverboat At Disneyland
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Ever wonder what it's like to steer the Mark Twain Riverboat through the Rivers of America at Disneyland? Or how the Radiator Springs Raceway cars get their power?
"Every Role a Starring Role" is one of my favorite Disneyland blogs that takes you behind the scenes with various cast members who describe their jobs.
Jen Holst, a Mark Twain Riverboat captain, describes herself as "the eyes and ears" ...
7 Disneyland Secrets That Will Transform Your Trip
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Whether you're young, or just young-at-heart, the magic of Disneyland appeals to the child in all of us. But each of us gets something different from the experience -- some have an adventurous side that longs for the thrill of the scariest ride, some have a girly side that wants nothing more than to meet the dazzling princesses of the park, some have an indulgent side that loves the wide array of food and ...
Disneyland Turns 60 Ranking Its Attractions by Land
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Oh, boy! The Disneyland Resort Diamond Celebration begins today!
Disneyland Park opened in Anaheim, Calif., on July 17, 1955, and ever since, it has entertained millions of guests from all over the world. That's no small feat!
"It's amazing to contemplate all that Disneyland has come to mean to so many people around the world," Tom Staggs, COO of the Walt Disney Company, recently told the ...
Growing Up In Disneyland
Don DeFore's Silver Banjo Barbecue Restaurant in Frontierland
Disneyland fans who have enjoyed the park numerous times might say they too "grew up in Disneyland." But my family's story is a bit different. Our Mom loved to quote us kids saying, "gee, do we have to go to Disneyland again? Such was the case in the early years of the Park when Dad owned a restaurant in Frontierland. A few stories below ...
Disneyland 60 Things You Might Not Know About The Magic Kingdom
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TV show named "Gunsmoke" made its debut, and another named "Make Room for Daddy" won two Emmys. Elvis Presley and Pat Boone had young hearts all shook up, and for the first time, they could listen to those crooners and others on a new gadget called a pocket transistor radio. A new car cost $1,900, gasoline was 23 cents a gallon and rents averaged $87 a month..
It was 1955. On July 17 of that year - a ...
Reflecting On Changes At Disneyland
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What could be more exciting for a 10-year-old?
It was June 1955. My family had just driven across the country to our new home in Lakewood. Not only were we returning to our California roots, but the kids' paradise of Disneyland was just about to open for the first time.
My sisters and I used to watch the weekly TV show "Disneyland" in our suburban Washington D.C. home. After various adventures ...
Happy Birthday Disneyland Happiest Place On Earth Turns 60
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Like the animator and entrepreneur, Disneyland was ambitious and imaginative - a real-life play land for children and adults alike. Thomas, a longtime Hollywood reporter for AP and author of a Walt Disney biography who died in 2014, wrote that Disneyland cost $17 million to build, and that no detail was spared. He also noted that a day trip was doable but "you'd no doubt end up with a headache."
Sixty ...
Disney Voice Over Actors Bring Theme Park Rides To Life
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Voice-over actors are the hidden artists who provide the audio atmosphere and essential back stories that bring theme parks to life..
From the parking lot tram spiel to park-wide announcements to ride narrations, the best work of voice-over actors often goes unnoticed simply because it blends so seamlessly into the overall theme park experience.
During the upcoming ScareLA convention on Aug. 8 ...
In Defense Of Disneyland Why Its Worth Revisiting As A Jaded Adult
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I went to Disneyland for the first time when I was 10-years old. My parents, aunt, and grandma loaded my sisters, two cousins, and me into two Oldsmobile Cutlass wagons and we caravanned from Portland (OR) to Anaheim (CA) in a sprawling, Vacation-esque road trip.
We visited the Redwoods, Universal Studios, and San Diego. Wonderful places, all. And yet I only have three or four fleeting memories from ...
