In honor of today’s return of the Orange Bird to Sunshine Tree Terrace at the Magic Kingdom, here’s a clip of Richard Sherman performing the Orange Bird Theme at D23′s Destination D 2011. Sherman launched into the tune spontaneously, so I missed the first line of the song, but I’ll bet you can guess what it is!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4fCmm8vOJQ

If you’ve ready many of my trip reports, you’ll know that ever since my wedding I’ve become obsessed by ordering specialty cakes at Walt Disney World. I’ve even compiled a massive FAQ on the process and a complete guide to cake options based on location (since Walt Disney World has no standard system for ordering fancy cakes).

Custom 8-inch cake by the Contemporary Resort Bakery

The trouble with all this cake ordering is that I’ve had to buy a ginormous 6- or 8-inch cake at a hefty price to get fondant and fancy decor. However, in the past year or so, it has become increasingly easy to get certain bakeries to make mini cakes, which are adorable, customizable and only feed 2.

Anniversary re-creation of our wedding cake by BoardWalk Bakery

What I’m also discovering is that they taste WAY better than Disney’s larger cakes, probably due to the lower frosting-to-cake ratio, and even the fondant is more edible than the stuff on larger cakes.

Check out the frosting-to-cake ratio on this baby!

Yes, the prices are pretty outrageous considering how little you get ($30-$55, depending on whether you want fondant), but I’d rather spend $35 on a delicious and entirely eat-able mini cake than $100 on an 8-inch cake that serves 12 and will just go to waste.

Coral & Shells fondant mini cake by the Grand Floridian Bakery

It appears that Yacht & Beach Club Bakery (which historically hasn’t offered custom cakes smaller than 10 inches) has begun offering mini cakes, which means you can now have them delivered to restaurants in Epcot. This dramatically increases the number of places you can get a mini cake on property and is cause for celebration… involving cake!

For complete details on ordering mini cakes at Walt Disney World, see this section of my How to Order a Cake at Walt Disney World page.

Lily Pulitzer-inspired custom mini cake by the Contemporary Resort Bakery

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve started a new show, the Disney Wedding Podcast! Although it has “wedding” in the title, I’m also widening the scope to include planning and celebrating any romantic occasion at the Disney parks and resorts, from engagements and honeymoons to anniversaries and other adults-only trips. And of course there will be lots of discussion of cake…

New episodes air each Wednesday. As with my last show, I’ll offer insider tips, money-saving tricks and inspiring ideas. I’ll also feature interviews with vendors, experts and real Disney brides and grooms.

The first show went live yesterday, and it was a lot of fun to record. Disney Wedding Blog Mentor and honeymooner extraordinaire Chrysty Summers joined me to talk about the Top 3 Romantic Resorts at Walt Disney World (well, technically 6 1/2 cuz there are two of us and I cheated)! We discussed what makes a resort a good choice for a romantic trip, shared stories from our own honeymoon resort-hopping, and answered the question, “Does it have to be a Deluxe resort to be romantic?” We also discovered a mutual disappointment in what we’ve decided is the most overrated honeymoon resort at Walt Disney World.

If you like Disney and you like weddings (or you just have a really boring commute), check out the Disney Wedding Podcast online, in iTunes, on Facebook, or on Twitter!

I have finally migrated my last DIS Boards trip report over to this site!

Wedding Crasher: 4 Parties in 3 Nights with 2 Cameras and 1 Fabulous Hat! is the story of my first solo trip to Walt Disney World, in which I attended two private parties as a legitimate guest and stalked not one but TWO Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings, with assistance from my always-game pal Jensey! Not only is this the trip where I discovered my signature black hat, but it is also one of the funnier trip reports I’ve written… maybe the funnniest. In fact, rereading it makes me worry that if I let you see it, you’ll notice how much funnier it is than some of my more recent trip reports. Gulp!

Yes, it’s an old trip report, but it’s also been buried in the DIS for the last 2 years, so if you’ve never seen it or you barely remember it, check out Wedding Crasher: 4 Parties in 3 Nights with 2 Cameras and 1 Fabulous Hat!

This post is part of DisMarks’ Disney Blog Carnival—click here or more great Disney blogs!

In yesterday’s post I detailed the history we learned about the El Capitan Theatre on our Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation tour last weekend. After the organ concert and history presentation, we were broken into groups and sent dashing through the narrow halls backstage to try to see everything before the theater opened for business that morning. Our group got to climb the steps and stand on the stage for a few moments while others split off to tour the balcony.

We were lead off the house left side of the stage and shown the stage manager’s base of operations.

The first and nicest of the many dressing rooms we saw is known as the “star” dressing room. At this point we weren’t really sure if we were allowed to go into the rooms we were being lead to, and our guide seemed more interested in moving us from place to place than showing us stuff, so I didn’t get any really good shots.

From there it was down the first of many narrow staircases, this one leading to the Green Room.

As I mentioned yesterday, the exciting thing about this tour for a Disney fan like me was that we were allowed to take pictures backstage—a definite no-no at the parks. Which means you get to endure such scintillating shots as this…

Not green.

And we're off!

This would make a great robot character in Star Tours!

The next stop was the “Mickey lift,” used to vault performers onto the stage quickly just like its cousins in the two Fantasmic! shows at the parks. It looks… deadly!

Another rare peek—the stage show performers' dressing room!

Costumes for the show that accompanies "Beauty & the Beast 3-D"

Chorus dressing room

Stage left houses a seemingly infinite staircase leading to three levels of dressing rooms, bathrooms, and the organ loft.

One of four organ pipe chambers

A bathroom in every hall...

Oh wait, make that TWO bathrooms in every hall—this place has some serious resale value!

Well hello there, creepy Jack Sparrow. The john's thattaway...

At the very top of the stairs is the organ loft, which the forward-thinking architects included even though the theater was not intended to show movies. It never actually housed organ pipes until the 1998 renovation, serving instead as a scenic shop for making props and sets. The giant thing in this photo is a Spencer blower for powering the pipes. Some old movie houses used to need two of these babies!

They never told us how many pipes the organ has, but we did learn that the largest is 32 feet long.

Vertiginous view of the stage from the organ loft

After descending the staircase sideways to accommodate the next groups, we went out through an alley and back into the theater before heading upstairs to the balcony.

Disney did a great job replicating a Hollywood alley. All that's missing is the smell!

The original curtain featured a pair of peacocks and was covered in silver leaf

I don’t remember what we talked about in the balcony cuz I was busy taking a bunch of blurry pictures I’m not going to show you. Well, OK, here’s one…

Patrick’s more of a detail man…

The upstairs lobby didn’t have display cases originally, but it is fun to look through all the photos of the various premieres and some historic shots.

From there it was all the way down to the basement lounge, which is the only room in the theater untouched by any of the extreme makeovers through the years. Disney had the paneling and light fixtures restored. The display case at the back of the room is an addition. Last time we were there it held Miss Piggy’s costumes from the Muppet movie, and the rest of the room prominently featured sets from the film. Now it’s been completely transformed for Story Time with Belle in the Beast’s Library Under the El Capitan on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

There was talk of us each receiving a reproduction of the program of the first play shown at the theater, but the guy who was supposed to bring them forgot.

We wandered through the Soda Fountain on our way out.

Barrel o' Belles!

If you’re interested in similar tours of historic LA theaters, keep an eye on the following sites:

• Los Angeles Historic Theatre Society
• LA Conservancy
• The Conservancy also shows films in the grand old movie palaces downtown once a year during Last Remaining Seats
• The American Cinematheque occasionally gives public tours of the historic Egyptian Theater. We really enjoyed that one too!

This post is part of the DisMarks Disney Blog Carnival. Check it out!

When a Disney movie opens in Los Angeles, it opens at Disney’s El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, so Patrick and I find ourselves there often. Seeing a movie at the El Capitan is a real event, complete with a pre-show concert of Disney tunes played on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, a Disney character-filled stage show themed to the feature presentation, and even a mini show on the curtain as it rises.

But considering how frequently we’re at the El Capitan, we know very little about its history, besides that it was restored by Disney and that the first movie to open there after the restoration was The Rocketeer. So when we saw that the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation was offering a backstage tour this past weekend, we jumped at the chance to learn more.

The tour was supposed to start at 8am so that we could be out in time for the first public screening that day. Unfortunately, it got off to a late start, and the presentations ran long, which meant that the actual tour was run rather briskly, with little time to linger and take photos. Still, you’ll see we got a ton — mostly because it was a treat to get behind-the-scenes shots we’d never be allowed to take backstage at a Disney park!

Because there’s so much to show you, I’ll break the recap into two posts, one about the history we learned during the first half of the presentation and one with the backstage tour.

The first part of the event was a concert by staff organist Ed Vodicka. We always enjoy listening to house organist Rob Richards playing Disney music before the movies, but it was an unexpected treat to hear a broader range of selections, including everything from “Stars & Stripes Forever” to “Aquarela do Brasil” (which Vodicka picked for its 1930s popularity but also happens to be featured in Saludos Amigos), played without the addition of the usual iPod backing tracks. If such a thing as a smokin’ organ solo exists, it’s the one Vodicka played in his rendition of “Friend Like Me.”

The Mighty Wurlitzer organ is not original to the El Capitan. It started life at the Fox Theatre in San Francisco and passed into private hands when that theater was demolished. According to one of our fellow tourgoers, the organ became one of the centerpieces around which the restoration of Glendale’s Alex Theater was launched, until it proved to be too big to fit in the space. Disney brought the organ to the El Capitan during a second phase of renovation in 1998, carving out space in the orchestra pit under the first few rows of seating and employing a single-shaft spiral lift to elevate the organ to stage height during performances.

Next we heard from representatives of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation and the El Capitan, including El Capitan Executive Director Ed Collins, who spearheaded the 1989–1991 renovations. They gave us a bit of history over a slideshow presentation, which we weren’t allowed to photograph. A couple of the shots are on the walls in the upstairs lobby, though, and I’ll give you links to the others below.

The El Capitan was opened as a legitimate theater in 1926 by “Father of Hollywood” Charles Tolberman and Sid Grauman, just a few years after their Egyptian Theater and one year before the Chinese Theater.

The exterior was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by the same architect who did the Mayan Theater downtown, and the interior was done in the East Indian style by G. Albert Lansburgh at the same time he was designing those of the Orpheum Theater and the Shrine Auditorium. Talk about a pedigree!

You can see photos of the original theater HERE. Some of the differences you might notice are the low wall at the back of the theater, which originally separated seating from standing-room-only but has now been replaced by a full wall the separates the theater from the lobby.

The original configuration had a very shallow interior lobby and relied mostly on the exterior “storm lobby.” Three ticket booths were built into one exterior wall. Although the compartment is still there (and appears to be used as a closet) the three windows are now poster display cases.

A ticket booth was added during a 1941 remodel and given its current look during Disney's renovation

After 10 years of stage productions at the El Capitan, the entertainment industry began to change in response to the Depression and the growing popularity of the talkies. For one thing, it was much cheaper to show movies than to put on plays. The first film shown at the El Capitan was the world premiere of Citizen Kane in 1941, which Orson Welles booked there because he couldn’t get into any of the theaters owned by major entertainment companies who were wary of angering William Randolph Hearst.

After that, the theater was leased by Paramount and closed for a year to be transformed into a Streamline Moderne movie palace called The Hollywood Paramount, whose advertising trumpeted, among other things, “the most beautiful usherettes!” You can see post-remodel photos HERE. Although the new look had a very distinctive style, all of us in the audience gasped when we saw photos of the transformation, which completely obscured the elaborate decor of the original. Only the downstairs lounge remained intact.

Former site of the coconut milk bar introduced in the 1941 remodel.

The El Capitan name and staff were shunted to the former Hollywood Playhouse around the corner (now the Avalon Hollywood), while The Hollywood Paramount operated under Paramount Pictures for just seven years. A Supreme Court ruling eventually forced movie studios to divest themselves of all their movie theaters. The Paramount continued to operate under a series of different names and owners until 1989, when then-owner Pacific Theatres entered into a deal with the Walt Disney Company to restore the El Capitan to its former glory.

Interestingly, the original plan was to evoke an Art Deco look. But on a walkthrough, one of the members of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundatio poked around behind some walls and discovered that much of the original East Indian interior decor was still there. He was able to convince Disney to uncover it and reconstruct the missing elements. According to theater designer Joseph Musil, who spearheaded the redesign, about 70% of what you see today is original, while 30% had to be re-created. But the aim was that the theater appear to be completely original with just a slight facelift.

Layers of mustard yellow paint were stripped away and the opera boxes, which had been sheared off in 1941, were completely re-created by a specialty company in Berkeley, CA. The detailing in the storm lobby was full of holes where the art deco canopy had hung, so the team reproduced the orignal using mostly photographs (since few architectural plans remained). Inside, the team made molds of existing parts of the proscenium and then re-created it out of insulated material to help change the live theater acoustics to movie theater acoustics.

We were told that the terms of the tax credit used in the restoration dictated that any new decor elements not appear to be original, which is why the new lobby light fixtures and murals are so brightly colored.

New lobby light fixtures are a simplified version of the originals

Original light fixtures, in the downstairs lounge

Another change was the creation of one large “blade” sign to replace three smaller signs on the exterior. The yellow-on-black color scheme was chosen so that the name would be visible far down Hollywood Boulevard even if the lights weren’t on.

The background's black in real life, honest!

And of course there’s the entirely new marquee Musil designed, which is far more elaborate than the original but looks as if it’s always been there. He used materials that appear to glitter and shine without illumination in daylight, a far cry from the inexplicably unlit disco balls that graced the marquee before the demolition (and reportedly smashed into a million bits on Hollywood Boulevard when they were removed!).

My favorite of all of Musil’s contributions is the four-curtain “Hollywood Romance” preshow (sometimes it almost makes me cry, it’s so evocative!), which is set to Bruce Broughton’s theme from The Boy Who Could Fly and harkens to a time when the number of curtains on the stage denoted how deluxe the theater was. A combination of LEDs and fiber optics creates the show on the various fabric curtains, which open to reveal one of two screens—a white one for standard movies and, now, a silver screen for 3-D movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0–33lI7tE

Behind the screen is a concert-style array of speakers (rather than the traditional left, right and center) to ensure the highest quality sound at every seat in the house.

When the full depth of the stage is used, they can fit up to 18 characters on it, and they use what’s known as a “Mickey” lift (because it’s the same one Disney uses for Fantasmic!) to vault performers onto the stage quickly. Photos of that to come in the next installment…

If you’ve read this far, you might be interested in an excellent interview the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation conducted with Musil 10 days before the El Capitan reopened in 1991. Not only does it include footage of the restoration in process, a photo of the old marquee disco balls, and even more interesting tidbits, it also has a couple of clips of the HIGH-larious stage show that played before The Rocketeer! It’s definitely worth the 20 minutes or so.

Part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EMwrbURzI

Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvyGs3vd2is

Up Next: Backstage at the El Capitan!

Looking for a little taste of Christmas at Walt Disney World? Got a few spare days on your hands? Why not read (or re-read) A Very Lurky Christmas: Holiday at Bay Lake Tower… of TERROR!, a leisurely account of our Christmas trip to Disney, chock full of gorgeous photos of the parks in all their holiday splendor by our pals The Roots!

Ooooh at the Osbourne Lights! Aaaaah at Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party! Thrill to the DIS Boards’ after-hours Toy Story Mania party! Gasp at the Cinderella Castle Suite! Grimace at Abby Bressy’s blank rendition of the Nativity story in Candlelight Processional! And realize too late that D23′s first Magic & Merriment event was actually its best!

It’s practically Christmas already, and you’re not going to get any work done at the office anyway, so put on the Disneyland Christmas soundtrack, grab a gallon of coffee, and settle in for…

A Very Lurky Christmas: Holiday at Bay Lake Tower… of TERROR!

Several years ago, MiceAge.com’s Al Lutz  posted an article (since updated – click HERE!) with a complete listing of the songs played on Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A. at the holidays. Even better, he dug up exactly which album each song came from. However, because Disneyland’s Christmas music loop was created around 1972, most of the tracks on it are from albums that are long out of print and have never been released on CD.

As a former college radio DJ and record shop rat, I zealously took on the challenge of tracking down every single song in the Main Street Christmas loop. Starting in the spring, I spent six or eight months combing local record stores, trawling the web, and stalking eBay. Along the way I may have overpaid for a couple of records, but I also enjoyed the thrill of discovery every time I came upon another rare gem.

After I’d collected all the albums (some of which, I realized, may once have been in my Lawrence Welk-loving grandma’s record collection), I had to digitize the songs with a complicated setup involving my record player, a 4-track recorder and my computer, since they hadn’t invented those USB turntables yet. Some of the records were not in the greatest shape, so a few of the songs have quite a bit of authentic hiss and pop that was impossible to filter out.

Next I spent an inordinate amount of time sequencing the songs so that they flowed seamlessly and there were no duplicates of songs or artists back to back (tricky to do when there are two versions of “Jingle Bells” and of “White Christmas,” plus five songs by the same artist). I’m not sure now why I didn’t go with the actual in-park sequence that Al documented…. I guess the me of six years ago thought she knew better than whichever cast member slaved over the very same task back in 1972!

The last project was creating packaging for my new compilation album, which I’d dubbed The Fabulous Sounds of Christmas at Disneyland! I used the various Christmas albums’ art as inspiration and found these blank CDsdesigned to look like 45s, with plastic grooves in the top and everything!

I was so pleased with the results that I made copies of my album for everyone I knew who was even remotely interested in Disneyland and/or Christmas, and it’s become an annual tradition to search out new people on whom to inflict my pet project.

Which is why this year I’m giving The Fabulous Sounds of Christmas at Disneyland! to all of you! Posted below are all the songs, plus a PDF file of the cover art, if you feel like burning the album to a disc. Note that the songs on my version are not arranged in the order in which they play at Disneyland—for that sequence you’ll have to check out Al’s article. But I did include a bonus track not found on the original Main Street Christmas loop…

And for all you Walt Disney World fans, I’ve noticed that the loop played in the Magic Kingdom at Christmastime sounds an awful lot like Disneyland’s, so maybe this album will work for you too!

The Fabulous Sounds of Christmas at Disneyland

1. White Christmas – Lawrence Welk

2. The Christmas Tree – David Rose

3. Zu Bethlehem Geboren – A Music Box Christmas

4. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – Ed Sullivan Presents Music of Christmas

5. Twelve Days of Christmas – David Rose

6. Silver Bells – Raymond Lefevre

7. Caroling, Caroling – Hollywood Pops Orchestra

8. Still, Still, Holy Melody – A Music Box Christmas

9. I’ll Be Home for Christmas – Lawrence Welk

10. Jingle Bells – Raymond Lefevre

11. The First Noel – Ed Sullivan Presents Music of Christmas

12. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – Lawrence Welk

13. Lobe Den Herren – A Music Box Christmas

14. Toyland – David Rose

15. Deck the Halls – Lawrence Welk

16. Petit Papa Noel – Raymond Lefevre

17. Ihr Kinderlein Kommet – Felix Slatkin

18. White Christmas – Ed Sullivan Presents Music of Christmas

19. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing – A Music Box Christmas

20. Carol of the Bells – Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra

21. The Christmas Song – David Rose

22. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – Lawrence Welk

23. O Tannenbaum – A Music Box Christmas

24. Christmas Waltz – David Rose

25. Jingle Bell Rock – Hollyridge Strings

26. Deck the Halls – Felix Slatkin

27. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing – Lawrence Welk

28. Jingle Bells – A Music Box Christmas

29. Do You Hear What I Hear? – Ed Sullivan Presents Music of Christmas

30. Believe… In Holiday Magic 

Click HERE to download the CD cover + tray art!

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After waiting so many years to see the Muppets on the big screen again, you probably don’t need any encouragement to go see The Muppets when it hits theaters Wednesday. But there are several reasons that you should see the movie twice.

The most obvious one is that we Muppet fans need to vote for the movie with our dollars. Before Jason Segel came along, Disney had never quite figured out what to do with the Muppets after buying them a second time. If this movie isn’t a financial success, it will be back to cheesy TV movies at best—and back on the shelf at worst!

But the big reason you need to see the movie twice is that—if you’re like me—you may spend your first viewing holding your breath and evaluating each scene to see how you feel about the direction they are taking the franchise instead of just enjoying the film. The first time we saw The Muppets, Patrick loved it immediately. I liked it a lot, but I had some reservations about things I didn’t think the characters would do or say. The second time we saw the movie, I stopped overthinking it and just allowed myself to be entertained. And I LOVED it!

If you’re looking for a fan’s review of the film, you can read a thoughtful, in-depth analysis that says just about everything I felt about the movie HERE. Suffice it to say, this movie is one big love letter to the Muppets, not some misguided attempt at making them more hip or relevant to today’s audiences. Yes, there are ironic ’80s gags and trendy song choices. But think about how “of its time” The Muppet Show was. When you watch it now, you may not know who half the hosts are or have ever heard the popular songs they sing. But you enjoy it because of the timeless characters and the huge amount of heart they display.

…And the other reason you should go see the movie is that Patrick’s in it!

A lot of people have been asking which scenes he puppeteered on, so I made a list. Thanks to modern movie magic, not a lot of puppeteers were required to bring the huge cast to life. (For example, when you see all the Muppets dancing in the arches to re-create the TV show opening, those were all performed by the same puppeteer and composited together.) So most of the work was done by the core group of performers who have done the characters for years now. However, Patrick was lucky enough to be on the list when they did need a lot of hands on the set, and he got to perform in a couple of big scenes.

Pitching in the Office of CDE Executive Veronica

The best place to look for Patrick is in the office of CDE TV executive Veronica (Rashida Jones), where he plays Animal and Floyd (simultaneously!). One of the most exciting things for a puppeteer is the chance to really communicate the personality of a character in even the briefest shot, so watch for Patrick’s take on Animal here.

Muppet Theater Lobby Pep Talk

This shot over Kermit’s shoulder was done in multiple passes in order to get the maximum number of Muppets on screen, so Patrick plays three characters in three different spots. From left to right they are Bobby Benson, a chicken, and a character called Nigel.

Another interesting bit of trivia: Three locations were used to represent the Muppet Theater. The exterior was Disney’s El Capitan Theatre, the lobby was that of the Los Angeles Theatre, and the auditorium was Stage 28, the set of Universal’s 1925 movie Phantom of the Opera.

Hollywood Boulevard Dance Scene

OK, most of the puppets and people in this huge dance number are just specks as the camera pulls back, but you’ll know that Patrick was somewhere in the cluster of Muppets at the left of the screen, puppeteering his heart out!

So what are you doing still reading this? Go buy your ticket to The Muppets right NOW!!!

Yes, this installment of  Trick or Tweet! Halloween at Disney World & Disneyland is a short, anticlimactic day spent bumming around Epcot and passing judgement on the then-new restaurant Via Napoli. But it’s also the last stop before we take our costume show on the road to California for Mickey’s Halloween Party—the first held at Disneyland in years! So join me in a fond farewell to Florida as we prepare to return to the Land of Fruits & Nuts…. Click HERE!