It Came From the Fandom: Disney Park Blueprints

As a rule, my ICFTF posts are, well, fun. “Here,” I say, tossing out my links in much the same manner that I skate a catnip mouse across the kitchen floor for the amusement of my cat, “this should entertain you for a while.” This one's a little different—still fun, immensely so, but also useful. We're talking bona-fide STEM content.

The Disney Park Blueprints website is an absolute treasure trove of dozens of images showing how individual attractions at the parks are laid out. Although aerial photos and fan-made images far outnumber actual blueprints/plans, the whole archive is still invaluable if you've ever wanted to recreate your favorite ride as part of a creative hobby, or just get a better feel for how a winding track fits into its show building. It can be difficult to perceive a track layout while you're riding and immersed in the scenery, but these images lay it all out for you.

Go, browse, enjoy!

It Came From the Fandom: Yesterworld Entertainment

(My excuse this time around is that I'm on vacation and taking it easy. I'll have something more interesting next week.)

Our subject this week is Yesterworld Entertainment, a YouTube channel focusing on theme park attractions that are either extinct, or have been heavily altered over the years. The curator addresses not just Disney parks, but Universal Studios and even films and video games, and occasionally does long-form podcasts with other theme park vloggers. The presentation is straightforward, with an abundance of photos and video clips showing what once was. Most YouTube channels can't tell me anything about Disneyland that I don't already know, but I've learned a lot from Yesterworld. There's no attraction too big or too small for this channel, as long as it has a detailed history. As of this writing, the most recent video is this one about Peter Pan's Flight:

Give it a watch! There's enough here to keep any theme park fan busy for hours or days!

It Came From the Fandom: Magical Soundtracks

Here we go again. I seem to be relying on these types of posts more frequently lately. I gotta get my groove back somehow.

The fan content I choose to highlight this time around is Magical Soundtracks, a YouTube channel that posts, almost exclusively, music from the Disney theme parks. Their particular area of specialization is music loops, be they from themed areas, shops, restaurants...even hotel lobbies and special seasonal events. Here's a timely one, considering the Year of the Pig starts tomorrow:

I'm always excited to see that they've updated, especially since the quality is so high—many theme park music archivists rely on induction recordings and shotgun microphones, which tend to produce listenable but not stellar audio. Magical Soundtracks, I believe, obtains reference recordings of loops and then reconstructs them using source tracks. So there's a lot of hands-on editing work that goes into this channel as well. The results literally speak for themselves.

Here's a few more of my favorites from this channel:

Have a listen!

It Came From the Fandom: MyVMK's Second Gate

I've mentioned MyVMK on this blog before, but it has been quite some time, so I'll sum it up here.

MyVMK is an MMORPG. Specifically, it is a fan-made revival of Virtual Magic Kingdom, an MMORPG that Disney ran for a few years starting in 2005, to promote Disneyland's 50^th Anniversary. True to its name, the world map is of a Magic Kingdom-style park, mixing and matching details from the various real-world ones. There are a lot of spaces to explore with your childlike sprite, and mini-games to play either alone or against other players...but the real point of the game is to create your own spaces and mini-games using the mind-boggling variety of “rooms” and “furniture” you can buy with the in-game currency. In the several years that MyVMK has been up and running, its programmers and moderators have vastly expanded upon the items available in the original VMK, as well as introducing new options for customizing the placement of furniture within a room. But one thing they never did, despite the urging of the players, was create new explorable spaces.

All that is about to change. This is the current overworld view of MyVMK:

See Spaceship Earth in the lower right corner there, with the Epcot label? That was never part of Virtual Magic Kingdom. There was always an “Esplanade” area, with famous landmarks from non-Kingdom parks visible in the background, teasing us, but to the best of my knowledge there was never any plan to expand VMK beyond a single virtual park.

So far, there is no proper second gate in MyVMK either. If you click on Epcot, it will take you here:

There's nothing to do in this room, and nowhere to go from it. Yet. But it's coming. And I am weirdly excited about it. I haven't been very active in MyVMK for quite a while, but this could very well renew my interest. On the whole, of all the Disney parks I can't casually visit, Epcot probably intrigues me the most.* I've been there a grand total of once, nigh-30 years ago at this point, and I would love to see it again...even knowing that it's a mere shadow of its Eighties self by now. The high concept is that good.

A trip to the real Epcot is not in the foreseeable future for me. I'll be more than happy to pop in on the virtual one, when it opens.

* Tokyo DisneySea is a close second.

It Came From the Fandom: The Disney Experience

I don't like doing one of these only three weeks after the last one, but it was just Halloween—my time and thoughts have been very occupied with matters other than this blog.

Anyway, this one is a lot of fun. The Disney Experience is a website dedicated to cataloguing creative resources for Disney fans. It's more addressed to general Disney fandom than the Disney theme park fandom specifically, but there is a lot of theme park related content, and crucially, the website treats it as its own facet of the Disney brand rather than making the common mistake of treating the parks as a mere spinoff of the film properties.

I want to call special attention to the paper model “kits” (actually downloadable PDF files) featured as their own category, as this is where the best theme park material is concentrated. If you have access to a color printer, a detailed, accurate model of the iconic Disney structure of your choice is within your reach!*

Other points of interest include:

• Paper dolls and other crafts that are not the elaborate models.
• Tools for customizing a personal computer with a Disney theme, including desktop wallpapers, mouse pointer sprites, and—my personal favorite—fonts!
• Special events and contests and whatnot.
• Validation for anyone who was worried that they were alone in their Disney obsession.

Poke around and see if you find anything you like!

* Provided, that is, your choice is one of the Castles, Haunted Mansions, Snow White's Wishing Well, the old Disneyland marquee...

It Came From the Fandom: Disneyland Halloween Costumes

Anyone remember this post? No? Fair enough; it was an awfully long time ago by blog standards. I guess that means I'm not repeating myself too badly if I do another post about Disneyland-themed costumes!

First, I should probably go ahead and re-post my photo collage from...jeez Louise, five years ago at this point. AKA “That Time I Was the Small World Clock Tower For Halloween”:

Not pictured: my dignity

(If you're wondering, how did she do that?, please follow the link above. If on the other hand you're wondering, why did she do that?, I'm afraid I can't help you. Who knows why wackos like me do anything?)

In sharing the above with the internet, I have definitely outed myself as one of the geekiest of the Disneyland geeks. Disney Halloween costumes are thoroughly mainstream (and sold in the parks in children's sizes), but Disneyland Halloween costumes are the domain of the truly obsessed and, with very few exceptions, require DIY skills to achieve. So when you see someone walking around dressed as an iconic character from the parks—or even worse, an iconic structure (*cough*)—you know you're witnessing a True Believer at work.

We're rare, but we're out there. For this week's post, I'll share some of the ones I found perusing Google.*

(Disclaimer: Not all of these people are celebrating Halloween. Some of them are at conventions, including D23.)

It Came From the Fandom: That's From Disneyland!

The Disneyland-related benefits of living in Los Angeles do not stop with proximity to the resort itself. Because the park has remained primarily of interest to locals (as opposed to tourists like its Orlando counterpart), the hardcore fan community is pretty centralized to Southern California. As well, this city being a major hub—maybe the major hub—for the entertainment industry as a whole means that, to put it delicately, there are quite a few stinking rich people in this area. And that all means that, on those rare occasions when Disneyland just up and gets rid of something, it tends to end up in the possession of someone who lives nearby...and in the fullness of time, many of these things come back to the fan community in some way.

One of those ways is by being loaned for display to the Van Eaton Galleries, an art distributor and auction house headquartered in Sherman Oaks, CA, perhaps a 45-minute drive from Disneyland...and about five miles away from the residence of Yours Truly. I manage to drop in whenever they have a Disneyland memorabilia collection on the premises. The subsequent auctions are invariably too rich for my blood, but they let you take as many photos in the meantime as you like.

For the most recent exhibit, still (barely) ongoing, they've ramped things up. This time, the feature is the collection of Disneyland megafan Richard Kraft, including everything from concept art to decommissioned ride vehicles, and there weren't no way that was going to fit into their regular exhibition rooms or even the overflow space next door. So they've leased a two-story retail location* for a full-on, museum-style pop-up exhibit and gift shop, freely open to the public. The name of the exhibit? That's From Disneyland!

That name says it all, doesn't it? They certainly know who their audience is—people who know Disneyland's iconography by sight and need no other reason to love it.

What? Of course I've been there. What kind of question is that? Here are just a few of the nice photos I got...

It Came From the Fandom: DisneyBound

Beware, for Disney's legal team is mighty and not to be trifled with.

The above is basically why adults aren't allowed to wear character costumes in the parks. No one is going to mistake the ten-year-old in the Cinderella dress for the actual official Princess offering photo ops and autographs, but an adult might be, and that raises potential liability issues for the company. A blanket ban on costumes for any guest over the age of 14 is the simplest way to avoid such problems altogether.

But in case no one had noticed, the majority of the grown-ups walking through those gates, with or without young'uns in tow, are Millennials now. Millennials grew up during the Disney Renaissance. Their childhoods were defined by a nearly constant stream of quality animated movies, which may be part of why so many of them didn't outgrow Disney when they hit puberty.

My point is, there are a whole lot of adults who wish they could dress as the characters when visiting Disneyland. And that is the reason for the practice known as “DisneyBound,” wherein people visit Disney parks in outfits that are not character costumes, but use color and accessories to be reminiscent of characters' looks.

I've tried it myself. I bet you'll never guess which character. (Sis, I see you preparing to type a blinding-flash-of-the-obvious comment, but you were there. So it wouldn't be a guess, would it?) Turns out, it's a lot of fun. Putting such an outfit together can be a great creative exercise, and it's a good way to snag a little extra Cast Member attention.

And if you need a little boost of inspiration...there's an app for that. Well, sort of. It's actually a Tumblr blog, dedicated solely to posting images of potential DisneyBound outfits. Some of the entries are submissions, but the vast majority are original content, composited from images of garments, accessories, and jewelry found elsewhere online. It's almost exclusively women's fashion (which is—let's face it—more variable), but someone with more masculine style could easily adapt the ideas.

Moreover, it's a really prolific blog, posting multiple outfits every dang day, often according to a daily theme, so a huge variety of concepts get explored. And before you ask...yes, some theme park-exclusive characters have been featured. It's a great blog just to scroll through.

Have fun!

It Came From the Fandom: Making Spaces

(The following is not a paid endorsement.)

This episode of It Came From the Fandom is a little different from previous ones. Y'see, the work I choose to highlight—the Making Spaces podcast by Ian “Skipper Ian” Kay—is not actually about Disneyland, or at least not exclusively, and maybe not even especially. But it is about theme parks, of which Disneyland is and likely always will be the Most Triumphant Example.* Furthermore, Kay has not only been blogging about Disney theme parks for quite a while longer than I have (I would also say more competently), but he is intimately connected to them in a way most of us will never be: he earned his nickname working as a Jungle Cruise skipper in Orlando. (He has since moved to Southern California, and Skipper, if you're reading this, we simply must meet up at the DLR one of these days.)

So Making Spaces is, like most of Kay's online work, about theme parks, and in particular their potential as a unique storytelling medium. There are three episodes up so far, with a fourth due to be posted any day now...aaaaaaannnnnyyyyy daaaaaayyyyy noooowwwwwwww...

(Skipper?)

Have a listen, and if you like what you hear, make sure to check out some of Kay's other online musings!

https://soundcloud.com/makingspacepodcast

* TV Tropes term. Investigate at your own risk.

It Came From The Fandom: The Happiest Place

Once again, I find myself lacking the wherewithal to produce a full post in time for Monday, so I'm stealing content from elsewhere on the Net and calling it a friendly cross-promotion, or whatever. Ironically, part of the reason for my malaise is that I spent Saturday at Disneyland, taking in the re-opened Disneyland Railroad, Rivers of America, and Fantasmic!—more on all that hopefully next week, after I've had a few days to get my thoughts in order.

For now, I offer you...fanfiction. Oh, stop making that face. It's true that the vast majority of fanfiction—no matter the fandom—is completely terrible, due to the barriers to entry being basically non-existent. But by the same token, it's no harder for a talented writer to self-publish online than a godawful one, so once in a while you might stumble something genuinely worth reading. Today I'd like to share a bona-fide unicorn: a fanfic about Disneyland itself, starring actual Disney characters (not the author's own dull self-insert) on an epic adventure to save the magic!

No, it's not my own “Crowns of the Kingdom” (though if you'd like to make my day...sidebar link, hint hint!). This unexpected treasure is called “The Happiest Place,” by fanfiction.net author ForTalosandtheEmpire. Not only is it well-written in general, but it hits all the right notes for my ideal Disneyland-based story, blending action, fantasy, heartfelt character moments, and, best of all, a baked-in appreciation for the magic of Disneyland quite apart from its status as the place where characters live. Most fanfic writers who tackle Disney theme parks tend to go with one of two portrayals—either they're “just” theme parks, or they harbor secret portals to the Magical Realms of Disney (i.e. the settings of the movies, Kingdom Hearts-style). ForTalosandtheEmpire has somehow hit upon an elusive sweet spot between the two, resulting in a depiction of Disneyland as we fans experience it, not necessarily as it is in objective reality.

If you're feeling hard-up for some of that good old Disneyland magic and have spare time for reading, you could do a lot worse.

It Came From the Fandom: SALUG Models at Supertrain

It's that time again...that time when I, your humble Dilettante, am short on material and have to turn to my fellow fans to provide content on schedule.

I love backup plans, don't you?

This time around, the subject is...well, it involves LEGO. (This seems to keep happening.) See, there's this organization in Canada called SALUG: the Southern Alberta LEGO User Group. And there's this annual model train convention in Calgary called Supertrain. Since LEGO model trains are a thing, the group has been known to build elaborate model train layouts for the convention.

At least twice, there was a Disneyland fan on deck.

For Supertrain 2005, they ran a train not entirely dissimilar to the good old Disneyland Railroad through a lovingly detailed plastic brick recreation of New Orleans Square and Splash Mountain. The following year, if anything they outdid themselves with a magnificently accurate model of Main Street, including the park's Main Gate, the entrance to Tomorrowland, Sleeping Beauty Castle, and even a sliver of the Fantasyland Courtyard. As a bonus, to the right of the Main Gate they decided to include...well, just have a look!

2005 photos

2006 photos

Sadly, I can't find any evidence that SALUG continued this tradition past 2006. But at least we have these wonderful photos to remember it by. Perhaps someday their example will inspire me to assemble something I wouldn't mind sharing with you!

It Came From the Fandom: Disnerland

Aaaaarrrrgggghhh, I didn't want to have to do this again so soon, but stress and a busy schedule hit me right in the inspiration and I wasn't able to get a proper post ready in time. So here, have some more fan stuff!

This time the spotlight is on “Disnerland,” a Tumblr blog that spoofs Disneyland, Walt Disney, and occasionally Walt Disney World in the most quirkily specific way. What it does is, it translates the names of theme parks, themed lands, attractions, and even the wording of Walt Disney quotes into what I can only call “Disnerland dialect.” It's not lolcat-speak. The spelling is always correct, and so, mostly, is the grammar, if you allow that certain words change their part of speech in the translation. For example, the word “world” is always rendered, in Disnerland, as “global.” As in “all the global.”

Most of the dialect consists of weird, but somehow logical, substitutions like that. “Family” becomes “house bunch.” Thoughts, ideas, and imagination are all referred to as “head stuff,” while dreams, even the aspirational kind, are “sleep stuff.” Money is “coin.” The founder himself has been transformed into “Wald Disner,” and his most famous creation is “Man Mice.” It's absurd, but the absurdity is methodical enough that you can pick it up quickly.

It's also dripping with affection for the thing it's parodying. Disney parodies are almost embarrassingly common, but finding one as adoring as this is extremely rare. No one who actually felt any hostility toward Disneyland would bother to create such a pervasive jargon for their snark. No one aims sincere mockery at Space Station X-1 or the Tomorrowland Art Corner or the entry plaque. (For one thing, before you can make fun of something you have to know about it, and only dedicated fans of Disneyland are instantly familiar with all those long-extinct attractions.) No one would go to such effort to erase the lettering from attraction poster after attraction poster, match the fonts, and replace it with the aforementioned jargon, unless they enjoyed spending that kind of time with those posters.

More to the point...Disnerland isn't actually saying anything negative, or even wry, about Walt Disney and the Disney theme parks. There are no jokes about Walt's supposed anti-Semitism, how expensive the parks are, or how unsuccessful California Adventure (“Disner's Cooltown Vacay”) was at first. It's just posters, quotes, and ads, run through the Disnerland dialect filter but otherwise unchanged.

But I've rambled enough. Why not click the link up top and see for yourself?

I would.

It Came From the Fandom: Little Big Planet 2 Custom Levels

Well, folks, I’ve been sick this week. I haven’t had the energy and focus necessary to think of a good topic to write about, much less put in the actual work. So instead I’ve decided to roll out a new post category: It Came From the Fandom. As fandoms go, the one for the Disney parks is not the most productive in terms of creating content like fan art, fanfiction, etc….but it’s out there if you know where to look. Since I do know at least some of the places to look, from time to time I’ll share my findings with you.