Matt Mason, author of The Pirate's Dilemma, sez, "I thought you'd be into this 3-D printed scale model of Cinderella’s Castle I received in the mail today. A few weeks back I was speaking at the Disney Imagineering HQ in California, where 3-D printing is used to develop new designs. They made one of these for Bob Iger, one for Steve jobs, and had this one at HQ, which they very kindly sent me as a thank you, after finding out about my obsession with all things 3-D printed. It’s the most detailed thing I’ve seen come out of a prototyping machine yet, this picture doesn’t do justice to the perfect brickwork, spires and columns, nor can you see the corridors that run through the model. It’s pretty nuts. Apparently it took 11 hours to print." Link (Thanks, Matt!)

See also:
Pirate's Dilemma author's speech: "To get rich off pirates, copy them"
Pirate's Dilemma slideshow video -- pirates will save the world

Matt sez, "Along the lines of the 'ghost' hotels in Egypt sitting incomplete, Disney World has had the Legendary Years section of Pop Century sitting incomplete for several years as well. " Link to YouTube video, Link to photo gallery (Thanks, Matt!)

No taking photos in the s33kr1t Disneyland parking lots! I mean, sure, they're full of CCTVs taking pictures of you, but just because you're paying $80 for the day, plus $10 to park, why should you feel free to steal the Mouse's precious, precious parking-lot photons? After all, those photos could be used by Al Quaeda to coordinate a strike on the Mouse House!

At the time I marveled that these were now ten years old--and I remember parking in the lot when it was brand new. Just as I took this photo, however, a Security Cast Member in a patrol unit approached me (well, he stopped a ways away and shouted through a rolled-down window) and told me photography was not permitted there. Since that statement didn't make any sense, my first reaction was to question why that was. As I evaluated the possible responses, I thought "security" or "because I said so" would be what I'd get, so I complied and continued walking. I brought this up to appropriate people, who agreed there is no blanket prohibition of photography there. I wonder what secrets are hidden in this Pinocchio sign that are waiting to be discovered?

Link (Thanks, John!)

The Disney Experience's papercraft replica of the dear departed Disney skybucket ride is fantastic -- so cool to have a replica of this notorious widowmaker from the Happiest Place(s) on Earth. Link (Thanks, Mike!)

Greg Maletic's added another poster to his collection of wonderful fan-made attraction art for Disneyland rides; this one's for Space Mountain. Link

See also: Fan-made Disneyland attraction posters (Thanks, Greg!)

Dan "Ride Theory" Howland sends in a link to a stupendous Internet Archive video entitled "Disneyland Dream," noting: "This would be interesting if it were merely a 1956 home movie of Disneyland, but it becomes great when the skinny, dorky, goofy dad (think Dennis the Menace's pop) not only documents the actual trip, but shows us how they got there -- by winning a Scotch Tape vacation contest. Highlights: the family's matching 1950's 'Wild West' fringe jackets with their names stitched between the shoulders, and the kids repeated insistence they have to change hats to enter different parts of the park."

Every second of this footage is pure gold, from the cornball jokes, the lingering shots of the "tickertape parade" the suburban Connecticut neighbors throw as the family gets into their gigantic land-yacht to drive to the airstrip, the runway footage from Idlewild, and the trips around Pasadena, Knott's Berry Farm and Universal Studios in 1956. The humor is pure "dad" -- loving and corny and just right.

In July 1956, the five-member Barstow family of Wethersfield, Connecticut, won a free trip to newly-opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in a nationwide contest. This 30-minute amateur documentary film tells the fabulous story of their fun-filled, dream-come-true, family travel adventure, filmed on the scene at Walt Disney's "Magic Kingdom" by Robbins Barstow.

Link (Thanks, Dan!)

The Extinct Attractions Club sells DVDs of long-departed themepark rides and vintage ride-throughs of existing rides, like family movies from Knott's Berry Farm and 8mm films from 1950s visits to Disneyland. There's an emphasis on interviews with and presentations by golden age Imagineers. This is pure park-nerd crack. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

This Disney Haunted Mansion fan's home office is the apotheosis of mansionfan chic. I could get a lot of work done in a place like this!

The green wallpaper with the Lily pattern is actually used in the foyer of the attraction. A company up north in Benicia, CA that makes authentic hand-printed Victorian wallpaper called Bradbury and Bradbury Art Wallpapers (www.bradbury.com) happens to sell it (Dresser Tradition 2-Ashes of Rose Code:LYW Pattern:550 ). The purple/blue wall is a stencil that I made. It is of the wallpaper pattern in the attraction as well. It took a few hours to paint-I still have to paint in all the little pupils in the eyes. The oval mirror is actually a two-way 50/50 mirror. Behind it is a relief sculpture of the Hatchet Goul (to be posted later with an update) that shows through via a light on a timer. The effect is an image that slowly appears and disappears much like the Cheshire Cat in the mirror at the Mad Hatter Shop at Disneyland.

Link (Thanks, Sam!)

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel brings word of reader Willykea's newly discovered trove of vintage Epcot pix:

Miraculously, on the day this was first posted I was cleaning out my garage and found a box containing a thick, full-color brochure from 1982 announcing the opening of Epcot. I immediately thought of boingboing. I was shocked when I saw the headline "Incredible Epcot Concept Painting" the next morning and the associated picture that I had just been admiring the day before. The brochure was buried under a pile of old letters and memorabilia that I had held onto for almost 30 years and I found it a few hours before someone posted the picture of the painting online - amazing coincidence. I went out and bought a scanner so that I could share some additional images from the brochure with you guys

Link, Discuss on Boing Boing Gadgets

See also: Incredible Epcot concept painting

Mister Jalopy sez, "Auction for banana leaf wallpaper that was destined for the Polynesian Hotel at Walt Disney World. When Cory builds the True Fan Enchanted Tiki Room, this will be perfect for the powder room!" Link (Thanks, Mister Jalopy!)

This year marks the 45th anniversary of Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room, the birthplace of animatronics and one of my all-time favorite Disney attractions. Some of my earliest memories are of being dandled on my grandfather's knee at the Tiki Room while we sang and whistled together to the birds' songs and jokes.

Former Disney designer Kevin Kidney and Jodi have been commissioned to make a run of limited-edition items based on the Tiki Room for a special event at Disneyland on June 22 and the schwag is awesome -- every nerve in my body just stood on end and shouted "WANT!" (Oh, if only I still lived in LA!)

For years, I've harbored a fantasy of putting together a punk/alternative tribute disc for the Tiki Room, with the parrots voiced by Shane McGowan, Nina Hagen, Cheech Marin and Jean Reno, and the songs performed as follows: "In the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room," the Ramones; "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing," Shonen Knife; "Hawai'ian War Chant," the Breeders; and "Heigh-Ho" by Tom Waits.

Yes, I know, many of these people are dead. But a fella can dream.

We’ve been waiting 5 years to make this item, and it’s finally happened. Rongo, the Tiki God of Agriculture, is at long last a beautiful green-glazed ceramic drinking vessel for your Tiki bar. His very unusual size and shape makes him an equally suitable fruit bowl, cereal bowl, or whatever-you-like-bowl. He’s even clutching his spool of kite string, just as he’s been doing at Disneyland for 45 years.

Link (Thanks, Dwiff!)

Kathryn sez,

In 1993 the People's Republic of China opened a park just south of Orlando, FL featuring over 60 handcrafted replicas of China's architectural, cultural and historical landmarks. Throughout Splendid China's 10 years of operation, the it was plagued by low attendance, frequent protests against the idyllic depictions of China the park provided, and financial mismanagement. The park was closed in 2003.

This past weekend two friends and I did a little urban exploring of the park, and took a lot of pictures. I was very surprised at how quickly the park has fallen into disrepair since its closing five years ago. It seems that vandals have stolen just about anything that wasn't bolted down (and lots of things that were). Most of the ceramic figurines have been smashed, which made for interesting photos at least.

Link to gallery one, Link to gallery two (Thanks, Kathryn!)

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels, this shot of the fingerprint reader at Walt Disney World's turnstiles. These machines (which, I'm told, capture the shape of your fingertip instead of your fingerprint itself) are used to keep Disney World customers from sharing or re-selling their admission tickets, and are part of a general and growing police-state climate at the parks that includes routine bag-searches at each park entrance.

The readers aren't very effective at stopping admission cheats. You can choose not to register your fingertip, and to use photo ID for admission instead (I'm thinking of having a random piece of photo identification made with the words "OFFICIAL BOGUS SECURITY IDENTIFICATION FOR HOTELS, THEME PARKS AND OTHER JUNIOR G-MEN" printed on it). So it would be very easy to share your pass: the person named on the pass enters with his ID, and the person with whom he's sharing the card uses a fingertip -- you could visit with your sister's family and half of you could use the tickets in the morning while the other half hung around the pool and relaxed, then switch at lunch: the morning crew uses fingertip, the afternoon uses ID.

What these readers are effective at is conditioning kids to accept surveillance and routine searches and identity checks without particularized suspcion. One morning at Epcot Center, as we offered our ID to the castmember at the turnstile and began to argue (again -- they're very poorly trained on this point) that we could indeed opt to show ID instead of being printed, a small boy behind us chirped up, "No you have to be fingerprinted! Everybody has to be fingerprinted!"

To all those parents who worry that Disney will turn their kids into little princesses, it's time to get priorities straight: the "security" at the parks is even more effective at conditioning your children to live in a police state. Link

Ray sez, "As a wrap up to my Disney Haunted Mansion papercraft series, I created a simple paper model kit of the Phantom Manor entrance pillar, with name plaque. It's a free 268kb PDF document that you can print and build." Link

See also:
Mooninite on the Haunted Mansion
Papercraft Haunted Mansion to download, cut and glue
Finest Haunted Mansion papercraft model ever
Haunted Mansion papercraft model adds crypts and gates

Scott sez, "A buddy of mine who works fraud security got ahold of this patch at a Disney conference." Love it -- "Do you see someone acting odd at a huge, postmodern constructed environment where the crowds run to Tokyo subway density, the food is all seasoned with high-fructose corn syrup, the lines are up to three hours long, and vacationers with children in tow converge from every corner of the globe? Report it! They might be terrorists! ZOMG!" Link (Thanks, Scott!)

LA Weekly sent a reporter (and Disney trufan) to the Doombuggies.org tenth anniversary after-hours party at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland. The event looks like just about the coolest thing evar.

We are like kids running through that graveyard on the ride by ourselves, away from the maddening crowds in a mostly deserted park in the middle of the night. It's strange, thrilling and genuinely scary to glide through the mansion under these conditions, with animatronic spooks popping up from behind gravestones and eerie talking busts, followed by all those empty DoomBuggies; decades ago, Gurr imagined them as a "chain of elephants" moving through the space.

Yet there is always something new to catch the breath, some creature crawling up the leg of a table, some creepy face peering out of the wallpaper. Asked about the process of designing the Gothic southern-plantation mansion, Walt is rumored to have said, "We'll take care of the outside, and the ghosts will take care of the inside."

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Oric sez, "The director of a Norwegian museum claimed yesterday to have discovered cartoons drawn by Adolf Hitler during the Second World War."

William Hakvaag, the director of a war museum in northern Norway, said he found the drawings hidden in a painting signed "A. Hitler" that he bought at an auction in Germany...

He found coloured cartoons of the characters Bashful and Doc from the 1937 Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which were signed A.H., and an unsigned sketch of Pinocchio as he appeared in the 1940 Disney film.

Link

Rumors abound about a new "exclusive" Disney World theme park that would only admit 2,000 people at a time for "adult" fun. Lots of similar ideas have been floated over the years, including a villain-themed park across the lagoon from the Magic Kingdom, with an evil, lurking castle to counterpoint the frosted confection that the "good" side sports. Best part of this rumor is that it holds that the new park will incorporate elements form the Pleasure Island Adventurer's Club, a nightclub/cabaret/immersive play that's one of my favorite things at the park.

There were a few missing details in Jim's report, but enough has leaked out that tells me this is similar to an idea that's been on the table since the mid-90s. Imagineer Tony Baxter talked about a related concept back in 1998. I know a certain camp in Imagineering has been itching to try it out, the only question being East or West coast.

What strikes me about this 'boutique experience' is how 'adult' all the attractions sound. Plus the evening hours is clearly targeting older guests. More than anything this might be Disney's attempt to win back some of the Vegas (aka High-Roller) crowd they hope to see return with a couple of the luxury hotels that will be opening in and around the WDW resort over the next few years.

Link

Here's some amazing footage -- uncut -- from a feature film that Suzanne Pleshette and Tony Curtis made in Disneyland in the sixties. There's not really much dialog and it kind of meanders, but it's really golden nevertheless: high-production-value footage of Disneyland from the golden age. Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: this WPA-style space mural outside the Spaceship Earth ride in Epcot. It's like a public artwork from an alternate universe in which space remained sexy. Link

A collection of drawings from the planning stages of the original 1950s/1960s Disneyland Monsanto House of the Future demonstrates the profound influence that Eames' designs had on the Disney planners.

...they’re currently for sale on ebay. The seller explains: “We purchased this group of related drawings and paper at a local estate auction. The estate sale was that of a designer named Aureli - according to the auctioneer who sold this he had been an architect and had taught at both Columbia and MIT.”

Link

See also:
Disneyland's new House of the Future will look like the boring recent past
Disneyland's Monsanto plastic House of the Future -- video

Planning approval has been granted to build a three-line, 45km monorail system through Delhi, to be built by 2010:

As per the plan, three monorail corridors spanning over 45 km will come up between Delhi University and Pul Bangash (via Shakti Nagar, Anand Parbat, Ajmeri Gate, Delhi Gate, Red Fort, SPM Marg), Daryaganj and Kondli (via Yamuna river crossing, Geeta Colony, Scope Tower, Vikas Marg, Patparganj, Kondli Road) and Budh Vihar to Shakti Nagar.

Link

Disneyland is reviving its old "House of the Future" attraction -- originally, this was a wheel-of-gouda-shaped plastic house sponsored by Monsanto that opened in 1957, featuring futuristic technology like cordless phones, giant TVs, electric razors, and kitchen appliances that rose out of the countertops. It was inspriringly goofy -- and so indestructible that the wrecking-ball bounced off it and so the structure had to be disassembled with cutting torches and chainsaws.

The new version will look like a suburban McMansion and will feature stuff that sounds like rejects from CES: touch-screen home automation, automatic lights and temperature (oooh, a thermostat!), and assorted junk from HP, Microsoft, and a couple other sponsors.

I'd rather see Disney give us something built out of surplus shipping containers, filled with just-in-time blobjects that track their existence through spimes and gracefully decompose into the manufacturing stream at their end of life. Something that at least looks like the future, rather than the model home in a pre-subprime-meltdown housing development.

When a resident clicks a TV remote, for example, lights will dim, music will shut off and the shades will draw as the network realizes a movie is about to start.

The system will allow residents to transfer digital photos, videos and music among televisions and computers in different rooms at the click of a button. Other applications still in development could include touch-screen technology built into appliances, furniture and countertops, said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's vice president for entertainment services.

In the kitchen, for example, touchpad software on the countertop would be able to identify groceries and produce recipes and meal suggestions. Similar programs could turn a desktop into a computer screen, allowing residents to load photos, music or e-mail onto a cell phone by placing it on the desk.

Link (via /.)

(Image: Yesterland)

The Nautilus is an incredible and ambitious steampunk home theatre setup that is themed like the galley of Captain Nemo's ship in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was built by designers who'd worked on Tokyo Disneyland (the Disney Sea park at TDL is easily the most beautiful human-constructed environment I've ever been to), and is a 900-square-foot, football-shaped room lined with portholes and artificially rusted struts.

The theater is located above the new garage addition. Malone handled the original sketches, which were approved by the Morans without question. During the design stage of the home theater, Malone refrained from watching the Disney film. “The idea of a Victorian submarine presents such a broad palette of ideas and it’s fun to experiment,” he says. “I didn’t want imagery from the movie to find its way into the theater.” Still, he admits that he couldn’t help but be influenced by his childhood memories of Harper Goff’s imaginative vision for the movie’s mysterious submarine.

Link (via Dvice)

DeviantArt's Thumper-001 is a brilliant visual mashup artist who specializes in combining imagery from Disney and Star Wars. This stuff is inspired -- especially the notional vintage Mickey Star Tours images, Snow White and the Seven Stormtroopers and Darth Valice in Wonderland (shown here). Link (Thanks, John!)

ChefMayhem of the brilliant Haunted Mansion fansite writes, "Next month, DoomBuggies is hosting its 10-year anniversary bash at Disneyland Park in the Blue Bayou in New Orleans Square. We rented out the restaurant for the evening, and the custom menu features items such as "Bride's Beating Heart Red Pepper Bisque," Filet Mignon and Shrimp, and "Graveyard Chocolate Coffins." We have WED Imagineer X Atencio and a few other Haunted Mansion legends lined up to speak at the program. We hired the Hitchhiking Ghosts to join us. We tracked down the Randotti heir, who's going to talk about designing and creating early souvenir skulls and tombstones for Disneyland, and we're giving away an authorized Randotti product as a special gift to each attendee. We're hosting a free raffle to registrants that will offer 1 out of every 10 attendees the opportunity to take a behind-the-scenes tour of Club 33. And after the park closes, we're taking a private, after-hours ride through the Haunted Mansion to close out the evening."

Come join with like-minded fiends at DoomBuggies' 10th Anniversary graveyard smash! While our original registration deadline is past, a few cancellations have left a small number of tickets available - so come join us! Attendees at our Swinging Wake will have a rare opportunity to hear stories directly from some of the famed imagineers who originally worked with Walt Disney and created the Haunted Mansion - in a personal setting with amazing food and wonderful people. This is truly a rare opportunity for fans of Disneyland and Disney history.

Holy crap, I wish I could go to this! Link

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: this shot of one of the kids at the children's photoshoot at Bat's Day at Disneyland 2007, when thousands of goths converged on the Gloomiest Place on Earth for a day's eyeliner frolic. I've had some pretty memorable days at Disney parks, but Bat's Day is in a league all its own. Link