For most, World of Color impresses!!

June 11th was  the grand opening of the Disney’s World of Color nighttime spectacular at Disney’s California Adventure! The general public was not disapointed by it and some guests who were interviewed said that it “beats Fantasmic! because of all the new technology inside the show and because although it shows some of the Disney classic films, many of the recent Disney films including UP, Princess and the Frog, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, and Pirates of the Caribbean are all featured in the show.  Disney has been promoting the show a lot around the resort including putting colored “paint buckets” around the California Adventure park, putting lighted-up Disney characters: Sebastian, the Genie, Lumiere, and Mike Wazowski, and the sign at the DCA entrance is now “colored.”  I should have pictures of all the promotion by Wednesday or Thursday since I’m trying to make it to the park this week to see the show.

Back from a month-long break and HUGE Disneyland Updates

As I was finishing up one last class and ending the school year, I did not quite have enough time to post news on MTPN.  Now that the year is over and I am going to graduate from high school this weekend, I can finally do so much more during my large amount of free time.

This past week, there has been a lot of news and buzz around the Disneyland Resort.  MiceAge delivered these news yesterday on their “Dateline Disneyland” update.

Disney’s California Adventure

First of all, Disney’s California Adventure got a new, classic 1930′s themed logo that will match the new “Early 20th Century California” theme of the park.  Instead of the generic theme with the grizzly peak on it, the new logo now has a nice new 1930′s era-looking “California” on it- we posted an image from Miceage below.

New DCA Logo- image src: miceage.com

Mickey’s Silly Swings, the new “Mickey and the Band” retheme of the Orange Stinger just soft-opened Friday after a long and very thorough retheme.  It will not have its grand opening until the World of Color nighttime spectacular opens June 11.

mickey's silly swings- just soft-opened- image src: miceage.com

This month, Disney announced that the World of Color show on the Paradise Pier lagoon would open June 11th as part of the return of the resort’s summer promotion, Summer Nightastic, that Disney kicked off last summer as well.  Disney has a snazzy looking page to promote the World of Color.  Miceage also posted this brilliant new TV ad that Disney put to promote this new nighttime spectacular that I posted below.

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Carsland, Little Mermaid, and the Red Car Trolley construction are also both progressing very well.  Radiator Springs Racers is already testing its vehicles on the track!  The Little Mermaid ride building steel framework is now up and is visible from throughout the pier.  The Red Car Trolley track construction is finished on the Hollywood Boulevard section of the park and is continuing to be built behind the Tower of Terror.

Disneyland Hotel

A ton of big news about the Disneyland hotel was just released within the past month- a retheme of the Peter Pan “Neverland Pool” and a retheme of the current three hotel towers: the Dream, Wonder, and Magic.

The theme of the Neverland pool will change to a theme of the Disneyland monorail when it first opened.  Instead of pirate ship slides, you will see waterslides themed to the monorails.  There will also be a new restaurant by the poolside rethemed to the former Tahitian Terrace at Disneyland’s Adventureland (which existed from 1962-1993).  These changes should be done by next year.

The three hotel buildings- the Wonder, Magic, and the Dreams buildings will also be rethemed to match the lands at Disneyland and their original artwork.  They will be rethemed to the Adventure, Fantasy, and Frontier buildings and will be themed to these lands of the park.

Disneyland Resort

Star Tours is now going to shut down in July, being ahead of schedule to make way for its sequel, Star Tours II (it was supposed to shut down October 11).

News Source: MiceAge.com

Update to Disney’s “NexGen” project

At the beginning of this year, Disney announced their ‘NexGen” project, in which they use new technology to make queue lines at theme park attractions more enjoyable.  This will be used a lot at WDW’s Magic Kingdom park- it was inserted on the Space Mountain queue at the end of last year, before it became part of the “NexGen” project and this will be largely used for the Fantasyland expansion.  Just today, they were testing out a possible “NexGen” idea for the Magic Kingdom Haunted Mansion queue.  WDW Magic has some photos of the queue testing with this interactive “murder case.”

Toy Story Mania to add a new game in California and Florida

Toy Story Mania promotional poster- image src: themouseexperts.com

The Disney Parks Blog confirmed that the Toy Story Mania attractions at Disney’s California Adventure and Walt Disney World’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios will replace the “Bo Beep’s Baa-Loon Pop” with “Rex and Trixie’s Dino Darts” in May as a way to promote the third sequel to the Toy Story movie trilogy, “Toy Story 3.”  In this game, you shoot darts at balloons in a primiveal world with Rex and his new Triceratops friend, Trixie (who will be in Toy Story 3).  In addition to this game, a new character from Toy Story 3 will come around at both parks to greet guests, known as “Lotso the bear.”

It’s Official- Captain EO return now confirmed for both Disneyland Paris and Epcot!

Again, a very long hiatus, I know.  I was studying for finals, finishing up my senior year of high school and I am done!  Anyway, some big news.  It’s now official- after many rumors about the EO return at other Disney parks besides Tokyo and California, Screamscape announced the King of Pop’s return to the 3D stage at Walt Disney World’s Epcot and Disneyland Paris’ “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience” theaters.  Epcot’s will come back to the Imagination Pavilion, where it played from 1986-1994 before being replaced by ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Audience,” and Paris’ will be in their Discoveryland (the Paris Tomorrowland with a Jules Verne twist), where it played from 1992-1999, also before being replaced by “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.”

Golden Progress 2: World of Color Update and opening of “Paradise Park”

Golden Progress Logo- Copyright MTPN

Update on Paradise Park and the World of Color:

According to Screamscape, the grand opening and media day for the new World of Color show on the Paradise Pier lagoon will not be until June 10th, in time for the return of Summer Nightastic (they did this last year, and Disney confirmed that it will return again this summer).  However, it sounds like they may soft open the nighttime spectacular around mid-May.  MiceAge also announced the opening of the show’s viewing area, Paradise Park, this week.  It is complete with benches, greenery, shrubs, a new icon for Paradise Pier, and a water play area for children.  MiceAge also has great pictures of Paradise Park’s construction, from the ground-breaking to the completion and opening.

MTPN 1st Anniversary- coming June 25th, 2010 and huge news about the site

If you have noticed our new logo, we are approaching MTPN’s milestone 1st anniversary, which will be in June.  To celebrate this, there will be huge site updates to make this site more user-friendly, social, and most of all more organized (not with everything on other websites like we have now).

The Big Site Updates, which may not be complete until next month will be:

• Disney Galaxy, our old Disney movies blog will now become MTPN’s new home page- this will be a Disney/theme park fan site complete with membership, forums, a site wiki, possibly a shop, and of course MTPN will be the first link on the navigation bar- nothing will be on a forum/web maker site like it is now and it will all be on this Blogger Blog that will be complete with a new domain name
• we will create more various apps and widgets to let the world know about us- Disney Galaxy will eventually have apps to make theme park travel much easier for guests than it is now- it will be complete with theme park maps, driving directions, and possibly purchasing airplane tickets and hotel rooms to come
• a lot more activity on our Facebook page and much more information for site updates, news, and events

We have goals we want to reach to help improve the site more for the Anniversary and its future:

• MORE POSTS! Because I have been so busy this year with school and college process work, it has been difficult for me to do so many posts a day for this site- and I apologize for all this.  This coming year, I will really try my hardest to deliver as much good theme park news as I can without missing too many important news.  I will also try to invite more authors from other theme park fan/news sites or even newspapers to
• Promotion, promotion, promotion… not because we want to show ourselves off too much but because we want people to get the best theme park news out there.  We will try to appear in the search engines more and do the best we can for more people to be able to reach, use, and contact us.
• Make this site more mobile friendly! We love technology at MTPN and want people to be able to use their phones to read our posts and updates! We do have a mobile site: http://m.mobilethemeparknewscase.com, but we really want to make an effort so that people can use their phones for theme park travel advice while they are away.
• Instead of completely using news (with sources cited obviously) from other theme park sites, it would be fantastic if we could receive press releases from Disney, Universal, or other theme park companies!  Over time, we will really try hard to contact these companies to make sure we get news directly from them!

Overall, it’s been a great 10 months for MTPN so far! Although just keep in mind, we are not trying to compete with our friend sites such as Screamscape, Theme Park Insider, and MiceAge, we just want to make this site another quality theme park news source. We just want to make sure that everyone likes this site and that it is a completely reliable news source.  Any comments, suggestions, criticism, or praise, please feel free to either comment on this post or e-mail me at Imdbman626@gmail.com.

Got back from Italy/New York with a Harry Potter video and big reveal about the new dark ride.

I just got back from my Spring Break trip with my family to Italy and New York, so I apologize, again and again, for the lack of updates.  The big theme park hype these days is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter themed area at Universal Orlando’s Islands of Adventure park.  The Wizarding World is opening on June 18th and if die-hard Harry Potter and theme park fans are dying to see what the area will look like, below is a video with Ellen DeGeneres and two young boys touring the land, including shops, Hogsmeade, and the Hogwarts Castle (which will house the new Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey dark ride).

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT

I have also received news from Screamscape that on the new Harry Potter dark ride- Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (don’t read if you do not want the plot of the ride to be spoiled), the villains you will encounter will be the dementors from the 3rd book/movie of the Harry Potter Series, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”.  According to Screamscape, the ride’s finale will have a virtual army of Dementors “coming to life.”

Earthquake in Southern California does not affect Southern California Theme Parks

As I leave Italy today and go back to New York for a couple of days, I just got news from Screamscape that an earthquake struck my home area in Southern California this weekend- I live in Los Angeles.  Of course, I am about 20 minutes away from Universal Studios Hollywood and about 45 minutes away from Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm, but none of these parks were affected so all is fine.

Again…so sorry for all the delays!…and my Spring Break in Italy

Very sorry for not posting for two weeks! – I’m sure everyone was impatiently waiting for more posts since March 19th.  The first week, I had a stressful amount of schoolwork, preparing for my upcoming finals and this week, I was on my spring break in Italy with the family.  I am still there with my family now at a hotel right on one of Venice’s famous canals which smells like sewage (from the canal).  I went to Rome the previous week and it was pretty amazing what I saw there: the Colliseum, the ruins of Pompeii, the forum, the Amalfi Coast, and our hotel was just a block down from the famous Fountain of Trevi, a huge marble fountain created during Ancient Rome.

Another interesting thing I heard was that when a driver took me and my family up to Pompeii from Rome, an hour away from Rome there is rumored to be a Disneyland Rome built where some old army barracks (from World War II) are today.  I searched it up on my phone during lunch later in the Amalfi Coast and there was some news from 2008 where it was rumored that Disney would build a park depicting Ancient Rome.  This may now be an abandoned concept (like Disney’s WestCot and the Mineral Springs Ski Resort), but it could be built in the distant future.

Here is an article about this Disneyland Rome which may not be