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Walt Disney World announced that they will shutdown the remaining nightclubs at Pleasure Island after September 27. Pleasure Island is to be “reimagined” to appeal to a broader audience. See the Orlando Sentinel article for more details.

Other than walking through Pleasure Island to move between the West Side and the Marketplace, we never did anything there. I’m not one to go to a nightclub or dancing, so there wasn’t much there for me. I did always want to go to the Adventurer’s Club though since it sounded like a fun “Disney” experience, but I guess that isn’t in the cards. Would have stopped by in April if I had known what was coming.

Oops!  MiceAge is reporting about major problems with the new Disneyland monorail car.  Apparently the blueprints from the 1980s didn’t include changes made to the cars before they went into service.  The result?  A monorail that caused major damage to itself as it tried to navigate a gentle S-curve.

I can understand why people assumed that the blueprints were correct and didn’t check them against the actual cars.  I am surprised, however, that no one did any simulations of the cars as designed on a model of the track.  These days it would be a simple matter for the designers to check clearances this way.

Here we go with another installment of Disney 2007 photos.  I’ve added an album for Day Four which mostly covers the Wilderness Lodge resort with a few other areas tossed in for good measure.  Here’s one from Epcot.

I’m so far behind in posting photos from our various trips, so I figured I need to at least post the pictures from our [tag]Walt Disney World[/tag] trip last month.  We were there June 8-13, staying at [tag]Wilderness Lodge[/tag], our new favorite resort. Although Yacht and Beach Club still have the most convenient location, Wilderness Lodge (WL) has incredible theming as well as a great location.  From the minute you set foot in the lobby, you may as well be in the Pacific Northwest.  The pool area is one of the best at WDW with a mountain stream flowing directly into the pool.  And you can hop a boat or take a nature hike over to Fort Wilderness (we didn’t try the trails, but hope to do that next time), or take the boat over to the Magic Kingdom and Contemporary Resort.  One night we had dinner at Citricos at the [tag]Grand Floridian[/tag] and took the boat from WL to Magic Kingdom (MK), then switched to another boat to the Grand Floridian (GF), then headed back after dinner via monorail to the Contemporary, then boat again to WL.  We hit all of the major parks, watched the space shuttle liftoff (as mentioned in a previous post), and were filmed in a crowd for an upcoming Wonderful World of [tag]Disney[/tag] episode.  A great vacation as always!

I have pictures uploaded from the first three days, coverin the Magic Kingdom and [tag]Star Wars Weekends[/tag] at [tag]Disney-MGM Studios[/tag].    The space shuttle photos are there as well.  Here are a few pictures to whet your appetite. Head over to my Walt Disney World 2007 gallery for more.

[tags]Liberty Belle, Cinderella Castle[/tags]

Disney and Pixar are expected to announce a major deal soon. I think the best option for both companies would be for Disney to acquire Pixar and put Steve Jobs (a major Disney shareholder after the acquisition) on the board. Put John Lasseter in charge of all Disney animation, including the new Pixar division, and you’d have a win-win for everyone.

Pixar brings Disney a steady new stream of successful movies and characters. Disney brings Pixar the marketing muscle and outlets to extend those stories and characters into so many areas, such as the theme parks for example. Without that, Pixar just makes movies. One of these days Pixar is going to release a so-so movie, so it is better to make a deal now when they’re batting a thousand.

If Jobs really wanted to find a new partner, he would have done so by now. The fact that he waited until Eisner was gone, made it clear that he wanted to be in business with Disney… just not with Michael.