StartedByAMouse.com Mail Bag - A Selection of Recent Letters

When I was the editor in chief of my college newspaper, I was amazed at how many letters we received. The amount of mail was astounding and I suggested to the editor who replaced me that she might want to keep all that she received in a closet and take a picture of the mountain of mail at the end of the semester and write a column about it.

As editor of StartedByAMouse.com, I still get an amazing amount of mail each and every day. It is all electronic now so there's no need to store it in a closet to later be amazed by the massive quantities I've received. But that's not going to stop me from writing a column about it.

A vast majority of the emails are spam and quickly get deleted but there are a number of messages that are in response to stories we run on the site or to Disney in general. It's amazing that when you run a collection of pictures of a certain ice skating champion, people will email you thinking that you are Michelle Kwan. Or that if you right an article about a visit to a scrapbooking store at Walt Disney World, people suddenly think that you sell the merchandise you've reviewed. But most of the emails we receive are more on the mark. Below are a few messages from the past month that I thought I'd share with you:

This email was a little unusual in the sense that there was no text included. Entitled "Disney on Ice," it contained two pictures of a frozen Mickey Mouse antenna ball from Walt Disney World with some fuzzy precipitation. I'm including one of the pictures below ...



The next email I'm going to share also was received with a photo attached but this one was in response to the riding in the Mark Twain pilot house article we recently ran.

Hi Matt,

What a great surprise to find an article about the Mark Twain pilot house!

I've attached an photo of me at the helm that was taken by a reporter (Dixon Geyer) of the Garden Grove Daily News (it was later purchased by the OC Register) in mid June or the first week of July 1955.

I was taken on a pre-opening press tour - the idea was to preview Disneyland through the eyes of a child.

The attached picture is the only one of dozens that I used to have. My parents moved overseas in the 70's and in the move, all others were lost. The only other surviving material from my visit is the full page newspaper article.

50 years later, I still feel that my life was affected by that visit and my myriad visits through high school.

Thank you for a great web site.

J. R. Hines
Louisville KY

What an absolutely cool story, no?

Here's an email regarding the Nick.com ads running at the top of each page ...

First off, I LOVE your site. I hit the picture of the day every morning and the wallpapers are super too.

With that said, one SMALL complaint...the musical banner you are running now (from Nickeldeon?) is REALLY annoying. The music is intrusive and really unwelcome. If it were Disney, it might be ok but really probably not.

Hate to complain but wanted to vent just a little.
Keep up the GREAT work
Heath

No problem venting. I apologize to anyone who was taken aback by the sound played with the Game of the Week ad (I know I was). I asked the advertiser to provide a soundless version, which we've now gotten. I never envisioned StartedByAMouse.com to be someplace overrun with ads and the decision to accept them is sometimes a difficult one to make. The money made from advertisements helps offset the cost of running the site. But I never want their inclusion to turn readers off to the content that we post. I appreciate both the compliment that the site is worth returning to and the comments that something can be done to better StartedByAMouse.com. Like this email I received about recent Wallpaper of the Week ...

I am a regular to this site and look forward each week with great anticipation to the new Wallpaper of the Week. I must admit though that I am somewhat disappointed with the last two submissions. The Cinderella Castle from last week was too dark, and the Spaceship Earth at Night is out of focus.
Usually I am not one to complain, but for the caliber of quality that I have come to expect from your wonderful site, I am suprised that these two have made it as part of the Wallpaper Archive. Please don't take this response as being negative. It's just that your site deserves the best, and compared to all of the submissions I have seen or downloaded, these are definitely not worthy downloadables.
Thank you in advance for your attention.

In Disney Spirit,

Michael Wolff

I definitely want to say that I would never run something that I felt was intentionally bad but I do apologize to Michael for disappointing him with recent Wallpaper of the Week selections. There are times that I feel I've got a great picture to share with everyone and it is greeted with apathy and there are other times that I'm less sure about the quality of the image but people love it. The Cinderella Castle picture he referred to was one of the most downloaded Wallpapers that we've ever run so I'm a bit surprised that he didn't care for it. And while the guest-submitted Spaceship Earth picture is a bit soft, I thought it made for an interesting image to share. Apparently, the bar is set high so I'll definitely continue to try to provide top-of-the-line images while at the same time realizing that I might not please everyone. But I do very much appreciate the comments.

And I do value feedback that you guys send. Share your thoughts with us via the Talkback feature at the bottom of each article or via the email address that's included with every story. Talk about what you've read here or create Disney topics of your own at our Disney Discussion Forums. The great thing about being a part of the new media is the ability to exchange ideas, share thoughts and provide feedback in a fast and simple way. I encourage everyone to join in and participate in StartedByAMouse.com.