I have a lot of Disney-related things that I couldn't really expand into a whole story, so I thought I would collect them and present them all together here. If I were clever, I would come up with some catchy name for all of this, but unfortunately, I don't have that creative ability. "Steve's Random Stuff", "The Burns Report", "A Bunch of Meaningless Rambling", "News from Here and There" - you get the picture.

In last week's story about Walt Disney World's 30th anniversary, I neglected to mention the Hall of Presidents as being an attraction original to the Magic Kingdom. Not really certain how I missed that one, since it is one of my favorites, so I just wanted to set the record straight. Incidentally, a story in the Orlando Sentinel states that the Hall of Presidents will re-open by the end of October. As you may know, the new show will include George W. Bush addressing the audience. Reports I heard originally said it would open at the end of the summer, then at the first of October. Apparently they are still making some technical adjustments to the show. If you haven't seen the Bush bust sculpted by Blaine Gibson, which has been on display in the Hall of Presidents lobby, it looks fantastic.

And speaking of Walt Disney World's 30th anniversary, the resort kicked off the 100 Years of Magic celebration last week, while also mentioning the 30th anniversary. They had originally planned to have a big media event as they always do for such occasions, but they decided to postpone the event after the terrorist attacks; however, the celebration still started as scheduled. And I thought they couldn't have picked a better place to kick things off than the platform of the Main Street Railroad Station at the Magic Kingdom. If you have ever visited my site, you know how much I enjoy the railroads, and the Disneyland Railroad was one of Walt's favorite attractions. I'm sure it was quite exciting for all those in attendance last week to see the train loaded with characters being pulled by the Walter E. Disney engine to the Main Street Station. A great way to start off their tribute to Walt. LaughingPlace.com had great coverage of the celebration kickoff.

In the car the other day, I was listening to some Spike Jones and the City Slickers. If you aren't familiar with Spike Jones, he was something similar to the Weird Al of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, except his comedy was more in his musical stylings than in altered lyrics. One year at the finals of the Disney Store Trivia Competition, one of the questions was something like "Who had a big hit off the song 'Der Fuehrer's Face' from the Donald Duck cartoon?" I was almost jumping up and down because I knew that one, but for some reason, I couldn't answer it; either it was a second round question and I was out after the first round, or it was a tie breaker question. Anyway, the answer was Spike Jones. It was one of his first, and biggest, hits. "Der Fuehrer's Face", the award winning cartoon, hasn't been seen in many years, since it was mainly a propaganda-type piece during the second World War. "Der Fuehrer's Face", the song, turns up on most Spike Jones collections.

Fall is arriving here in Tennessee, and that means the leaves are starting to change colors. I was noticing the different color trees driving from our home into town. Incidentally, our county was originally represented in the Tennessee Legislature by David Crockett, who of course is better known as Davy on television and in the movies. All of Disney's Davy Crockett episodes will be coming to DVD in a special 2-disc set in December. Other sets will feature Mickey Mouse cartoons, Silly Symphony cartoons, and episodes of the Disney television show featuring Disneyland. I especially enjoy wandering through the woods during the fall and winter, when there isn't as much threat from snakes and poison ivy, and I wonder if the rural areas now are really that much different from when Davy Crockett was in the same area.

October's item of the month from Steve' Archives...

This is one of the tickets mentioned in the story a while back on Walt Disney World Anniversaries. For the 15th anniversary celebration, a prize was given away every 15 seconds. Each guest was given a ticket like the one above when going through the turnstiles. A prize would be printed in the box of a winning ticket. Odds of winning were 1 in 24. We had 7 people in our group that visited the parks on 3 different days, for a total of 21 entries; if we had gone one more day, odds were good that one of us would have won something.

I had wanted to include this ticket in that story, but I didn't have time to hunt it down. For last week's 30th anniversary story, I wanted to include my ticket from my first Walt Disney World visit. So I got the big key, unlocked the even bigger padlock, and slowly opened the even bigger impenetrable door to my archives and started digging through. Apparently, "organization" is a foreign word in the archives. But while I was looking, I did find some interesting things, and I thought it would be fun to occasionally share some of them here.

Just now as I was finishing this up, one of the fine people of the United States Postal Service brought me the new Tokyo DisneySea Music Album. I immediately popped it in the CD drive of my computer, and I'm listening to it right now. Sometime in the future, I'll give a review of the music, since I obviously haven't really had time to listen to it. The CD came with a great numbered collector's card for the park's grand opening, along with a map of the new park and the usual flyers for upcoming releases and such. I like most all that I've heard so far, though. More later!

So that just about wraps up this batch of unrelated ramblings, just mainly some thoughts I had been having lately. If you have any comments, be sure to let me know!

- Story by Steve Burns; Graphics ©Disney
Posted

Steve is a three-time Disney Store National Trivia finalist and webmaster of BurnsLand, home of Steve's Disney Railroad Adventures.

E-mail Steve at steve@startedbyamouse.com, discuss this article in the StartedByAMouse.com Disney Discussion Forums or use the Talkback feature below.

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