Jim Disney

Opus One is very well rated, rather fairly too I think. Like I posted on my site as well, it's all left up to personal taste. I personally enjoy big bordeaux blends, subtle reds from Burgundy and nasty ol' Tuscans... others like more simple wines... but I opt for the more complex wines more often than not. As for Mondavi, I thought that since they sold to Constellation Brands, the family isn't directly involved with management anymore? Other than Tim actually working as "winegrower" overseeing the general process and direction of the wines of course. And currently Michael Salicci is the winemaker at Opus. So I'm not too sure what the Mondavi family/kids involvement have to do with it's well being.

Westcoaster Update - 08/11/2005 - OC Fair (Take 2) and The Disneyland Resort Westcoaster Update - 08/09/2005 - OC Fair and Las Vegas Just wanted to let everyone know we've posted our new updates. In these action packed um... updates, we take a trip to the OC Fair and make Dan spin around on a spinny bear ride... we visited Las Vegas and lost lots of money, and we have a look at the Disneyland Resort and some of the construction happening there. WEEEEE!! Anyhoo... check it out or don't... enjoy! JD http://www.westcoaster.net

^Thanks! I'm not sure what SFMM has to do when it comes to getting approvals to build anything to be honest with ya. But pretty much all the hints and such coming from people have said beemer. So take that for what it's worth (very little until stuff starts arriving).

Knott's Berry Farm, Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood and Six Flags Magic Mountain Well, the Alvey's have SFMM covered pretty good here, so what I have is pretty much just a rehash... but we're also beginning the annual Halloween Haunt coverage, construction of Finding Nemo at Disneyland and a quick look at Fear Factor Live at Universal Studios Hollyweird... enjoy!

http://www.myspace.com/ducksdontscheme

Maybe...

Here's mine...

Hi... just thought I'd say hi... y'know... so, hi.

Westcoaster Update - Warner Bros. Movie World and Disneyland Just thought I'd let everyone know we've got a new update on Westcoaster from Warner Bros. Movie World and the track deliveries they've been getting for their Superman coaster. And also from the Space Mountain previews last week. Head on over and check it out!

This one's for Joey... DIE!

Magic Mountain? I mean... sure, it doesn't have a castle... but... y'know... I'm just sayin'...

I don't chime in around here often enough... but here's my two cents. Vekoma just design rides poorly. Go look at video of Goudurix... or hell, even a few photos. The rides often appear to be thrown together. On top of that, their bogie design coupled with odd track profiles just makes for an awful ride. So yeah... Vekoma sucks for the most part.

^To tell the truth, Disney's America wasn't the greatest concept IMHO. Basically, it was Disney's California Adventure with a bigger scope and budget. Same lack of imagination with a bigger cash cannon. Well... actually, not as bad a lack of imagination. But just not a great park by what I'd personally enjoy visiting.

Well, that was WestCOT Version 1. In the early 90's they pitched the park with its 300 foot tall SpaceStation Earth and the cranky old residents around Anaheim almost crapped themselves to death. Here's a quick run down of when the different ideas were pitched. 1990 - Port Disney including DisneySeas was pitched for Long Beach on the site of the Queen Mary & Spruce Goose dome. Long Beach went all douchey and turned it down... Tokyo bought the DisneySeas concept and we all know how that went... 1991 - WestCOT Center Version 1. Old people all around Anaheim form "H.O.M.E." basically its only real purpose was to stifle any real development in the Anaheim Resort area. Late 1991, Port Disney is scrapped. 1993 - WestCOT EIR is approved by Anaheim. At this point in time, the park had been redesigned. The "Corners of The World" idea was expanded, the layout was changed, removing SpaceStation Earth and moving the Future World area of the park into a position roughly where the Timon Parking lot now exists. The icon for the park was reduced to a single spire... yep... a giant stick. They also greatly reduced the number of hotel rooms they planned to build, removing the in-park hotel plans. The size of the Disneyland Center shopping district was also reduced, allowing for a slightly larger WestCOT Center. 1994 - WestCOT Center is scrapped due to cost (they were too cheap to build something nice) and local pressure from old fogies. We all know what happened from there. Personally, WestCOT and Disney's America (now bastardized as DCA in a cheaper, smaller, state focused form) are slight obsessions of mine. Both serve as proof that there was a lot of creative talent that was wasted on lesser offerings such as Disney's Animal Kingdom, Disney's California Adventure and Walt Disney Studios Paris. Why? All because the focus was so trained on the bottom line that they forgot that you have to spend money to make money. WestCOT was a cool park... I dug the idea of entire regions being represented in the World Showcase rather than individual countries. For instance... you would have one "pavillion" dedicated entirely to The Americas, another one for Europe, yet another for Asia, etc. This brought the burden off individual countries and played up a more happy sort of "togetherness" feel. The park was very theatrical in that, instead of huge pavillions like Florida's Epcot (especially in Future World), it functions more like "stages". There was a 45 minute long boat ride that encircled the park that was to be the park's version of Spaceship Earth. 5 stops would break it up into 9 minute segments where you would go through indoor and outdoor scenes of the different regions you visited in the park. Then obviously, you could get off the ride and explore the different areas of WestCOT. Personally, I'd love to still see the park built eventually... it's a great concept!

I can't speak for Tokyo, but I know WDW does have Buzz Lighyear AA, and it's really kick ass.

First off... I have to get this off my chest; F**K LYPHA!! That felt good... words are completely worthless in conveying my overall dissatisfaction with our web host recently. I think with these guys we've actually suffered more downtime than in the previous 3 years. So for those of you who can see the site; congrats... if you're in the boat with the rest of us... just remember kids, never... EVER use http://www.lypha.com for your hosting needs unless you plan on dealing with at least one major downtime a month. Again, sorry for the downtime problems... but thanks to those of you who've sent some very nice e-mails. Hopefully this won't last much longer...

This was something I noticed the first day... people were nicer... and it just had a much happier vibe because of this. Kids weren't climbing through all the planters or stuff like that... you never really heard "Please do not climb on the hand railing!" or any of the typical things you hear at DCA or KBF. It just didn't have the rude vibe you get from the local parks here...

oh... this is good... Now... I don't claim to be a WDW expert... I've only been there once (so far). But here's my take... Disneyland Park vs. Magic Kingdom -Attractions: I give the edge to Disneyland. While Magic Kingdom does have a much better version of Splash Mountain along with Hall of Presidents, Mickey's PhilharMagic, Tomorrowland Transit Authority, Astro Orbiter and Carousel of Progress. The rest of the attractions at the park are either the same or just not as good as Disneyland's versions. Disneyland has better versions of Winnie The Pooh, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of The Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Jungle Cruise, Enchanted Tiki Room, and Space Mountain. This is in addition to stuff like Indy, Alice in Wonderland and Matterhorn that you won't find in Florida. -Atmosphere: I give this edge to Magic Kingdom. I love Disneyland, I really do. I even like it's dinky little castle. But there's something to be said for the Magic Kingdom and the sheer size and beauty. The park reall has a great deal more details to it. Things are just that much better done. But this is what happens when you have an original concept... then give it time to mature and progress, as well as the money to do things on the scale that gives validity to the overall vision. Granted, Disneyland's Adventureland is much better as a whole, as is Disneyland's Toontown in comparison to Florida's horrific Mickey's Toontown Fair crap. And of course, Anaheim does have New Orleans Square (which is my favorite land in a theme park this side of Epcot). But it's the overall size and detail of the Magic Kingdom that I love so much. It's just incredible! I love Disneyland for some things... but I love Magic Kingdom for others. Being someone who could just sit, relax and read a book for hours in a theme park. I'd be more inclined to pick Magic Kingdom just for that fact... but if I'm in more of a mood for rides, I'd rather have Disneyland. As for the other parks... things like Epcot's size, Illuminations, and cheese-ball rides like Spaceship Earth really make me love that place. MGM is the one park that I can't quite decide what I think of it... do I love it, or do I wonder what the hell it wants to be. But I like it more than I hate it. And Animal Kingdom, despite what I probably lead on in my updates is incredibly pretty (when you don't think about Dinoland at all)... things like the African Harambe village are just great! I love that sort of theme. Africa has always been a great interest to me, and I think they did a hell of a job recreating that sort of environment there. Then there's things like DCA. Which, while I love it... after seeing a few things like Islands of Adventure and Epcot, really shows me how uninteresting California really is as the basis for a theme park. That's not to say that DCA is a horrible park, it really isn't. But there were so many other opportunities that they probably could've explored while retaining some of the same ride concepts. Especially since things like the rapids rides and coasters had been in development since WestCOT 1.0 (African rapids ride, and coaster along the great wall of China). And of course... comparing Downtown Disneys is just retarded... DLR's version can't even begin to compare. It's like debating whether you prefer moldy nasty rotten food over filet mignon... you sure as hell aren't going to want that moldy crap when presented with good stuff. All in all... just for its size and variety, I have to say I prefer Walt Disney World, hands down. But I still love Disneyland and DCA. Jim "Goin' through a bad case of 'I hate So Cal parks' right now" Disney

^Well, I was just going to blame it on you... but then I thought about it and decided to just place the blame where it deserved to be. Jim "I <3 Burritos" Disney

Based on what I've been on: Xcelerator Superman: The Escape Goliath I really need to get out more...

Okay people... I wanted to let everyone know what was going on with Westcoaster. There's been a little bit of a problem with our hosting company. They've been moving all of their Domain Name Servers into a centralized arrangement. In the process of moving everything, they accidentally moved our domain information to an older machine that apparently still had our site on it (but not updated since 9/19). So this is why the site is not functioning properly or the community isn't up. Currently a few people can still access the site. But it will be incremental over the next day or two until everyone can see the correct site. I'm very, very sorry for the inconvenience we're all dealing with. But thankfully, my biggest fear of the site getting wiped out or anything like that hasn't been realized! So right now it's just a waiting game until the DNS servers for everyone's web providers update until you can see the site again! Thanks for your support and patience. Jim "I'm so annoyed with my web host" Disney