Disney also announced this week that it will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of It's a Small World on April 10. The theme park industry's most famous earworm debuted at the New York Fair in 1964 before moving to Anaheim's Disneyland in 1966. Copies of the ride now appear at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland. Fans can visit SmallWorld50.com to record themselves singing the Sherman Brothers' famous theme song, or to build their own Mary Blair-inspired Small World virtual doll. Disney will donate up to $250,000 to UNICEF as part of the celebration, in recognition of Small World's original role as a tribute to the United Nations' aid and relief fund for children around the world.
Six Flags Magic Mountain is sending two of its popular roller coasters backward for a limited time this spring. Batman The Ride and Colossus are making the switch, starting this weekend.
Apparently inspired by all the Finding Nemo stuff they saw young Disney fans bringing into their restaurant, the tropical fish of T-Rex in Walt Disney World's Downtown Disney recently attempted their own spectacular escape. Restaurant employees responded quickly, however, capturing the fish and returning them to other tanks in restaurant. The fish are said to be trying to obtain a copy of DreamWorks' Chicken Run to help them plan their next escape attempt.
Editor's note: On Saturdays going forward, I will be writing "Insider's Update" round-ups of news items from the Disney and Universal theme parks, as well as other major parks in Central Florida and Southern California, that didn't make it into their own Blog Flume posts during the week. On Wednesdays, Jeff Elliott will be returning to the front page with his round-ups of news from other parks "Beyond CaliFlorida," as well as other quirky stories of interest to theme park fans.
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Curious if perhaps they will have him break the news on their plans for the park's expansion or upgrade. It sure would be awesome to have Mark Hamill announce it.
Otherwise, it's just cool that he's agreed to show up.
One of the things I love about theme parks is how they bring together such a huge, diverse group of fans -- people who might not agree about anything else in life, except that they love theme parks.
That's why I decided more than a year ago that I needed to get more voices on the TPI front page. My voice alone couldn't represent the wide diversity of theme park fans.
So I don't want Jeff to sound like me. Nor do I want Russell, or Amanda, or Krista, or Jim to sound like anyone other than themselves.
Of course, this will lead to situations where some readers might not feel a connection with some voices on the site. That's why I want to have many voices here -- to increase the chances that everyone will feel a connection with at least someone writing in our community.
That said, and now this is for everyone reading, if you don't see a voice that you really want to hear on Theme Park Insider, maybe you could be that voice? I'm always looking for people with smart, well-informed takes on parks to help us cover what's happening and help other readers plan the best possible vacations. Email me if you're interested.
A few times, an article or two has appeared on TPI that didn't seem to come from this positive place of love but instead from a darker place. Grousing about how much things cost, working in some pretty dark and violent imagery and calling it "jokes". On one hand there's the concept of having a diverse groups of voices (which is wonderful) but is it really "diverse" to have one voice that goes to such dark places?
I'm looking forward to seeing the "Beyond CaliFlorida" column because I think it has great potential. I just hope it's not a litany of things the writer hates about life or various parks and it doesn't go to the dark places of some past articles.
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