“In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room, all the birds sing words and the flowers croon, in the tiki, tiki, tiki room”

Disney has finally confirmed that Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room will (tentatively) reopen on August 15th in Walt Disney World’s Adventure Land. This follows a nearly year-long refurbishment after a fire broke out in the attic of the show building, damaging many of the “Under New Management” animatronics. The new show will be a re-imagination of Walt Disney’s original Enchanted Tiki Room show with Jose, Fritz, Michael, and Pierre returning to their rightful posts, er, perches.

From Disney:

“From time to time, we make adjustments to our operations to accommodate for planned transportation maintenance. With that in mind, operating hours for the Epcot Monorail system will be modified to operate one hour after regular park close beginning July 11, 2011 and the Magic Kingdom Monorail system will also operate one hour after regular park close beginning August 1, 2011. At that time, watercraft (where applicable) and additional buses will be available to transport guests to their destination.

Return service from evening Extra Magic Hours in the parks will be supported by watercraft (where applicable) and bus transportation.

(Hat tip to The Examiner)

I just shut down (temporarily) the message board forums. In the last several weeks they have been attacked with spam and ads (not sure how the people behind that think that some of those ads would be relevant to THIS audience, but whatever). I’ll be working on cleaning/fixing them for the future.

… and I’m officially working on a new episode for the Netcot Podcast.

What do you mean “what’s the Netcot Podcast?” Really? Has it been that long. Doh. I’m sorry!

C-ya-soon!

-Van

Netcot on: twitter | facebook

Hey everyone! I’m still here – its just been a very busy year at work. More to come on that topic but for now I simply wanted to say “hi” and let you know there are some upcoming podcasts in the queue that will roll out shortly including features on World of Color and Hong Kong Disneyland. So stay tuned and of course, ROCK ON!

-Van

The Walt Disney Company has announced they will be building Disney’s Art of Animation Resort, which will be their first non-DVC hotel in seven years. The hotel will feature 2,000 rooms with construction starting this summer and a planned opening in 2012. The resort will be built across the lake from Disney’s Pop Century and will use the land previously cleared for the second phase of Pop Century.

The building will feature 1,120 suites and 864 traditional hotel rooms with themes based on the companies most popular animated movies: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Finding Nemo and Cars. It will be priced as a value resort as Disney is betting travelers will continue to be frugal with their money for years to come even after we pass through this recession.

As seen in this YouTube video, Disneyland is testing a Mickey Mouse character greeter that can blink, move his mouth and even talk as he completely interacts with guests. Its simply an amazing piece of technology and worth checking out.

No word yet on how this may be used more frequently in the parks but one can imagine that a character that talks may have slower lines for photos as he/she needs to politely excuse himself/herself from one guest to greet another.

(Incase you’re wondering, the other item we are all waiting for is a WDW monorail expansion. And now that we have a talking Mickey, I suggest Disney get working on THAT.)

According to a jury, Walt Disney World’s Tower of Terror ride did not cause a stroke for Marvin Cohen from Philadelphia in 1998. The man claims he suffered a stroke weeks after riding the attraction and the sudden drop tore an artery leading towards his brain. Jurors took only three hours to find that Disney was not responsible for the mans stroke.