** After you read this report you may want to check out the pictorial updates in our Disneyland Resort Pictorial Update section

Our plan on this rare Saturday visit was to see the new Mickey's Detective School, see how the Super Soap promotion was going at DCA, see the Segway, and to just hang out for the day. This was also the last weekend of the traditional Spring breaks. The crowds at both parks were healthy. We arrived about 11am and stayed through Believe.

Disneyland Items:

• The crowd felt like a mild Summer day. No where near as packed as last Friday
• There was another Dance team or something party going on in the evening so there were large groups of kids running around again in addition to all the familes on Spring break
• There was quite a bit of entertianment choices out and around the park, from the Mime in NOS to the normal bands around the park. The Fab 4 were out in Tomorrowland and there was Swing dancing at Carnation. So it was a full schedule
• Our major disappointment of the day came in the form of the Segway demo at Innoventions. We were really excited that finally Innoventions would have a really innovative product on display. Of course the three times we checked throughout the day it was not running. We got to see the one on the ceiling and took a peak at one that was parked. Oh well we will just have to see it next time.
• Work seems to be moving along on Splash. The new paint job looks great. You can actually tell the difference from what is done and what is not.

Mickey's Detective Show Items:

• I was impressed by the set on first site. It is just plain flat sets, but the visual gags were great.
• The show itself seemed very formatic (is that a word)... basically it seemed to follow a formula. Each character or group comes on stage, does a song and dance number, then it moves on. The plot moves along by the number. Then they solve the problem and confetti gets shot from above. Basically it reminded me of the Minnie Christmas show way too much in that respect.
• Overally though I think the show is ok. It is better than nothing and somewhat entertaining. Most Kids will enjoy it, we saw a couple that seemed to loose interest about half way through.
• I am not going to go into the plot except to say the idea is for Mickey to help solve a case. Along the way he needs help from his secret agents (Chip & Dale) and they interview a bunch of usual suspects (audience people, Captian Hook, and Cruella).
• I found several of the lines and gags to be really funny. Who ever is doing the Chip and Dale writing in both this and the Minnie show is doing great...
• So in conclusion I would recommend seeing the show if your in the park, but I would not make a special trip to see it. I think kids will enjoy it and adults will be able to handle sitting through it and some will find it enojoyable. (How's that for some generic comments).

DCA Items:

• The park had a good size crowd due to the Super Soaps Weekend Promotion. In case you had not heard for three of the weekends in April they are going to have different ABC Soap Opera cast at the park. (I will talk about it more in next section of the "column".
• One thing we noticed was the increase in volume at DCA Saturday. The whole park just seemed louder. Like they changed all the volume settings upwards.
• They were working on the Tower Site. Appeared they were still digging (or maybe it was just cleanup), but seemed weird to be working on a Saturday.
• The GZ was down most of the afternoon/evening. No idea why. They said because of wind, but there really was not any that we could see or feel (went on the Sun Wheel).
• Speaking of the Pier section. By Screamin' there was a swarm of Bees buzzing around above the boardwalk. Could not see why and did not want to stick around to see what happened (I really do not like bees that much).
• Went to see Blast, Does anyone know if they have permentantly removed the drum solos from the show? This is 2 or 3 shows now we have seen and they skipped that segment. It also appeared that people were missing. Wonder if they got a spring break too.

DCA Super Soaps Items:

• The even appeared to be a success to us. There were quite a few soap fans around the park. On the whole the event seemed fairly organized and under control (of course we were not trying to do the events and just wondered around the park taking pictures.
• This weekend was "All My Children". I am not a soap person, so I had no clue who any of these people were or what they were talking about most of the time.
• There were several autograph locations set up throughout the park and there were scheduled times that a particular start would be there. The queues seemed to fill well before the stars arrived. I thought it was good that they were cutting off the sessions vs. making people wait only to find out they could not get an autograph.
• Out in the Golden State Amp. they did a Q&A show throughout the day. This drew large crowds (as you can see in our pictorial update).
• In Golden Dreams they did a show called Casting Call. From what I read it allowed a selected person to do a scene with a star. I did not go to see it. It was great to see the whole queue filled for the theater though. Never seen that before.
• There was a "parade" in the early afternoon. I thought it was really cheap. I was expecting an Disney Studios type parade where the stars were a couple to a car or float. Instead they had two units. The first was the hummer they use for the character encounters and it had some Disney characters on it. That was followed by some people walking with balloons, then a single float with all the soap people and Mickey on it. That was it. The soundtrack was the theme from the show I am guessing (since the crowd went crazy when it started and really seemed to know it). The parade did the normal parade route and that was it. The soap fans seemed happy though.
• Along the Hollywood backlot they had several radio stations broadcasting for the day
• Speaking of the media I want to complain about how rude and annoying they were. The photographers I mean (not the radio people). The best example of this occurred twice during the parade:
  1) As the parade started they all staked out locations right in front along the route (pretty much centered with the golden gate bridge). That was fine. But as the parade drew near and the balloon people went by they were actually yelling at them to get out of the way (I heard this from across the street). Some actually went out onto the route to get the shot.
  2) Worse yet was after the float passed. You know how people seem to follow the parade. Well that was happening, but the brilliant photographers decided they wanted to run and get ahead of the parade for more shots. So instead of working there way through the crowd like most people would they basically put their heads down and charged through running anything or one who got in their way over. Yelling along the way. I thought it was terrible and extremely rude. (I was sort of "bratty" and made sure to plant myself in a "pathway" and refused to move. I just thought they could have thought things out a little better and been under control.
  3) One more example just popped into my mind. They also thought they had the privilage to climb anything for the shot. Disney CMs tried to control a couple as they were scaling a trashcan/lightpole. It was ridiculous to watch.
• We also went to the Millionaire Play It! to see what they were going to do for the "Super Soap Edition". FastPasses were gone early in the day for these special shows. (They also had normal shows too). Basically there were two stars who competed for points. The points were worth prizes for the entire audience. It was really entertianing and of course they won the grand prize 1 million points. So we all got a $5 gift certificate good in the park at any merchandise location, a Soap Net tote bag, and a ABC Super Soaps Weekend T-shirt. Not bad for seeing an entertianing show. I thought this was extremely well done and entertaining. I also enjoyed it because the stars seemed to be great sports. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if I actually knew/had an interest in the celeberties to have some background on them.... but still for a non-soap person it was a great show.
• I think that is everything... so in conclusion I think the Soap events will be a success. The crowds seemed large and generally happy from what I could tell. I did not wait in the lines or attend all the events, so this is a somewhat general observation. (If anyone actually did a bunch of the events and wants to write drop me an email and I will post your impressions disneygeek@disneygeek.com

Be sure to check out the picture update that goes with this Geekspeak column, it can be found in our Disneyland Resort Pictorial Update section

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