Can't Think of a Clever Title but we went to the D23 Expo!!! UPDATE 10/16 Final Thoughts

That's ok! Thanks for letting me know you're reading, I hope you're enjoying it :)

I was hopeful to get the next installment done before I leave to go camping on Thursday. If not, I'll still continue it will just be next week.

I have been so busy and have been only able to read on my phone and replying on my phone just doesn't work well.
 
So while everyone else from Live Action ran off to get into line for Parks and Resorts, we headed back out to the show floor. Live Action ended at 12:30, Parks and Resorts started at 3 but Auli'i Cravalho (Moana) was signing from 2-3. I really wanted to see Parks and Resorts but Moana was in my top 3 must dos.

We had a bit of time before we had to get in line so we wondered the show floor. We almost got in line to meet Ashley Eckstein (Her Universe and Ahsoka's voice in Clone Wars and Rebels) but it would have ended up clashing with meeting Moana (even though according to the times guide it shouldn't have).

While we were figuring out if we could meet Ashley or not, we happened to be standing right by the DuckTales money bin jump.

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Then one of those fun, unpredictable convention moments happened. All the voice cast of Duck Tales who were at the convention were being led over.

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Ben Schwartz (Dewey), Kate Micucci (Webby Vanderquack), Beck Bennett (Launchpad McQuack), and Toks Olagundoye (Mrs. Beakley) were all there. They were going to jump into the money bin so D23 could take some promotional pictures. So of course I had to take my own pictures.

First up was Beck Bennett

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Then Ben Schwartz

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Kate Micucci

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There's only so many ways to jump into a money bin while wearing a dress

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And sometimes, jumping into a money bin with a dress just ain't happening

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Since we couldn't meet Ashley we finally ventured into the non-Disney run vendor booths and tried to find the DISboards booth.

Right when we found it the Ultimate Fan Street Party started up and went by.

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There were some balloons. The fab five! I only care about Donald.

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Dancers.

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Then they had a car with the celebrity guest of the day. Today's guest was Colin O'Donaghue from Once Upon a Time.

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He looked a bit charmingly befuddled at being the center of attention and 100s of screaming females. It soon became a bit awkward, the parade stopped so the dancers and the Fab Five could do a little routine. It was only stopped for a few moments but Colin quickly became even more awkward (and who could blame him). He kind of halfheartedly waved his pom pom a bit. Looked around nervously at the crowd, waved at a few people. Fidgeted uncomfortable, waved the pom pom a bit more.

Once the parade passed I chatted with some of the DIS podcasters. I was a little shocked and pleased that some recognized me by name because of my contributor articles. After a few minutes of chatting it was time to head back to the Music Emporium for the signing.

We checked out the SW hologram records at the Music Emporium booth:

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They look pretty cool but I think the hologram is smaller than I thought it would be.

It was finally time to get in line for Moana. Her line was huge. I think it ended up taking us around 45 minutes or so to get through.

This is where the bad part of the day really amps up. As we were waiting in line the employees were shouting out directions. One woman was saying one item signed per wristband. We asked for clarification since we'd been sold the lithographs with the promise of an additional autograph. She reiterated one item per wristband and didn't seem to care what we'd been told. So we were already a bit upset about that.

When we first got in line, we were seeing lots of people taking photos with Auli'i. As we were getting closer to the front of the line they started shouting out no photos. We found out later that they'd sold a lot of stand by wristbands and were really trying to push the crowds through to get to the stand bys. Which, nothing against the stand by people, I do not begrudge them their chance to meet her but seriously Disney?! You can't over sell your wristbands to meet the celebrities and then deprive people of their chance to get a picture or say something to the celebrity. If I had just wanted an autograph I'm sure I could have purchased one from a vendor. I like to meet the celebrities and tell them how much I appreciate their work and have a 2 minute conversation.

So we get up to the front of the line. Brian has my phone ready to take pictures, ideally we would have both wanted to be in the picture, but we figured he could grab a pic of us while she was signing. The woman who was standing right next to Auli'i started snapping that no pictures were allowed.

I had brought along a stuffed Hei Hei because I originally thought it would be fun to have him in the picture. So it was our turn, Brian went running off to the end so he could snap this picture (even though they were yelling at him no pictures).

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So this is our only picture. I guess Brian was also being sneaky because he set the lithograph on the table, not in front of her, just on the table, while I was handing over the record. Auli'i ended up grabbing the litho from the end of the table and signing at as well. I was literally in the middle of quickly telling her how much I had enjoyed Moana and the yelling woman literally gripped me by the arm and moved me past the table.

Now, no shade against Auli'i. She might be the sweetest, loveliest girl in the world. Which she did seem from the 5 seconds of my interaction with her. I know she isn't in charge of how her line runs.

But seriously, this was ridiculous. If I had known it was going to be even less than a 'huge and shove' meet and greet I would not have bothered paying for the album and giving up the Parks and Resorts panel. Disney, as usually happens, over sold the wristbands by selling the humongous stand by line of bands. Which then lessened the experience for everyone.

We left with a really bad taste in our mouths and just kind of stood around listlessly for a bit.

The major thing left on our list for the day was the Kiss Goodnight panel with Richard Sherman and Floyd Norman at 6 so we had a bit of time.

Stephanie split off to try to get a wrist band for a Frozen artist signing at the Disney Animation booth and Brian and I decided now was as good a time as any to get in line for the Pirates Archive exhibit. I am going to end this update here because I am about to take you on a picture tour of the exhibit, and there are a lot of pictures so I'll pick that up in the next post.
 
Oh...I love Kate Miccuci so much!

Too bad about about the Auli'i experience. It probably wasn't all that pleasant for her either.

We were watching an Indiana Jones movie last night (the bad one) and my daughter and I were talking how he was too old then, and now really too old, but there is still an Indiana Jones movie on the books for 2020, and I pointed out that if that is the case, maybe we'll have to get up at 3 AM for that live action panel for D23 in 2019 to see crotchety old Harrison Ford present the teaser trailer. That and with the recent push-back of Episode IX to December 2019 might be double worth that 3 AM rise.
 
We didn't really know what to do with ourselves and were disappointed with our meet and greet experience so we decided to check the Archives pavilion off our list. This year they brought a Pirates exhibit. There was a decently sized line but it moved pretty quickly. They kept a count of how many people left and then let people in big groups at a time. I think we only waited 10-15 minutes.

I'm just going to post all my pictures. I basically took pictures of everything, because pictures are free. As you entered your eye was immediately drawn to the large pirate ships in the middle of the room. They weren't life size, but they had to be at least maybe half life size, they were pretty big.

Everything here was either used in or for the movies, or were a part of the theme park POTC attractions and Peter Pan attractions.

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Continued in next post...
 


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Over the exit:

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I really enjoyed the Archive exhibit. It doesn't hurt that I like the Pirates movies and both attractions that were showcased. I think the Archive exhibit was one of my favorite things.

My favorite things were the smaller and larger model ships. I found some of the papers from the attractions fascinating, hopefully those others of you who are interested were able to enlarge the pictures to read the papers.

They did a very good job of keeping the crowds inside manageable. Some exhibits had a few people crowded around but you could easily just pass those by and come back.
 


Oh...I love Kate Miccuci so much!

Too bad about about the Auli'i experience. It probably wasn't all that pleasant for her either.

We were watching an Indiana Jones movie last night (the bad one) and my daughter and I were talking how he was too old then, and now really too old, but there is still an Indiana Jones movie on the books for 2020, and I pointed out that if that is the case, maybe we'll have to get up at 3 AM for that live action panel for D23 in 2019 to see crotchety old Harrison Ford present the teaser trailer. That and with the recent push-back of Episode IX to December 2019 might be double worth that 3 AM rise.

You've probably heard me arguing this on the rumors and news board before, but I really do believe Indiana Jones could be a James Bond type franchise. I was really hoping they'd at least re-boot it and do some of Indy's college years with a different actors. If Lucasfilm is ok with re-casting a 5 years younger Han Solo, they should be ok re-casting a 10-15 years younger Indy.

Ugh, let's not talk about Harrison Ford being at live action. I think I already want to skip that one next time around. Maybe I'll see what panels are up against it. If it's like this year and there is something like Power of the Princess, I probably will skip live action.

I would have loved to see the Archive exhibit. Great pictures.

The archive exhibit was great. I think that Disney should have a traveling archive exhibit and change it up every few years. Some of the stuff in this exhibit was crazy. Like, did they save all those papers about the attractions knowing that DL was going to be a huge hit for many years to come? Or was it just one of those...throw all these papers in boxes and somehow they got kept all these years kind of thing.
 
I forgot to post a picture of our signed Moana record so I'll add that here:

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After our walk through the Pirates Archives it was time to check out an event I'd seen advertised on a sign in the vendor hall: Marty Sklar book signing!

I was actually pretty upset after we got home and I heard that plenty of Disney royalty had been doing book signings or meet and greets among the outside vendor booths. I had read before hand that in previous expos vendor booths had brought in celebrities and done paid signings. Those were banned this year so I never gave it another thought. Apparently vendors still brought in the celebrities but didn't charge for the signatures. I was really sad at some of the people I missed out on meeting. Luckily I saw the sign for Marty Sklar. As most of you know he ended up passing away a few weeks after the expo. I've always really admired him and the work he did for Disney, as I also fancy myself somewhat of an amateur writer.

All you had to do for the meet and greet was buy a copy of his book. I already owned a copy of 'Dream It! Do It!' but luckily there was a second option, 'One Little Spark'. The price wasn't inflated at all so I got it for about $20. We came back right before his signing time started and I was shocked that there were only a few groups of people ahead of me. I mean, Marty is much more of a Disney legend than a lot of the people who were signing at the cluster that was the Disney Animation and Pixar booth. I wonder if a lot of people just didn't know about the opportunity. It wasn't listed on the app. I never did find out about any of the other vendor booth signings, so I guess his short line kind of made sense.

I only had to wait a few minutes and then it was my turn. Brian took pictures as I chatted with Marty. He was so nice. I told him my name so he could personalize the signing and he told me that his granddaughter was also named Rachel so we talked about that for a few minutes. I got a bit choked up and said that I'm sure he hears it all the time but I wanted to thank him for all he had done for the Disney company and how much a lot of his work had impacted me personally. He was so nice. I'm very glad I got the opportunity to meet him. He is in my favorite group of Imagineers/Disney people including Rolly Crump, Mary Blair and Mark Davis. I wrote a long article on him for the DIS but unfortunately it has not been published. I think his death was the celebrity death I have been the most torn up over. I believe he even beats out Carrie Fisher. At least he lives on through his works and the countless smiles he'll bring in the future.

I couldn't find any pictures where I wasn't making any goofy faces:

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And we saw my favorite costume of the expo:

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We had some more time to kill before the 6 pm Kiss Goodnight (Brian had run and got us stage passes for this at some point).


We headed back towards the Disney sponsored pavilions because Stephanie had made an intriguing discovery while waiting for her Frozen animators autograph: the Disney Animation and Pixar booths were both randomly doing giveaways. It involved a cast member walking around the booth with a bag of items and handing them out to whoever got there first. This is how the Pixar ball giveaways happened.

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The big screen at the Pixar booth was constantly playing Coco scenes:

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There were a few benches and it was a nice place to take a break and watch for giveaways.

We wondered over to see if they were handing anything out. They were and we got some truly epic stuff by just hanging around and waiting.

Here is a Pixar lanyard that I got:

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We saw some great Gravity Falls costumes:

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There was a little Edna Mode section:

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And a somewhat bigger wall for some Cars 3 concept art:

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Over on the Animation side they had some big props to pose with like Maui's hook:

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Ralph and Vanellope:

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During our time exploring the booth we managed to get quite a few giveaways. I don't remember when we got each certain thing, so I'll just post them all here. Even though we did return later this day and on Sunday so not all of these were from right now.

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I did purchase the SW one on Friday at the Imagineer store.

Even better than the buttons, sometimes they handed out lithographs:

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A sticker:

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Stephanie discovered that the Disney Animation booth was doing a super secretive art giveaway. They posted on their twitter account that you had to find one of their guys with an envelope who was being very discreet and show him the tweet. Then you would get one of 100 Olaf art pieces:

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The Star Wars Imagineering booth was right around the corner and we noticed that there was a new droid out and about. I always like to try to spot the droid handler out of the crowd.

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And a great Hera with Chopper (from SW Rebels) backpack costume (I am a huge Chopper fan and I need to find this backpack):

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I wanted to get a close up picture of Rex who was on display:

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Continued in next post...
 
While wandering around we noticed that the Dream Store didn't have that long of a line.


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While waiting in line I kept checking twitter for updates from the Parks and Resorts panel. So I'm standing in line freaking out about the Star Wars resort and frantically looking around for other people freaking out. I couldn't find any and I was like aren't you people huge Disney fans?! Why is no one else checking for the Parks and Resorts updates and freaking out with me!? A stormtrooper randomly walked by and I was like Stormtrooper! We're getting a SW interactive resort! I think he was confused and probably a little weirded out by me.


A photographer walked by with a D23 frame and we got some pictures.


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We probably waited around 15 minutes.

There was actually a lot of stuff left in this store. They had all the Epcot and POTC anniversary merch, a lot of art including sculptures, the vinylmations, some pins and a few other things. This store had schedule artist signings, which I thought was kind of odd since there was always a line to get in. I guess if you want to do an artist signing here you have to line up ahead of time and then just hang out inside the store.


Here is what we ended up with (the best part was your Disney Visa discount worked here):


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After our shopping experience we headed next door to the virtual Lion King experience. There was a wait to use the headsets to see the 180 degree view of the stage show, so we just looked at the props around the booth.


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It was about 45 minutes until the Kiss Goodnight panel so we took the long walk over. I think it was on the opposite side of the expo floor. We ended up not even using our stage pass, we were some of the last allowed into the gold members line.


Finally it was time to cap off the day with the Kiss Goodnight Panel!


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We chose seats on the front row of the first tier up. This way no one could sit in front of me and block my view. This was my favorite room for panels. There was always more than enough space and there were plenty of seats to choose from.


I will be honest, I wanted to attend this panel with the hope that I would get to hear Richard Sherman play some songs. I immediately noticed that there was a piano on the stage and I started to freak out. Which seemed to be a common thread for me this afternoon.


This panel was focused on the making of the book 'A Kiss Goodnight' co written by Richard Sherman and Floyd Norman.


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Wendy Lefkon hosted the panel. She is the editorial director of Disney editions books.


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The whole panel was very interesting Floyd and Richard shared many great stories about Walt and Diane.


Floyd's wife, Adrienne, is a Disney storybook artist and also contributed to the book.


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They had the music copyist give us a talk. I had no idea what those people do but it is a very interesting, dying profession. They hand write the music copy instead of having it printed out.

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I actually ended up buying a copy of this book from the Disney Dreams store (some of our friends went on Sunday and they picked me up a copy). It is a very beautiful book.

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At long last there was a pause in all the interviews. Ashley Brown was introduced to wild applause.


The moment had arrived! Richard Sherman stood up and walked over to the piano.


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Come on guys, Disney dream moment here! Listening to the legendary Richard Sherman play live! They started off with A Kiss Goodnight, and ended with Feed the Birds.


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I knew other people were going to be recording so I just sat back and lived in the moment. I highly recommend looking this up on youtube. It isn't the same as being there, but it was incredible.


After the songs the panel concluded. This may very well have been my favorite panel. I mean...listening to Richard Sherman play Feed the Birds live?! You can't beat it.


We were definitely leaving the panel on a high note.



Though the expo had officially closed, we were walking by the outside of the Marvel pavilion and I realized we hadn't been there yet so I snapped some pics of the costume displays.


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Apparently the Marvel booth had been unveiling new things each day, which were up to that point covered by a big sheet. I think these guys are some of Thanos' other children (like Gamora and Nebula were).


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We also walked by a display of models that people had made and submitted to a costume, this was one of the winners:


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We must have walked a different way than we usually did because we were passing all sorts of new stuff. There was a Disney Voluntears booth set up where you could stuff bags to be delivered to children's hospitals. Though the expo was officially closed, the booth was still calling for volunteers so we went in and filled a couple bags with coloring books, crayons, comic books and some other fun little toys. For our efforts we got some nice Disney Voluntears re-usable shopping bags.


Stephanie wanted to ask the autograph workers how the Tangled signing was going to work Sunday morning. We had heard through Twitter that they royally messed up the Once Upon A Time signing. I guess the app told people that they signing would happen at the signing area (big shock there). So people had been lined up all day waiting for wrist bands and it turns out the wrist bands were handed out to people in line for the Once Upon a Time panel. Not really cool. People were mad. So we head over there and who do I see just working his way down the rope taking pictures with fans?! Ben Schwartz! So I had to go running over to the end of the line (there were only about 10 people, not a lot of people were in the area). I got a picture (my face can't be normal) and we did the Duck Tales woooo-ooo chant. Really nice guy.


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I've always been fascinated by models.


While on our way out we saw some more great costumes:


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I asked to take their photo and they happily posed while their mom muttered something about them really living up their 15 minutes of fame. I think they must have been stopped a lot that day and maybe they were getting big heads about it because mom did not seem too pleased with them.


There were a lot of food trucks lined up right outside of the convention center. Stephanie got some food and I got a delicious frozen ice treat.


We headed back to the room. A couple people in our group were debating going to DL that night, I almost decided to go but we were really wiped out from the lack of sleep. We knew we had another big day ahead of us in the morning so we just headed back to the room.
 
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Here we go, it was our final expo day. We were all really dragging this morning. The night before we'd had a big debate about when we wanted to wake up.

There was no big panel to line up early for. I still thought we should get up early and get going. If you missed the cut off for waiting in the basement you then had to wait outside with no access to a bathroom. If you waited too long to line up you ended up way far back in the line and it took some people more than an hour after it opened at 9 to get inside.

In the end we decided to just suck it up and wake up early again. We did not want to waste an hour of the last day in line outside waiting to get in.

Somehow we all managed to be asleep around 9 pm. We were up a bit before 4 (thanks, Fitbit!). Woohoo bright eyed and bushy tailed indeed.

Here was the days panel schedule:

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Arrival Time: we were walking inside and thru security a little before 5.

Initial Wants Before Arrival

9 am: Tangled animated stars signing wristband
10-11 am: Lion King Panel
11- 12 am: Michael Giachhino signing

12-1 pm: Tangled signing
12:30-1:30 pm: The Making of Hercules Panel
1:30-1:55 pm: Coco Music
1:30-3 pm: A Whole New World of Alan Menken
2-3 pm: Moana special effects talk
2-3:30 pm: Fulton Signing
2:45-3:15 pm: Susan Egan Broadway singing (she was the original Belle on broadway)
2:45-3:45 pm: signing Bret Iwan
3-4 pm: Signing Moana Directors
3:45-4:15 pm: Voices of Jim Cummings
6-7 pm: Legends of Walt Disney Imagineering

I just went ahead and underlined the things on the to do list that we actually did.

There were a lot less people in the underground holding pen on this day.

It was actually a little amusing, the giant section that was reserved for people waiting for the big panel was occupied by about 4 people. That section was being used for the Alan Menken line up. I had been worried about that panel, I had a lot of things on my to do list for Sunday and things were going to get messed up if we weren't able to get into the first panel. There was one at 1:30 and one at 5:30. Turns out I didn't really have to worry, Sunday was sold out, just like the other days but I think it really helped that there were 2 shows.

All the rest of us were lined up to get onto the show floor.

Here is a random photo:

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We relaxed for a bit on our mattress and then Stephanie and I started to put our costumes on. We were going as Ursula and pirate Ariel.

I'll show you a picture we took later, it isn't the best picture but it does show our costumes:

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I thought pirate Ariel turned out really well. Stephanie made the corset and I used Brian's Jack Sparrow swords since he was not in the mood to dress up. Stephanie also made the little fish net accessory thing, which looked pretty good when it wasn't constantly tangling and riding up. My necklace was one of the coins from the original POTC movie. I used my old Elisabeth Swann pirate hat, which didn't fit that well because I have a lot of hair and it was all shoved under that Ariel wig. My favorite detail was the tiny little fork that I had dangling from my hair. Like how Jack Sparrow has his pieces of eight accessory, I thought Ariel would use a dinglehopper.

Everyone ready for today's 'who the hell knows whats going on?' segment? A lot of people had lined up early to try to get a wristband for the Tangled voice actors signing. Could you really blame us? It was Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi (who if you don't know, are Rapunzel and Flynn's original voices and also very famous for other things as well). Also, Jeremy Jordan was also there signing (he played the original Jack on Broadway in Newsies). Though I'm still a bit confused by him. As far as I can tell his character has only been in one episode of the cartoon, I guess he just came along because he is famous. Also Eden Espinoza was there, she played Elphaba from Wicked on Broadway.

So...someone announced that they were going to take people who wanted to line up for the 10:30 am Tangled panel upstairs to line up. Since some volunteer upstairs had started another line of people who arrived later for the Tangled panel. This had been posted on twitter and people downstairs discovered it and threw a fit.

So about 20 people asked the volunteer if it was the line for the panel or for the wristbands. Every time they were told it was just for the panel. Yeah, you guys aren't dumb, you know where this is going.

They moved the downstairs line for the panel upstairs and made those later arrivers move back to let the downstairs people be the first in line, since downstairs people were there first. Upstairs people didn't like this so all threw a fit on twitter.

After waiting forever in the basement, it was finally time for all of us to move upstairs to get ready to enter the show floor. This whole process took forever, they had to carefully go line by line and move everyone out and up the stairs then line us up in pre-marked tape lines on the floor and wait for the official 9 am opening time to let us in the doors.

Here are some pictures I took while in the upstairs hallway.

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Entirely made out of flip flops, which I did not realize until later. Hey, it had been a long weekend.

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We weren't even inside the show floor and someone came out and announced that all the Tangled signing wristbands were gone. Oh well, so much for that. We later heard from some friends who had been in the Tangled panel line that someone had come out and handed out signing wristbands to people in line for the panel, even though all those waiting in the basement specifically for the signing were told that the line being formed to go upstairs was not for the signing, but for the panel.

Ah, conventions, what are you gonna do? It's kind of like the old show hosted by Drew Carey, Whose Line is it Anyway: the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter.

We allowed ourselves a few minutes of complaining about how dumb everything always is at conventions and then moved on with our day. We were finally being let inside the floor and we really had nothing of any urgency to do, so we decided to head over to the Imagineering pavilion and check out the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge model.

We were over there so early that there wasn't even a line and we could just walk right in! Amazing! We did spend a minute or two watching the robot wander around.

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Once we entered the model area there was an imagineer on the microphone who was giving some backstory and talking about the new land.

This model was soooooo huge. These pictures won't do it's size justice. I'm just going to go ahead and post all the hundreds of pics I took of the model in case anyone is interested. This model is specifically for the Disneyland Galaxy's Edge and WDW's will be a bit different. For instance, I believe the WDW will have less entrances/exits.

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Someone in the crowd did question the Imagineer on the inaccuracies of the model. He asked why the whole land wasn't shoulder to shoulder with people. I appreciate the question, though I don't think the Imagineer did.

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Yep, that is the Falcon hidden back there. More about that in a bit.

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We all knew at this point that there was going to be an attraction based on piloting the Falcon. There were about 10 imagineers in the little space who switched off speaking on the mic and speaking with any individual who had questions.

I picked out my poor Imagineering victim and started to grill him about the Falcon attraction. He couldn't tell me much. I asked him what the Falcon was doing sitting on this planet and what the timeline was for the attraction. Apparently it is going to be after the Force Awakens. He said the Falcon was part of a smuggling/trading operation. I was like...what? Why does this random person have the Falcon?? Chewie would never give that ship up. He kind of stared at me with a blank look as I went rambling on about how this ship couldn't possibly be there and who had it? Was it Lando?! Cause that would be ok. But he wouldn't answer me and I just shook my head and was like you guys are gonna have lots of issues about this with us die hards, just you wait you'll see and then I walked away.

I didn't have a grumpy tone with him, I think I was speaking very factually but I was not pleased that the Falcon is just with some random person being used for their operations. Wouldn't happen. I wasn't too pleased with that.

So that happened...and then we looked a bit more at some of the smaller displays for Galaxies Edge.

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I believe that is going to be the ride vehicle for the other attraction.

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Oh the Falcon...what are you doing there??

I'll leave this for now until the next update since I believe I'm out of picture space.
 
We went next door and checked out the giveaways at the Pixar/Disney animation booth.

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I managed to score the last pair of Pixar sunglasses, which are now my new favorite sunglasses.

It was time to head over to the Lion King panel. We managed to get the last spots for Gold members and we only had to wait about 10 minutes until it was time to enter. I was happy this panel was in my favorite space again.

We headed over to the first tier of the tiered seats again. It was a bit farther back then we had to go, but this way my view would not be blocked by people sitting in front of me.

I was pretty excited for this panel. It was the last panel announced and I love the Lion King. I think it is my favorite of the Disney animated renaissance movies (so little mermaid, beauty and the beast, aladdin etc).

The panel was really very interesting.

The Lion King's produce, Don Hahn gave us a few fun facts. The movie was being made at the same time as Pocahontas. All the veteran animators and talent wanted to work on Pocahontas. Lion King was a very big gamble so it got all the 'B' talent and younger animators who really hadn't had a chance to make a name for themselves.

The movie was projected to make about $50 million, but doubled that figure opening weekend.

One of my favorite parts was Ernie Sabella, the voice of Pumba. Pumba is one of my favorite Disney characters so it was great listening to him share his stories about making the movie. Apparently, during the making of the Lion King, he was on Broadway with Nathan Lane (Timon). Those two actually recorded their lines together (a first). I'd love to hear some of the footage those two came up with that didn't make it into the movie. Also, we learned that Pumba is the first Disney movie character to have gas. That was a fun 5 minute conversation. We also learned that Nathan Lane improvised the line about dressing in drag and doing the hula.

The panel also included Rob Minkoff, the co-director, Mark Henn (baby Simba's animator), Jim Cummings (voice of Winnie the Pooh, etc, here he was a hyena, Ed), Tony Bancroft (Pumba's aimator) Whoopi Goldberg came out at the end to talk about how she begged to be in this movie.

Mark Henn is basically the lead animator on all the best Disney princesses (Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan). He really wanted to animate Scar so that he could get away from his princess pigeonholing. He ended up being drafted for baby Simba though, because he was the most proven animator they had for this movie and the baby Simba was such a crucial character.

I enjoyed hearing Tony Bancroft talk about Pumba, since he is one of my favorite characters. I thought it was kind of amusing that Tony went on to direct Mulan, and his brother was the main animator for Mushu, my other favorite Disney sidekick.

I highly recommend finding this panel on youtube, there was tons of info and funny conversations shared.

Of course, it wouldn't be a D23 panel if there wasn't a surprise, epic ending.

Carmen Twillie, the original singer of the Circle of Life was introduced. She came onstage to perform the song and a hundred member choir with light up robes came streaming down the aisles to accompany her. There were also lots of costumed animals on stage (think of the Lion King animals from the show at AK).

This panel was so much fun, it ended up tied for best panel I attended.

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I watched the lion king panel on youtube after and it looked like a great time. Lion King is one of my all time favorite movies so I enjoyed listening to everything that was said. That circle of life finale looked awesome!
 
I watched the lion king panel on youtube after and it looked like a great time. Lion King is one of my all time favorite movies so I enjoyed listening to everything that was said. That circle of life finale looked awesome!

It really was a lot of fun. The audience was having a great time. As much as the headline panels are trumpeted at D23...I really can't say enough about some of the smaller panels. I am probably going to go to the expo in 2019 and I might seriously consider skipping a lot of the bigger panels in favor of the smaller ones.
 
It really was a lot of fun. The audience was having a great time. As much as the headline panels are trumpeted at D23...I really can't say enough about some of the smaller panels. I am probably going to go to the expo in 2019 and I might seriously consider skipping a lot of the bigger panels in favor of the smaller ones.

See you (and @rteetz ) there in 2019! That Lion King panel looks cool. The Lion King still holds up so well. Our daughter was in the musical last winter in 8th grade, and I had to watch it 3 times as well as numerous practices and I simply never got sick of it - which says a lot to the quality of it.

I have to tell you, your picture files must be huge, it always takes like 10 minutes to load your TR so I can see the pictures.
 
See you (and @rteetz ) there in 2019! That Lion King panel looks cool. The Lion King still holds up so well. Our daughter was in the musical last winter in 8th grade, and I had to watch it 3 times as well as numerous practices and I simply never got sick of it - which says a lot to the quality of it.

I have to tell you, your picture files must be huge, it always takes like 10 minutes to load your TR so I can see the pictures.

The picture files are rather large, sorry :( Formatting the pictures and getting them all chosen and loaded are my least favorite parts of writing a trip report, so I always rush through it.

We'll all have to meet up and wait in an hour long line for something during the next expo :)
 
The Lion King panel had just ended. Our wrist band signing with Michael Giacchino began at 11, so we rushed over there and got in line. The line was moving pretty quick but still took around half an hour.

It didn't take too long until it was our turn and I was doing my rapid fire gushing and we got our album signed!

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It's not everyday you meet your heroes dressed as a pirate version of a Disney princess!

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Here is the album as it is today, on display atop the TV stand.

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By this time it was around noon. We wanted to see the 1:30 Alan Menken. We were right next door to the outside grilled cheese cart so we had that again. Best food we found there and it was reasonably priced.

After that we bolted downstairs to find spots in line. There were two really long lines to get wristbands for D23 gold member seating. We picked one and it moved soooo slowly. A manager type ended up coming over and said they had to cut the gold member line so they gave my group the last bands and told the people behind us to join regular seating. Geez.

There actually weren't that many people down in the waiting area. I think they waited near last minute to seat us once again. And once again the gold member seats we ended up in were pretty far back and the general seating sat closer to the stage than us. Typical convention suckiness.

I didn't end up taking any pictures because we were somewhat far back and I decided to just relax and enjoy the show.

IT WAS SO GOOD! I didn't even know Menken had worked on Newsies songs! And it was a bit emotional too because he talked a lot about Howard Ashman.

Halfway through the concert something very annoying occurred. A girl sitting behind us must have decided that it was her name on the program so she started to loudly sing along with all the songs. Sooo frustrating. Look...we all knew all the words. Some of us also like to sing. But please!! I am here to hear Alan Menken sing, not you. I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to turn around and tell her to shut the hell up. But how do you nicely say that? I know I have a bad temper and am not always the nicest, but I had to have earned some major cosmic brownie points for not asking her to stop singing. I just grit my teeth and had a bad time for the rest of the Random Girl (oh wait, Alan Menken) concert.

But still...still a great show overall and I'm glad I got to have that experience

It was 3 pm and our convention time was running down.

Bret Iwan, the voice of Mickey Mouse, was doing a signing at talent central and we foolishly thought we might be able to just walk up half an hour into it. We did manage to get a wristband and then a few minutes later we learned that we didn't have Bret wristbands but rather bands for some youtube star. We took those off and headed away.

Mark Henn (the guy from the Lion King panel who draws all the princesses) and Eric Goldberg were doing a signing over at the Pixar and Disney Animation booth at 5:30. Ugh, I don't know why we even bothered but we headed over and there was the usual 100-200 people milling around asking about wristband distribution. I didn't want to hover for the next hour or more just to not be able to get a band, so we decided to use our time better.

Here comes some random convention magic! We literally rounded the corner of the booth to see if they were giving away any freebies on the other side but who do I see just standing there hanging out?! Mark Henn!! He was chatting with a woman so we hovered a few feet away. Once she left I went running up and told him I was a huge fan and we got to talk for a few minutes! How about that. There were hundreds of people on the other side of the wall who were clamoring for a chance to meet him and here he was on the other side.

Sure, I didn't get a nice signed lithograph but I got to talk with him for a bit and get a picture!

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After that experience we spotted some of our ABD friends who were getting ready to head to the Center Stage for Voices of Jim Cummings. We went over with them and on the way picked up our other ABD friend and her friends.

Brian and I had the opportunity to meet Jim Cummings at a local convention and he is really great. He voices Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Darkwing Duck, Don Karnage (Tale Spin)...and I'll stop there because he seriously does so many Disney voices. Just look him up. It was a really interesting talk. He told a story of how he was in a restaurant with the original voice of Winnie the Pooh and he couldn't make himself go talk to him, and little did he know he would later voice that character.

I was super excited when the host asked if he would sing a song as Ray, the firefly from Princess and the Frog. I love Ray and his songs!

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He sang Gonna Take you There and my favorite, Ma Belle Evangeline!

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I like the look on Ray's face in that picture.

The interview was over at 4:15 and we all wanted to head over to the DISunplugged booth to see if Craig was there so we could get an ABD reunion pic. Craig and Kylie were the unplugged reps on our southern california trip.

Along the way we wanted a picture of all those of us in the group who were in costume:

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We arrived at the DISunplugged booth and got lucky again, 4 other members of our ABD were already there! So we had to get the big group picture:

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It was a great time reminiscing and getting to see everyone again.

Legends of Disney Imagineering started at 6. It was very close to 5 at this time so we made a quick run back to the Pixar Disney booth and ended up just missing the daily Pixar ball giveaway :(

Stephanie was going to do a quick tour of the Archives that she had missed the other day. Brian and I were starving so we ate at the Big D. I'm not lying, someone at Disney thought it was a good idea to name the D23 convention's counter service the Big D. Sometimes I just don't know. This food was pretty terrible and it was so expensive. I was sad our grilled cheese cart was closed. Do not wait until around the end of the day at the convention to get dinner, most choices are closed.

While we were eating we saw 4 Disney plaids walking around the next door Disney Music Emporium and we got super excited. I mean...who warrants 4 plaids?!

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Why, Disney royalty of course. It was Richard Sherman and his wife, who adorably were shopping at the music emporium.

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I really, really wanted to go over but they were shopping and I just wasn't sure if it was appropriate. I guess I could have asked a plaid but we decided to leave them alone.

At this point we needed to get lined up for our final panel. I believe we had a stage pass which we ended up using for this panel. Stephanie caught up to us in line and it wasn't too long before we were let in.

We were back in the arena, my favorite panel room. There ended up being a lot of people but there were still plenty of seats. We found 2 of our ABD friends and sat with them on the floor about 10 rows back.


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This panel was very adorably hosted by John Stamos. I love it when celebrities are big fans of things like Disney, it reminds me that celebrities are still human.

He was a great host and kept the conversation going and he really is passionate about Disney. He told a funny story about, as a teen, wanting to take dates to Disneyland and how he had trouble with that. I don't think he has trouble with that anymore.

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Marty Sklar and Tony Baxter were the two featured guests. Wayne Jackson came out near the end to accept a replica award of the Tokyo Disney castle.

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I didn't realize this, but I guess this was Marty Sklar's last appearance :(

Marty and Tony talked about a lot of the Imagineering Legends. There were tons of personal stories told and this panel was just so much fun and a great way to cap off the expo. There was just such a sense of Disney to the whole thing.

Once the panel was finished the expo was closed. We slowly walked out and headed back to the hotel room. We were going into the parks that night but first we took an hour or so's break.

I'm going to come back in the next post and leave my closing thoughts on the expo.
 
So great that you got to see Marty. He is one I would've loved to meet but no longer can.
 
I'm not sure I'm going to write about the rest of our DL days here. That Sunday night after the convention Brian and I went to DL. It was surprisingly empty. We watched the MSEP, which we thought we had seen for the last time at WDW so that was fun. We walked onto the Matterhorn, Alice and the Tiki room. We watched the fireworks and then used a fast pass for Space. We then cleared all of Fantasyland before the park closed except PP was down and never re-opened :(

We had 2 more days at DL and the parks were sooooo crowded. It was insane. We did manage to see the new Fantasmic on Monday night with a River Belle dining package. The dining package is really the way to go for Fantasmic at DL.

Anyway...

D23 Final Thoughts

I definitely want to go again next time. It really is the ultimate fan event for Disney super fans. For anyone else who is thinking of going, I'm going to write some bullet point list tips or things I learned. But first...my favorite panel list.

1. A Kiss Goodnight. I am a WDW fan. The part of WDW that I like the most is the historical aspect together with Imagineering. So of course this was my favorite panel. Hearing Richard Sherman sing/play Feed the Birds should be at the top of most Disney fans lists.
2. Animation Panel. So much energy and so many fun surprises. Well worth the wait and craziness.
3. Lion King. Once again, very high energy and so many fun stories and celebrities.
4. Disney Legends. John Stamos was a great moderator. I loved to hear all the old Imagineering stories.
5. Alan Menken concert. Amazing experience though it was kind of ruined by the singing woman behind me.
6. Disney Park Stars. Informative panel, which it had had a bit more though.
7. Live Action. Very long wait, just wasn't that impressed by the celebrity parade.

-get there early. As in, before 6 am early. This gives you access to the indoor waiting area with food, bathroom and AC. We had friends who got there around 7 or 8 and they didn't even make it onto the floor until after 10 pm
-just tell yourself ahead of time that you are probably going to have at least one big disappointment due to how the convention handles things. It will just happen, try to steel yourself for it and don't be too upset.
-don't forget to take note of the smaller thing. Like the stage on the floor that had programs like the Jim Cummings interview. or the vendor booths. which leads to...
-one thing I didn't realize until too late was that some of the vendors brought in famous Disney legends for autograph sessions. I didn't even bother with that this year because vendors used to be able to bring in celebrities and charge for their autographs. Disney put a stop to that this year, but some vendors still brought in people anyway and either didn't charge for the autographs or, like Marty Sklar, you just had to buy a copy of his book.
-if you plan to camp out for the bigger panels, be prepared. it will be freezing in that basement. bring something to sit on and sweatshirts or blankets. bring things to do. bring food/drinks.
-stay within walking distance to the convention center. it was so nice to be a 5 minute walk away. I think parking was an expensive disaster, so it's best not to even mess with it.

That's really all I've got for now. Sometime over the next year the DL sub forum will most likely start a D23 thread. I'll definitely be hanging out there.

If anyone has any other questions about the convention experience don't hesitate to ask :)
 
All good advice. I really want to do this in 2019, but I am already steeling myself against what kind of an event it will actually be. We definitely plan on taking a couple days at DLR after the trip...though not looking forward to the crowds - especially since there is a GOOD chance this will be soon after the opening of Star Wars : GE. Yikes! Can't even imagine how they are going to handle those crowds.
 

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