Enjoy!

Pick Your Spot By Night’s End

Decide if you want to end your night with fireworks and Fantasmic at Disneyland, or ElecTRONica and World of Color at Disney California Adventure. Park hopping may not be allowed if the parks get too crowded, so pick a park and stick with it.

Get To Park As Early as Possible

Plan to be at the park ALL day. No really! Both parks may reach capacity before noon, and you may not be allowed to enter or re-enter the park once the crowd-control restrictions are in place. This is not the day to go “off-site” for lunch, or return to your hotel room for a nap.

Be Willing to Skip Stuff

This is not the day for riding every single ride and seeing every single show. Utilize the Fastpass service wherever possible to reduce wait times, but be prepared for long lines. If you have a iPhone you can download a diversion like the Wishing Stars application to play between rides, or pick up a copy of the Disneyland edition of the Hidden Mickeys book to read while you’re waiting in line, and use a smartphone ap like Touring Plans to keep tabs on wait times.

Be Flexible

While a little planning can help make the day more enjoyable, you should also be prepared to be flexible and change your plans on the fly. Expect to grab a meal on the run if your preferred restaurant is too busy, skip a favorite ride if the line is too long, and explore parts of the park you may never have seen before.

Visit Movie-Based Attractions

Whether it’s Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Captain EO, It’s Tough to be a Bug, or  Muppet*Vision 3-D, movie-based attractions offer an opportunity to get out of the crowds and sit down, even if just for 15 minutes. Visit the Blue Sky Cellar in DCA, explore the Disney Gallery on Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A., or go play with some new and not-so-new technology in Innoventions.

Don’t Waste Your Day For the Perfect View

Unless you’re willing to get there at park opening and sit on a bench for hours and hours, don’t even worry about seeing the midnight fireworks from directly in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle. There’s a large group of folks who make it an annual tradition to hold that prime bit of real estate so they’ll have the perfect view of the festivities, and the area will be completely full by mid-morning.

One strategy for getting a good view of the fireworks is to wait until just after the Believe… in Holiday Magic show ends (it’s scheduled for 8:45 p.m. on December 31st), and then grab a spot as people leave that show. You’ll still have a three-hour wait until the Midnight show, so bring something to pass the time. You may also opt to view fireworks near “it’s a small world,” which is usually less crowded than Main Street.

Bring Warm Clothing and Be Able to Layer

It can get really chilly inside the parks at night. Locker rental is much cheaper than purchasing Disney-priced sweatshirts, scarves and gloves, so plan ahead.

Wait For the Rush to Pass

The Resort often suspends tram service immediately following the fireworks shows due to the number of people trying to exit the parks, so wait around a bit if you don’t want to walk back to the parking structure.

Great tips from MousePlanet. Of course if you are like me, you’ll completely avoid the park during busy times such as these. To be in the park during these type of events is not for the faint-hearted. However, if you dare, there is no better place to spend New Year’s Eve, that is if you follow these and other steps to ensure the best experience.

Guests will be able ride the Red Car Trolley up Buena Vista Street to the park’s new icon, Carthay Circle Theatre — a recreation of the original theater where “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs” premiered in 1937. Guests will also be able to experience the park’s 1920′s style architecture which will include a mix of stores, eateries and guest service.

And with no further ado, here is the video.

Eleven parks later and a media company that is one of the largest in the world, that original theme park has quite a history. The Infographic below, courtesy of City Traveler, takes us through the events of Disneyland’s grand opening all the way up to events as recent as the reopening of Star Tours in 2011. Enjoy!

[Click to Enlarge]

Additionally, the Orange County Register created a neat graphic which details what’s in store for the 12-acre addition to Disney’s California Adventure.

Looking at this layout, there will be three attractions (Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree, Luigi’s Flying Tires and Radiator Spings Racers), three food venues and three retail shops.

Personally< I can’t wait for it to open so I can take my grandson who is a Cars fanatic.

Spoiler Alert:

Disney’s newest dark ride attraction is based on the film The Little Mermaid and scheduled to officially open June 3, 2011. CM previews for the ride took place between May 20-26, which have been followed by a preview for annual passholders, and then possible guest soft-openings leading up to the June grand opening.

So no doubt the first full ride video I have come across came from one of these sources. The attraction itself incorporates an Omnimover ride system, very similar to the one currently in use at the Haunted Mansion. In this manner, Disney Imagineers can rotate the ride vehicles to show guests what they want them to see any any point in the ride.

With no further ado, here is “The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure” full ride video shot by YouTube user Asianjma123.

The animators compare the audio-animatronic figures in the attraction to their original drawings produced for the film.

The video reveals quite a bit of the six minute dark ride. So if you can’t wait for the opening next month, enjoy the video below.

The video moves quickly from scene to scene so you may want to watch it once then run through it again and pause several times to see some of the detail of the new ride.

And now, enjoy the video!

In May, Disney Imagineers tested out the talking Mickey, who greeted guests by name and had conversations with them, during meet-and-greet sessions. Read a previous story about the talking Mickey Mouse. Talking Mickey also appeared at the private premiere ceremony of “World of Color” in June.

While the new Mickey is not expected to greet guests at California Adventure, the character is slated to dance and talk during the show. Fans got a sneak peek of the show, including the talking Mickey, during last month’s Destination D convention by D23, the official Disney fan club.

The talking Mickey already performs at Walt Disney World in the “Dream Along with Mickey” show.

For further details, see the full article at The Orange Count Register.

Looking at concept art above provided by Disney, it appears that the existing “barn” building will remain in place, however the Farmers Market and Sam Andreas Shakes buildings will be no more. It also looks like the existing parade gate will be replaced with a Quonset hut-like structure, with the new entrance into Cars Land passing to the left.

Here is what the area looks like today.

So, if you wish to visit Bountiful Valley Farms one more time before it is scheduled to be demolished, better do so in short time. You’ve got less than a month.

While not a horrible ride, Mulholland Madness is simply a stock “wild mouse” ride with little appeal beyond the typical wild mouse ride experience. The attraction has been blamed as part of the problem that earned Disney California Adventure its “on-the-cheap” reputation.

The new themeing will get its inspiration from the 1940 cartoon short “Goofy’s Glider” where the storyline follows the clumsy anthropomorphic dog’s attempts to teach a group of novice pilots how to fly in which things go awry, Goofy style.

Riders will climb to the top of the 55-foot-tall coaster through clouds festooned with Goofy-shaped holes and pass a series of step-by-step billboards explaining how to fly before finally exiting through an airplane hangar façade.

The Mulholland Madness cars themselves, which hold four riders, will get a modest makeover, replacing the automobile theme with a new paint job, Goofy graphics and a small winglet on the nose.

Scheduled to debut in 2011, the complete makeover will be the third attraction that Disney has retooled in the last three years in an effort to add more classic Disney characters to the California Adventure park, the other two being Mickey’s Fun Wheel and the Silly Symphony Swings.

Concept artwork courtesy of L.A. Times.