Disney's California Adventure Project Tracker VIII

[FutureImagineer183]

Originally Posted by nemofinder22

Isnt that stand just the same one that used to sit near the entrance to Orange Stinger before it was eaten up by walls.

Yup exact same one, so I think there will be a better newer one in the future.

[Mojave]

Originally Posted by Ron W

Just some small puddles - no filling. I noticed that the men working on the platform are using ladders and a portable staircase to get to the platform from the bottom of the bay, so I doubt they will start filling until the platform work is done.

Maybe filling the lagoon up while they're still working in it will make them work faster.

[my7dwarves]

Originally Posted by Mojave

Maybe filling the lagoon up while they're still working in it will make them work faster.

funny, very funny...
I am hoping to go tomorrow and check out DCA... I can't wait till they start refilling. It is amazing to think that they are going to cover all that with water..

[MrToadOfToadHall]

The day you see those two wooden ramps leading to the show platform removed... the next day they will start the filling.

[BiggestDisneyFan]

With all the talk about this being an 'El Niño' winter, maybe Disney is hoping to save a bunch of money by letting the bay fill up 'eau naturelle'.

My (most recent) guess for the PoM: It will be a planter, mostly as shown in the BSC pics. The top will hold a statue that will include a light or lights of some sort and there will be lights on the four corners of the base area. The four recesses in the pillar will contain speakers, hidden behind decorative... I dunno'. I'm completely stumped on that last part. I would normally guess that said 'hidden speakers' would just be hidden, but since the rectangular holes are framed, they're obviously going to be something, um... obvious. Yeah.

[Theophilus Carter]

With regards to Tim Delaney, here is an interview he did with laughing place:

An Interview with Imagineer Tim Delaney
by Doobie Moseley
March 13, 2001
Tim Delaney designed the Entrance Plaza and Paradise Pier at Disney's California Adventure.
Tim Delaney was one of the first Imagineers to join the Disney's California Adventure project in 1995. Delaney joined Walt Disney Imagineering in 1976 where his first assignment was designing the Starcade at Disneyland. He's since worked on The Living Seas at Epcot and Discoveryland at Disneyland Paris including Space Mountain: From the Earth to the Moon. LaughingPlace.com interviewed Delaney during the DCA media events a couple of days before DCA's grand opening.

LaughingPlace.com: What was your specific role in the development of Disney's California Adventure?



Tim Delaney: My specific job was I was the designer in charge of the design group for the entrance complex here at Disney's California Adventure, as well as for Paradise Pier. Two very exciting, very exciting projects.

LP: Regarding Paradise Pier - two people I've interviewed already have made a point of saying how Disney's California Adventure is about now. It’s not about fantasy. It’s not about history. It’s about right now. That doesn't seem to quite apply to Paradise Pier. Can you talk about that?
TD: The thing is the way we designed Paradise Pier was not necessarily historically. We didn’t take any buildings and directly lift them. We actually took bits and pieces of them. We actually designed it nostalgically, something meant to really create the dream quality of what a seaside amusement park was meant to be. In California we had a huge history of these seaside amusement parks. Their heyday was from 1905 to 1929 just prior to the depression. They were very elegant places, had very exotic architecture, wonders of the mechanical age. They were just really wonderful places.

After that they began - after the depression, after World War II - they began to deteriorate and eventually most of them ended in fires. We only had three left, Belmont Park, Santa Monica and Santa Cruz. Santa Monica and Belmont Park are really just a shadow of what they were originally. So what we wanted to do was bring these places back. Bring it back to the nostalgic quality and the emotions and the feelings that they had. So in a way it is really meant to be; I guess timeless would be a better word rather than historical. It’s really touching on emotions about places like that. Paradise Pier is a very energetic place once you step into it. The more people you get the more sound. We get all the rides running tomorrow. Disney had a couple running today and you’ll see that there’s something so fundamental and intrinsically entertaining about it that again, that quality remains timeless with everybody.



LP: A specific question, before I forget. I know that during it’s testing the Sun Wheel had a lot of different light patterns going on. Since the park began soft openings it seems the patterns have gone away.

A: No, no, you should see them on tonight. We’ve gone through some interesting challenges with the lighting on this. It rains and they're like "oh..." It will have the full compliment of all its lighting. There is about a 20 minute cycle on the lighting and it’ll be spectacular. It better be spectacular or I’ll kill someone on that too.

Continued at: An Interview with Imagineer Tim Delaney, - LaughingPlace.com: Disney World, Disneyland and More

And another one with Alain Littaye of the disneyandmore blog:

(he apparently was also key in the development of HKDL's Tomorrowland)

Today,here is the awaited fourth part of this Hong Kong Disneyland article with an interview of Tim Delaney, show producer of Tomorrowland. Tim was previously the show producer of Discoveryland, at Disneyland Paris, and, too, for California Adventure. Please note that this interview was done for the opening of the park, before the opening of Autopia and Stitch encounter.

Alain Littaye: Tim, as we know, you were the show producer of Discoveryland at Disneyland Paris. The theme, there, was that Discoveryland was supposed to be the land of visionaries, and here, in Hong Kong, the theme is probably different. So,what is the story line of Hong Kong’sTomorrowland ?

Tim Delaney: Well, we wanted to create here something totally different, our biggest challenge was how to create something that is not only tomorrow, but also something that is timeless. So, we took the theme in this particular case of a “spaceport”. All of our attractions relate to space travels: we have Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, the Orbitron - this last one with a totally different style.

Continued at: disneyandmoreartwork: Hong Kong Disneyland Part Four with interview of Tomorrowland Show-Producer Imagineer Tim Delaney Artwork, Photos and Videos!

[thermo648]

A Bit of an Update



Apparently the workers on TLM want to see if they can just how far they can keep digging because it's not getting any deeper, but the deepest part is getting wider.



Also, SS Rustworthy is finally saying it's last goodbyes. But those goodbyes were long overdue.



Those spots really are huge, and this picture really puts it into perspective. I'm really still in awe of the sheer size of them.



Some more concrete was layed out a while ago in that band that contains the probable planter area.



The wooden coverings have finally been put on the second holding area in the viewing area.

My main problem right now is trying to figure out what they are planning on doing to make the second layer of mist screens that are in the front of the platform.



If you look at the bottom right of this picture you can see two flexible hoses. It is possible that they could be for going up to the front, but I think it's far more likely that they're going to be powering two of the back mist screens which makes for 4 heads for the back one, which makes sense.

It seems to me that it would make more sense to snake pipes to where they need them and then make a few more holes in the platform. This would make sense because they have this.



It has nothing attached to it and it's pointing towards the platform. I don't think that they would simply install a piece like that just to leave it shut off like that with no function. I think it's actually very likely that they will snake pipes up because they have these waiting to be used.



So that's my idea on what they might do for those front screens. Please, anyone let me know if you've got a better or more accurate idea.

That's all I've got for now. And these pictures were from darkbeer's latest picture update as well as disneygeek's latest update.

Adam

[DL2006]

HAHA! My favorite part of the laughing place interview is when hes talking about the sun icon in the sunshine plaza and he says this:

It will be timeless. It’s never going to change for the next 500 years. There are a lot of subtle colors to it. I’m hoping it becomes just as strong an icon for this park as the castle is for Disneyland.

500 years? Less than 10 buddy.

[indyIluvu]

This is what I hope they do with the POM. It would bee awesome if they were building a statue of the little mermaid that is also a fountain. And the speakers in the base would play music and/or sound clips from the movie.

[Theophilus Carter]

My favorite TD quote is this one:

I kind of design stuff from a marketing approach. That’s why you see the Golden Gate Bridge and the Sun, mouse ears, sun face and all that stuff because I know that’s what people want to see and it’s fun. You can make things anonymous but I actually design everything as a photo shot. So you can stand in front of something, "oh, I was there."

DCA in a nutshell.

[nonob88]

Originally Posted by Theophilus Carter

My favorite TD quote is this one:

DCA in a nutshell.

Uh no, not really. Besides, none of those things (bridge, sun, sun face) will exist come 2012, half are already gone sadly.. That article is from 2001 in case you didn't notice. Also, I wish we could have kept these articles away from this thread - I'm not looking forward to the "HAHA look at how wrong he was omg" comments. Let's just move on and have a bit of respect for the guy. It was a good read and I enjoyed learning more about the backstory of PP, but I know most people here will want to put a negative spin on it.

[kaliwolf]

Originally Posted by HMF

Just a heads up everybody' Tim Delaney who was creative lead on Sunshine Plaza' The original Paradise Pier and Carsland has just left WDI.

WHAT?! This is not good, we can't afford to lose good Imagineers. This is a quote about the man from Eddie Sotto, in a conversation on WDWMagic:

“Tim is one of those rare talents that does everything. He can take an idea from a napkin sketch right into the field and direct the vendors into a finished vision. "He walks the walk" and loves what he does and it shows. There are lots of people pitching things that cannot be built, but Tim is respected as an Imagineer who can deliver on what he designs and literally paints the paintings then drives the execution of his own ideas. I was always impressed how in some ways he was a great project manager as well as an artist. VERY RARE indeed. He treats the budget like it was his own money and respects it. He'd go find the sources to make something better and for the budget, so he'd have more cash to use in other areas. If you look at how much art that guy cranks out, it is stunning. When he gets fired up about an idea, Tim generates a flurry of images, some you could practically build from, and I'm sure he'll tell you that they did just that. Disney and more blog has lots of his great designs to look at. WDI needs more talent with that versatility and that makes Tim IMHO very valuable. I can only hope the mentorship program is alive and well. Last time I checked, you can't build from "sales pitches".”

This guy isn't a hack as some of you seem to think. He was essentially design head on DLP's Discoveryland and HKDL's Tomorrowland. He worked heavily on the Living Seas at EPCOT Center. Heck Theophilus Carter, your avatar is likely one of his pieces (he worked on DCA from close to the start, and saw it through all the changes, from some pretty good ideas like Circle of Hands, to what we got...) When you interview, particularly with a place like Laughing Place (strong ties back to the WDC itself), you don't talk trash. You have to try to put it in a positive light. Have you ever seen an Imagineer really trash a project they've worked on? Sometimes when you're stuck with ideas you don't like, you have to try to find the good in them to get you through.

This is bad. This is very very bad. Disney can't afford to keep losing people like Tim, or the Kirk brothers, or Tom Thordarson, or Eddie Sotto. Not if they hope to have any tethers to actual creativity left.

[FloFelix]

I'm actually quite astonished that people cheer at Delaney's departure from Imagineering. We Europeans tend to associate him mostly with the wonderful work he has done on Space Mountain at Disneyland Paris - probably the only Space Mountain with a real story. His assignments at DCA probably just show that not only creativity, but budget, too, is a pivotal part of Imagineering.

Well, so long, Tim, and thank you.

[kaliwolf]

More bad news, Valerie Edwards, Director of Sculpture for WDI (recently noted for creating the sculpture of Obama's face for the Hall of Presidents) was also let go/forced out. In a D23 interview she noted that her mentor was John Hench, and that she also learned a great deal from Blaine Gibson (WDI's previous master sculptor, among countless other accolades). What the heck is happening at WDI??? It's like they're having a meltdown. You don't get rid of these people, not unless something putridly political is going on.

[TrevorD]

Originally Posted by FutureImagineer183

They could very easily build a mountain type structure behind screaming, there is A LOT of room back there, they could even add a ride or two inside the mountains.

To take a break from the sad news from WDI, I would infer that Screamin' was given its wooden look to act as a barricade itself. It is the mountain that is to block out the world behind it. For this purpose, I think it works perfectly. I also would infer that that is what the "scream tubes" are for, considering that noone screams on the lifthill. If it were me in charge, to the east of PP, trees and foilage would do just the trick, and maybe a new Screamin Building. along with some retouching in the area. To the West, new additions and a new log ride with specificly placed drops and hills could also do just the job.

I wish that the parade didnt need to travel back there, that would free up so much more room. Assuming that the public roads could be taken out (at the cost of a hidden mickey!) there is a bit more room, but TSMM took up a large chunk. Much of the room is to the left behind the Maliboomer.