HIDDEN MICKEY HUNTING
We went to California Adventure for the Food & Wine Festival, also known as "Trying To Kill Mrs. Pianoman With Spice Festival", formerly known as the "Mac & Cheese Festival". When entering the park, there's a big billboard for "Elias and Company / Open 7 Days". There's a really small Hidden Mickey in the billboard, just to the right of the "N" in "Open".
We headed to the Luigi ride, looking through all the travel photos in the queue, as well as Luigi's office. There's two photos of "Uncle Topolino" there; "Topolino" is Italian for "Little Mouse".
There's a "Periodic Table Of The Elements" in Luigi's office, but it's difficult to get a good picture of it. Hoping that there's a Mickey in there somewhere.
At the entrance and exit to the Animation Building, there's a lot of dots on the wall. It's inevitable that there would be Mickey shapes in this many dots, but there are a couple of small dot/large dot combos that look like solid Mickeys, here and here.
This week we went for rope drop at Disneyland, and did Rise, Runaway Railway twice, and Matterhorn. I have a lot of Unknown Mickeys on the Matterhorn, so I was glad to get a couple of those cleaned up. We both took videos on Runaway Railway, and that helped with spotting some of the Mickeys that go by quickly. However, videos don't give nearly the same granularity as photos, so they're not suitable for "final photos". There's a feature on iPhones that allows you to take multiple photos in a single shot, and that's probably the best approach for those Mickeys that are hard to spot.
Video allowed me to capture two Mickeys that are in the Factory scene of Runaway Railway. They are on the right side, just below the flywheel treadmill-looking thing that Mickey is running on.
You have to keep your eyes on the "ear lights", as they bounce up and down independently. If you're in the factory long enough, you'll see them both. We were in the front when I took these.
Fun Fact: Your position at the end of the ride isn't controlled by which row number you load from. Each dispatch produces random results.
Nothing new to report from the Matterhorn, except it sure is a bumpy ride! They're using the brakes less and less, which makes the ride a lot more fun. Hold on tight!
SITE UPDATES
I've started adding Easter Eggs to the attraction title line. I wanted to find a place where Tom Shaw's "Fun Facts" could go, and putting them just above all the Hidden Mickey sightings seemed like a logical place. I decided to start with those attractions that were in the ticket books of the late 70s. (Yes kids, Space Mountain used to be in the ticket books!)
If you see the letter "E" on the same line as an attraction name, click on it to see the E ticket that you would have used to get on the ride.
I created sitemaps for both Google and Bing, and these files help those two search engines locate me and keep my site in search results. I've been resisting the urge to send Google money to move my site up in the searches, because it kind of flies in the face of the whole "community site" idea. I'm kind of glad that I avoided it, because my search position has been gradually improving every week, which is pretty exciting. I've also been getting better Click Through Rates (CTRs) on a regular basis, which is also great news.
The most popular queries are for Cars Land, and Radiator Springs Racers. I would have assumed Disneyland would be more popular, but maybe the popularity will change as time goes on.
HIDDEN MICKEY COUNT
As of 4-Mar-26:
- 934 Sightings
- 592 Unknowns
- 264 Confirmed Hidden Mickeys
- 78 Others (Decor, Wishful Thinking, Other Hidden Characters)
- Mickey's Toon Town: 69 Mickeys, 66 Unknowns
- Runaway Railway Mickeys: 55
That's all for now. As always, this is a good place to discuss Hidden Mickeys, so leave a comment if you'd like to have a conversation. Join the Facebook page for Hidden Mickey updates. Or contact Pianoman at:
hiddenmickeywiki at pobox dot com
Happy Hunting!
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