MRS. PIANOMAN RETIRES, SO WE RENTED A "PLAID"
The fabulous Mrs. Pianoman has called it a career, which means that she and I will have even MORE time to spend at the parks, riding rides, watching shows, hunting Mickeys, and so on.
What she wanted for a retirement present was to "Rent A Plaid", officially known as the "VIP Tours". This is the touring experience where your tour guide, decked out in a plaid vest, gives you the "celebrity treatment" in one or both parks. As you might imagine, it's pretty expensive, and is really a "once in a lifetime" kind of trip.
Mrs. Pianoman had a brief discussion with the VIP Tours people as to what kind of Plaid we wanted, and she indicated that we were longtime fans of the park, we're not interesting in all the "basic tourism" stuff, and that we were very interested in Hidden Mickeys. They responded by assigning us a Plaid that was personable, had plenty of "park trivia" questions for when we were waiting in lines, and of course was a Hidden Mickey hunter!
Our group was riding Smuggler's Run, and I passed on it because I had ridden it earlier that day. So I took the opportunity to do something I've never gotten to do -- geek out for 15 minutes with a Cast Member about Hidden Mickeys. Most Cast Members are either barely aware of them, or not really interested in talking about them. But our Plaid had a camera roll full of photos of Mickeys that he was willing to share. Most of these were Mickeys I already knew about, but I did get a few that I hadn't seen before.
The big moment came when I told him about my site. It turns out that there are several Cast Members who have been using it to learn about Hidden Mickeys in the Disneyland Resort area. This was a real thrill for me, because as exciting as it is to find guests who use my site, it's a lot more exciting to find out that Cast Members are using it.
He pointed out that the number "28" on the transport vehicle in Rise Of The Resistance is a shout out to Steamboat Willie. Also on Rise, there's the panel where Fin is telling you to abandon ship, and a Mickey is made up of buttons. Hard to see as your vehicle is moving pretty fast at that point.
He pointed out that there's not a lot of Mickeys in Galaxy's Edge as the designers wanted to keep it focused on Star Wars characters. He then said, "All except for Donald Duck, of course", and pointed out the front of Oga's Cantina.
Big shout out to VIP Tours for giving us an incredible day, and many thanks to my Plaid (you know who you are!) for all your help making the site better. It's a community resource, and that includes the army of Plaids who lead the tours.
TICKET ICONS COMPLETED
Ticket Book icons have been added for all rides that had tickets. It's a fun nostalgia trip for those of us who remember them. Mrs. Pianoman was remembering that when she was a kid, the first thing they'd do is trade their "A" tickets to their grandmother for all her "E" tickets. Everyone thought they were getting the best of THAT deal, because Mama would spend all day riding Main Street Vehicles, and people watching. (Disneyland is a PARK, after all!)
For the next round of Easter Eggs, I'm thinking about posting pictures of the wooden figures that are in the rafters of the Peter Pan queue. I just need to think about how they would be best presented on the site, without making any of the sections too big.
RUNAWAY RAILWAY 100 CHALLENGE UPDATE - 61 MICKEYS SO FAR
Several months ago, I asked a Cast Member how many Hidden Mickeys were on the Runaway Railway ride. She said that the Imagineers had been told to "Go Wild", and that the attraction was rumored to have over 100 Hidden Mickeys on it. At that time, that seemed like a ridiculous number, and felt like the kind of lore that would kick around the Back Stage Scuttlebutt Barrels.
But the more that Mrs. Pianoman and I ride it, the more Mickeys that we find. As of this writing, we are up to 61 Hidden Mickeys after finding five new ones last Saturday night. Three of them were spotted in the movie posters that line the queue, so there's probably several more in the other posters that we haven't spotted yet.
We also need to get some video of the LEFT side of the factory room, as there are at least three Mickeys over there that I don't have pictures for, and maybe more Mickeys that I haven't spotted yet. Most of the action takes place on the right side of the ride and straight ahead, so there's probably more on the left that I haven't seen.
It's rapidly turning into our favorite ride, and there's always more Mickeys to discover. Nothing can stop us now!
hiddenmickeywiki at pobox dot com
Happy Hunting!
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