Hidden Mickey Report #4 - Spring-Ish, 2026

RECEIVED MY FIRST EMAIL SIGHTING

This is like the restaurant that frames their first dollar.  On February 18, I received an email from Garrin P, a Hidden Mickey fan who had three Mickeys on Runaway Railway that I didn't know about.  Hopefully this is the start of many more such reports.  Mrs. Pianoman and I can't be expected to find ALL of the Hidden Mickeys on the Runaway Railway, and we definitely need "a little help from our friends".

GARRIN'S MICKEYS

The three Hidden Mickeys Garrin reported are:

• The bass drum near the plane.  This one is tough, because you can't see it if you get too close to it.  You have to step back as far to the left of the queue as possible.  Garrin indicated that this Mickey was confirmed by the Disney Parks TikTok site, and that's good enough for me.
• In the Snack Bar area, there's a BBQ sauce spill.  The Mickey is just below the main spill, and you need to look at it from the right angle to see it clearly. 
• At the end of the ride before you enter the barn, there's a signpost on the right with four signs.  One of the signs is "Fishin' Hole", and the Mickey is the "O" in that sign.

Ther'es also a "Yensid Valley" sign on that signpost, which cracks me up.  I always like seeing "Yensid" references in Disney parks.

DECOR SIGHTINGS IN THE ENGINE EARS SOUVENIR STORE

Garrin also reported Mickeys on the top shelves of the store that you pass through after the Runaway Railway ride.  There are a LOT of Mickeys there, but I'm not sure if they are really "Hidden".  They seem pretty obvious to me.  There are some other hidden characters here -- Donald is pretty tiny, and Goofy appears to have slammed his plane into a barn.  Those two are much better hidden than the Mickeys.

I might put on my "Goes To 11" hat, and try asking a bored Cast Member whether those Mickeys are considered "Hidden" or not.  Maybe I can get some kind of consensus.  If they are indeed Hidden, it might explain why the "There's over 100 Hidden Mickeys!" claim is out there.

SITE UPDATES

As mentioned in the last report, Wishful Thinking reports have been moved to their own page:  "Pianoman's Wishing Well".  I've been gradually migrating Wishful Thinking entries into this location.  Once that's done, I'll be removing them from all the table summary data, just as I did with the "Lost" Mickeys.

I added a "spinner" to the site, which displays whenever links are clicked on.  It's a feedback thing, that tells users that "something is happening" whenever they navigate.  

Checklists are now updated whenever navigating to them.  If you go back or forward to a checklist, it'll get refreshed.  This will enable users to check the box on the main link, then go back in their browser to the checklist and see it updated.

GAVE UP ON SAFARI

While working on some of the site changes, I found that using Firefox was generally a cleaner experience on my iPhone.  I've started using it more often in the parks as well.  I haven't used Chrome for a while, but it's probably very similar to Firefox.  Stock browsers like Safari and Edge are just not great for performance and ease of use.

HIDDEN MICKEY COUNT

As of 4-Mar-26:

• 930 Sightings
• 600 Unknowns
• 253 Confirmed Hidden Mickeys
• 77 Others (Decor, Wishful Thinking, Other Hidden Characters)

The land with the most Hidden Mickeys is Mickey's Toon Town, which currently has 65 confirmed Mickeys, and 69 Unknowns.

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!

HM Wiki Updates

• HM Wiki has a Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61572546510153
• There's a X/Twitter page too:  @HMickeyWiki
• Started a "Ballot" page, to gather together all the voting.  I still want to change the look of it - make it leaner, and easier to access using mobile devices.  Just need to figure out the proper CSS for it.
• It occurred to me this week that this collection will be the largest online.  Even after lobbing over all the Mickeys I know about on Runaway Railway to Steven B, he's still missing several that are in the HM Wiki catalog.
• Bing has started showing impression results, and Google has been showing them for a while.  Looks like the scans are producing results.  It's a slow start, obviously, but hopefully it'll pick up. 
• Still looking forward to my first real report.  It'll feel like getting your first dollar when you open a restaurant.

Once I've finished harvesting all the HMs I can find online, it'll be time to circle back to Genealogy.  I need to learn the fine art of presenting photos, and the best way is probably to work my way through Grandma's photo album along with Aunt Sue's oral annotations.  I could probably include Uncle Carl as well.

Hidden Mickey Wiki -- All Systems Go

Hidden Mickey Wiki has been launched, and is now available for public use.  The site was launched on 9-Jan, 10:25 AM, while sitting in the lobby of a physical therapy office.  No, I am not making that up.

I did a few Google-centric things to try and raise my "SEO Score", and we'll see how that goes.  It's not a complicated site, so if there's meta-info that needs to be added to improve my search score, it should be pretty easy to fix.

Still a few minor items to complete before the launch is official.  I still need to create a Facebook account to go with the X account, and I think I should probably announce it from my personal Facebook account just to get it going.  Also, need to reach out to all the email addresses on Tom's original site.  He hoovered up email addresses from contributors back before the "Days Of Spam", so that's a possible source of people that might still have an interest in contributing.

Most of the sites that have Hidden Mickeys are including them as part of their general articles.  "Top 15 Hidden Mickeys Of Disneyland", or "Ten Hidden Mickeys You Need To See Before You Die".  I haven't seen anyone doing what I'm trying to do, which is to build up a catalog of all current Mickeys as well as new sightings

To all who enter Hidden Mickey Wiki -- welcome! 

Of websites and 90-90 rules

 I asked ChatGPT about the development phenomena when 90% of a project seems to take only 50% of the time, but the other 10% takes the remaining 50% of the time.  It kicked this out:

The rule you're referring to is often called the 90-90 rule. It humorously describes the phenomenon where the first 90% of a project takes 90% of the allotted time, and the last 10% takes the remaining 90%—suggesting that projects often take much longer than initially anticipated.

This "rule" is typically used in software development and other creative or complex projects to highlight the difficulty of accurately estimating how long tasks will take, especially as a project nears completion. It underscores how unforeseen challenges or the final polish can significantly extend timelines.

Never heard it referred to as that, but it's appropriate.  I've nearly completed the Hidden Mickey content for Hidden Mickey Wiki, but I'm finding there's a lot more left to do before launching.  My hopes of starting up the site on Jan 1 are pretty much gone.

Shouldn't be too much longer though  I've been moving some of the "B-Tasks" over from the "Launch" project into the "After Launch" project, which is going to make things much simpler.  I'd really like to get it all rolling before digging into less importing things.

Hidden Mickey Wiki is almost ready to go

Mrs. Pianoman and I got our first annual passes in 1997, and started going about once a week.  Within a few months, I had discovered Tom Shaw's "Hidden Mickeys of Disneyland" site, and was forever hooked as a "Hidden Mickey Huinter".

Tom stopped posting updates sometime around 2006, and I'm not sure why.  Updates that should have been posted never appeared.  (For example, the "other hidden characters" from Country Bear Jamboree in the new Winnie The Pooh ride in Critter Country.)  It was never clear to me whether Tom was just burnt out, or whether it was something worse.

So that's when I got the idea of creating a wiki-based Hidden Mickey site, and registered "hiddenmickeywiki.com".  Due to the nature of Hidden Mickeys, and how they can appear and disappear at the whims of Imagineers and Cast Members, I thought it made more sense for Hidden Mickey information to be in a wiki format.  Perhaps a community solution would be better than just a single monolithic site.

The domain registration landed in my hosting account, and it has been there ever since.  Work on HiddenMickeyWiki never got started, mainly due to life getting in the way.  Work, musical theater, family, etc. etc. etc. -- there just never seemed to be time to get started on such a large project.

Retirement changed all that.

I still have work to do on California Adventure and the Disneyland Resort (including Downtown Disney).  Once that content has been migrated from Tom's site, I'll be ready to move all the data over to it's permanent home.

I'm going to be using my retirement blog to post updates and info about the site.  Makes more sense to do that than to create a new blog for it.  The site is directly related to retirement anyway, so it seems to be a good fit.