Sunday – the final day of the D23 Expo.

There were noticeably fewer people today – not that it made a great deal of difference in the lines. The sessions that started before noon were not packed (the Marvel session in the Arena was only 1/2 to 2/3 full), but the afternoon sessions were again filled up 1.5-2.5 hours in advance. I never did get in to see the Archives – the line was always huge, and they closed the line at about 3:30 today.

Most everyone I talked to was very frustrated about the Expo – quite a number of people left early yesterday and went over to the parks instead, and I talked to people today who had friends/family that were in the parks instead of at the Expo.

But back to today’s events…

I was able to get into the 9:00 Imagineering the Dream and the Fantasy session. Imagineers Joe Lanzisero and Bob Zalk talked about some of the challenges and different ways of thinking they had to take into consideration when designing for a cruise ship instead of a theme park.

Here’s a few things they talked about:

— Cruise ships tell stories, too.

— Guests are going to spend days aboard a ship rather than minutes on board an attraction.

— The need to balance Disney whimsy with elegance.

They showed some examples of what guests see on the virtual portholes. On the Fantasy there will be some new characters.

They also talked a little about the new “show” in Animator’s Palate aboard the Disney Fantasy. Before dinner guests will have the opportunity to create their own drawing of a character:

The drawings will be collected, and some of them will be animated and included in an animation sequence that will be shown later. There will be different animation sequences in different parts of the room – so a guest’s drawing, if it it chosen, will be displayed on the screen that they can see.

Here’s a look at the Disney Fantasy, still under construction in Germany.

After that session, I almost immediately got in line for the Radiator Springs Reality panel, which wasn’t scheduled for another three hours (and it was full two hours before it started). I had friends to wait with, so the time went faster.

I don’t have time to write about this panel right now, but I’ll talk about the contest they announced at the end. John Lasseter, as most Disney fans know, was a Jungle Cruise skipper at Disneyland (in 1977-1978). Unfortunately he has no photos of himself in that role, so he’s looking for someone who has a photo of him. The prize is a trip to the grand opening of Cars Land as a VIP guest of John Lasseter. For more details, visit http://johnofthejungle.com And he warned us that Pixar developed digital compositing, so they will know a fake if they see one! (In this photo he was a Jungle Cruise skipper for a day during Disneyland’s 50th anniversary celebration.)

We’ll have more on the Marvel session that Lee attended, and on the Radiator Springs session, coming soon.

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