We’re having a great time but getting tired – there is so much to do and not enough hours!

Haven’t had much time do any video editing, and only a little photo editing, so this is going to be a little less complete than I would like.

Back to Saturday’s events…

We headed over to the Expo about 8:15 where we met up with Deb Koma. Lee went off to the “Who Wants to Be an Imagineer” presentation, while Deb and I went down to the exhibit hall for a while.

Where I got to meet Lucky the Dinosaur. He is so cool!!! He purrs if you scratch him under his chin, and he really seems to look at you and react to what you are doing.

I went to the Disneynature event at 10:00, presented by Paul Baribault. They are doing some beautiful, beautiful films, working with the leading filmakers in nature films like Alister Fothergill and Mark Linfield (who did Earth for them). And they are using new camera technology that allows them to get very stable images from a helicopter, even when the ‘copter isn’t that close to its subjects.

Coming over the next few years are:

2010: Oceans, which will be released on Earth Day, 2010. The footage we saw is absolutely stunning – the colors, the amazing creatures…wow.

2010: The Crimson Wing – Mystery of the Flamingos, filmed in Tanzania

2011: Hidden Beauty – this is about the pollinators – bats, bumblebees, hummingbirds, and butterflies (and now I have the “We’re pollinators” song from “it’s tough to be a bug” going through my head!”)

2012: African Cats – Kingdom of Courage. Filmed in Kenya, which is the only place lions, cheetahs, and leopards all live in relatively close proximity. They had just gotten some footage back from their first season of watching the various cat families, so we got to take a look at some of it. I love cats, so this one looks especially interesting to me!

2013: Chimpanzee – they are working with Jane Goodall as a consultant, filming in West Uganda and the Ivory Coast of West Africa.

With each film, Disney is making available educational materials for free, designed for teachers or other groups to use (there were some Girl Scout people in the audience who were interested in that.)

I didn’t attend Jay Rasulo’s Imagineering the Future of Disney Parks session since we had other people covering that…but I’m sure by now you’ve heard the big announcements: the big Fantasyland expansion at Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, and the new version of Star Tours that will be coming to Disneyland.

I wanted to attend the Science of Imagineering session, which started shortly after Rasulo’s talk was supposed to end, and given the lines to get into the small venue for it, I knew I needed to be in line early.

This session is actually something that Disney developed about a year and a half ago which is aimed at kids, and getting them interested in math and science, but there was still plenty of interesting stuff for those of us who are kids at heart.

So they brought out some of their “toys”. First off was a session on roller coasters, where they brought out the Force Vector Simulator and demonstrated it with the help of a volunteer from the audience. I have a video of this, but can’t get it uploaded in time…sorry.

There were also sections on special effects (acoustics), fireworks, biology, and computer simulation. On our way out, everyone in the audience received one of Disney’s educational DVDs: The Science of Disney Imagineering: Fluids. Apparently there’s 8 other DVDs in the series, with such topics as Levers and Pulleys, Gravity, and Energy. It was a lot of fun – there is an encore presentation today.

I happened to catch up with Deb Wills and we wandered the exhibits a little bit, where I had a close encounter with a storm trooper.

DebK and I tried to see the Princess and the Frog session at 3:00, but there was a HUGE line. And as it turned out, they took all recording devices away from everyone (which they had NOT announced prior), so so the presentation started an hour and a half late!

That’s all I have time for now!

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