Last batch.....for now

 I know at one point I posted the picture of the Zero G bicycle girl but this pic of Fonz Behind the set was never shared.

Here are the last three. GE Fiber Optic Logo. long turned off. Scuba Class, and Fonz in the Control booth in Mesa Verde.

 Here we have Fonz and myself entering the Space Shuttle scene. You may remember the floating luggage in the lower right corner. 

Anyone would be proud of getting their picture taken in this scene. Just like arriving from Earth on a Space Shuttle. 

Hard to believe that this is all long gone.

 

NEW HORIZONS DISCOVERY! Hold on TIGHT!

Just when you think it's all over and it's all been said....POW! Something amazing about Horizons hits you right in the face!

Folks, I'm sitting here going through old pictures trying to find suitable reference for issue #2 of the comic book. I happened upon some classic shots from 2004 when, as you may recall, Chief and I found ourselves working in a Magic Kingdom art department. Briefly. Very briefly but that's another story.

One of the first things I did was to explore the several storage containers that sat in the parking lot. That's when I discovered a rack full of Horizons character heads! That in itself is amazingly cool. There was so much cool shit in there I lost track but over the next few months I took plenty of photographs. Like This:

In the middle is the woman from the Space scene. She was piloting that robot armed craft. To the right is the dad who was trying to get the shoe in the Space Shuttle dock.

Below that there where shelves of Haunted Mansion stuff. You can see Gus, Little Leotta, and Ezra. The guy in charge of the mansion figures would come in here and pretend he was working. He primed Little Leotta there and got primer all over the place. 

ANYWAY as I sit here in December 2013 I find this picture and I wonder "why is little Leotta not in the Haunted Mansion and where is her head?" 

POW! BECAUSE THAT ISN'T LITTLE LEOTTA IN THE HAUNTED MANSION THAT'S THE MINI HOLOGRAM GIRL FROM HORIZONS!!!!!!! THEY WERE THE SAME FIGURE! The Horizons Hologram Girl is standing at the exit to the WDW Haunted Mansion! Flesh colored hands and all. 

AND that's why Hologram Girl's costume was on Ebay years ago!

AND that's why the non moving Leotta figure is laid to rest right under the Horizons heads!

AND why was her head in the black light paint room and cast in clear resin? I DON"T KNOW!

AND now General Electric and Hoot Gibson present "Brian Removing His False Teeth and Gumming Hoot's Big White Ass!". Ain't THAT a hoot?

Long live Mesa Verde Times.

From the MVT mailbag....

This is awesome. It's the FIRST email we've been sent telling about how someone else enjoyed jumping out of a Horizons ride vehicle.

Caroline Hood writes:

It was bound to happen, two bored teenage girls with an Epcot fetish getting stuck on Horizons. I mean it broke down enough in those days, I'd have to guess this was around 1996 or so. Back in the days before the mess that is Mission: Space happened. It was early fall, I'd guess to say about 8pm or so when we where in the middle of enjoying Horizons when the inevitable happened, that fateful E-Stop on the ride. We walked right on the ride, No line and I was fairly sure there couldn't have been more then 25 people total in that entire building. So naturally after sitting for about ten minutes before the bright idea dawned upon on fearless heads, we looked about and saw empty cars so naturally we slipped right out of the car and onto the platform.
Not nearly as brave as Hoot and Company, we only prowled around for about ten minutes before the "Oh SHIT!" moment when the ride restarted. Now there is a drop in Sea Base, we ducked behind the very first surface we saw that could hide to small teens. Slinking around on our bellies in the dust, we peeked around corners wondering what the hell we'd gotten into. After doing our best Bond impressions from spot to spot we began to get highly paranoid, surely the Disney Gods where going to smite us on high for this. Waiting for another dead spot to launch ourselves back into space (or sea) now to two girls this was a task of not only aim but timing a moving ride..
Not even a minute after we managed to scramble back into an empty car without being see, the damned ride E-stopped again!
Go figure.
After a few minutes, I suppose they really did break it this time as the announcement for evacuation came on. After hearing people passing behind our car on their way out from the ride we once again slide over the side and clamly walked right out with the rest of the few souls on Horizons that fateful night without anyone but us knowing what we'd just accomplished.
Oh the good times we had, I just wish we'd had a camera!

Carrie, we'd like to present you with the "Mesa Verde Times Lifetime Achievement Award". This is one bad ass story and you deserve it. Bishop Kyle will bless you at the next get together.

The Little Mermaid

Hey it's Ariel! Even better, it's Spike Tripper but he's just as cute. Spike was interested in seeing the ocean floor so we took him there. Watch out for those tube worms!

As you see it was hard to quickly navigate the rock work and it was dark.

This vacuum cleaner thing works it's way across the bottom collecting little loaves of....something. Seaweed? It doesn't look like kelp but it must be important.

When I was kid we had a thing that looked like that in our pool. It did a great job of clearing our swimming space of loaves of seaweed.

"To Do" list

Our adventures weren't all unorganized mayhem. Remember, film was a little pricey back in the day and what could have easily been done by a digital camera had to be done with some form of order to save money on film. Chief and I had ongoing lists of things we thought were important to preserve.

The night after every adventure we'd have our pics developed at the Walgreen's one hour photo across the street from Universal. So, we'd drop off the rolls, go home and drink beer, and then go back and collect our hard copy analog shots. The next day we would go to our shitty jobs and spend hours looking for other details we wanted pics of. Our list (an early version below) would change as we deleted the shots we'd covered from the text file.

This version is from pretty early on and features many set pieces and figures that didn't involve being behind the scenes. They were all just a simple jump from our ride vehicle.

It's fun to look back and see that we did a kick ass job of taking care of this laundry list of future goodness:)

Robida

I'm not a big fan of painted flats unless we're talking about Mr Toad's Wild Ride (RIP but you'll see plenty of it on Pirates of the Magic Kingdom).

I thought this Robida scene was somewhat cool though and it did have some neat effects. The music was nothing short of dreamy as well. Let's take a look.

Here's a puzzling scene! This must be where rich old men take their hot young girlfriends for a ride on a blimp! The sequence seems to go: hot girl, old man, hot girl, old man etc.


With a random old bag thrown in to keep this a family attraction.
I saw plenty of pics around of the girl with the huge.....well I'll just say it...CANS!HUGE CANS, folks. I think every Horizons dork from here to Cleveland tried to get a shot of her (I have 47)! If that old man stops walking she'll run him through! Awesome.


Behind the scenes magic. She's in this too. What a coincidence!

More Water Damage

Some of you have asked just how bad the water damage was over the "space" area. The answer is pretty clear in this shot. I was seated in my vehicle when I took this so it was plainly visible to all passengers.




I was trying to get a pic of the airlock door and it wasn't until I got home that I noticed this. Of course, we had to see for ourselves so we made a trip to the catwalk. That's when we discovered the rotten ceiling.

These "skid marks"........ah never mind. I just wanted to say skid marks.

If Disney wasn't willing to fix the show side we new they'd never keep that ride running even with updates.

Outta Space

Here's another one of those "If this was all I had I'd kill myself" pics. It's not even a good in ride shot but it sets us up for some better material.

this one was a little better but not really. the only good thing I see here is that I was the only dork to shoot a pic of the truss they're working so hard on. It doesn't look like THAT would hold an entire Space Station together but then again I'm a caveman from 2010 not a future man from 2083.

Aaaaahhhhh... from up on the catwalk above the scene, things look much better. Here's a shot down at the astronaut.

This was the highest point in the show building and only from here could one tell just how massive this show building was. It was like looking into the Grand Canyon only better because we knew there weren't bears roaming around.

From way up here we were able to see where the truss connected. We crawled out onto the platform behind those black curtains and realized that there was a mechanism that would lower (?) the lady in the roboty thing for maintenance. The platform creaked and was very wet.

Looking up we can see why. Chief and I noticed that the Horizons show building had a seriously leaky roof. Giant ceiling tiles, water logged, would come crashing down on the catwalk! We found water dripping down on broken pieces and we realized that maintaining this show was no longer important to Disney. The end was coming and quick.

20,000 Leagues Under the Gun -part two

When we last left our brave heroes they were in a jam! Forced to take refuge behind a rock, in which a blinking octopus stood guard, Hoot and Chief waited.....

The hiding space wasn't very big and didn't provide a much needed view of the oncoming ride vehicles.

Hoot took a peek.

No empty cars!

Just then the unthinkable happened. The ride stopped running!

They waited......

They could hear some little kid talking to his dad.

Just then the little cuss saw something...

The kid actually spotted Hoot!

Hoot pulled himself in tighter. This must have been the longest breakdown in history. Minutes turned into tens of minutes. There was simply no way out.

Eventually hunger set in and poor Chief, with no "Hot Pockets" on hand, snapped.

Human beings stand little chance of surviving under these conditions.

Hoot started to look mighty tasty! Chief was going for the breast meat. (he doesn't like chicken on the bone)

Suddenly the ride started up again!

It was time to get out of there.

Chances were slim that they'd get an empty car without being seen.

Success!

Desert Father AKA Captain Nemo

This just in from the MVT mail sack!

Regarding the Desert Farm Father who we refer to in previous posts as "Captain Nemo".

"As a fan of Horizons since my first trip to EPCOT in the fall of 1983 or 84, I have been wondering a lot about the things you have been documenting. Keep the information coming! Before MVT came into existence, I was forced to ask these questions to anyone I could find with a connection or knowledge to Disney and the parks. One friend who grew up in the Orlando area and has made and keeps many great "Disney" connections with many Imagineers and cast members, has helped me answer questions over the years... that is how I came upon his name.

His name is Pete Renoudet. He was the voice of many AA characters at the Disney parks, including the voice of Captain Nemo on the WDW version of 20,000 leagues (Go figure!!!). Most Notably, he was also the voice of Henry in the Country Bears and Abraham Lincoln (Succeeding Royal Dano).

In a 2007 interview, Pete describes that his presence in Horizons was a last minute change. The voice we hear is not his, as he was only used as the model for the AA and was filmed for the video on the videophone. (This could be another reason why the mask doesn't seem to fit the AA head... IT WASN'T THE ORIGINAL "MASK"!!!)

This and a lot more about him was posted in the interview. Here is the link for your confirmation purposes.

http://www.mouseclubhouse.com/Interviews/pete-renoudet/pete-renoudet-parks.htm

Read, Enjoy, and congratulate yourself on the Captain Nemo connection! That was amazing.

One of the die-hards!

Michael Garay (aka Menutia)"

Awesome contribution! Chief and I would like to grant you a position here at The MVT headquarters. From this day forth, Menutia, you will be known as "Minister of Missing Persons and Submarine Rides @ Mesa Verde Times". Congratulations, sir.

Art Deco Background for Kali Part One

Mesa Verde Times reader Kali has requested some Easy Living, art deco, background painting shots. Ask you shall receive!

This one was taken from the very left of the scene.

How many of you would agree that this a tribute to Spaceship Earth, art deco style?

I FOUND IT!

To me, kind folks, this is the Dead Sea scrolls. I dug around, I found it, and I'm happy as hell. This simple two page spread holds SO much history for me for it is part of the seed that lead to the adventures of Hoot and Chief. Let's go back in time to 1983.

Story time with Uncle Hoot is about to begin. Please do NOT remain seated and do not keep your hand and arms inside the vehicle.

10th grade 1983. Hoot Gibson is in the waiting room of the principals office. Another idea that seemed good to me at the time went wrong. I was sitting there flipping through some sort of scholastic magazine when I came across this two page spread. IT WAS HORIZONS!!!!!! In true Hoot fashion I loosened the staples and preserved this wonderful piece.

I was called in by the nice office people who knew me by name. It was my turn, once again, to face my good friend Ms Gibb.

Ms Gibb ran through the usual banter about how my future life depended on my grades (which turned out to be bullshit). The speech turned into blah blah blah because I was reading this fantastic article over and over again. "HOOT GIBSON! Are you listening to me"? I wasn't. We had been through this song and dance sooooo many times and being an honest person I said "no...sorry".

Ms Gibb grabbed this very piece of paleo-future from my hands, looked at it, and said "this is your problem, Hoot. All you care about are these comic books". WHAT!??? This came from a magazine in her own office! She didn't even read it! This was an ad for GE and Horizons!!!!!!!!!! It was intended to give kids hope and to inspire learning!

Little things like this make you question authority.

Luckily I still have this piece of history. I've kept it all these years. Enjoy it, my friends.

Cool tools

Various tools of tomorrow, the kind of things we Cave Men couldn't begin to understand. AH! His welding glasses are on the floor.
I wonder what that rainbow colored thing is.
Next to his ass is a yellow pad. Probably an Electro-pants mat to prevent chaffing.