Our Favorite Redhead

Ok, so here we have the best we could get for the daughter part of the video phone call, or whatever you want to call it. And Hoot will have to chime in here in the comments to correct me and/or fill in any details I might have forgotten. My memory has never been real good, and as I get older its only getting worse. :)

Anyways, at the beginning you can see Hoot trying to setup the camera on a tripod to try and get a good shot of the projection screen. But the tripod wasnt tall enough, and there just wasnt a real good spot to get a good shot. Not like the guys projection, as you could see in my 'The Human Clock' post. The projection room was much closer to the screen for the girl film than the projection setup for the guy film. So when we realized we were not going to be able to get a good shot of the screen within range of hearing the audio too, we decided to get what we could get.

So the first long stretch of black screen, is Hoots camera sitting in the projection room to pick up the audio. And of course you can hear the projector and on occasion us making some noises too, sorry. :) Then you can see Hoot pick up his camera, and you get a brief look of the projection out of the glass window in the projector room. Then we setup the camera outside of the booth to the right side, and film the back of the screen from the side at an angle, not the best shot, but it was the best way we could figure out at the time with what we had. Now, when you are watching this part, the guys audio you are hearing is not the audio for his AA in the undersea set, that is the audio from the girls bedroom video screen. You can kinda tell this just by watching, because his audio doesnt match up with her projection. Rememember, we are behind the scenes here, and the backside of those two sets were actually very close. And you will see after we finish filming almost 2 loops of her, Hoot keeps recording as we head back to base camp, and the audio of the guy just gets louder and louder as we crawl there. Base camp was right under the kitchen and girls bedroom sets. I have a pretty decent shot of base camp filmed from my camera where I turn on my lamp, so its not quite so dark. :) I will be posting that sometime in the near future. Enjoy!

The Human Clock

Haha, I love that part "... you must be joking, I mean, you're talking to the human clock here." But seriously, does anyone really believe that this dude was dating the hot daughter?? Come on, he was a submarine repairman!!! Hehe, Enjoy!

Grove Control Tower: Monitor 1

So here we are underneath the Grove Control Tower, trying to get shots of the fake monitors. This one was shot by Hoot, and the other two monitors (like this one) were shot by me. I will be posting those soon. Enjoy!

Grove Shot 3

And yet another grove shot. You would think there was futuristic wacky weed growing in that plywood and plaster farmland seeing how much time Hoot and I spent there. Just wait until you see the footage of the two of us crawling around underneath it on our hands and knees just to get to the video monitor projections in the control tower. I would do it all again in a millisecond!! Enjoy!

Backdrop Fever

Here is a compilation of backdrop paintings from what I am calling 'Hoot Tape 2'. Enjoy!

Grove Shot 2

Here is another grove shot, from a wider angle so you can see pretty much the entire grove. And in this shot you can see two flying harvester projections on the wall. Enjoy!

Grove Shot 1 (Full)

We posted a while back about a couple of videos on YouTube that happened to be from our adventures. Well, here is the full version of that grove shot. It includes Hoot setting up the camera in the beginning, then after 6+ min or so, he comes back and picks up the camera to come find me. I have called this one 'Shot 1' because we have a couple more grove shots like this, but from different angles. Enjoy!

Smile, You're On Hoot & Chief Cam!

Ok, so we have explained in previous posts how we would stand in the load area watching for a gap of empty cars so we could jump out without anyone seeing us, as well as having enough empty cars to have some time to take pictures in a set, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes a minute or two. And we have explained how we started staying inside the ride for extended periods, sometimes hours at a time.

Well, when we started the extended stay adventures, we quickly realized one little problem, how do we get back onto the ride??? We didnt have the luxury of standing in the load area and waiting for a gap. So we had to find certain places of the backstage areas that we could see the cars going by, so we could count empty cars, just like we did in the load area. So this video here is us scouting some of those locations and filming them to see if whether or not it appeared like the guests could see that spot. And as you can see, the camera sitting on the railing at the Nova Cite garden was quickly spotted by some teenagers. :)

But what we really needed was a spot close to the cave, because that was the easiest spot to get back to the cars, so the spot where we are looking thru the pine bush at the Mesa Verde grove control tower was that sweet spot. Anyways, it was good to know of alot of spots we could 'spy' at the cars, because it always helped us keep on top of what was going on: Were there alot of people riding, were they cycling guests out of the ride, were cast members riding thru, where were places we had to be extra careful to duck when walking behind the sets, etc...

Also as a bonus, at marker 5:20, you can see me climbing up behind the rocks on the side of the Mesa Verde farm looking down at the grove and cars. And you get a quick shot looking out of the cave facing the Kitchen at marker 7:45. Also I think I should mention that the long period of time in the garden shot, we were not standing there with the camera. What we would do is set the camera up somewhere, let it record for several minutes while we would go off and record some audio or take pictures, etc... Hoot did this several times, mostly to get some really cool grove shots that I will post in the future. Enjoy!

Birthday Scene Catwalk

Continuing on with the Birthday Scene, here is a quick clip of the audio-animatronics used for the peppers ghost effect.

Early Catwalk Adventures

Here are some shots from our early catwalk adventures. I think this was actually during our first "extended stay" adventure. And of course it was very dark up there in the catwalk area and we didnt have super-night-vision cameras, but I still think Hoot got some great shots here.

I remember these trips being particularly exciting because we were finally free to just explore, without the rush of the jump-out, get shots, jump-back-in trips. And we were finally able to make it to areas that we were just not able to get to before, and so it was almost like xmas morning opening presents feeling, such as when we finally saw where those models were, just hanging right there upside down in front of us. :)

More Entry Area Fun

So here we are again, waiting for a gap to get in. And for whatever reason Hoot decided to film alot of the wait, which at the time may have seemed odd or even a waste of tape. But now, some 11 years later, I am Happy for every second of video that we have. It really helps me 'go back in time' and relive these awesome adventures we had.

Final Bits with Fonzi

Here are the final bits of film we have with Bionic Fonzi, remember we did three "rides" with him in one night. Most of this clip is in the Sea Castle Resort area. On one of the rides Hoot gets a couple closeups of the scuba classroom and then on the last one he gets some good video of the restaurant. And then of course how could a Mesa Verde Times video be complete without me making a fool of myself in it. You will see what I mean around 6:30 mark, I put an annotation in the video to kinda mark the spot. Heh :) And sorry to say folks, I have never gotten professional help to figure out my obsession with wanting to dry hump animatronic figures and other inanimate objects in a Disney ride. Luckily for me, not all of them were caught on film. ;)

Towards the end of this video, Hoot gets a quick shot of the animatronics for the hologram birthday calls, same peppers ghost effect. We have some decent still shots of these, taken from up on the catwalks. We will get to those sometime in the future. These three rides with Fonzi were still during the pre-staying inside the ride timeframe.

Also towards the end, even though the video doesnt come out well (being a pretty dark room an all), you can hear us getting all excited standing out in the starfield room/corner that you saw right before the choose your own future projection screens. It really was a neat feeling standing out in that room and looking back at the ride vehicles slowly going by, its just too bad it was a hard experience to capture on film. Anyways, hope you enjoy! And dont worry, we still have plenty of video clips coming, this is not the end, just the final pieces I hadnt shown yet from the Fonzi rides.

Future Living with Fonzi

Here are a couple more shots from our trips with our old friend Bionic Fonzi. There are a couple decent shots from wierd angles in the Urban Habitat and Desert Habitat. And you can see how sometimes we would take a more "fun" route thru a set, such as the grove control station. Mostly to get a better picture, but also because it was fun. :) Next video will be Sea Castle area with Fonzi.

Hoot Almost Dies

Here is another shorty but goody! This was the night Hoot almost fell to his death in outerspace. I know Hoot will chime in with more comments and fill in some more details, but I believe his ankle has never been the same since that night. Anyhow, I for one am super glad that all turned out ok that night and my pal indeed did not fall to his death! And I like how we just continue on with our goal that night. :)

And the end of this clip is a very nice shot of the projection mechanism for the "zero-g basketball (or some sort of ball) game". I believe Kyle was asking if we had any pictures of this, and Hoot said 'no, but we have some video', and I am pretty sure this is the shot Hoot was thinking about. Enjoy!

Holo-Girl (Part 4)

So here is the final installment of my Holo-Girl series. I believe one of these photos was already published by Hoot in an earlier post, but I decided to go ahead and post it again here in my series so they are all right here together. And even though this completes my offering of our favorite miniature animatronic, Hoot may have more pictures of her to post in the future. :)




And here, as promised is the awesome video shot that Hoot got that should once and for all help those who may still be a bit confused, as to where she was located. Feel free to rewind to about 1:15 and watch it over and over and over, I do! :) Enjoy!



Hope everyone has a fun and safe 4th of July weekend!

Easy Living

I thought since we were recently talking about the "bathtub girl", I would cut together the Easy Living portions of the three rides we did with our old friend Bionic Fonzi.

These rides are pretty neat, they show how we used to jump off right at the beginning and run ahead to the stairway up to the Easy Living set. We did this to try and make it as far ahead to the beginning of our "empty car gap", so we would have more time. The second ride shows Hoot running up the spiral staircase to the bathtub girl with video camera in hand, very cool. Also on the second ride, you can see us getting nervous about the ride slowing down and then stopping with the "e-stop" spiel going off. We were fairly certain this was for a wheelchair guest, but we were always scared we had been caught when that would happen. :)

Then we decide we have time for a third ride. This shows us in the load area counting cars for our gap. You get a pretty neat shot of under the ride platform, where you can see the pipes and stuff painted a fluorescent orange. Hoot also films me up on the bathtub platform taking a picture.

Wow, watching these again just brings back so many fun memories, Enjoy! :)

Trial And Error

Here is another early run, with us testing different strategies for running ahead to get a 'larger gap' of cars to allow us more time in a set. As you can see in Easy Living not all of our ideas worked out very well. :) In this clip we test our timing again trying to reach the Holo-Girl. We also take a quick trip down the cave and look behind 'the Grove' and 'the Kitchen'.

An Early Run

Here we go folks, here is video one! (of many)

This is not the very first video we shot, but it is one of the early ones. Definitely before we started 'staying in' the ride. Hoot is at the controls with his Super 8mm video camera. I am of course the one with the foul mouth.