From our pal Applewhite

http://freshroastedcorn.blogspot.com/2011/12/refreshing-works-that-you-should-own.html

Walt and the Promise of Progress City

Order up! Now here's a book that is top on the Hoot Gibson Holiday wish list.


"Walt and the Promise of Progress City is an amazing new book that explores how Walt Disney—the master of fiction—was determined to bring new life to the non-fiction world of city design and development and, in doing so, fundamentally improve the Great American way of life."

If you're into Horizons you'll be doing yourself a huge favor by learning more about the original EPCOT. Not "center" not lower case "Epcot". I say that because Horizons was the tail end (last) of the Walt Disney style visions of the future. I can't wait to get mine and further school myself on EPCOT the city.

Paperback

Kindle

More on the Horizons Remote Cam

You may or may not already know about the camera that was mounted on top of the Horizons building. Either way it doesn't matter BECAUSE IT'S GONE FOREVER! But, yes, there was a cool camera mounted to a GE GP-66 industrial robot arm. This rig could be controlled from the GE lounge for the amusement of the employees of said GE. I once heard a tool remark how cool it was to zoom in on girls asses on the other side of the park.





PS. I left the cool little blurb from another page on the left side.

Space Mountain

I never go to Disney Parks unless I can get in for free. Yesterday I did just that. I went to the Magic Kingdom for the first time in a year or so.

I haven't been on Space Mountain since the big update but I was very impressed by it. Overall it seems like they shit canned all of the goofy-ness that came with Fed Ex and the "New Tomorrowland" (The kinda junk that made RYCA-1 seem great in comparison) and brought back the same feeling that the original 1975 version had. The audio and art direction were a breath of fresh air in a park that usually makes me bitch all day.

The post show speed ramp still needs help though. It would have nice to see a new version of The Home of Future Living but it's just another low budget show built on the core of the shitty "RYCA-1 Dream of a New World" that replaced HOFL in 1985.

One Scene DID make me happy. The last show scene before the green screen television which features a futuristic living environment, a robot butler, and a backdrop painting of a future city. It ain't much folks but I'll be damned if it didn't give me a jolt of the Horizons feeling all over again. It was like having loved your granny very much, she dies, and years later you see a pretty good wax figure of her at a museum.

Look at these video grabs. The robot is just an old AA armature with some shit slapped on it BUT STILL, it's a robot serving drinks! In a 70's-esq bachelor pad!

Besides, we would have all bitched if they used our old pal here who happens to sport the same footwear.

Rounded bench seating, a sleek table with crazy future shit on it, clear acrylic chandelier....... are you seeing it?



The backdrop was first installed in 1985's "RYCA-1". That makes it only 2 years younger than Horizons. As you see it's a very 80's vision of tomorrow which is perfect in this case. I've never liked it until now.

Like I say, it ain't much but somebody deserves a prize for coming up with this scene. with my luck it was probably Jeff Kurtti.

Fresh Audio

Oh boy audio fans! I have two lovely clips for you in honor of it being Wednesday! It's also national Fiji Merman Day in, where else, Norway!

These two clips were obtained using a process developed by Concourse Six Laboratories in which one leaves an audio recording device in a Disney ride and returns later to retrieve it. You therefore get several looping full segments and one hell of an idea of the atmosphere in that portion of the ride. The proper term used to describe this maneuver is "Drop Off".

STAR ROOM

This is when we did a drop off in the "Choose your Tomorrow" star field room.

SPACE

Of course in the Space scene with all of the different sounds.

More to come. Enjoy!

Destination D Walt Disney World

Wow. That was the most fun I have had in a long time.

I honestly didn't think it would be THAT kick ass but it was. When Chief, who is a member of D23, asked me if I wanted to go I said yes mostly because it would be a reason to spend time with him for two days on Disney property. I didn't think we'd see anything of merit because I've grown to think that the history of Walt Disney World wasn't very important to the company or Disney fans.

Hoot Gibson was wrong. here are some things that blew me away:

The Western River Expedition flow through video. That's more WRE material than I ever thought existed! Wonderful.

DreanFinder, the REAL fuckin' DREAMFINDER, singing "One little Spark" with Richard Sherman........... LIVE!

WDW construction pics.

The folks at the Disney Archives like Hoot and Chief!

Debbie Dane Brown, the 1971 Ambassador, likes Hoot and Chief and hugged us at will!

We met fellow bloggers. The exact guys who inspired me to start Mesa Verde Times. Check it out.

Left to right:

1. George of Imaginerding.com fame! Great material and I can't believe we finally got to meet him.

2. Dr Joe, official Surgeon General of Mesa Verde Times. It was great to hang out with him for the entire weekend. Joe drinks beer and so do I ..........we drank us some beer! We also met his wonderful family. We're working on some WEDCON stuff with Joe.

3. Hoot Lariat Gibson

4. Thunder Chief my dear pal.

5. Michael Crawford of Progress City USA! Love this blog! I was sort of nervous to meet this guy because his blog is very professional and I wasn't sure if he liked our stuff or not.

6. Chris Wallace was there as well. He gave me a free t-shirt on Saturday but i got drunk Saturday night and lost it. Debbie Dane must have it. Wink wink. He's doing wonderful work and his renderings are beautiful. Click on his name, suckas!

We had fun. We found ourselves in a an employee break area or two.......or three looking for sweet retro trash cans:

..and meeting up with old "pals"



Good times

We did it!!!!!!!!!!!!

We found Bionic Fonzi! After 13 years of searching.....................we found him!

We were spooking the D23 event at WDW tonight and, low and behold, there he was!

Most amazing. One of only three who joined us on our adventures.

Priceless film

This is a great video for early Horizons footage. It starts out as a 1978 film but the portion on Horizons is from a later film.

At 2:35 Horizons steals the show with it's amazingly corny song. Glad it didn't make the cut.

At 2:59 There's a sweet shot of an early version of the Diving Class scene. Underwater safety is no joke.

At 3:05 A dolphin would have been cool near Sea Castle but our seal friend did just fine. Look to the right of this frame. "swimming" Audio-Animatronic figures?! Was that replaced by the film clip of the diving class? I would gave rather seen AA's.

At 3:45 Paul Torrigino lending his incredible artistic skill to a model of the France Pavilion.

I would love to see all of the Horizons concept art and models.

MUST READ!!!!

Horizons/Carousel of Progress fans! Mike Cozart of Tomorrowlounge '67 just started the MOTHER of all....... I'm not gonna blab about it, read it for yourself and be amazed at the fact that Horizons almost made it to Disneyland!

AMERICA SINGS MEGA POST FINAL #6 --America Sings replacements that never were!!

I WILL have this.....

Check it.

Excellent graphics

Mesa Verde Times pal Evan Alporque came up with these kick ass graphics in Photoshop. If you use them in your projects, for texture maps etc, please give him credit and $400 in Thai currency. Enjoy!

Space Crystal Lab panel.

Lab Patch.

Shuttle Port Santa Maria seating chart.

Easy Living wallpaper.

Sea Castle improvised Menu.

All fine examples of someone using our pics to better the world. Thanks, Evan!

Moving Forward

Here are a few things that'll be coming up on MVT:

* More pics of our adventures. Still a bunch more.

* A few more "Hoot and Chief Action Comics" to help tell a few tales.

* "The Prologue and the Promise": What really happened to that painting as told to us by a Disney Pigshot...I mean..BIGSHOT.

* GERO, the Horizons robot you may remember and where he REALLY came from.

* WEDCON 2011 and our involvement with it.

* Audio loops recorded live and through Spike Trippers special 3-D system.

Stay tuned!

Ghosts and Gardens

"Maybe you got hit in the head with some frozen meat........"

Riding Horizons was like having an out of body experience. However, instead of floating like a ghost through your own time, you had a very short vision of the future unfold before your eyes. You tried to soak it in but you couldn't move or change your perspective to figure out what was going on. You had a basic narration to guide you but it wasn't nearly enough.

Soon your dream state was over and you had the rest of your life to try to make sense of what you saw. Strange gadgets, Strange footwear.

Chief and I are your Patrick Swayze in "Ghost". We learned to manipulate the "out of body" situation and turn it into an "out of ride vehicle" situation. Just like Swayze did when he learned to move objects and shit after he was dead. Chief and I are each Patrick Swayze.



Granny had a sweet garden on the patio of her Nova Cite apartment. Plenty of strange veggies growing everywhere and no sign of actual dirt! Why get dirty in the third century if you don't need to? She had tables to work on, a cup of tools, some gloves and a vintage pair of 1983 office scissors! Let's take a look at what's for dinner.

OOPS! During the time the above and below pics were taken, the long green leaf vanished, the huge garlic got turned over and the scissors moved leaving a dirty spot! Proof that other ghosts were acting a fool here.

Anyway, you can see a wide variety of foods that could be grown in a small space.

Check out the red onion there in the middle. It has the same greens as the carrots. Is that a cross breed of onion and carrot?! The future is a very bold place.

Mesa Verde Times turned 2 years old on March first. Welcome to Mesa Verde Times 2.0.

ANYTHING is worth a shot

Our good friend Keir just sent this:

http://www.petitiononline.com/Epcot/

It might be a long shot but what the hell. You never know:)

If I had one little bit of input for Disney it would be "please make it impossible to jump out of the new ride vehicles because my foot still hurts and Chief and I aren't spring chickens anymore". Amen.