Space Family

Here's a shot from the star field behind the shuttle scene. I accidentally had my camera on "panorama" but it made for some cool pics.
<--------- See these two grey boxes? They controlled the speed of the two motors that made the kid float. If you thought he looked too much like the vampire boy in "Salem's Lot" you could just turn up the speed to "Kid in the dryer"!

Remember when Pooh Bear was floating around in there too?

50 "followers"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow! We made it to 50! Honestly I never thought we'd get two or three. I mean, this long after Horizons closed? I never thought there were so many hardcore fans out there. I love this blog:) Thanks, Horizons fans for everything you do.

tanyeshka was our 50th follower! Tell her what she won, Johnny!

"tanyeshka wins a new washer dryer combo! Not only that, she wins a brand new Laser Chef "Laser Oven"!" She also wins an all expense paid trip to.................SEA CASTLE! Yes tanyeshka and a guest will experience life under the waves! Dinning, Romance, and leisure! This could all be yours if the price is right!

Rock on! Chief is going on vacation so you people are all MINE for the next week!

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'.

Holo-Girl (Part 2)

Ok, so here we are, up on the catwalk looking back down into the 'living room'. We are basically right above the ride track, looking to the 'left' if you will.

And now I am looking to the 'right', and if you look real close at this picture, in the upper right hand corner, you can see someones elbow, hrmm, I wonder who that is? :) Also in this picture, pay attention to the gray box, with some electrical connection coming out of it. It will help put the next photo into perspective.

Why, it is none other than your captain, Hoot Gibson! hehe This is the photo being used in his profile currently. Again, notice the gray box in the lower left corner. Also in this photo, notice the mirror just below Hoot, it looks like a corner is broken off, you will see this mirror again in a couple photos I have coming up in a future part of my Holo-Girl posts. And I have no idea how/why the corner is broken off, just pointing it out because it makes it easy to remember and recognise.

Broken kid

It was pretty funny to see this seal kissin' kid completely broken. He was stuck in that pose while the seal attacked him. The other kids were laughing.

Diving Class Patch

What DID that patch look like on the wetsuits? I must have a better picture somewhere. This is an ok start but let me keep digging.

The how to....

There are a lot of people wondering how we did this so I'll try to explain again. This is how it went in the early stages:

1. Chief would hang out right near the load area and watch people get on the ride.

2. Hoot would stay back where people entered the building.

3. Chief would count empty ride vehicles, there had to be at LEAST six ahead of us.

4. Hoot would signal Chief when somebody entered the building. We had to have at LEAST six empty vehicles ahead AND behind us to not be seen.

5. Most of the time Chief would count ten to twenty empty cars before I signaled him that we had six behind us.

6. We'd get on the ride and check our ride vehicle number.

7. As soon as we rounded the corner out of the load area we'd jump out and run like hell to get as far ahead as possible.

8. By keeping count of the cars we had a precise idea of how much time we had in a scene.

We got very good at knowing how much time we had from doing this over and over.

Later, this became old hat and we just stayed in the ride for 8 hours at a time:)We ate dinner there and even washed ourselves in the Mesa Verde Kitchen scene waterfall.

Pink shoes

Like I said, I made a list of things I wanted pics of. I was pretty sure these shoes were important because they're such a minor detail. Horizons was all about the small details in true old school Disney fashion.

A Family Attraction!

WoooooooooWeeeeeeee! Full frontal nudity Audio-Animatronic style! We call this figure "Ms Easy Living" and I'm sorry but she's HOT!Did they need to sculpt her torso for this scene? Hell no. Did they anyway? HELL YES!

This rubber chick is even hotter than the Red Head in Pirates! Disagree? You're nuts.

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.

Bath time

While Chief takes care of the mini farmer girl I'll get back to "Easy living" bath tub chick.
First, it was incredibly hard to run up the spiral staircase and get pics of her. This shot was my first and I wasn't happy with it all. REWIND.

REWIND to the time we were doing this stuff. I would take my pics to my boring desk job and scour them for any detail I wanted to see more of. I made a list based on these pics and checked them off as we got them. The list, which I still have, was really long and it seemed we would never finish it but we wanted every detail documented at all cost.

It's REALLY stupid to jump out of your ride vehicle on a Disney ride and we knew that. I suffered a fractured bone in my foot and Chief cut his head wide open once or twice. This was also pre 9/11 when things were very different.

Attractions close and that's the natural order of things. Ask Mike at Widen Your World. He knows. Somehow Horizons had such an impact on Chief and I as kids, and the time was right, that we had to do what we did at any risk.

Don't try this......EVER

Holo-Girl (Part 1)

I am going to revisit the "Holo-Phone Girl" (or whatever you want to call her, cool farmer girl doll, etc...) with a series of photos I have. Hoot posted one of our best pictures of her in an earlier post. Early on in our adventures, when we were still worried about gaps, and getting back to our car in time, etc... getting to this figure to get some decent photos almost seemed impossible.

We needed a gap of empty cars large enough ahead of us and behind us to allow us to jump out, run ahead to the living room entrance, then run thru the living room, up the stairs behind 'dad' on the organ, climb up a ladder, take a picture, then run all the way back and hope no new guests were just coming around the corner to the future living room. Phew. Needless to say, early on, we only tried this a couple times I think. But that didnt matter once we started 'staying in' the ride, then we could hang out as long as we wanted with the doll. :)

Anyways, the photo above is of course standing in the stairwell looking back down at 'dad' on the organ. And then the next one here is a little further up that stairwell, still looking down.

And then below is one of me standing on the ladder, looking back down at Hoot, who just happens to be wearing my backpack. You can see the stairs (red carpet) in the top part of the photo. I will probably post three or so pictures in each part after this, I have a total of fourteen to post from my collection, and I know Hoot has plenty more. I also plan on ending this multi-part series with a really awesome video clip that Hoot shot of the doll, from the pathway in front of the ride vehicles. Its a really quick shot, but it is still one of my favorites.

More Comments?

Hey, Horizons fans! I had to switch to "moderate all comments" because some Ohio guy thought I was sleeping with his wife. AS IF!

Now, I know girls dig guys who are into old EPCOT Center attractions. We all know that. Horizons knowledge was a chick magnet back in the day and still is. "Show me your pics, Hoot" and "let's watch Horizons video, Chief". We got use to it but I can't have comments like he posted on this blog.

Somebody shoot me a comment so I can see if this works. Please?

Behave yourself, Ohio man!

More Models

To follow Chief's lead, here's a cool model shot. This pic IS upside down as ol' chief mentioned. See the strings? It's the same effect as the models in the tunnel leading into Space Mountain. If you don't know how it's done it goes like this:

They were hung upside down with a big reflective, concave disk behind them. The reflection was cast upon the glass in front of you and the image appeared to move as you went by. Low tech but future!