Disneyland Trivia

In 1953, Walt Disney created a company that was separate from the Disney Studios called "WED" (for "Walter Elias Disney"). The company was formed in order to take over the design and construction of attractions for Disneyland, so as not to put any additional financial burden on the parent company. The company was later renamed Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), and continues to create, renovate and expand all of the Walt Disney Company's theme parks.

There are more than 20,000 different colors of paint used in Walt Disney World.

There are enough of the famous "Mouse Ear" hats sold each year to cover the head of every man, woman and child in Pittsburgh and enough Disney character T-shirts are sold in Walt Disney World each year to put Mickey Mouse's smiling face on the chest of every person in Chicago.

When Walt Disney World turned 15 years old in 1986, prizes were given out every 15 seconds. Guests were given a ticket upon entering the park that let them know if they won anything from small buttons to full-sized automobiles!

The real town of Marceline, Missouri has a school named after its most famous resident. About 320 children from grades Kindergarten to 5th attend Walt Disney Elementary School. There are other schools bearing the same name in Burbank, California; Alvin Texas; Rochester, New York, and numerous other states.

Walt Disney originally wanted to name Mickey "Mortimer", but his wife Lillian convinced him to change the name during a train ride from New York to California.

Walt Disney, the visionary behind the entire Disney empire, attended only one year of high school.

According to Kodak, 4% of all amateur photographs worldwide are taken at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

By 1978, guests visiting Walt Disney World spent more money on merchandise than on food.

Walt Disney World is the largest supporter of the "Give Kids the World" program, providing over 50,000 tickets a year and special services and wish fulfillment for terminally ill children and their families.

To keep the Magic consistent, the characters that sing during the parades are all lip-synching to prerecorded music. Many of the Cast Members who perform in the parades and shows are often chosen for their looks, personality and ability to dance rather than their singing talent (or lack of any!).

As part of Disney's commitment to the environment and the local community, used and excess building materials are sent to the Orange County Distribution Center, where they are distributed to local non-profit organizations. Construction and demolition waste amounts to around 620 tons (or 1,240,000 pounds) a year.

Both Walt and Roy Disney passed away in the month of December - Walt on December 15, 1966, and and Roy on December 20, 1971, just about 2 months after his brother's dream of Walt Disney World opened its doors to the public.

Walt Disney World welcomes millions of international, and offers numerous amenities to cater to the foreign visitor including telephone information in almost any language, guidebooks to the four major parks written in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Japanese, and currency exchanges. Even park Cast Members who speak foreign languages wear a badge with the flag of that country on their name tags to make themselves recognizable and accessible to international guests.

Disney doesn't allow any pets into the theme parks, with the exception of service animals such as guide dogs for the blind, (although pets are welcome at certain locations within Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground, such as the full hook-up campsites). So, while you're on vacation, your pet can have a magical time at one of the five Pet Care Kennels, each of which is a member of the American Boarding Kennel Association, found at all four theme parks and the Fort Wilderness Campground.

Mickey Mouse has about 175 different outfits in his wardrobe, including a scuba suit and a tuxedo. Minnie Mouse's massive "walk-in closet" contains about 200 outfits, including a cheerleader costume and various evening gowns.

Disney World bought about 150,000 gallons of paint -- enough to cover nearly 7,500 average sized homes in 2004

Number of miles buses travel annually: nearly 18 million.

If you were to stack all of the buttons used by the Costuming Plant Seam Team in one year, you would have a stack 96 times taller than the height of Cinderella's Castle.

Number of trees, shrubs and flowers on property: more than 7 million

Daily water usage: 15 million gallons 2,000 acres of turf. At three mowings a week, that adds up to 450,000 mower miles per year, or 18 trips around the Earth at the equator.

Largest working wardrobe in the world with more than 1.5 million operational garments in use and over 7,000 different garment types. In addition there are over 2 million pieces of entertainment costumes. Each day the costuming plant processes between 27,000 and 31,000 garments.

More than 50 million soft drinks sold annually.10 million hamburgers, 7 million hot dogs, 9 million pounds of french fries and 300,000 pounds of popcorn sold annually.

Every year, Walt Disney World:
Uses 194,871 miles of toilet tissue
Uses 24,409 miles of paper towels
Uses 319,353 lbs. of chocolate
Uses 1.2 million pounds of watermelon
Uses 741,150 pounds of sugar
Uses 1.8 million pounds of flour
Uses 245,000 pounds of fruit filling
Uses 38,000 pounds of white icing glaze
Uses 2.9 million pounds of eggs
Uses 606,000 pounds of bananas
Uses 510,000 of grapes
Serves more than 1.5 million soft pretzels
Serves more than 639,000 pounds of macaroni and cheese
Orders more than 3.8 million ballpoint pens
Orders more than 337,000 pencils
Uses nearly 148 million sheets of recycled copier paper
Uses 730,102 gallons of bleach
$1.7 million worms are ordered each year to feed animals at Disney's Animal Kingdom.

214,000 bandages were provided to guests during the year 2004

In 2004, Walt Disney World recycled 18,322,000 pounds of paper products.

Random Facts About the Sun

• The Sun appears to be yellow-gold because we view it through Earth’s atmosphere. The Sun’s actual color is more white than yellow.

• The Sun contains 99.9 percent of all matter in our solar system.

• English astronomer James Jeans determined that if you placed a piece of the Sun’s core the size of the head of a pin on Earth, it would still generate enough heat to kill a person 84 miles away.

• The surface gravity of the Sun is 28 times that of Earth. If you weigh 120 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 3,360 pounds on the Sun.

Attempt at salmon, part 2

This past Saturday I tried my hand at salmon once again, but this time with much better results. I was able to get a steal of a deal at Smith's and got a 13 ounce filet of Sockeye salmon for only $3.35. Woot! That's a big chunk o' fish. Instead of wrapping it up in tin foil I just seasoned it with lemon pepper and put it on the top rack of my BBQ. I let it cook about 10 minutes on both sides over med-high heat. After peeling off the skin I let it cook another 10 minutes or so along with a hot dog for Owen. After that we sat down to our meal, both of us drinking out of our Spider-Man cups, and enjoyed a great meal. This time the salmon was a lot more tender, and a better taste to it and was easier to pull apart. Owen had a few bites of it, but wasn't too impressed. After we finished our dinner we went to get some ice cream. Yummy! BTW, I couldn't find a camera to take a picture of it so I used my cell phone, but it didn't quite capture the grandeur of the meal, so just use your imagination :)

More Random Thoughts

I've been meaning to blog more, but just haven't been able to do it so here's just a few thing to tide you over until I can do something nice and flashy.

• Michael Phelps, the now most gold medal winningest athlete ever is every bit the champion he has shown the world to be. He is humble and complementary to his team, yet isn't ashamed of being great. I'm convinced that if people want to be inspired by athletes, look at Olympics.
• Have you ever wondered what would happen if... Today I saw what would have happened had I not met Melissa. Please see the geekshow podcast about Kerry's toy room. That would have been me.
• Speaking of Kerry, today was the Radio From Hell's 5000th broadcast. I used to listen to those guys when I was in Junior High, and here they are now, 22 years later, still being funny and entertaining. I was very pleasantly surprised to hear Mr. West on the show today. Awesome!
• I think I hate socks.
• I finally started to write my own Great American Novel. I've never done such an undertaking before, and I'm not really sure what I'm doing, but I've had a bunch of ideas bouncing around in my head for a few years now and I decided to finally put them on paper. I'm currently on chapter 15 or so with the summaries, so once I finish that I'll start fleshing everything out and see if I can't crank out a three to four hundred page book that millions of people will find fascinating, making me filthy stinking rich so I can finish my elusive Predacon collection.
• I can't wait for my favorite TV shows to come back on. The Office webisodes weren't long enough, Heroes looks excellent, and, sadly, Battlestar Galactica won't return in the fall, but will start again early next year for the series finally.

Attempt at salmon, part 1

A few weeks ago when Melissa went to Cali with her friends I found myself with just Owen and a desire to cook fish. I bought a small filet of salmon and decided to cook in on my BBQ. I've never cooked fish before so I just kind of winged it. I wrapped up the filet with some butter and threw it on. What happened afterwards? It was edible. I think the salad tasted better, but it wasn't horrible. I think I needed to cook it either longer or hotter or both. We'll see.

Epic Fail

Progressive Rummy

I learned how to play Progressive Rummy or PR from my buddy Jake sometime in the early 90's, and that was much akin to learning to swim in the Amazon with piranhas. Jake's family is very even keeled, but slap some cards in front of them and the family dynamic does an about-face, especially his mom Coila. I've never seen such violence in a card game. Anywho, I've taken this game that I learned from Jake and his family and have taught it to my family, who in turn have taught it to many others. There have been many times when Mindy has called me up to ask the order of the rounds, so I decided to make a little cheat sheet and explain the game.

The mechanics of this plays fairly similar to Phase 10, but it can be a lot more hectic and intense. First off, in a group of 4 you'll want to use 2 decks of cards with the jokers. After shuffling the dealer will try to guesstimate the number of cards s/he needs to perfectly deal out 11 cards to each player in the group (in a clockwise fashion). If the dealer got the right amount of cards they will receive -50 points to start the round. The remaining cards are set in the middle with the top card flipped over. During the game you will be completing rounds consisting of sets and runs. A set is 3 of a kind, and since you'll be playing with at least 2 decks you could have the same suit in your set. A run consists of four consecutive cards in the same suite, but you cannot have a King, Ace, Deuce, Three. An Ace may be used after a King or before a Deuce, but not both. A joker may be used as a wild card in either a run or a set. Jokers also have the ability to be reused by other players. Once a player lays down, meaning they have all the cards necessary for the round, other players may be able to take a used Joker on their turn, but only by replacing the Joker with the card it represents, and only in a run. If a Joker is used in a set it is permanently locked and may not be removed. So for example, if my run is 2 3 Joker 5 of hearts and the next player has a 4 of hearts in their hand, on their turn they may replace the Joker with their 4. Again, this can only be done on their turn. Each round every player will have 3 "buys". The card that is facing up may be purchased out of turn by a player at the cost of an additional card. The purchase should be made before the player draws a card. There is also a purchase priority meaning if two people want to buy the same card the person closest in order of the current active player will get the card. If a player uses all three buys they'll have a total of 17 cards in their hand, so use buys wisely. When it's a player's turn they must either draw a card or they can chose the card that is face up. All buying at this point is over. The player decides what to do with the card, then must discard a card from their hand to the face up pile. Once that card is discarded it is available for purchase. Finally, as the name of the game says, if you discard a card that could be used in a pile that someone has laid down someone may yell "Rummy!" and give a card of their choice out of their hand to the player that discarded it.

Round 1 - After the cards are dealt the object is to get 1 set and 1 run. Once you have the cards you need you can chose to lay down on your turn or wait to see if you can lay down all at once. After you lay down you will probably still have several cards in your hand. After others lay down you can add to their piles on your turn. Once a player goes out and has no more cards in their hand the round is over. Everyone tallies up their points and moves to the next round. The points are the following: 2-8 5 points, 9-K 10 points, Ace 20 points, Joker 50 points. Obviously if you go out first you get zero points. The score keeper should have basic math skills. :) Everyone moves on to the next round whether they lay down or not.

Rounds 2-7 - Once you understand how to play the first round it becomes easier to follow the game and begin to develop your style. Round 2 is 2 sets, Round 3 is 2 runs, Round 4 is 3 sets, Round 5 is 2 sets 1 run, Round 6 is 1 set 2 runs and finally Round 7 is 3 runs. The winner is the player with the lowest score. It is possible to end the game with a negative score, but not likely if you play against me. I'm just saying.

So hopefully these instructions were useful, it's always best just to play it with someone who's played before. I've included a little cheat sheet that you can print out and put in your deck o' cards.