The Complete Walt Disney World Fun Finds & Hidden Mickeys: The Definitive Disney Field Guide

by Julie Neal, Mike Neal

Overview

Think you've seen everything at Walt Disney World-yet Think again. Add a playful sense of adventure to your Disney vacation with this unique guidebook, which uses easy-to-scan lists and eye-popping color photos to reveal thousands of fascinating Fun Finds and hundreds of Hidden Mickey three-circle shapes. Written by the award-winning authors Julie and Mike Neal of The Complete Walt Disney World, it's perfect for families, friends, couples, and Disney fans of all ages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780990371625
Publisher:	Coconut Press
Publication date:	06/23/2015
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

A former Walt Disney World concierge supervisor, Julie Neal is the author of “The Complete Walt Disney World” series of travel guides. As such she’s spent over 2,500 days at Disney World not counting her time behind the desk. For the production of this Fun Finds & Hidden Mickeys book she traveled to Disney nearly every single day for seven months—if there’s one thing she’s an expert on it’s how to get around the place. Her husband Mike Neal is an award-winning graphic designer and photographer.

Julie and Mike live in Orlando with their daughter Micaela, who helps out in the family business when she’s not scuba diving in the Caribbean or going to school at Florida State. Spending most of her recent summer and winter breaks at Disney, she researched this book’s largest sections, including the mega one on The Haunted Mansion. Her favorite Disney attraction: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

The Neals share their home with the most important member of their family: Oliver, the world’s most cuddly 85­pound rescue dog.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpts

The Barnstormer

Goofy wants to be a stuntman, and fails miserably

Though on the surface this junior roller coaster seems pretty basic, a closer look at it reveals a witty and surprising back story. It's one that alludes to many old cartoons and movies, stays true to its star character and even comments on the Disney company's growing budget-conscious mindset.

According to Disney, the coaster lets you relive a recent aerial mishap of the Great Goofini, the name Goofy has given himself in his quest to be the Storybook Circus daredevil star. Finding stardom hasn't been easy. Fighting for attention with the circuses' famous flying-elephant act, he had previously attempted many stunts but failed at all of them. And then recently, falling back on skills he learned earlier as a crop duster, Goofy created a stunt show that he thought he could certainly do—an aerial one that would use his old plane. To prepare for his "acrobatic skyleidoscope," he put up two large red-and-white racing pylons to fly around right next to the popular pachyderm tent, as well as a billboard that faced it.

But then everything went wrong. As his first show got underway, Goofy took off perfectly straight... straight into one of his pylons, that is, the impact of which caused him to immediately lose control of his plane. Swooping and swaying as he desperately headed back to his barn, he avoided hitting his other pylon, but couldn't avoid his billboard, which he crashed through just before landing.

Props and posters. Goofy's previous stunts are alluded to with props and posters outside the roller coaster. The cannon he used in a "Canine Cannonball" routine sits next to the entrance walkway, on the right. Look closely to notice its primitive "Launch-O-Matic" lever, which is set on "high"; its fuse, which occasionally lights itself and fizzles; and (for some reason) cannonballs, one of which is Goofy's personal bowling ball. A round canvas target for the cannon appears about 50 feet in front of it, near the entrance to the Frontierland train station. Shaped like Goofy's silhouette, a hole in the middle of the target reveals that when he was shot into its tight fabric, he slammed right through it.

On the left side of the walkway are the smoking remains of a rocket Goofy saddled, straddled and rode in a "Fearless Rocketeer" act. Classic-movie buffs will recognize it as a sly homage to the 1964 Stanley Kubrick movie "Dr. Strangelove," in which Slim Pickens rode an atomic bomb like a rodeo cowboy as it dropped out of a plane over the Soviet Union. Goofy's rocket is named Delores, the name of an elephant he gives a bath to as a circus worker in the 1948 cartoon "The Big Wash." The queue also passes Goofy's Wheel of Peril, a circular piece of wood he has strapped himself to and spun around on as others tossed knives at him. Note: Unlike the other props on the walkway, the wheel is not roped off and children are welcome to climb on it.

Props in the boarding area allude to Goofy's failure as a stunt pilot. Just as you exit your coaster, look to your right to find a large First Aid crate and an even larger Second Aid crate, a bottle of High Flyer Altitude Discomfort Remedy (it "Gets Your Head Out of the Clouds") and a bottle of How to Fly-brand air sickness pills (a reference to Disney's many "How To" Goofy instructional cartoons). In front of the ride, a poster promoting Goofy's skills at tiger juggling is a veiled allusion to the 1945 cartoon "Tiger Trouble," in which he and elephant Delores hunt for the large cats.

Bare-boned and budget. Unlike the beautifully filigreed Dumbo attraction next door, Goofy's act is bare-boned and budget, a makeshift affair thrown together with secondhand materials. Shade for its walkways comes from targets he used during his Canine Cannonball days. Its hangar is actually two buildings patched together, a corroded airport quonset hut and a worn wooden barn. And its plane is, of course, an old crop duster. Wood railings appear to have been painted in some distant past; their colors today often faded away.

Riders who take themselves out of the ride's storyline will notice that its low-budget theme is an in-joke, a reference to the fact that when Disney replaced its Mickey's Toontown Fair with Storybook Circus, it totally demolished the area except for this ride, which except for some basic decor changes it left almost unchanged from its 15 years as The Barnstormer at Goofy's Wiseacre Farm (1996-2011). Disney adds to the self-parody by making the attraction's sign appear to be a hand-me-down, even though it's not—look closely as you walk under it and you'll notice it appears to be made from Wiseacre Farm sign, its wood just recut, flipped over and repainted—and by making everything look rusty or otherwise neglected, including the ride's two Fastpass+ touchpoints, high-tech MagicBand readers that were installed in 2014.

Other fun finds Numbers on the tails of the planes refer to the month and year Goofy first appeared onscreen: May 1932 (as Dippy Dawg, in the cartoon "Mickey's Revue"). The ride has three planes, numbered 5, 19 and 32. Two planes are on the track at any one time.

Other props in the unloading area include an old gas can on your right that recalls a 1942 Disney movie, the Latin American-themed "Saludos Amigos." Referring to Pedro, a small mail plane who flew over the Chilean mountains in that film, a sticker on the can shows a mountain peak with a silhouette of a plane. It reads "Pedro, Empresa Gasolinera".

On the left side of the exit area, a barrel of beat-up water skis and a life preserver pay homage to the 1961 Goofy cartoon about water-skiing, "Aquamania." The life preserver's "Yah-Hah-Buoy" brand name recalls Goofy's signature "yah-hah-boy" yell; its small print indicates that it was manufactured by Geef Industries, which alludes to an odd alter ego Goofy had during the 1950s (see "Man... or Man's Best Friend, below). Aquamania is also the name of a previous Goofy stunt show highlighted on a poster in front the attraction.

A chicken appears on another poster out front, hanging on to Goofy's stunt plane for dear life. The fear-filled fowl is a reference to a moment in the Wiseacre Farm version of this ride, when Goofy's plane crashed through a barn and startled a group of Audio-Animatronic chickens.

Goofy's socks and long johns fly above the ride's entrance, just as they used to do over his farm. Coco the monkey, Goofy's "coconutty" companion on the Disney Jr. television show "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse," appears on several posters as Goofy's assistant.

Discarded banana peels—apparently from Coco—have formed impressions in the walkway in front of the ride entrance.

Hidden Mickey On the far right of the billboard Goofy's plane crashes through, a three-circle Mickey Mouse shape appears inside the whirling blades of an airplane propeller. Incredibly small, it's just above the phrase "A Staggering Series of Stupendous Stunts."

Other fun facts The idea of Goofy failing at flight was first seen in the 1940 Disney cartoon "Goofy's Glider," in which he attempts to fly a powerless plane. The first attraction on this spot was Grandma Duck's Petting Farm (1988-1996), a petting zoo with live pigs as well as Minnie Moo, a cow with Mickey Mouse-shaped spots.

Man... or man's best friend? It's a question that baffles Disney enthusiasts, or at least those who love Goofy, a character who has the body of a human but the nose, snout and long ears of a dog. Disney has never actually said, though most fans agree Goofy is human, as the company's signature cartoon dog is obviously Pluto. And besides, Goofy is so much a man—a clumsy, gullible good-hearted simpleton who has a hard time concentrating and—despite his bad posture and ill-fitting clothes—loves to mug for a camera. During the 1930s and 1940s he starred in many of Disney's best theatrical shorts. In one of the company's more bizarre moves, in the 1950s it transformed Goofy into suburban everyman George Geef, a character with none of the traits of a dog and, at times, no ears at all.

In "The Complete Walt Disney World" guidebook The Barnstormer earns a 4-star rating. We call it a "perfect first coaster for children" that "is also fun for couples and friends."