Tag: DL

The History of What May Be Disney’s #1 Favorite Snack, Dole Whips

Dole Whips. If you’ve ever been to Disneyland or Walt Disney World, the mere thought of them might make your mouth water. #amiright?

For the uninitiated, Dole Whip (also known as Dole Soft Serve) is a soft serve, dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan frozen dessert created by Dole Food Company. It was introduced to the Disney parks soon after Dole became the official sponsor of Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room (an attraction inside the Adventureland area of Disneyland) in 1986. It’s always been popular but in the past few years has gotten something of a cult following, along the lines of some snacks at another popular Disney park…

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Those Times When The Onion Satirizes Disney Parks & It’s Not All That Far from The Truth

The Onion, as per Wikipedia, is “an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical articles on international, national, and local news. Based in Chicago, the company originated as a weekly print publication on August 29, 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin….The Onion‘s articles cover current events, both real and fictional, satirizing the tone and format of traditional news organizations with stories, editorials, op-ed pieces, and man-in-the-street interviews using a traditional news website layout and an editorial voice modeled after that of the Associated Press.”

The Onion, as per The Onion, is “the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.”

And that pretty much gives you an idea about The Onion ;-).

What can I say…some people love The Onion and some people hate it. And when you’re a hardcore Disney fan, that love/hate thing can become even stronger because not only are they sometimes kind of spot on (that’s when you have to do a double take at the headline to see that, oh yeah, it’s just The Onion), but the popular satire site has not always been kind to The Walt Disney Company, particularly the division of Disney Parks and Resorts. Cases in point…

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Why The Water Rides At Disneyland & Walt Disney World Smell Like They Do

Scientists have discovered that the sense of smell has a stronger link to memory and emotion than any of the other sense. This is why when you smell certain things, it brings your mind back to a moment in the past – the scent of a vacation at the beach, the pine smell of a retreat in the mountains, the scent of the water rides at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Some of you read that last part and may be smiling and nodding your head right now. Others of you may be lifting an eyebrow or cocking your head to the side and saying, “Whaaaa?” For the latter of you, I say, “Yes, really!”

If you’ve been to a Disney park, you’ll know there are a lot of scents there. The smell of the different foods, like Dole Whips, turkey legs, and churros. The scent of the fireworks if the wind is right. The smells they pump into certain attractions, like pine trees, the ocean breeze or oranges. In fact, there are so many smells at WDW and DL that people sell candles that smell like the things people want to “relive” through their olfactory glands :-).

But back to the water rides at Disney…

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What To Do if You Lose Something At A Disney Park In The U.S.

It happens to everyone at at Disneyland or Walt Disney World at some point – they lose something. It could be the cell phone that fell out of your pocket as you stepped out of the Pirates Of The Caribbean boat, your child’s security blanket that somehow wound up behind the bathroom door which you missed as you left your hotel room, or the souvenir bag you left at the restaurant.

I remember when I went on my 3rd trip to WDW (my first trip as an adult), it was “the trip of losing stuff.” I left my (white) nightshirt on the bed and housekeeping picked it up with the sheets (they changed the sheets every day back then). My friend went on the tube slide at River Country and flipped upside down at the bottom, causing her glasses to fall to the bottom of the lake. And she also somehow left her day planner…”somewhere.”

Back then, all you had to do was make a report at the park or hotel where you think you lost wherever the item was, and a process would happen where you might get you your stuff back, or you might not. As it turned out, we did pretty well with the stuff we lost on that trip…although my nightshirt was gone forever, divers found Kim’s glasses and they were returned to her the next day. And can you believe they found her day planner 6 months later and mailed it to her???

Times change, and how things get done change too. Here’s what to do nowadays if you lose something at a Disney park in the U.S.:

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Opinion: Should Disney Get Rid Of FastPass? Maybe. Here’s Why.

FastPass (and a Disneyland/Disney California Adventure version, called MaxPass) is a virtual queuing system created by the Walt Disney Company. Introduced in 1999, it’s a way for theme park guests to avoid long lines for rides and other attractions by reserving a time to come back and wait on a minimal queue, ahead of most people who don’t have a FastPass and are waiting on a “standby” line.

Joe and I have been Disney fans for what feels like forever, and are at an advantageous point of view where we’ve lived long enough to have spent several years both with and without the various versions of Disney’s FastPass service. After all, Joe’s first trip was in the mid-1970s and mine was in the late-1970s, so we both had 20+ years of Disney parks “BFP” (before FastPass). We’ve also lived in the northeast AND in the Orlando area, so we’ve been able to experience Walt Disney World as vacationers and locals. This is significant because visiting Disney is usually a different experience, both with their respective advantages and disadvantages, as a visitor and a local. So we’re able to see things from both sides of the coin. So when a friend of mine posted the following article, I found it to be a VERY interesting read.

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