With my long hair, I was often referred to as Doug Henning in the '80's.
Once I cut my hair to a non-retarded length, and until about 3 years go, I was constantly mistaken for Gary Oldman, though I do not see the resemblance at all - not one little bit. But one particular lady at DCA was so insistent I was him - and that I give her an autograph - I obliged by signing Mr. Oldman's name. Sheesh.
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Originally Posted by MouseWife
I want to know, the skyride, did someone make that? After reading that it was 99% your items, what did YOU make?? AND the Pirates bed, that is yours??? AWESOME!!!
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Many people thought the suite came pre-Disney decorated by Disney. Um, not so. (
Though there are prints of Disneyland artists' renderings throughout, which will be available at Company D once they gut this building in 2012.). Just about EVERYTHING was installed by me and my crew, from - ahem - concepts of mine, inspired by the suite's unique layout.
So the Skyway was the most time-consuming and difficult item of decoration. Modern-day beach pails and childrens' toys no longer look like the original skybuckets, and I couldn't even find online expensive models of the revised skybuckets. I was so fortunate to locate a paper model of the skyway at disneyexperience.com (
they have papers models of a slew of attractions).
We doubled the size of the parts and painstakingly cut, folded and glued for nearly 40 man-hours of work to make the ten buckets. (I can't imagine what kind of ship-in-a-bottle tools would be needed to make them in the original size - but we needed a larger size in any event for our event purposes).
It was very discouraging work at times. We were able to print out different colors for the buckets, but I'd hoped no one would notice the buckets all had the same number - which would be an error. Oh, until I noticed that number was - astonishingly - 55.
That gave me the encouragement to finish.
Alas, though the sky crew who put together the entire, beautiful, outdoor patio lighting were an amazing bunch - they did not secure the Skyway to my satisfaction - and buckets kept falling all through the night (prompting many jokes about why the Skyway closed).
When I went around repairing various items on Saturday, the Skyway was foremost in my mind (recalling those 40 man hours of construction). But I saved the project for last, hoping the wind would die down at the higher elevations of the 11th floor penthouse. So when I sliced my arm in Toad Hell, the reason I kept screaming "
Fvck" was not because it hurt - but because I instantly knew my necessary trip to the emergency room would mean the Skyway would never be re-commissioned.
But - like many of Disneyland's best effects (the purple smoke from Toad Hall chimneys, the collapsing dry ice "roof" in Indiana Jones) - the Skylight Skyway of 55/50 would be temporary, in this case for the big party only. And in those few hours, it inspired all the laughter, joy and fond remembrances I'd hoped it would.
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More about the decorations in future posts)