Jr. Imagineering Update

We are still Imagineering! We had a week and 1/2 of vacation but we didn't forget our goal. School will start soon too, Mom thinks we will go to a homeschool charter this year since we can't afford our old school and this way she can help us better. We will practice the homeschool stuff and all to see if we kids will actually follow along in homeschool. we might be a hand full for mom we are called double trouble around town for a good reason!

We borrowed a bunch of Disney Classic dvds from the library including a Chip & Dale dvd. Some are so classic that Chip has two front teeth and Dale doesn't talk at all. We have to think of the Chip and Dale ride for Critter Country, we don't have a story or anything. We thought up one of Chip and Dale, where you will ride around a forrest and look in at their tree house while they hunt for nuts, annoy Donald, and hide from Pluto.

We haven't heard back from Imagineering yet, but we are hoping we do! We sent two letters now, the second Brother sent one to Audio-Animatronics to ask for advice on where to start for the Mine Car dark ride cars. Also, we asked for a new map to Disneyland so we can draw all over it.

Our dark ride has a audio animatronic dwarf driving the individual mine cars through the mine. They need to look real, talk, and look around. They will have special pexiglass around them so no one gets into the mine where people can't see them and touch them. They could bite. We should program them to bite if a bad person tries to mess with them or tag them or look under their coats to pull their wires.

For our Ode to Walt Disney Railroad, we found the original maps for Disneyland had Edison Square to the right of Main Street going between Main Street and Tomorrowland. If they have anything backstage there, we are going to pretend to put everything underground like a Utilidor, and build on top of it the Ode to Walt Disney. The ride portion of this railroad needs a live, upperlevel view of the real Disneyland Railroad Depot. It also needs space for the model railroads, gallery and shopping. We are adding a retail line of Disneyland model railroad trains and parts. After Brother and Mom went to the National Model Railroad Convention, he really, really wants to buy a model train of his own. He wants to make a model monorail and people mover thingy too. Actually, Mom suggested it, and inventing model rollercoastering. She said, "Why don't we just invent model rollercoastering, where you make a model of a rollercoaster the same way you build a model train?" We think that's the best new idea for our project since we thought up Club Penguin Headquarters. 

In a little bit, we will make an actual schedule and deadlines for our Imagineering projects, blogs and updates so everyone who likes to read this doesn't think we gave up.

The National Model Train Convention

Over the weekend Mom and Brother went to the National Model Train Convention where they learned a lot about model trains and model making.

First, they wanted to check out the trains for our family Imagineering Ode to Walt Disney project. If you don't know, we are Imagineering stuff at home, pretending that we're making real rides and attractions for Disneyland. We are doing our own version of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Car ride smooshed between Fantasyland and Frontierland. We are doing an Ode To Walt Disney, which is a train depot and scale train ride that takes guests through the Carolwood Pacific and various Walt Disney Park's Railroads, along with model railroads of every Disney Park Railroad across the whole world.

To learn more about the train attraction, Brother and Mom went off to learn about model trains. Brother took charge and start asking all the vendors there if they had any Disney Railroad train models or the Bachmann Walt Disney's Carolwood Pacific set; which they found! Then Mom told brother they had no money to buy it and he was bummed, he looked hard for it!

Mom gave brother the flip camera to video tape models he thought were neat, and he took a good one of a very nice mountain, bridge, waterfall display at a booth selling model rock making kits. Mom and brother realized we all need to be learning this stuff if we're going to try and make real models in the garage of each of our attractions! We really need to figure how to make the mountain for our Mine Car ride.

Model trains will be the best bet for making the working models. While we finish up the storyboards, which are taking forever and then some, and Mom finishes up the stories for us, because she once wrote stories so she knows how to work my brother and my ideas in, we are going to start model railroading. Plus, Brother really wants his own model railroad set to play with after going to that convention, and Grandpa is super excited to help.

We are still working on getting that Mine Car story online as soon as we can, until then, that's all for now. I am up way to far past bedtime.

Storyboarding

We are storyboarding. Imagineers start their rides with a story, and work from there. We learned that Imagineers don't just come up with a story, but they make a big whole board full of drawings, stories, pictures and ideas to make an entire story for their ride or attraction. When they get their whole story down, they make a storyboard, and that storyboard helps them design the blueprint for the ride.

We had a story and all, but when were going to design the ride, we got stuck. It was hard to figure out just which way to make the ride turn and twist. Mom was helping us design the ride, but was having trouble. Then she realized that storyboarding was the answer. She has done these before. No, she has used these before, but not drawn them out herself. We are now drawing out a storyboard for our Snow White Mine Car/Mother Lode ride. We can tell you that it takes a very long time to actually draw out each little box with the story.

We're also coming up with a storyboard for the Ode to Walt Disney train depot, but we're focusing on the Snow White ride first. We will keep posting as we go along here. Now, I have to go so I can get back to drawing and drawing and drawing some more.

More to come!