Category: Mr. DAPs
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Dancing with Caballeros
Mickey’s Soundsational Parade is full of incredible talent. Quite often it is easy to notice the characters, the musicians, and people towering above as they dance down the parade route on stilts. However, there are dozens of others that bring the magic to the parade on a daily basis. They are absolutely incredible performers and without them…
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From Death Comes Life
One of my favorite things to see and places to visit is the pier leading out to the SS Palo Alto. This is a cement ship (one of only three) that was built towards the end of World War 1 and never saw action after being launched in May of 1919. She was mothballed in 1929…
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Home of the White Rabbit or the Mad Hatter?
It has always been interesting to me that the Mad Hatter store in Fantasyland really appears to be the White Rabbit’s home. I suppose I could dig into this more and find out why this is but it really has never gone beyond idle speculation before. In fact, just writing about it today takes it…
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Goodbye Tree Over the Train
One of the struggles with having a backyard train can be nature. The very thing which makes the whole backyard train thing so beautiful and intriguing can also be the most frustrating. Queue giant Jacaranda tree in my backyard. A beautiful tree, one of the tallest in the neighborhood, with the unique ability to drop…
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“A moment lasts all of a second, but the memory lives on forever.”
“A moment lasts all of a second, but the memory lives on forever.” – Unknown Yesterday I had the pleasure of getting to spend some time watching the Mad Hatter and Alice in Wonderland making memories at Disneyland. I hadn’t done this for quite some time and really it is a shame. As I stood there…
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Visiting Alice in Wonderland
One of my favorite things to observe at Disneyland are the magical interactions that happen daily throughout the Resort between kids of all ages and characters. On Sunday I was able to observe an adorable interaction between Alice in Wonderland and the girl in yellow. She was completely enthralled with Alice in her own little…
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Let the Snow Rage On
Disneyland has Frozen a bit. Let’s face it, it seems to be everywhere you look and really that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sure, for those of us who visit regularly it can be a bit overwhelming. But let’s face it, there is a reason that there is Frozen stuff all over the place. In…
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The First Attempt at a Garden Railway – Part 3
My garden railway was starting to actually look like a railroad. It had a layout that was now embedded in lovely gravel and wound its way through my backyard. However, it was a little plain. I was given a book for my birthday that went into many different ideas for backyard trains. As I looked…
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Like a Grand and Miraculous Spaceship
Today I woke up thinking about what a new year is. It’s a new start. It’s a chance to hit the reset button in life and choose where to go from a new starting point. It’s a chance to decide and embark on a new adventure! Of course then my mind started wandering to things…
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The First Attempt at a Garden Railway – Part 2
The time had come to actually start building a train in my garden. I had the train. I had the track. I had the power-pack. I had a general vision or plan mapped out on my iPad. I also had figured out where everything would be going into the backyard. Now it was time to…
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The First Attempt at a Garden Railway – Part 1
A year or so ago I visited a friend’s house. It had been a few months between visits and imagine my amazement and wonder when I discovered that he had installed a train in his backyard. It was gorgeous. It wound its way around the entire yard, was embedded into the patio, and had a wireless…
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A Beautiful Night
During Disneyland’s Holiday Time I just can’t get enough of Sleeping Beauty’s Winter Castle at night. It is obviously pretty year round but… add the snow and those magical lights and it goes to the next level. The other night I wandered through the park with my camera and tripod in hand and stopped to…
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It's a Beautiful Small World
Christmas time at the Disneyland Resort really is all about the magic of Christmas lights. Thousands upon thousands of lights are strung throughout the Resort turning an already magical place into something even more incredible. One of the places where a lot of these lights end up is It’s a Small World Holiday. Both inside and…
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It All Started with a Train
As a kid, we moved around a lot. This led to some really interesting experiences for a growing boy but I’m going to narrow all of these down into just one story today. This is the story of where my love of trains originated (at least in my memory). Shortly after my sixth birthday, we…
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Beautiful Night, Beautiful Castle
Sleeping Beauty Castle is always a beautiful focal point of the Disneyland Resort. During the Christmas season though, it becomes even more dazzling. Every night the “snow falls” and it lights up with the beauty of a wintery and snowy Disney magic to become Sleeping Beauty’s Winter Castle. While it looks pretty cool during the…
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It's a Good Time to be a Star Wars Fan
Now is a good time to be a Star Wars fan. With all the excitement going on with the upcoming Star Wars movies, particularly Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, this is the most exciting time to be a Star Wars fan since the mid nineties when there were rumors surfacing about new movies…
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Pluto in the Rain on Main Street
This morning started off with rain coming down. It was absolutely beautiful. So after a quick jaunt to Starbucks, I ran to Disneyland. I arrived just in time to catch the end of the “storm” with just a few scattered sprinkles still coming down. I made my way to the Hub where I found that…
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Queen Elsa, Bring on the Cold!
Frozen is all over the place these days, and it isn’t just Disneyland I’m talking about. While Christmas shopping last night, I saw Frozen merchandise EVERYWHERE. There were dolls, toys, games, clothes, blankets, wrapping paper, bags, cards, Christmas stockings, and decorations… just to name a few things I happened to notice last night. The other…
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A Rainy Day with Tinker Bell and Fawn
Rainy days at Disneyland are always a favorite of mine. A week or two ago we were blessed with a few rainy days so I grabbed my camera and made my way to the park. During one of these visits I saw there was pretty much no line to visit Tinker Bell so I stopped…
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All in a Moment – the End of Mad T Party
One of the things I love so much about photography is the capturing of moments. I could write on and on and on about something and still not capture the emotion of an event. However, I could attend the same event and capture a quick photo (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) that captures and conveys the…
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Welcome Home, Oswald!
In 1928 Walt Disney lost his little not-so-lucky rabbit: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Walt Disney went on to create Mickey Mouse and Oswald went on to appear in several shorts with Universal. His last appearance would be as a cameo in a Woody the Woodpecker short in 1951. He also appeared in several comics through…
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Anna: The Warmth of A Smile
Some smiles can warm the coolest days… On a warm day, they are just frosting to an already lovely day. Last Sunday Anna had a particularly warm and charming smile. This picture was taken during the Frozen pre-parde on Main Street, USA near the firehouse. Anna was having fun goofing around as they floated down…
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Elsa
A new fan favorite at the Disneyland Resort is the Frozen pre-prade. Throughout the summer this pre-parade has been delighting fans of Frozen who don’t want to wait the multiple hours it takes to meet them at their location in Fantasyland. It also has become a fun and quick way to get photos of Elsa…
