Gravity Falls Costumes

My son and I had the opportunity to go to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at the Magic Kingdom a few weeks ago. I got the tickets last minute, so I had four hours to throw together costumes for the party. My son and I had previously talked about Gravity Falls characters, and knowing that the Wreck It Ralph costumes would be outside our reach in the limited time I had, I was able to make my son into a pretty good Dipper Pines, and myself into a passable Grunkle Stan.

While we were at Not So Scary, we saw a few other people dressed as Dipper and his sister Mabel, but I didn’t see another Grunkle Stan that night.

Overall, I think they turned out pretty good for the time/resources I had.

For my son’s Dipper costume, I found the vest jacket at Ross in the kid’s section for about $10. The hat is a plain white hat I found at Michael’s for $2.99. (One of the Mabels we saw made her brother’s Dipper costume and said she found a plain white trucker hat at Walmart.) The red t-shirt was $4 at Target, and the grey shorts were $12 at Target (but those can be worn all the time, so it was a good buy). The book is a faux leather journal that I glued the 3 hand to.

Movie Review: Wreck It Ralph

Yesterday, the fine folks at The Disney Parks Blog organized a Family Game Day Meet-Up at DisneyQuest with a preview screening of Wreck It Ralph. I was fortunate enough to be invited along with a friend from Twitter and her husband.

If you’re unfamiliar with DisneyQuest, it’s 5 floors and 100,000 square feet of video games and interactive attractions, like CyberSpace Mountain, where you can design a rollercoaster, and then ride it in a simulator with 360 degrees of movement (coaster with 13 loops FTW!).

For the upcoming release of Wreck It Ralph, they’ve added 7 arcade cabinets of Fix It Felix, Jr., the game from where Ralph comes. There was a long line to play these games, and while there’s a cluster of six on the 3rd floor, there’s a “hidden” one on the 4th floor, among the kiddie games.

I’m sure I could talk about the Lego building area that was set up that my son loved, or the Wreck It Ralph cupcakes that they had available, or the cool swag we got in the form of hero medals, or the contests that they had for playing the games.

But we all know you just want a review of Wreck It Ralph. Is it worth seeing? Is it worth seeing on the opening weekend?

Yes and yes!

New Fantasyland: Dress Rehearsal

My son and I got to see parts of the New Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom as they are doing their dress rehearsal. This is their soft opening while they test and adjust the attractions, food and merchandise. Almost everything was up and running except the Be Our Guest restaurant, though they let us walk in to see how it looks. This new area of the Magic Kingdom opens officially December 6th.

We had Le Fou’s Brew at Gaston’s Tavern, which is apple juice slush with Monin Toasted Marshmallow syrup and topped with a passion fruit foam,  and a pork shank, which will probably be as popular as the ubiquitous turkey leg. It’s a pretty hearty meal, and well fit for Gaston’s.

The Enchanting Tales with Belle experience is what every character meet and greet should be. Ariel’s Grotto was done well so that there is plenty of individual time with everyone’s favorite mermaid. The Under the Sea ride is solid, with good audio animatronics, but the queue is awesome.

The attention to detail in the whole land is wonderful, with surprises to see everywhere you look. Along with the already-open Storybook Circus, the new additions to the Magic Kingdom really make you wish every part of the parks were as detailed and lush. The adjacent Tomorrowland could use a tender loving makeover with a fine bristled brush.

Here’s a slideshow of our New Fantasyland experience. The pictures are on Facebook, too, with captions. And, a few were posted on the very awesome Disney Food Blog.

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Wreck It Ralph Costumes!

Disney just released a new trailer for Wreck It Ralph, and it looks great! If you haven’t seen it yet, I’m including it here for your convenience.

Looks fun, right?

While I was at work today, I got to thinking that it might be fun to dress up as Wreck It Ralph for Halloween, and have my son dress up as Fix It Felix. The size differences work for us. So when I got home, I started looking around at how to make those costumes work. And as I was online shopping, I started pinning what I found on Pinterest.

It turns out that Wreck It Ralph is somewhat difficult. I can’t find anything like the orange shirt he wears. I can find an orange short sleeved henley shirt, and maybe that would do fine. I found a Texas shirt that could work, if it didn’t say Texas in huge letters across it. The overalls weren’t easy to find, either, and they aren’t cheap. Here’s what the board looks like:

Magic Kingdom Photo Scavenger Hunt

Many of you know that my son and I got to Walt Disney World an awful lot. We take it for granted, and my son is probably a little spoiled on it… Let’s revise that… My son is very fortunate that we get to go to Walt Disney World so often.

Because of we go so much, a lot of times, we go early and leave early, after doing just one or two things. Special events like the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, or Star Wars Weekends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios will get us to stay longer. It’s rare that we will stay a long time in a park when it’s hot and busy.

But today, we stayed more than 6 hours in the park… and we still only rode one ride. And we had a great time! I made a photo scavenger hunt for my son that had us running all over the Magic Kingdom, trying to find all kinds of things. It was a great way to keep things fresh. Even though we go to the parks all the time, this scavenger hunt was still a challenge for both of us.

Star Wars Galaxy at Disney Hollywood Studios

The Disney’s Star Wars Weekends page on Facebook posted this question about the possibility of getting a CarsLand at Disney’s Hollywood Studios like the one that just opened at Disney California Adventure.

First – I thought that was an official Disney page on Facebook, but it’s obviously not if they’re posting rumors. And then after I saw that, I saw a bunch of errors/typos in previous posts, which sealed that.

Part of me thinks that the CarsLand conjecture makes sense.

Movie Review: Paranorman

Paranorman was the second movie my son and I saw this weekend, and we both liked The Odd Life of Timothy Green better. There are some similarities in the two films… both deal with children who are different from other kids and don’t fit in, both have some takes on bullies. In these themes, Timothy Green deals with them much better, because it seems to have more heart than Paranorman.

There is some heart in Paranorman, and it’s that of the filmmakers. There is amazing technical aptitude in the characters and the world of Paranorman, and you can sense the passion of the artists behind it. The special effects, too, especially in the final scenes are impressive. After the credits, there’s a stop-motion scene where they show an artist creating a Norman model, which is cool, and I think it supports the focus of the studio on the techniques more than the story.

The story is one you’ve seen before, kind of a mix between Monster Squad and Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners. If you’re looking for a similar movie with more scare factor, go with The Frighteners, and if you’re looking for kids fighting supernatural creatures, go with Monster Squad.

Paranorman is a horror movie. My son said it was both creepy and scary. The scary parts are of the jump out and scare you variety. The film was released in 3D, but we opted for one less dimension when we saw it. I bet young kids would especially freak out over the jumping out. There’s also some pretty adult humor for a PG movie. An example: Norman’s uncle wants him to promise to do something and he says, “I want you to swear” and Norman says, “What? Like the F word?” While he doesn’t actually say it, the line seemed really inappropriate in a PG movie. Maybe not quite as bad as the usage of “penisbreath” in E.T., but it’s not the only questionable dialogue in the film.

Overall, the movie was good. It’s a good mix of funny and creepy, and if you enjoy stop motion animation, you’ll love the way they’ve brought it to life.

It will be interesting to see how Frankenweenie does in comparison.