Speaker 1: Get in technic technology with tech Stuff from stuff dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and this week I want to talk about
Speaker 1: Disney Magic. Not just Disney Magic, but the Disney Magic,
Speaker 1: the oldest of Disney's cruise ships. And the reason I
Speaker 1: wanted to tackle this topic is that by the time
Speaker 1: you hear this episode, I will have just returned from
Speaker 1: my tenth cruise with Disney. So you might say I'm
Speaker 1: a bit of an addict. I thought it would be
Speaker 1: cool to talk about how the Disney Magic works and
Speaker 1: explore the sort of things that make cruise ships possible. Now,
Speaker 1: before I jump into this show, I just want to
Speaker 1: let you all know Disney had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: me choosing this episode, apart from the fact that I'm
Speaker 1: going on a cruise anyway, this is not a sponsored show.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting any perks for recording it. In fact,
Speaker 1: Disney is not even aware I'm doing this. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: know me from anybody else out there. And I say
Speaker 1: this because I am a Disney fanboy. I'm gonna geek
Speaker 1: out over Disney stuff as well as the cruise ship
Speaker 1: technology stuff. And it's important. You know, I have a
Speaker 1: completely biased opinion, but it comes to me honestly. Now
Speaker 1: that being said, the company, if they decide they want
Speaker 1: to sit be on a cruise, they can do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna turn it down. I love them. I'm
Speaker 1: really hoping that I can actually get a bridge tour
Speaker 1: this this cruise, but they don't tend to do those,
Speaker 1: so if it happens, it will only be because somebody
Speaker 1: took pity on me. All right, So let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about the history of Disney in the cruise industry. Um
Speaker 1: before the Disney Company actually commissioned its own cruise ships,
Speaker 1: it partnered with an existing company called Premier Cruise Line.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen five. Premiere became known as the official
Speaker 1: cruise line of Walt Disney World, and Disney characters would
Speaker 1: appear on Premiere ships. It was one of the things
Speaker 1: that set Premiere apart. Premiere was also known as the
Speaker 1: big Red Boat because some of their ships were big
Speaker 1: and red, big ish, They're not as big as the
Speaker 1: ones that you would see today in the industry, and
Speaker 1: the nickname of its flagship, Starship Oceanic, was the Big
Speaker 1: Red Boat, and it actually became the official name of
Speaker 1: two of their other ships. They actually renamed them because
Speaker 1: both of those ships were older. With the exception of
Speaker 1: one of their ships, the starship Atlantic, which was built
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two, the company's fleet consisted of ships
Speaker 1: built between nineteen fifty five and nineteen seventy, so they
Speaker 1: were a little on the creeky side. The partnership with
Speaker 1: Disney ended in nineteen Premiere would eventually go out of
Speaker 1: business in two thousand and Out of all the ships
Speaker 1: in their fleet, only one still exists, and that is
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. All the others have either been sold for
Speaker 1: scrap or they sank. So Disney had kind of dipped
Speaker 1: its toe in the cruise partnership world. And once that
Speaker 1: partnership with Premier ended, you know, it was an agreement
Speaker 1: to last a certain amount of time, essentially a little
Speaker 1: less than ten years. The Disney Company started to hold
Speaker 1: talks with other cruise lines, including Carnival and Royal Caribbean,
Speaker 1: but neither of those companies could agree to Disney's terms,
Speaker 1: essentially how much money they would have to pay Disney
Speaker 1: to allow Disney characters to appear on those cruise ships.
Speaker 1: By the rumors were that Disney the company was looking
Speaker 1: at creating its own line of cruise ships. Now, the
Speaker 1: actual Disney Cruise Line Department was founded in nineteen and
Speaker 1: Disney commissioned two ships from an Italian shipyard called Finn Cantieri.
Speaker 1: The two ships would become the Disney Magic and the
Speaker 1: Disney Wonder, and according to a website called Hidden Mickey's,
Speaker 1: the Magic cost three fifty million in dollars to build.
Speaker 1: I've also seen that figure go up as high as
Speaker 1: four hundred million dollars to build, So between three fifty
Speaker 1: and four hundred million dollars. So a big, big investment
Speaker 1: on the part of Disney in an area that they
Speaker 1: had not really explored. But they saw an opportunity because,
Speaker 1: as Disney representatives will tell you, the issue with the
Speaker 1: cruise industry was it was mainly geared towards adults and
Speaker 1: a lot of UH senior citizens as well, but not
Speaker 1: so much to families with children. And so they saw
Speaker 1: it as an opportunity to do to the cruise industry
Speaker 1: what they had done with theme parks and hotels and
Speaker 1: other things like that. So they decided to take this plunge. Now,
Speaker 1: Michael Eisner was in charge of Disney at the time,
Speaker 1: and he wanted the ships to have a classic ocean
Speaker 1: liner feel, so something akin to what you would have
Speaker 1: seen back in the old days of ocean liners were
Speaker 1: talking like the early nineteen hundreds, and to take those
Speaker 1: lines to kind of update it with modern accents, but
Speaker 1: to still have that classic style. So that's exactly what
Speaker 1: the engineers did. They started to design this so it
Speaker 1: kind of had this sleek look of a classic ocean liner,
Speaker 1: complete with two smokestacks, even though those were not both necessary.
Speaker 1: More on that in a second. And they decided that
Speaker 1: the interior decoration was going to be in the Art
Speaker 1: Deco style for the Disney Magic the Wonder actually has
Speaker 1: an Art Nouveau style. Now, the ship was constructed in
Speaker 1: two halves. You had the bow and the stern, the
Speaker 1: front and the back. The front half of the ship
Speaker 1: was built at the Ancona shipyard and the back half
Speaker 1: was built at the Margara shipyard. And those two shipyards
Speaker 1: are more than a hundred miles apart from each other.
Speaker 1: So once they finished building out the four half, the
Speaker 1: forward or front half, they had to tow it back
Speaker 1: to the other shipyard, and they did this by placing
Speaker 1: it on a giant kind of floating barge essentially, and
Speaker 1: towed that more than a hundred miles to the other shipyard.
Speaker 1: And then they had to fit the two together. Now,
Speaker 1: remember that this ship is like a small city. It
Speaker 1: has all of these independent systems that make up the ship.
Speaker 1: That includes a water system, so lots of water pipes,
Speaker 1: and electric grid including electric generators, climate control, and more.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything that you would expect to have in
Speaker 1: a nice hotel has to be on the ship, which
Speaker 1: means all those systems have to be self uh self contained,
Speaker 1: and that means that all of this stuff laid out
Speaker 1: had to fit together perfectly. You could not have any
Speaker 1: misalignment or else. The conduits where you would allow electrical
Speaker 1: wires to go through, or the air duct systems or
Speaker 1: the water pipes they wouldn't match up. So they had
Speaker 1: to make it precise and hope that they could fit
Speaker 1: it together exactly the way it needed to. And this
Speaker 1: is not a a small challenge. It's actually pretty tough.
Speaker 1: So once they got to the point where they were
Speaker 1: ready to put the two halves together, each half had
Speaker 1: to be put on a giant rail system and this
Speaker 1: allowed them to very slowly bring the two halves until
Speaker 1: they met in the in the center, and then they
Speaker 1: started to weld the ship together and that's where you
Speaker 1: get the full ship, the Disney Magic. Now, this construction
Speaker 1: project encountered multiple delays throughout the process due to other
Speaker 1: construction projects being a little slow at the shipyards, and
Speaker 1: it meant that Disney had to keep pushing back the
Speaker 1: date of its initial sailing, and UH it ended up
Speaker 1: being almost five months late as a result of this.
Speaker 1: The Magic finally set sail across the Atlantic to its
Speaker 1: home port in Florida or Port Canaveral and was ready
Speaker 1: for its first cruise, UH several months later than it
Speaker 1: was originally planned, and I believe it was July of
Speaker 1: n so a little bit later than what they had hoped.
Speaker 1: At any rate, it does take a long time to
Speaker 1: build one of these ships. There's a lot that goes
Speaker 1: into it. In the design process. You have the imagineers,
Speaker 1: that's the Disney term for the engineers who bring Disney's
Speaker 1: flare into whatever projects they're making. So Disney imagineers are
Speaker 1: responsible for pretty much anything physical that you encounter within Disney.
Speaker 1: So you think about the Disney parks, the imagineers are
Speaker 1: the ones who are designed, who had designed all the theming,
Speaker 1: all the rides, everything that you encounter, an imagineer has
Speaker 1: had a hand in designing the same thing is true
Speaker 1: for the cruise ships, but it meant that they had
Speaker 1: to design things and then shipbuilders actually had to make
Speaker 1: it happen. So it was an interesting relationship because this
Speaker 1: was not something that they had done before. So imagineers
Speaker 1: would typically use three D rendering software to build virtual
Speaker 1: representation of a space that they wanted to create within
Speaker 1: the ship. So you had a virtual model, and then
Speaker 1: you had to plan out how could you achieve this physically,
Speaker 1: and in some cases it might mean that you had
Speaker 1: to go back and redesign. That's why you have to
Speaker 1: use that three D approach so that at least it's
Speaker 1: less complicated than building something out and then realizing it's
Speaker 1: not going to work. Now. Part of that included building
Speaker 1: up spaces specifically for kids. I mean, this is Disney
Speaker 1: we're talking about, and in fact, kids have a couple
Speaker 1: of different areas on a couple of different decks of
Speaker 1: the various Disney cruise ships that are dedicated just for them. Adults,
Speaker 1: apart from the supervising adults are not allowing that space.
Speaker 1: So uh. The worst part is these are some of
Speaker 1: the coolest areas of the ship, and typically you only
Speaker 1: get to see it maybe when you first board. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the Disney allows adults to tour the spaces before the
Speaker 1: ship gets underway, because you might be looking at it
Speaker 1: in order to decide whether your kid will go to
Speaker 1: the Oceaneers Club, for example, and maybe you don't have
Speaker 1: a kid, but maybe you do want to be an Avenger,
Speaker 1: so you go anyway. I'm not saying I've done that.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying I'm not above doing that at any rate.
Speaker 1: A lot of really interesting spaces, and when the imagineers
Speaker 1: were designing these spaces, they had to take concertain considerations
Speaker 1: in mind that you wouldn't necessarily think of for other spaces.
Speaker 1: So they actually built out some rooms that had lower ceilings,
Speaker 1: which makes the kids feel taller because they're in our
Speaker 1: space that is scaled more to their size. They also
Speaker 1: created different stories for different areas, like there's a toy
Speaker 1: story area, there's a uh Pixie area, there's the Avengers area,
Speaker 1: which is the one I really I want to go through,
Speaker 1: And then they are like the Ocean Eers Lab, which
Speaker 1: is more of a science e ocean voyage themed area,
Speaker 1: and all of this had to be done on computers
Speaker 1: first before building out the actual physical uh stuff that
Speaker 1: would fill up these spaces, and then there had to
Speaker 1: be the installation phase. So all this is very technical.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of work on the front end
Speaker 1: before you ever get to a point where a guest
Speaker 1: actually walks onto the ship. Now, the ship's tonnage is
Speaker 1: eighty four thousand tons. That means the ship has the
Speaker 1: volume of eighty four thousand tons. That's typically what tonnage means.
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty big ship, though not as big
Speaker 1: as the Disney Dream or the Disney Fantasy, which are
Speaker 1: two of the younger ships in the Disney Cruise line,
Speaker 1: and of course there are other cruise lines that have
Speaker 1: ships much much larger. So the Magic is nine four
Speaker 1: ft long and one hundred six ft wide at the
Speaker 1: beam that means just the whitest part part of the ship,
Speaker 1: and it's one seventy one and a half feet tall.
Speaker 1: The draft of the ship is twenty five point three
Speaker 1: feet Now the draft refers to the distance from the
Speaker 1: water line to the bottom of the hull. Also known
Speaker 1: as the keel, so you measure that distance and that's
Speaker 1: how you get the draft three ft. Now, when it launched,
Speaker 1: the Magic was one of the largest cruise ships in service.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it was the third largest ship
Speaker 1: in service at the time. Now since then it's been
Speaker 1: eclipsed big time. There's a Lure of the Seas, which
Speaker 1: I believe is the largest cruise ship currently in service
Speaker 1: that's run by the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. That one
Speaker 1: is one thousand, one hundred eighty one ft long and
Speaker 1: two dred eight feet wide with a ton unge of
Speaker 1: two thousand, two hight two tons, So enormous, huge, much
Speaker 1: bigger than the Disney Magic. But when Disney Magic was
Speaker 1: first built, it was considered to be a pretty big ship. Now,
Speaker 1: the Disney Magic has five sixteen cylinder Solzer diesel engines,
Speaker 1: each of which can has an output of fifteen thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred forty eight horsepower. Serious horse power. There, the
Speaker 1: total horse power for the ship is sent two hundred
Speaker 1: forty three. Now that means the Magic's engines have the
Speaker 1: power equivalent to one hundred Formula one race cars running
Speaker 1: full speed. They're also to nineteen megawatt general electric propulsion
Speaker 1: motors that's what actually turns. They are provides the power
Speaker 1: to turn the propellers in the propulsion system. And the
Speaker 1: ship has a fuel capacity of twenty thousand gallons of
Speaker 1: diesel fuel, so it's running on diesel um to run
Speaker 1: these engines, which also provide the electricity for the entire ship.
Speaker 1: And the ship's hull has a special coating on it
Speaker 1: that's designed to actually make it move through the water
Speaker 1: with less resistance, which reduces the amount of work the
Speaker 1: engines have to do in order to move the ship.
Speaker 1: So this was an effort to reduce the fuel consumption
Speaker 1: of the Disney Cruise line ships, and uh also means
Speaker 1: that the engines themselves don't have to do as much work,
Speaker 1: so they don't need to be um, replaced or repaired
Speaker 1: nearly as frequently, although of course every cruise ship out
Speaker 1: there undergoes a period of maintenance. It's called dry dock.
Speaker 1: It's when you bring a ship in you elevated above
Speaker 1: the waterline and you're able to really work on it
Speaker 1: and make sure that it's ship shape. Now, there are
Speaker 1: three bow thrusters and two stern thrusters, each watts and
Speaker 1: the arrangement allows the ship to turn into play turn
Speaker 1: in place without moving forward. So, in other words, you
Speaker 1: can rotate the ship three sixty degrees and not be
Speaker 1: moving forward at the time, which is pretty cool. And
Speaker 1: I've actually seen it done because that's how I've seen
Speaker 1: it done with a hundred eighty degrees, because that was
Speaker 1: how the cruise ship would pull into one of the
Speaker 1: ports of call, the Disney's private island. They would actually
Speaker 1: turn the ship completely around so that you would back
Speaker 1: into the space. I don't think they actually have a
Speaker 1: rear view camera to do that, but maybe they do. Actually,
Speaker 1: they have lots of cameras all over the place in
Speaker 1: order to be able to navigate the ship. Now, like
Speaker 1: I said, the ship has two smoke stacks, but one
Speaker 1: is used for exhaust and the other is decorative and
Speaker 1: actually houses some other stuff in it. Um, so only
Speaker 1: one of the two smoke stacks actually is for exhausting
Speaker 1: smoke from the engines. But they decided that they wanted
Speaker 1: to have the two smoke stacks on the cruise ship
Speaker 1: to give it that classic look. The cruising speed that
Speaker 1: the ship can attain is twenty one and a half
Speaker 1: knots It has a maximum speed of around twenty four knots,
Speaker 1: although I've read that it can go as fast as
Speaker 1: twenty six knots, which might be after The Magic has
Speaker 1: had a couple of renovations. It's been and upgraded, both
Speaker 1: in two thousand thirteen and two thousand and fifteen. More
Speaker 1: on that in a little bit. One of the interesting
Speaker 1: things about the Disney Magic is that they have their
Speaker 1: lifeboats painted a yellow color to match the color of
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse's shoes. This was actually a big deal. The
Speaker 1: US Coastguard has a standard for lifeboats. It's they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be a bright orange, which is considered to be
Speaker 1: one of the most visible colors on the surface of
Speaker 1: the ocean. So if you are in a lifeboat, you
Speaker 1: want to be really visible so that you can be rescued.
Speaker 1: And Disney had to prove to the Coast Guard that
Speaker 1: the yellow they wanted to use was in fact just
Speaker 1: as visible as the orange or else. The Coastguard We've said,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I know you want to have this beautiful
Speaker 1: color because you wanted to fit the theme of your boat,
Speaker 1: but people's safety is more important than theming. But Disney
Speaker 1: was able to prove that the yellow was in fact
Speaker 1: just as visible, and so they were able they were
Speaker 1: allowed to paint are their lifeboats yellow, and in fact
Speaker 1: the cruise ship in general is designed to have the
Speaker 1: color palette of Mickey Mouse, so it's essentially white, black, red,
Speaker 1: and yellow. Uh. It has eleven passenger decks and three
Speaker 1: I think crew only decks, but eleven decks that passengers
Speaker 1: can go on. The decks, of course, are floors, kind
Speaker 1: of like floors of a building. And it has the
Speaker 1: capacity to hold two thousand, four hundred guests, although according
Speaker 1: to some some sources I've read, the actual limit is
Speaker 1: closer to and it has a crew of about nine
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty people, so you have just shy of
Speaker 1: a thousand people working on this ship to make everything go,
Speaker 1: and then another twenty four hundred who are guests. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of people to be on one boat. There
Speaker 1: are eight hundred seventy five state rooms, two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty two of which are inside state rooms, which means
Speaker 1: you don't get a view of the ocean, which is
Speaker 1: kind of sad. But you have six d thirteen that
Speaker 1: are outside state rooms, and out of those, four have
Speaker 1: a veranda, which is really nice. And there are three
Speaker 1: major themed restaurants Lumier's Animator's Palette and what used to
Speaker 1: be parrot Key and is now Kariokas. Plus you have
Speaker 1: an adult's only restaurant called Palo and a buffet restaurant
Speaker 1: called Cabanas. And every restaurant has its own galley attached
Speaker 1: to it. Then a galley is a kitchen, so every
Speaker 1: single restaurant has its own kitchen. Um and on the
Speaker 1: big ships that's seven galleys total. Now, this was actually
Speaker 1: a new approach in cruise ships. A lot of cruise
Speaker 1: ships have a single galley that provides all the food
Speaker 1: for any of the places where you can get get food.
Speaker 1: And in fact, a lot of the cruise ships only
Speaker 1: have one restaurant that you go to. Disney was different
Speaker 1: and had all these different themed restaurants. So by having
Speaker 1: a galley attached to each restaurant and meant that the
Speaker 1: white staff doesn't have to travel a ridiculous distance or
Speaker 1: use escalators or elevators to get food to the guests
Speaker 1: are uh So this was another innovation in the cruise industry.
Speaker 1: In addition, guests rotate through the restaurants, I mean not literally,
Speaker 1: you actually go to a different restaurant each evening. You
Speaker 1: get an assignment when you get to your stateroom that
Speaker 1: tells you which restaurants you go to on which evenings,
Speaker 1: and you travel one to the next and uh, if
Speaker 1: you know. You also get your wait staff to travel
Speaker 1: with you, So the people who are doing your drinks
Speaker 1: and food service go restaurant to restaurant as you do,
Speaker 1: which means they get to know what you like, what
Speaker 1: you don't like, any allergies you might have. This was
Speaker 1: another big innovation in the cruise industry, something that you
Speaker 1: don't see in other cruise lines. So some of the
Speaker 1: innovations that the Disney came up with aren't necessarily technological,
Speaker 1: but they were big changes to the way things had
Speaker 1: been traditionally done within the industry. So those galleys have
Speaker 1: to store a lot of food, and according to Disney,
Speaker 1: on a seven day cruise, passengers consume a total of
Speaker 1: five thousand pounds of beef, ten thousand pounds of chicken,
Speaker 1: twelve hundred pounds of salmon, hundred pounds of shrimp, which
Speaker 1: I will skip because I discovered this year I'm allergic
Speaker 1: to shrimp and it will kill me a thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of lobster tails. I'll also skip that because I found
Speaker 1: out on my first Disney cruise that I'm allergic to lobster.
Speaker 1: That was about seventeen years ago. Fifteen thousand pounds of melant,
Speaker 1: hundred pounds of pineapple, seventy one thousand, five hundred eggs,
Speaker 1: fifty seven thousand, eight hundred twenty cups of coffee, three thousand,
Speaker 1: one twenty five gallons of soft drinks, twelve thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred eighty five bottles or cans of beer, and twenty
Speaker 1: seven hundred bottles of wine and champagne. And that, my friends,
Speaker 1: is a party. Also the cruise I'm I'm going to
Speaker 1: go on that I've already been on by the time
Speaker 1: you hear this is a twelve day cruise, so those
Speaker 1: numbers are even higher for my trip. For the larger
Speaker 1: ships essentially comes down to having to prepare twenty thousand
Speaker 1: meals a day, so that means that these galleys have
Speaker 1: to be outfitted to do that, and that includes these
Speaker 1: huge industrial sized ranges, ovens, boilers, all sorts of equipment
Speaker 1: that is of enormous size to allow for simultaneous preparation
Speaker 1: of hundreds of dishes. Some of the stuff they'll do beforehand,
Speaker 1: like for sauces, they'll actually make sauce by putting all
Speaker 1: the ingredients in these huge boilers that can hold gallons
Speaker 1: of sauce at a time, and they'll have it cooked
Speaker 1: down overnight. I actually have done tours of the galleys
Speaker 1: aboard these Disney ships and they are incredibly impressive. They
Speaker 1: are enormous. They have to be spotless. I mean the
Speaker 1: Disney Disney in general prides itself on trying to maintain
Speaker 1: a clean environment as best it can. The kitchens are
Speaker 1: are amazing in that respect. You will also see some
Speaker 1: of the largest cook where you've ever seen in your life,
Speaker 1: unless you're in the military, in which case you'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with that um And it's laid out in
Speaker 1: such a way to be as efficient as possible and
Speaker 1: allow for a massive amount of traffic because you have
Speaker 1: the weight staff coming through to pick up the finished
Speaker 1: dishes and take them out to the various tables. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you've got the cooks actually actively working on the food.
Speaker 1: So seeing this enormous amount of technology all in one place.
Speaker 1: Even though it's technology, we're all familiar with on some level.
Speaker 1: The kitchen stuff is not like it's super high tech
Speaker 1: kitchen stuff, but just seeing it on that scale is
Speaker 1: incredibly impressive. And if you do ever take a cruise
Speaker 1: and they have a galley tour, I mean it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be a Disney cruise, any cruise and they
Speaker 1: have a galley tour, I encourage you to try and
Speaker 1: take that because it's really an interesting experience to see
Speaker 1: how behind the scenes things have to happen in a
Speaker 1: roor for you to be able to get your dinner.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty phenomenal. Now, out of the major restaurants,
Speaker 1: Animator's Palette is probably the most technically sophisticated in the
Speaker 1: original incarnation aboard the Disney Magic. The way this worked
Speaker 1: was you walked into Animator's Palette and the restaurant starts
Speaker 1: out with just everything in black and white. The table cloths,
Speaker 1: the walls, the columns, which were designed to look like
Speaker 1: paint brushes. Everything's in black and white. Even the white
Speaker 1: staff's outfits were all in black and white. And as
Speaker 1: you sat down to dinner and dinner commenced, you would
Speaker 1: start to hear music from various Disney movies. And if
Speaker 1: you looked around the restaurant, you would see that there
Speaker 1: were portraits from Disney movies, all in black and white,
Speaker 1: all around you, some of which were static portraits. They
Speaker 1: were just they were drawn essentially onto the walls, but
Speaker 1: they had had a frame set around them. Others were
Speaker 1: actually display on l e ED television screens essentially, and
Speaker 1: if you listen to the music and you recognize where
Speaker 1: it was from, you could actually look for the corresponding
Speaker 1: images on the walls and slowly color would seep in. Now,
Speaker 1: with the LED screens, that's pretty simple. You just you know,
Speaker 1: you have a little animation program that allows us a
Speaker 1: black and white sketch to be infused with color. But
Speaker 1: for the static portraits, what they used were fiber optic
Speaker 1: cables that were behind the walls. So you have a
Speaker 1: computer system that is timed with the soundtrack for the dinner,
Speaker 1: and as certain songs play, the computer sends the command
Speaker 1: to light up certain fiber optic lines and those portraits
Speaker 1: would slowly go from black and white to color. UH
Speaker 1: animator's pett has changed quite a bit since the renovation
Speaker 1: that happened in two thousand thirteen, where a lot of
Speaker 1: these static displays were removed and new L E D
Speaker 1: screens were put in place. So I'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that when I get to the renovation
Speaker 1: side of things. But this was one of those experiences
Speaker 1: that people really felt had the Disney touch. You walked in,
Speaker 1: you sat down, the restaurant transforms around you, even so
Speaker 1: much that the wait staff would change into colorful outfits.
Speaker 1: They would go backstage essentially and change it to their
Speaker 1: colorful outfits, come back out, and this would be the
Speaker 1: big dessert celebration part of the dinner. And it was incredible.
Speaker 1: It's certainly like you might if you're if you're a grouch,
Speaker 1: you might roll your eyes at such a thing. But
Speaker 1: to see all the families and kids get really excited
Speaker 1: when this transformation happens, It's it's like going to Disney
Speaker 1: World for the first time and having that experience of discovery.
Speaker 1: Now I've done this, it will be ten times by
Speaker 1: the time you hear this. So for me, I still
Speaker 1: enjoy it, but there's not a whole of discovery left
Speaker 1: for me at this point. That said, I still think
Speaker 1: it's one of those experiences that really sets the Disney
Speaker 1: cruise line apart. Because it's pure Disney um. There are
Speaker 1: two theaters aboard the Disney Magic. One of them is
Speaker 1: specifically for live performances, although they'll also show movies in
Speaker 1: that one, and the other one is specifically for movies,
Speaker 1: although they'll also hold live conference type things in there,
Speaker 1: like sometimes they'll have special guests aboard the cruise ship
Speaker 1: that might give a talk in the second theater. So
Speaker 1: the big live action theater is the Walt Disney Theater
Speaker 1: and the cinematic theater is the Buena Vista Theater Um.
Speaker 1: So the live action one can set around nine hundred
Speaker 1: people and the Buena Vista one about two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty or so, and uh, they're both really impressive. In fact,
Speaker 1: the the Walt Disney Theater has a lot of different
Speaker 1: interesting technologies behind it. It's got a stage that's about
Speaker 1: forty ft wide, really impressive considering it's on a boat,
Speaker 1: and it has an advanced fly system which doesn't involve
Speaker 1: zippers necessarily anyway. A fly system in theatrical terms is
Speaker 1: a term for a rigging system, and the rigging system
Speaker 1: is a bunch of ropes and pulleys and they're meant
Speaker 1: to do things like move curtains or lights or scenery
Speaker 1: and sometimes even people. So if you've ever seen a
Speaker 1: show where a person is in a flight harness and
Speaker 1: they're flying around, that's because they're part of the fly system.
Speaker 1: And of course in Disney that happens a lot. You've
Speaker 1: got characters like Peter Pan who fly around over the stage,
Speaker 1: so they are part of this or dependent upon this
Speaker 1: pretty impressive flight system or fly system. The stage also
Speaker 1: has several lifts. Uh, So they have lifts that can
Speaker 1: that can elevate or recess below the stage. There's a
Speaker 1: storage area below the stage where scenery can can be
Speaker 1: or or actually characters can wait so that they can
Speaker 1: dramatically appear on stage that being lifted out from underneath.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's really pretty incredible to think about that.
Speaker 1: You're on a moving platform, you're on a ship, and
Speaker 1: the ship is at sea, and you have these theatrical
Speaker 1: elements that have to be placed on elevators to go
Speaker 1: up or down. So you might think, well, how do
Speaker 1: they make sure stuff doesn't slide around if the ship
Speaker 1: is rolling a little bit, And there are two things
Speaker 1: that they do. One is that the stage itself has
Speaker 1: tracks built into it, and the scenery can be placed
Speaker 1: on these tracks. They look like almost like if you
Speaker 1: remember old slot cars, it looks kind of like the
Speaker 1: slots for slot car racing. And you set the scenery
Speaker 1: into these and you can even have it all computerized
Speaker 1: and automated so that the scenes can come on and
Speaker 1: off through a computer control, uh, but that the tracks
Speaker 1: actually limit where the scenery can move so that way
Speaker 1: it doesn't just roll all over the stage if the
Speaker 1: sees get a little choppy. The other thing they can
Speaker 1: do is they can also alter the shows so they
Speaker 1: can take out stuff that isn't necessary for the show
Speaker 1: if the sea is acting up a bit. So what
Speaker 1: they'll do is they'll they'll simplify a sequence so that
Speaker 1: there's not as many elements on the stage, or they
Speaker 1: might remove some of the dance moves that the performers
Speaker 1: need to do so that they aren't endangering themselves while
Speaker 1: they're trying to perform. And so it's a combination of
Speaker 1: changing the performance itself and depending upon this technology. If
Speaker 1: you talk to people in theater, they often will refer
Speaker 1: to the cruise ship stages being as advanced as something
Speaker 1: you would see on a state of the art stage
Speaker 1: on Broadway or London's West End. That's the amount of
Speaker 1: detail that Disney put into this stuff, including things like
Speaker 1: l E. D s that are inside the the ceiling
Speaker 1: where you'll get a starlight effect inside the theater. It
Speaker 1: creates this more immersive experience for the audience. They also
Speaker 1: have pyrotechnic capabilities, so you'll actually get some fireworks in
Speaker 1: some of the shows. And these are all things that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily think to find on a cruise ship
Speaker 1: or even just a regular theater theatrical stage. I've got
Speaker 1: a chance to do a behind the scenes tour of
Speaker 1: the stage as well. Disney used to do a lot
Speaker 1: more behind the scenes stuff, um several like more than
Speaker 1: a decade ago now, and I took those opportunities to
Speaker 1: take those tours. Is really interesting to see how they
Speaker 1: made as much use of the space as possible. This
Speaker 1: theater doesn't have very much wingspace, so everything has to
Speaker 1: go either up or back or down from the stage
Speaker 1: because there's not really a whole lot of room stage
Speaker 1: left or stage right. And it also showed how technical
Speaker 1: these shows, where they had to be timed just right
Speaker 1: for multiple reasons. They had to be time just right,
Speaker 1: so that the scenery and the lighting and the effects
Speaker 1: are all coming on at the right time. So you
Speaker 1: have all these very sophisticated computer systems that keep all
Speaker 1: of that um synchronized properly, and you also have the
Speaker 1: time it right. Because of the schedule that people have
Speaker 1: in the evening, you would either be coming from dinner
Speaker 1: and seeing a show, or you have see the show
Speaker 1: and then go to dinner, and you don't want anything
Speaker 1: to run too long and interfere with the rest of
Speaker 1: the schedule. So it's really cool to see how they
Speaker 1: had set up these computer systems that were all specifically
Speaker 1: designed for each show. And keep in mind, if it's
Speaker 1: a long cruise, they do multiple shows. They do two
Speaker 1: shows a night for the two different seatings that they
Speaker 1: have for dinner. There's an early seating that kids tend
Speaker 1: to go to and then they go see the show afterward,
Speaker 1: and then there's the late seating that adults tend to
Speaker 1: go to. They see the show earlier in the night,
Speaker 1: they see it before dinner, and that means that you
Speaker 1: have to have a sophisticated technical system that can handle
Speaker 1: all of the needs of each show, do it twice
Speaker 1: a night, and then be switched over for the following night,
Speaker 1: and it is really neat to see this stuff backstage.
Speaker 1: If you ever get a chance to check that out,
Speaker 1: you should. There are also several documentaries more or less
Speaker 1: commercials for the Disney Cruise line that do show you
Speaker 1: some of the behind the scenes stuff, and it's cool. Sadly,
Speaker 1: most of them are pretty limited in what they show you,
Speaker 1: so if you ever get a chance to actually do
Speaker 1: a behind the scenes tour, I highly recommend it because
Speaker 1: it is really cool to see how they put this
Speaker 1: stuff together. And keeping in mind, this is all on
Speaker 1: a ship that's moving around. I as a performer, I've
Speaker 1: done some stage work. I've done musicals where I have
Speaker 1: to dance and sing. I'm not great at it, and
Speaker 1: to think about having to do that on a stage
Speaker 1: that's actually moving is terrifying. So let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the other technical stuff about this ship, not just
Speaker 1: the theater, which obviously I'm a huge fan of, but
Speaker 1: the actual things that make the ship itself work. The
Speaker 1: most technically complicated area of the ship is undoubtedly the bridge.
Speaker 1: The bridge of the ship is where the ship's senior staff,
Speaker 1: who are in charge of the the systems that keep
Speaker 1: the ship running and navigate navigation as well as as
Speaker 1: actual steering the ship. All of that is located on
Speaker 1: the bridge, and then you have other departments that are
Speaker 1: obviously very important where these those officers would be located elsewhere,
Speaker 1: they would not be on the bridge. That's where your
Speaker 1: ship's captain is going to be most of the time.
Speaker 1: And if you were to take a look at it,
Speaker 1: look a lot like the Star Trek Enterprise set. I
Speaker 1: mean you have these different consoles with computer screens and
Speaker 1: lots of complicated looking controls, and they're all very important
Speaker 1: for the control and and safe operation of the ship.
Speaker 1: There are stations for communications, navigation, and other critical systems
Speaker 1: all on the bridge, and you'll see lots of screens
Speaker 1: showing stuff like current sea conditions, whether any sort of
Speaker 1: naval traffic that's going through the area, ships status, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. They do have a ship's wheel, so
Speaker 1: you could stand behind the wheel and use the wheel
Speaker 1: to steer the ship. But they also have an option
Speaker 1: to route all the ship controls into a joystick, so
Speaker 1: you could actually have the thrust, the steering, all of
Speaker 1: that in a single joystick, which is particularly useful if
Speaker 1: you are maneuvering in or out of a dock. You
Speaker 1: can also hand over controls to a land based system
Speaker 1: if necessary. But it's really interesting to see that all
Speaker 1: of these complex controls like the thrusters and the the
Speaker 1: steering and all of these other elements can be boiled
Speaker 1: down to a single joystick control when necessary. In normal
Speaker 1: up rations, you wouldn't be using that, but for something
Speaker 1: where you're using precise movements and you're trying to maneuver
Speaker 1: so that you can DOC or something similar, then it
Speaker 1: becomes necessary. They also have a semaphore flag station. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cruise ships still uses semaphore flags in case other
Speaker 1: communication tools are unavailable or not working. So semaphore you've
Speaker 1: probably seen it, the idea of holding flags that have
Speaker 1: symbols on them and then you move your arms in
Speaker 1: a particular way. It usually looks very robotic, very stiff,
Speaker 1: but those are specific ways of communicating messages to other
Speaker 1: ships when your communications tools have otherwise died down. It's
Speaker 1: all visual based and you can send messages like we're
Speaker 1: in distress or um you know, uh, you know, we've
Speaker 1: got uh, we need some help, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And they have a whole cabinet filled with the various
Speaker 1: semaphore flags they would need in order to communicate at
Speaker 1: any part of the world, which is pretty cool that
Speaker 1: they have the low tech version of long distance communication
Speaker 1: along with the more high tech versions as well, because
Speaker 1: you want to have some redundancy in those when you're
Speaker 1: talking about more than two thousand guests, you've got to
Speaker 1: have those redundant systems in place just in case something
Speaker 1: goes wrong. There's also apparently a bridge simulator for the
Speaker 1: kids in Ocean Quest, but that's a kid's only area,
Speaker 1: so that's one of those things I've heard about but
Speaker 1: I've never actually seen, because despite my sense of humor
Speaker 1: and my general personality, I am not a child, so
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to go there. But they apparently have
Speaker 1: a live camera feed from the bridge that serves as
Speaker 1: the vision they see like the they have windows or
Speaker 1: actually their displays, but they look like windows up in
Speaker 1: front of them, and that's coming from the live camera
Speaker 1: feed from the bridge. And then you have controls that
Speaker 1: you can use as a kid that simulate the way
Speaker 1: it would work if you were actually on the bridge
Speaker 1: of the ship itself, which sounds so cool that I
Speaker 1: wish that all the staterooms had one of these because
Speaker 1: I would play with it. But again I'm not allowed
Speaker 1: to go there, so I haven't been able to experience
Speaker 1: this myself. Some other interesting technical details. When Disney Magic anchors,
Speaker 1: when they have to lower the anchor, they're lowering an
Speaker 1: anchor that weighs twenty eight thousand, two hundred pounds, So
Speaker 1: imagine the torque necessary on the motor to be able
Speaker 1: to lift twenty two hundred pounds worth of anchor. The
Speaker 1: ship has seven propellers. There has two primary propellers and
Speaker 1: then five thruster propellers. I mentioned the thrusters earlier. You
Speaker 1: have two in the stern and three in the bow.
Speaker 1: The two primary propellers weigh eighteen tons each. They are
Speaker 1: enormous and heavy, and in order to limit the amount
Speaker 1: of rolling that the ship does. Rolling is the side
Speaker 1: to side motion, like if you're looking for meaning you're
Speaker 1: looking forward from the position you are in on the ship.
Speaker 1: Rolling would be the left right mission the important starboard
Speaker 1: rising and lowering, as opposed to the fore and aft
Speaker 1: that's rocking. So you can rock and roll on one
Speaker 1: of these ships. The stabilizers are meant to reduce that rolling.
Speaker 1: They are actually two large wings that can retract into
Speaker 1: the ship or extend outward if the seas start getting
Speaker 1: choppy and it's beneath the waterline, so you don't see
Speaker 1: it as a passenger, but beneath the waterline, these two
Speaker 1: wings extend outward and create some stabilization and they look
Speaker 1: like plane wings and they're they're pretty big. So they
Speaker 1: according to Disney, they reduce roll dramatically. They actually set
Speaker 1: up to ninety degrees, which is pretty amazing and I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure how that's possible, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: they are meant to reduce that rolling so that you
Speaker 1: don't get that sea sick feeling walking around inside and
Speaker 1: being rocked all over the place. Um. I am not
Speaker 1: prone to sea sickness, so I haven't really had an
Speaker 1: issue with it, apart from I think one cruise where
Speaker 1: for some reason I was affecting me. But I do
Speaker 1: know that even with the stabilizers, some folks are a
Speaker 1: little susceptible to that. So if you ever do go
Speaker 1: on a cruise, look at the drama mine that can
Speaker 1: help you out a lot. Now, one of the other
Speaker 1: things you have to think about is when you're on
Speaker 1: a ship and you're out at sea, you are a
Speaker 1: completely self contained community, and that means you have to
Speaker 1: figure out how you deal with other stuff like garbage
Speaker 1: and waste, and how do you conserved water and energy
Speaker 1: so that you're not being wasteful. So one of the
Speaker 1: things they do is they actually have a way of
Speaker 1: collecting the condensation from air conditioning. So as air conditioners
Speaker 1: work and water condenses, you know, water from the atmosphere
Speaker 1: condenses on the equipment, they can actually collect that water.
Speaker 1: They harvest it, and they use that water to wash
Speaker 1: the decks, and they also use it in the laundry system.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly fine. It gets filtered through and everything. It's
Speaker 1: just condensed water from the atmosphere is actually pretty clean stuff.
Speaker 1: But Disney estimates that this approach saves them up to
Speaker 1: twenty two point three million gallons of freshwater every year,
Speaker 1: so it's a pretty interesting way to get around the
Speaker 1: issue of how do you deal with all of these
Speaker 1: needs without wasting fresh water. The ship can also distill
Speaker 1: one two hundred tons of fresh water from seawater every day,
Speaker 1: and the total potable water storage capacity aboard the ship
Speaker 1: is eighty two thousand gallons. They also recycle used cooking oil,
Speaker 1: so they go through about two and sixty four gallons
Speaker 1: of cooking oil every week. Now that oil is taken
Speaker 1: by a company called the Bahamas Waste Management Company and
Speaker 1: they converted into bio diesel. They also have a partnership
Speaker 1: with BMW and there's several BMW vehicles that run on
Speaker 1: this biodiesel UH in the Bahamas. Disney estimates that recycles
Speaker 1: nine hundred tons of aluminum, paper, plastic, and other odd
Speaker 1: recyclable stuff every year from their cruise line. Now, going
Speaker 1: back to the Disney Magic and talking about its original cruises,
Speaker 1: it sets sail and it's made in voyage on July
Speaker 1: out of Port Canaveral, Florida, and originally it only sailed
Speaker 1: for three or four day cruises. In fact, the first
Speaker 1: time I ever went on one, it was a four
Speaker 1: day cruise. Then a year later the Disney Wonder joined
Speaker 1: the fleet. The Disney Wonder and the Disney Magic are
Speaker 1: nearly identical. The theming is different. It's Art Deco and
Speaker 1: one Art Nouveaux and another. Some of the spaces are
Speaker 1: themed a different way, like the different nightclubs and stuff
Speaker 1: that you can go to have different themes. The main
Speaker 1: restaurant on the Disney Magic is Loomier's. The main one
Speaker 1: on the Disney Wonder is Triton's. Um helmsman Mickey is
Speaker 1: on a is in a statue in the lobby on
Speaker 1: the Magic and Aerial, the Little Mermaid is on the Wonder,
Speaker 1: But otherwise, apart from some superficial differences, they're largely the same.
Speaker 1: So once the Wonder came online, it started doing the
Speaker 1: three and four day cruises, and the Magic began to
Speaker 1: do seven day cruises, which meant that Disney had to
Speaker 1: come up with all new ways of entertaining guests and
Speaker 1: feeding them and making sure they had enough variety on
Speaker 1: their menus so that people weren't just tired of eating
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over. So it came up
Speaker 1: with new challenges. In the Magic went in for a
Speaker 1: massive facelift. Disney actually called it a reimagining, which makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense when their engineers are called imagineers. Now, this
Speaker 1: time they took it to the Navantia shipyards in Cadiz, Spain,
Speaker 1: so they weren't at the same place that they were
Speaker 1: when the ship was being constructed, and there was another
Speaker 1: dry dock period in two thousand and fifteen that updated
Speaker 1: a few more features. The two thousand thirteen dry Duck
Speaker 1: lasted two months and involved taking apart about eighty per
Speaker 1: cent of the ship for upgrades, including stripping the ship
Speaker 1: completely of paint. So you can see pictures of the
Speaker 1: Disney Magic and Dry Duck from and it looks pretty
Speaker 1: pretty banged up because all the pain has been removed.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, they upgraded the engines aboard the Magic
Speaker 1: to be more efficient and reduce fuel consumption further along
Speaker 1: with that special coding on the whole. And one practical
Speaker 1: addition to the ship was the duck tail and this
Speaker 1: was not Donald Duck reference. The duck tail is an
Speaker 1: industry term. It's essentially a tank that's placed in the
Speaker 1: back of the ship that adds bulliancy, and it's distributed
Speaker 1: so that it provides bulliancy without making the ship list
Speaker 1: to either side. This is really important because during this
Speaker 1: renovation period they added a lot of features onto the
Speaker 1: Disney Magic which increased the weight of the ship, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't built to hold that much weight, so they
Speaker 1: had to adjust the design of the ship in order
Speaker 1: to account for that. To account for the change, Disney
Speaker 1: added a second water slide. There was already one small
Speaker 1: water slide, which they actually replaced and made a slightly
Speaker 1: larger one. Uh. And this new water slide, called the
Speaker 1: Aqua dunk is a is a a slide that's designed
Speaker 1: to do a pretty rapid drop into water. UH. It's
Speaker 1: actually a twisty slide. It goes two twelve feet and
Speaker 1: twists that way, and part of that includes a twenty
Speaker 1: ft clear section that extends out over the side of
Speaker 1: the ship and over the ocean. So for a twenty
Speaker 1: foot stretch of that, you're directly over the ocean. You
Speaker 1: can look down and see the ocean about a hundred
Speaker 1: feet below you. Sliding down takes about five seconds, so
Speaker 1: you have to look fast. It's actually a really tough
Speaker 1: thing to have water slides on a ship. This is
Speaker 1: another engineering challenge. Water slide technology is pretty simple. You
Speaker 1: pump water up to the top of the slide. You
Speaker 1: let the water go down using gravity as your main
Speaker 1: force to the bottom, and then you collect the water,
Speaker 1: filter it, pump it back up. Not a whole complicated
Speaker 1: technology there, but the engineering when you're talking about a
Speaker 1: water slide on a cruise ship is much harder. And
Speaker 1: the reason for this is that cruise ships can twist
Speaker 1: and torque, they can bend in different ways. They also
Speaker 1: can expand and contract because the body of the ship
Speaker 1: is made out of metal, and all of these mean
Speaker 1: putting extra stresses on what is supposed to be a
Speaker 1: water type tight water slide. So if you want a
Speaker 1: watertight slide and you're gonna have all of these different
Speaker 1: motions to take into account, you have to build it
Speaker 1: on a very special material, and you have to figure
Speaker 1: out a support system that will move along with the
Speaker 1: ship while keeping the integrity of the slide intact. On
Speaker 1: top of that, you have engines running at different levels
Speaker 1: throughout the cruise, which means you're going to have vibrations
Speaker 1: sent through the ship. And yes, if you're quiet and
Speaker 1: you're in a quiet spot, you can feel the vibration
Speaker 1: from the engines pretty much anywhere on the ship. Of course,
Speaker 1: you can feel it better when you're closer to where
Speaker 1: the engines are, but if you're if you're very quiet
Speaker 1: and you and you just you know, touch a wall,
Speaker 1: you can pretty much feel the vibrations. Well, that slide
Speaker 1: has to take that into account to you are constantly
Speaker 1: being rattled. So this was actually a pretty tough challenge
Speaker 1: for the imagineers to create a slide that was fun
Speaker 1: and safe and would be resilient to these different stresses
Speaker 1: on it, and I think that's pretty impressive. One of
Speaker 1: the other changes they made was to the ship's horn. Originally,
Speaker 1: the horn only played the first few notes of when
Speaker 1: You Wish upon a Star, And if you're a Disney
Speaker 1: nut like me and you hear it for the first
Speaker 1: time on your first cruise, it's a pretty phenomenal experience.
Speaker 1: You you are surprised and delighted to hear this little
Speaker 1: Disney touch early on in your cruise experience. It's also
Speaker 1: fun to see all the families and kids kind of
Speaker 1: light up at it. Uh. These days, when I go
Speaker 1: into Disney cruise, I see a lot of returning cruisers
Speaker 1: because you can you can tell the more cruises you
Speaker 1: go on, the different lanyard you will get, like, um,
Speaker 1: you'll have a silver level, of Gold level, Platinum level,
Speaker 1: and I just went on my platinum cruise. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I see a lot of returning guests. So the ship's
Speaker 1: horn doesn't have quite the same effect that it used
Speaker 1: to but the upgrade allowed it them to create new
Speaker 1: tunes for the horn to play, and they're all Disney
Speaker 1: related or uh. One of the Disney properties are property
Speaker 1: owned by Disney. Like Star Wars, there's an Imperial March
Speaker 1: horn now as well. Also, this is kind of dorky
Speaker 1: but awesome, there is a physical button to sound the
Speaker 1: ship's horn. You have to make an announcement first to
Speaker 1: let people know, Hey, by the way, we're gonna sound
Speaker 1: the horns, so be prepared for that. But the button
Speaker 1: itself is on a console and around the button is
Speaker 1: a little frame in the shape of Mickey Mouse ears.
Speaker 1: So the buttons in the center and you've got the
Speaker 1: two ears on either side. And I know it's dorky,
Speaker 1: but I love Disney, so I think it's awesome and
Speaker 1: I want to push that button so badly. Um, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to resist it. Uh. That of course
Speaker 1: is on the bridge, so it's right there along with
Speaker 1: all the other controls. There's a console area where there's
Speaker 1: the ship's horn and you usually sound that whenever you're
Speaker 1: entering or leaving a dock area the parent Key restaurant.
Speaker 1: During this renovation period, the two one was changed at
Speaker 1: that time. So parent Key, which you can no longer
Speaker 1: go to, had a Caribbean theme. Um actually, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The Disney Wonder might still have parent Key, but I
Speaker 1: haven't been on the Wonder in years, so I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: But the Magic the parent Key is gone. So I
Speaker 1: had a Caribbean theme. It was a lot of the
Speaker 1: cuisine was Caribbean in in inspiration. They have now replaced
Speaker 1: that with a restaurant called Kariokas, and Karaokas is named
Speaker 1: after Jose Karaoka, a Donald Duck character in the Three
Speaker 1: Caballeros cartoon. I don't know why I am suddenly adopting
Speaker 1: an accent here, but the Three Caballeros cartoon is a
Speaker 1: very fun classic Disney cartoon, and so the The Three
Speaker 1: Caballeros takes place in South America, and the cuisine at
Speaker 1: Karaokas is largely influenced by the food of Brazil. So
Speaker 1: it's a different change, different style of cuisine, and they
Speaker 1: did different theming, different lights in order to give it
Speaker 1: this much what a pretty large change in identity. And
Speaker 1: another space that got a major overhaul was the ocean
Speaker 1: Eers Club. That's when they ended up being able to
Speaker 1: incorporate stuff like Marvel Avengers and toy story things that
Speaker 1: weren't as prominent back in the late nineties when they
Speaker 1: were building the ship in the first place. So, uh,
Speaker 1: when you go to like the or when your kid
Speaker 1: essentially goes to the Avengers Academy, they can train to
Speaker 1: become a superhero. Nowhere yet, if Captain America whispers hell
Speaker 1: Hydra to each recruit, that's a reference to a storyline
Speaker 1: that's going on right now in Marvel that I'm not
Speaker 1: crazy about. I also wonder if the Captain America aboard
Speaker 1: the Disney cruise ships is getting any flak about being
Speaker 1: a secret Hydra agent because they do have, you know,
Speaker 1: lots of different Disney characters aboard these various ships, including
Speaker 1: Marvel characters. Typically it's it's Captain America. UM. They've also
Speaker 1: had Star Wars characters as well. They've done Star Wars
Speaker 1: themed ship cruises. I have not gone on one of those,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that I also love Star Wars as
Speaker 1: well as Disney. UM. I did not do one of
Speaker 1: those yet by stress yet. Now. One of the other
Speaker 1: changes they made was that Animator's palette. I mentioned the
Speaker 1: fiber optics static displays earlier, the ones that were just
Speaker 1: black and white sketches of various Disney characters, they couldn't
Speaker 1: change because they were built into the wall. But then
Speaker 1: the fiber optics would allow color to come into the picture,
Speaker 1: and so they would change from black and white to color,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't change what the portrait was of, Right,
Speaker 1: like a picture of of of Ballue, the bear from
Speaker 1: the Jungle Book is always going to be blue the bear,
Speaker 1: it would never change into anything else. When they did
Speaker 1: the renovation, they pulled out some of that and swapped
Speaker 1: in LED screens, and now you get a different experience.
Speaker 1: So instead of it just being images that go from
Speaker 1: black and white to color on the screens, you'll see
Speaker 1: sketches start to appear on the various portraits of various
Speaker 1: Disney characters. And as the dinner progresses, you get more details,
Speaker 1: you get color, you get animation, um, and they change
Speaker 1: over time, so you're not looking at just a an
Speaker 1: evolving sketch of a single character. It swaps as the
Speaker 1: dinner goes on. Uh, And again it ends up being
Speaker 1: kind of a show. It's not just dinner, it's also
Speaker 1: a performance, which is kind of cool. UM at the
Speaker 1: end of one of the dinner's an Animator's palett. If
Speaker 1: you go twice, if your cruise is such that you
Speaker 1: go to Animator's Pallett two times, the second time, they
Speaker 1: have a special show where all the guests are invited
Speaker 1: to draw a character on a piece of paper, and
Speaker 1: all those pieces of paper are taken backstage and scanned
Speaker 1: into a system, and then when you watch the show
Speaker 1: at the end, these characters are animated and they appear
Speaker 1: on screen. So a character you drew will appear on
Speaker 1: screen and dance around and move about. The way they
Speaker 1: do this is they have special blocks set aside that
Speaker 1: you draw in, things like legs and arms and hands
Speaker 1: and a head and a body and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And when they in it, each of those blocks is
Speaker 1: um design in such a way that it's considered to
Speaker 1: be a joint, right like the shoulders or the hips
Speaker 1: or whatever. And so when it's animated, it animates each
Speaker 1: of these blocks in a way so that the characters
Speaker 1: can move around when you're looking at them on the screen.
Speaker 1: When I did this, I drew a pirate with a
Speaker 1: peg leg and a hook and an eye patch, and
Speaker 1: his name was Lucky other Disney touches. Of course, you've
Speaker 1: got the characters, You've got the Disney movies that are
Speaker 1: shown in the various theaters. If a Disney film comes
Speaker 1: out during your cruise, they show it that same day
Speaker 1: on the ship, so it's premiere on land and see
Speaker 1: UM and I think I might be seeing Finding Dory
Speaker 1: by the time this episode goes live, I will have
Speaker 1: seen Finding Dory, assuming that premieres while we're on the ship.
Speaker 1: I think it will actually, which is kind of cool
Speaker 1: the neat idea that you get this unique Disney experience. UM.
Speaker 1: Disney actually also does this this big fireworks display out
Speaker 1: at sea. Typically they do this with a pirate themed
Speaker 1: deck party. So if you've heard the tech Stuff episode
Speaker 1: on fireworks, you know how technical that can get. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the Disney shows, they tend to be three hundred
Speaker 1: or so shots per fireworks display, which is modest by
Speaker 1: Disney standards, but it's at sea, so that makes it different.
Speaker 1: These are also controlled by a system that is highly
Speaker 1: synchronized with music and other effects, so that you get
Speaker 1: a story throughout the fireworks display, not just stuff shooting
Speaker 1: off into the sky and blowing up, which is also
Speaker 1: pretty cool. But it's more effective when it's all synchronized
Speaker 1: with music and everything else. They actually hold several patents
Speaker 1: for their fireworks displays, and they were the first cruise
Speaker 1: line to have a fireworks display out at sea because
Speaker 1: it involves getting a lot of permission from various nautical authorities.
Speaker 1: The fireworks themselves are made out of edible material, so
Speaker 1: when they are done exploding and they go down into
Speaker 1: the ocean, UH, they can actually be eaten safely by
Speaker 1: sea life, so there's no um, there's no pollution there. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty cool. So you can actually
Speaker 1: check this out and not feel any guilt about it. Now,
Speaker 1: a couple of other little things before I wrap up.
Speaker 1: One of them is that there are two suites aboard
Speaker 1: each of the Disney cruise ships that are the biggest
Speaker 1: and most luxurious staterooms on board. Uh. There's the Walt
Speaker 1: Disney Suite and the Roy Disney Suite, and they have
Speaker 1: lots of special features like a private hot tub um
Speaker 1: I think, and at least one of them there's a piano.
Speaker 1: There are things like in the master bedroom there's a
Speaker 1: television that can rise up from the foot of the
Speaker 1: bed and then go back down when you're done with it.
Speaker 1: There are two and a half bathrooms inside these uh
Speaker 1: inside these suites, they're pretty swanky. I have never been
Speaker 1: in one. I can't afford it, but it does sound
Speaker 1: like it would be quite the experience to be in
Speaker 1: the Walt Disney Suite or the Roy Disney Suite. I
Speaker 1: think they can sleep up to seven people in those
Speaker 1: suits as well, so they're they're meant for a family
Speaker 1: of some means beyond my own. Maybe one day, I
Speaker 1: can keep hoping. But interesting that they would go with
Speaker 1: this level of luxury. The staterooms in general aboard Disney
Speaker 1: cruise ships are larger than the industry standard, and part
Speaker 1: of that was because Disney was aiming for families, so
Speaker 1: they needed more room for each stateroom because it could
Speaker 1: be a family of four, not just a couple, so
Speaker 1: it was a practical concern. Some of the ships also
Speaker 1: have interactive portraits that anime or a part of an
Speaker 1: augmented reality game aboard the ship. I got to play
Speaker 1: with one of these on the Disney Dream I believe,
Speaker 1: and that's really cool to this idea that you've got
Speaker 1: these these things that look like they are static portraits
Speaker 1: from Disney movies. But if you watch, you see that
Speaker 1: they start to animate and sometimes they interact with each other.
Speaker 1: I remember coming to one hallway where there were portraits
Speaker 1: of pirate ships on either side of the corridor UM
Speaker 1: on other side of a doorway really, and they had
Speaker 1: a battle with each other. They actually started firing cannonballs
Speaker 1: at each other, and I thought that was really a
Speaker 1: clever thing to do. And the game aspect, you can
Speaker 1: play a game where you have UM cards that have
Speaker 1: a low pattern on them, and when you hold them
Speaker 1: up to the portraits, the portraits have embedded camera that
Speaker 1: can pick up the pattern on the card and tell
Speaker 1: the portrait this person is playing this particular game. And
Speaker 1: it's almost like a scavenger hunt as you go through
Speaker 1: the ship and you try to solve a mystery or
Speaker 1: hell about the character. And it's really an interesting way
Speaker 1: to explore the ship as well as engage in a
Speaker 1: fun interactive form of technology. Very clever approach to using
Speaker 1: augmented reality and and video interactive video. So well done. There. Now,
Speaker 1: that pretty much concludes all the stuff I have to
Speaker 1: say about the Disney magic and the basic technologies behind it.
Speaker 1: I look forward to my upcoming cruise, and I hope
Speaker 1: to be able to explore more of this if I'm
Speaker 1: given the opportunity. We also have at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com a full article on how cruise ships work.
Speaker 1: I didn't go into full detail on the stuff from
Speaker 1: there because obviously that would be its own episode, and
Speaker 1: I hope one day to get either Ben or Scott
Speaker 1: from Car Stuff in here and talk about cruise ships
Speaker 1: and what makes them work and the considerations that you
Speaker 1: have to take when you're creating something that big that
Speaker 1: has many people in it for that long a period
Speaker 1: of time. Didn't go into stuff like how do you
Speaker 1: make sure that people are being as careful as possible
Speaker 1: so they don't spread an illness that's a big concern
Speaker 1: aboard cruise ships, or just how how's the water recycling
Speaker 1: system work? How frequently do they have to deal with
Speaker 1: things like waste like people waste that I feel would
Speaker 1: be a great episode as well. So I hope to
Speaker 1: do an episode with either Ben or Scott in the
Speaker 1: future to talk about the workings of your basic cruise ship.
Speaker 1: But since I'm going on vacation and I had to
Speaker 1: record another episode so that I would have enough to
Speaker 1: get through that time without going dead for a week
Speaker 1: or giving you guys a rerun. I chose to do
Speaker 1: Disney Magic. You're probably sick of hearing me talk about it,
Speaker 1: but the alternative was a rerun or not having any
Speaker 1: episode at all this week, and I hope that this
Speaker 1: is a better alternative than those. If you guys have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, maybe there's some
Speaker 1: technology that either I've never covered or I covered so
Speaker 1: long ago that is transformed completely since then. You want
Speaker 1: me to talk about it, you want me to have
Speaker 1: a guest on to really dig down into the details.
Speaker 1: Let me know. Send me an email. The address is
Speaker 1: text stuff at how stuff works dot com, or draw
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle at
Speaker 1: both of those is text Stuff h SW. I really
Speaker 1: do look forward to hearing from you guys. I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to do a bunch of new episodes in the
Speaker 1: near future. I'm hoping to get a lot of different
Speaker 1: guests in here to do two person shows or interviews,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. I really want to do more
Speaker 1: of those moving forward if I can. Scheduling is a challenge,
Speaker 1: but I want to do more and I want to
Speaker 1: hear what you guys want to hear more of as well,
Speaker 1: So get in touch with me and until then, I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Isn't how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com