Disney’s California Adventure has launched their newest evening show called World of Color. I was lucky enough to be there for the world premiere on June 11, 2010.

What is World of Color?
-It’s an nighttime water spectacular with one of the world’s largest water/mist screens. It’s inspired by Disney’s 1960’s TV series, “Wal Disney’s Wonderful World of Color”, and it involves more than 1200 fountains, 36 fire cannons, and Nearly 30 high-definition projectors to create this mega-scale show.

I have been to Walt Disney World in Orlando with my older son in about 9 years ago, but since then we have been away from Disney parks. And even when we were at WDW we never stayed late enough to watch any of the show. Gasp! I know….but we are not really a “show” kind of people. I don’t hate them, but I just never really had an opportunity to appreciate them before.

So, when I arrived in sunny California and Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel (which is gorgeous -and oh so convenient to be able to walk to both Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure-highly recommended), met up with everybody and see how excited everybody was about World of Color-I still wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

Unfortunately I could not bring my kids to Disneyland on this trip(Older one had exams, and younger one is not even 2 yet). I was a little lonely to see all the other families, but if you’re a parent, how often do you get to enjoy Disney parks by yourself? I had a great day filled with attractions, (Most with VIP seatings and fastpasses-Thanks to the Disney folks) but the most interesting thing of all was “Walk in Walt’s Footsteps” tour. It’s a walking tour to learn about Walt Disney, and we learned so much interesting facts on Walt. Some facts I learned;
-Walt actually lived in the Disneyland.
-On the Main Street, USA, many store windows have names related to Disney-such as his father Elias Disney, but Walt Disney himself was a humble man and never put his own name up.
-When they created Jungle Cruise, Walt wanted the plants to be exactly like real jungle, and he smuggled native plants seeds sewn in his cuffs.

This is a tour you probably would not take if you had kids, so I really appreciated it.

On this trip I was invited as part of the “International Media-Canada” team and met some really neat people from Calgary Herald, Red Deer Advocate, Kelowna Daily Courier, Canoe.ca, BT Calgary, ET Canada, and more.

We got to cover the “Red Carpet” event-it was actually a blue carpet because of the water theme-it was exciting to see celebrities like Teri Hatcher, Jamie Lee Curtis, Wayne Brady, Jason Seigel, Vanessa Hadgens and a fellow Canadian Cameron Mathison(who, by the way, was a really really nice).

Once all the celebrities and guests arrived, it was finally time to see the World of Color. Following one and only Mickey Mouse’s introduction and Chairman Tom Staggs (I was lucky enough to run into in a store and were able to snap a photo) and CEO Bob Iger’s speeches, it finally started.

Here’s a really good video montage;

I had never seen anything like this.
It started out with the original theme song of World of Color. Then it showed all the Disney’s favorite characters-Ariel from “The Little Mermaid”, Simba from “The Lion King”, and of course Nemo..

My kids are both boys, so to be honest I have never seen the entire “The Little Mermaid” before, but I still know the song “Part Of Your World” –it is such a beautiful song.
The show continued with more of Disney’s favorite moments, such as from “Toy Story” where Woody tries to convince Buzz Lightyear that he is a toy. ☺

The day after this world premiere, I was lucky enough to be invited to a special round-robin interview session with Disney’s Imagineers (that’s what they call the creators and engineers at Disney). One of the people I got to talk to was Dave Bossert who is the creative director and head of special projects at Walt Disney Animation Studio – and when we asked about the favorite scenes-he mentioned that the scene with Woody and Buzz was one of the most popular moments and when “Toy Story” segment came up during the premiere, everybody clapped. Everybody has such a emotional connection to the movie, and I believe the same for the “Part of Your World” song. That really is the magic of Disney-people connect with them on such emotional level.

Back to the show-other than the animation, there were thousands of stunning water fountains doing some amazing moves too. Also at the round robin session we got to talk to Chuck Davis, technical producer of World of Color. And he said that the humidity greatly affects how the water drops and that ultimately affects the sharpness of the image on the mist screen. Isn’t that fascinating? He said he didn’t know about it until one day he realized the image on the screen looked different.

I enjoyed all part of the show, but my favorite part is the kissing montage(Around 2:23 in the video above) towards the end-from Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast and more…Girlie girl inside of me thought- “Ohmigod! Love IS the most important thing in the world!” It was lovely. Loved it.

The next night we got to see Fantasmic! Show in Disneyland, and even though I enjoyed it, I still loved World of Color better. So yes, my verdict is, if you are going to California Adventure….World of Color is a MUST see. Highly recommended.

My special thank you to Angela Saclamacis and Laura Haughey from Disney Canada who invited me as part of the media. I loved everybody I met at Disney-what an amazing company to work for.

And hey….guess who I got to see at the after party?

Disclosure: I was not compensated outside of the experience. I was not asked or obligated to write about my experience.

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Erica Ehm AKA @YummyMummyClub on Twitter was in Victoria to promote her new children’s book “Mischievous Mom at the Art Gallery” this week. I saw her few weeks ago in Toronto, but I was very excited to welcome her in our own beautiful Victoria BC!

Since she told me she was coming to Victoria, I have been tweeting about possible Tweetup somewhere in Victoria and looking for a good place to meet up. “Quieter the better” was Erica’s wish, so I had asked around Twitter and very generous Fairmont Empress offered their gorgeous Bengal Lounge‘s curry buffet for special price. Thank you! I have always loved Bengal Lounge.
There were about 10 of us, few people couldn’t make it, but it just worked out perfectly as we all got to sit at a table, and we actually got to talk to each other-a lot. Here are some of the pictures.

I knew almost everybody from Twitter, but some, I got to meet for the first time, like @PlayinBC, and @tjrossignol. There were so much interesting conversations….that’s what happens when bright women get together, right?

After delicious curry, cocktails and dessert, Erica and I headed to Bolen Books for her book signing. Erica wanted to take a picture of the bookstore and we were sitting in my car while she was getting her Blackberry ready, as I looked out and saw a mom and a little boy walk into the store….the boy was carrying a backpack on his back, and there it was-”Mischievous Mom” peeking out of his backpack! That was the cutest sight. We both went “Awwww!” Turned out the mom was Amy Bronee (@Realparenting)-our local radio show host.

The book reading was great-so entertaining and I loved all the kids’ questions.
After the reading, I found out the man who’s been helping us that night at Bolen was an author Robert J Wiersema who wrote “Before I Wake“-the book is on my night stand-and that was really neat. And then also I met Jeanette Miller from Limelite PR-I knew of her but it was great to finally meet her.

After the reading, Jeanette, Erica and I went to Stage for a glass of wine and had a very interesting conversation-mostly on current marketing trend on mom bloggers/moms in general-there has been interesting discussions in the blogosphere whether mom bloggers should be paid for the reviews they write or not. Also, Jeanette was part of California Moms campaign and Erica and I were part of ONE campaign in Toronto so we discussed our experiences. Next week I am going to California, invited by Disney’s California Adventure Park, so it was quite interesting to hear about her trip.
I consider myself Yummy Mummy (Hell Yes) but I don’t necessarily consider myself as a mom blogger or even just a regular blogger-I am still very new to this and I don’t know the politics/dynamics of all the bloggers out there nor I have much interest in. But I must say it sure was great to hear these amazing ladies’ stories. How lucky am I?

Next morning I met Erica again at the hotel and took her to Tall Tales Books-my favourite childrens’ book store. Erica signed few more copies of her books there, and soon it was time to say goodbye. She was off to Vancouver for more signing, reading and Tweetups.

Thank you Erica for coming by – I am so happy I got to introduce you to my amazing friends in Victoria. Come back again soon!

You can see more photos here on my Flickr.