Hi all
Here's an abbreviated version of the meet report, later I'll
put a page with pictures up on the site. Leading up to the meet
several folks had a string of bad luck, or needed to change plans, so
it ended up being a rather small meet, still that was good in a way.
I hadn't been able to do much to prepare for the meet in part due to
working extended hours at work (even cancelling a few days vacation
due to the situation we are in at the moment), if it had been a large
group I might have felt a bit guilty if we had problems getting
seated or such, with it whittled down to such a small group that was
no problem. the Kugels had to cancel as Tracy was a bit under the
weather (I can imagine it would have been a miserable car trip from
MD travelling sick!). Jeff Jobes had to cancel due to a sudden
unplanned surgery his wife had to have (I hope she is doing well
Jeff!). Cathy Bock, and Lois (also sick) had to cancel fairly late
too (in fact I received their messages upon my return home). I hope
everyone gets to feeling better, look at it this way better to be
sick for an RADP meet than for an actual trip to Disney right?
I had an uneventful and pleasant drive to Raleigh listening
to Podcasts using a cassette adapter to my car stereo (this is normal
for me, and one of the reasons I never mind running errands for the
wife!). I even got to the mall early enough to check out a store on
the way in Best Buy, which to my DELIGHT I discovered DOES still
carry mini discs, I used to buy them at WalMart they only cost about
half as much there, but they simply do not carry them any longer. I
halfway remembered (I thought) Lous advice (Lou of the WDW-memories
podcast)
http://www.wdw-memories.net/
on where to park , and it seemed I was correct I parked quite close
to the nearest entrance to the Disney Store, and I made in in and to
TDS by 5 or 10 minutes after 1PM, after a few minutes browsing the
store I came back out front to look around, to my chagrin there were
no benches near the store, I think someone had mentioned this in one
of the meet planning emails, but in the whirl of work in the week
leading up most all pre-planning had totally slipped my mind. After a
bit decided to go back in the store to kill a bit more time while
waiting, I've been hearing enough good things about "Meet the
Robinsons" that I want to see it in 3-D, and I've enjoyed the bit's
of the soundtrack that have been used on various podcasts, especially
the version of "Theres a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" played by They
Might Be Giants, so after browsing a bit more I picked up a copy of
that, as I waited in line I thought I saw someone hanging out by the
entrance who just might be looking for some Disney theme park fans,
after completing my purchase I headed that way, it turned out it was
a member of the yahoo group Ken who goes by disnoid1313 in the yahoo
group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/disneypodcast/
We got to talking, this was the first time I had met Ken, and I
hadn't even had much email correspondence with him either so it was
nice to get the chance to get to know him a little. I thought he was
in the group as coasterfan08, but I think that he un-subscribed that
nickname when he joined with the disnoid1313 name, as you might guess
Ken likes lot's of parks not just Disney so I mentioned the coaster
trip i took with the Kugels in 2001, Kens going to let me know when
he's planning to hit Carrowinds again, so perhaps I will re enter
that park (right here in Charlotte) once again, for the first time in
some years!
Once I got talking to Ken time passed much more quickly, and soon we
were joined by Bob Williams, he had a nice surprise too Linda (who
had just had knee surgery Thursday) had decided to join him and she
was waiting at the restaurant, once it got to be about five minutes
until 2 PM I said "well if anyone else comes up they'll know we were
headed to the cheesecake Factory at 2", so we headed on upstairs to
the Restaurant. Once we put our name on the list it took about 20
minutes or so to be seated, we got a table for six in case anyone
else showed. I still thought Lou might show since I knew he had been
at church until one, so I told the lady at the desk if anyone came in
looking for "Brian" or the Disney people that would be us. It was
nice chatting as we ate, and the Cheesecake factory was a new
experience for most of us (one I'll definitely be repeating at some
point!). As the meal wound down I passed out a few of my homemade
CD's, and afterward we headed outside for a group photo.
In addition to the cancelations I had received in my mail that
morning I had also received a reminder about a Disney event in
Winston- Salem that Jeff Jobes had sent in some time previous to
cancelling, I decided I might try to check it out since it was on the
way home more or less. I only printed a part of the blog post by Jeff
Pepper (yes the blogger who appears on Lou Mongellos WDW Radio)
http://2719hyperion.blogspot.com/2007/04/pixar-at-riverrun-
international-film.html
it mentioned the Steven Center in downtown Winston Salem as being the
location where the behind the scenes look at Pixar would be. as I
neared the downtown area I noticed signs for a school of the arts and
figured that was a natural for a film festival, so I parked there
(signs that said "event parking" seemed to suggest I was correct.
when I asked about the Stevens Center though it was far enough off
campus that I drove over there, after waiting a while for the box
office there to open I started to suspect that location was only used
for the animation roundtable that had been held earlier in the day,
it turned out there was a "film festival central" location a few
blocks away so when another fellow who had walked up told me about it
i walked over there with him. It tuned out the first location I had
been at was the correct location so I headed back over there and
hoped there wee still tickets to be had, there were, and they were
$10 so not bad at all! I noticed that the car I parked behind had a
personalized NC licence tag reading DISNEY, WOW! is that cool or
what!
The talk given was a sort of power point style presentation (though
projected on a Movie screen!) given by two animators, whose names
will appear in the longer version of this trip/meet report (in other
words I forget their names just now!), the presentation seemed to me
to be broken into two parts, first an overview of who, what, where is
Pixar, and a "how Pixar makes movies" section, using "CARS" as a case
study. One of the animators worked on Cars, and the other has spent
the last four years working on "Ratatouille" (so go see it when it
comes out in a few weeks ;-) ). There was a nice long Q&A after the
presentation and a trailer for Ratatouille. One of the last
questioners was a man whose son had asked a probing question early
on, a question that made one of the animators respond "wow, you know
more about company politics than I do" in a truly "amazed at this kid
is sharp" way, not in a mean or sarcastic way, anyhow when the father
of this boy asked his own question I thought his voice sounded
familiar, I decided he just might be Jeff pepper, so when the
questions finally ended and folks started getting up I said "Are you
Mr Pepper?" it turned out he was/is and i got to talk with him and
his family for a good bit , including, as we walked back to our
cars...you see they are the family with the NC tag that reads
DISNEY, I made sure they saw my tag too G0IN2WDW. I made it home a
few minutes before midnight and was a total lazy slug the rest of the
weekend (which explains the lateness of this report summary)