Jeff Baham, who, as "Chef Mayhem" is the brains behind doombuggies.org (the Web's greatest Haunted Mansion tribute site) and eBay's best Haunted Mansion tchotchke supplier, has a blog! It's really great, too.
Also heard from an ex-imagineer, and he had a couple interesting comments…
"…since the big layoffs at WDI (they are literally shutting the place down, selling off the tools in all the warehouses, firing people who have been there 20 years, etc.), I'm pretty much frustrated with the theme park industry. There just isn't the sort of money and quality (with the exception of the Tokyo DisneySea stuff I did) being spent any more."
"But I was very pleasantly surprised with the "Nightmare" rehab. It was very well done! It made me a little upset, though – because I pitched a whole Nightmare dark ride to go in Fantasyland up at WDI about 4 years ago… The people who make those decisions told me "We will probably never do something like that." Of course, people in the parade dept. down at Disneyland were given carte blanche! Yes – WDI had almost nothing to do with the Nightmare rehab. Even the Jack figure was built down at the park, not MAPO (traditionally the manufacturing arm of Imagineering). It's kind of sad – it feels like Imagineering (at least how it is supposed to function) is not going to be around much longer…."
