Believe it or not I still occasionally write about Disneyland, too! 🙂 I’ve been very fortunate to spend so much time in Florida recently, but I’ve been missing my “home” park.

I was invited to a media event at the Disneyland Resort on Thursday night which featured both a sneak peek of the updated Blue Sky Cellar at DCA (opens to the public on Friday), and the premiere of The Magic, The Memories and You!, shown on the “it’s a small world facade” at Disneyland.

In the interest of getting something posted quickly, since it’s now very late on Thursday, I’m going to concentrate on The Magic, The Memories and You!, especially since I just saw the WDW premiere last week. (I’m bi-coastal! 😉 )

The Disneyland version of The Magic, The Memories, and You is very similar to the WDW version – both are about 10 minutes long and include about 500 photos of guests, either taken that day by a PhotoPass photographer, or contributed on Disney’s “Let the Memories Begin” web site: memories.disneyparks.disney.go.com. At Disneyland the show is projected on the “it’s a small world” facade – a much larger canvas than Sleeping Beauty Castle would have been. The finale includes a burst of fireworks. One thing that’s different – “small world” is more of a horizontal canvas, while Cinderella Castle is more vertical. Most of the effects are the same, though – especially the really awesome effects like fire and the rocket launch.

I loved Michele Himmelberg’s description of it on the Disney Parks blog: “It turns [the facade] into an animated, etch-a-sketch coloring pad.” You really have to see it in person – video just doesn’t capture it.

Currently the show is scheduled once each evening Monday-Thursday at 7:30, with two shows Friday-Sunday – one at 8:00 and the other at 9:10 just before the fireworks show.