Our latest photo report brings us to Epcot for the first time in a while, although I think the D23 Expo should bring us some news that will make trips to the park a lot more frequent for these reports…
The Calm Before the Storm
Vera Bradley has released an Alice in Wonderland collection at Disney Parks.
Dooney and Bourke has a new version of the Sketch design for sale, a good upgrade on the old, IMO.
Some new phone cases for sale. Disney seems to be favoring these hard plastic cases now, rather than those with the rubber borders.
There’s been so many new mugs released recently that it’s kind of hard to keep track of them all.
New to the parks is the “Love is Magical” collection, which bolsters some of the existing wedding related items.
Cars 3 merchandise is available at the exit of Test Track now.
This pretty neat souvenir cup can be found at various food and drink stands around the park.
A Trip Around the World
There have been a lot of construction walls around the planters and railings at the Odyssey for a while now. Some still look pretty battered like above, but some already have new floor lights in place.
Some of the grates over the lights aren’t even painted yet.
Some are finished. Either way, it’s nice to see them paying attention to this forgotten corner of the park.
Work continues on the heavily delayed Choza Tequila outside of the Mexico pavilion.
The exterior of the pavilion is still being repainted, I’m not sure how I feel about the darker colors…
The bottom portion likely givers us a taste of the finished product for the whole facade.
Another look at Choza Tequila.
A peek under the wall reveals what should be a rather pleasant bar.
I’m woefully behind on dining reviews, but I have one for San Angel Inn that I hope to have out soon.
For whatever reason, they laid a slightly updated map of Shanghai Disneyland over the old one. It’s not all that different, but maybe slightly easier to see because the overall image of the park is larger.
The Outpost in Africa is back now selling jewelry made from seeds and other natural ingredients.
I didn’t notice the “no photography” sign until I after I took this, but how will a picture of the jewelry hurt the sale of it? I understand pictures of art and then you could print them out, but this seems odd.
As we reported a few weeks ago, it seems likely that Club 33 at Epcot will go above the American Adventure.
The front section of the Mitsokoshi store in Japan was remodeled.
It’s very “kawaii.” I learned that from my hipster friends who have been to Japan. I only go to theme parks, so I never learn things like this.
It’s just preparation for the Food and Wine Festival at this point, but this is the future home of the Ratatouille ride between Morocco and France.
Lots of Ratatouille merchandise can already be found in France.
Meanwhile, the U.K. now has a bunch of character merchandise for sale.
They also have all of the Disney related teapots for sale.
This and That
Heading back to Future World…
This awesome Figment journal is now for sale!
I love this new Figment kid’s shirt, but I don’t understand what the classic “D” logo has to do with him…
Many park-specific shirts are on sale 2 for $40 currently, a great deal, but hopefully not a sign that they are going away.
The shirts have to be $24.95 or $29.99, but that leaves a lot of options. This is happening at most major stores, so look for the signs.
I’m sure there are good ways to sell the Behind the Seeds tour. This table at the exit of Living with the Land is not one of them.
The airport style seating they placed at the exit of Soarin’ (where you used to get paper FastPass, kids ask your parents) now has USB and standard outlets for charging.
This is really nice for those waiting for their party to come off of the ride.
Ever wanted to see The Living Seas Lounge, you know, those windows off in the distance when you look out into the big tank? You can if you come to WDWNT: The 10th Anniversary!
Mission: Space is closed for refurbishment until September. There are rumors swirling about changes being made to the ride…
How cute is this gift card?
Rather than station a cast member at the kiosks (because that costs money), they now have signs attached to the FastPass+ kiosks in Future World to assist guests.
So hard to view these pictures on my PC (1280×768). Banners on top and bottom, viewing area is half a picture, not good.
We’ve tried to optimize our new site layout for both mobile and desktop. Unfortunately it seems that your resolution kinda falls in between a tablet and a modern desktop monitor. Our analytics tells us that most people viewing our site from a PC have a monitor capable of at least 1080p resolution, so that’s what we’re optimized for. Might I suggest adjusting the zoom on your browser (Ctrl-minus on most modern browsers) to see if that will help?
Viewing from a Chromebook with a 1080×1920 resolution it’s “OK” when zoomed to 100%. Any further zoom and the loss of vertical real estate due to the persistent top menu bar along with the bottom “previous/comment/next” navigation bar really makes it hard to view more than 3/4 picture at a time.
If anything, you could make those top/bottom bars autohide and it would go a long way towards helping usability. If they need to stay visible at all times, there’s a lot of white space in the left and right columns that could easily house those links.
The idea was that you’d use a zoom less than 100% to make things fit better (i.e. Zoom OUT). I was not suggesting zooming in more than 100%. I’m using 1920×1080 also and I have no issues.
Jason,
I worded that badly; I understand you’re suggesting to zoom out. However, I’m on a 13″ Chromebook with a high resolution. Text becomes hard to read if zoomed to <100%. Prior to the site redesign I would view at 125% or so. Text was readable and pictures were a reasonable size.
On my work PC using a 24" 1920×1080 display things are fine for the most part.
Brett,
One thing we considered with the new site was doing photo reports as a gallery or slideshow instead of a lengthy post. Do you think that would be something that would be beneficial?
I’ve yet to see a gallery/slideshow on a site (not limited to this site, just in general) that worked well for viewing both the photo content as well as the captions and other article text, and that did it well across device form factors. Might look fine on a desktop, but on Mobile the pictures go full screen and you lose the captions, etc.
I usually prefer to read photo updates as normal articles, but for me it’s key to maximize the amount of vertical space that’s dedicated to the article itself. Top/bottom menus, banners, and the like seem to detract from that. For an idea of what I mean I would prefer something like what Mice Chat does for their photo updates (strictly referring to page layout, not article content). As you scroll down the page the menu header disappears, but slides back in if you scroll up. Other page navigation links that fly in on the right can be dismissed with an “X” if desired. Hope this helps, feel free to email if you’d want to discuss further.
Like Jason said, the problem isn’t the site, the problem is your computer. Just do something that affects all settings on your computer, it’s that simple!
I didn’t realize the Mission Space refurb was extended. Did this happen recently? I did notice that no fast passes were available for my trip at the end of august but wasn’t aware of an official announcement.
Running an iPhone 6+
Site looks fine. But the load time and usability is shockingly bad.
Multiple clicks required to load stories.
Obtrusive adverts.
Not great.
We’ve had a lot of complaints, this was the first photo report on the new site so we’ll take a look and work on it before the next one.
Wow, great update on my favorite park, thank you! That Figment journal is the most gorgeous Figment-related merchandise I’ve ever seen! Nice to see him getting a little love!
As always thank you very much for the photo reports!
The reason they don’t want you photographing their jewelry is because their designs can be easily replicated.
Although they can ask you not to photograph, there’s really nothing they can do about it if you do photograph it. Especially inside a Disney park. I’ve seen this at craft shows and such, and I got yelled at when I took a picture. I told them the truth – I was sending the picture to my mom to see if she liked it and would want me to buy it, and if they didn’t want my business then that’s their loss.
For someone who “only visits theme parks” and is doing a report on EPCOT, you probably should know all about “kawaii” from an EPCOT visit, not your hipster friends. There is a large exhibit on this very topic just feet away from the store in the Japan pavilion. Maybe trying to a little less clever would serve you better.