Discover Hani El Masri, wonderful Designer, Illustrator, and former WDI Imagineer

Today, i would like to introduce to you Hani El Masri. Not only Hani is a highly talented designer and illustrator, but he was a WDI imagineer some years ago and did creative concept for many WDI projects.

Hani is Egyptian, but he was raised by French Jesuits in Cairo. Thanks to this, he spent most of his childhood reading european literature, and so, at the surprise of others WDI imagineers, he was familiar with the world of European tales, myths and architecture.

And, as an Egyptian, and after five years of academic studies at Cairo's school of Fine Arts - the oldest in the Middle East - he is of course also familiar with Oriental tales like the famous tale of "One thousand and one nights". So, it's naturally that in the mid 90's Walt Disney Imagineering asked for his help on the design of Tokyo Disney Sea's Arabian Coast.

In fact, Hani, it's more than twenty-five years of an award-winning creative career in illustration, graphic design, advertising and promotion of an unusually broad array of consumer products, as well as children's books and theater productions.

He arrived to the United States in 1987 and freelanced until being hired by Walt Disney Imagineering in March of 1990. We will have a look to his work for Walt Disney Imagineering, but while he was in California, Hani did some beautiful watercolor paintings like this one of Los Angeles Chinatown - picture above, on the top - who look also like a decor study for a Disney theme park...

Or this one of the San Juan Capistrano mission. By the way, this reminds me that San Juan Capistrano was part of the inspiration for some of the Zorro series decors...




In 1995 Hani was hired as a visual development artist by Dreamworks SKG - Steven Spielberg's studio - to work on the animated "Prince of Egypt", and stayed on for another two animation movies "El Dorado" and "Spirit". The September 11 attack was devastating for Hani, as he always dreamed of being a cultural bridge between Orient and Occident and thought his work on the 'Thousand And One Nights' could be of some help in this dream...
He then came back to live and work in Egypt in February of 2005 and was awarded Best Egyptian illustrator of 2004 by the National Council for Children Books, headed by Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt First Lady, in may 2005.

At walt Disney Imagineering, Hani, as i've said, worked on many different projects, whether it was the Blizzard Beach concept - here two concept study for the Summit Plummet chalet and the Merchandise shop.




Or these boat concepts for Tokyo Disney Sea....




Not to mention this beautiful Nautilus artifact who was supposed to be placed outside on TDS Mysterious Island. The imagineers idea was that, when a guest will use the telescope to look at other places of the park, a green laser ray coming out of the telescope would have point the place the guest was looking at. Great idea, unfortunately never realized.



For Tokyo Disneyland, Hani - and it was one of his first work for WDI - did the concept-art for the Grandma Sarah Restaurant located in Critter Country.
He did also amazing concepts of "Critter Cars" that Tokyo disneyland wanted to use as photo-ops in the land. The first rendering below was inspired by the shape of an old Rolls Royce - totally transformed in a vehicle you will only see in a Disney theme park!




Hani also worked on the Disneyland Toon Town project and ended up designing Minnie's House and Goofy's Bounce House, and here is the concept for his Goofy's house...



And pictures of the model that was done inspired by Hani's concept art




This color rendering was Hani's concept for Minnie's house...



Here are the preliminary black and white study for Minnie's house




And, too, pictures of the model inspired by the concept arts




But there is much more to say about Hani's work for Toon Town... And this is why i invite you to don't miss tomorrow's part two of this article, as you will discover something you've never seen before!


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All Artwork by Hani El Masri and copyright Disney and Walt Disney Enterprises Inc.

Many thanks to Hani El Masri for his great help in the making of this article.

Universal Studios Singapore map and details revealed !

Yesterday was revealed more details and the map of the awaited new Universal Studios theme park in Singapore. Famous Universal Studios classic attractions like Jurassic Park or the Mummy will be in the park but the park, that should open early next year will include 18 rides and attractions with some specially created or adapted for Singapore like the Shrek land or the Madagascar ride.

So, let's have a closer look on the map above. The theme-park will feature seven zones, each with its own iconic food outlets and entertainment attractions. The entrance is located at the bottom left of the map and guests will enter in the Hollywood section. Visitors can expect Broadway-style theatre modelled after the famous Hollywood Pantages Theatre and walk down Hollywood Boulevard complete with the famous Walk of Fame.

If you turn right when you'll arrive at the lagoon you will enter the New-York section for a slice of the Big Apple, from NY-style pizza to movie-set scenes, including a special effects stage with Steven Spielberg who offers behind-the-scenes peeks and Stage 28 for star wannabes who get a chance to be part of a movie production.

Next land, going up north on the map will be Sci-Fi City. Sci-fi buffs will have a city of their own and be able to join in the Human vs Cylons battle on the Battlestar Galactica dueling coasters, supposedly the tallest of its kind in the world. Another battle in this zone is the highly-anticipated Transformers ride which debuts at Universal Studios Singapore before heading out to the US theme-park.



On the picture above, the Egypt land under construction is on the left and the Battlestar Galactica dueling coasters on the right.

The two next lands are for adventure-seekers as they will be able to trip to the 1930's Golden Age of Egyptian Exploration to discover the Sphinx, Pharaoh's tombs and mummies in the Revenge of the Mummy attraction, or take on the Lost World zone inhabited by dinosaurs at the redesigned Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure and Waterworld, with death defying stunts.



Above and below, Dinosaurs are arriving in the "Lost World" of Universal Singapore.



Below, the future Waterworld Theater.



Tied-in to movie favourites, are the Madagascar and Far Far Away zones, featuring attractions for both young and old.





Above, the Far Far away castle under construction.

Visitors can explore Shrek's swamp home, a castle and party at a Knight Club, or 'move it, move it' with wacky King Julien at a beach party after outwitting the Foosa in an original, one-of-a-kind immersive river ride that should be as wild as the lemur tribe of Madagascar.



On this picture of the Resorts World model below, Universal Studios Singapore are located on the left.



Below, a close-up on an early Universal Studios Singapore model.



Tom Williams, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks & Resorts said of Tuesday's unveiling of some of the theme-park's attractions that attention was paid to location-specific creatives and designs so as to offer both first-time and devoted Universal Studios visitors, an exciting, different and memorable experience with many new rides, shows and themes that can’t be found at other Universal Studios parks around the world", which we are happy to learn as there is nothing worst than to find exactly the same version of attractions all over the world. We'll be pleased to check all this early next year!


Thanks to leave a comment or discuss this article on D&M english forum on Mice Chat

All pictures and artwork: copyright Universal Studios

Editor's Note: Don't miss the Western River Expedition article below, and when you've finished your reading jump to the Disney Rocket9 web site where you'll find gorgeous high-res panoramic pictures of Disneyland!

How Marc Davis legendary " Western River Expedition " attraction was almost built at Disneyland Paris

If you're a true Disney theme park fan, you've certainly heard before about this Marc Davis legendary attraction project "Western River Expedition". What you don't know is how this attraction was almost built in early 1990's at Disneyland Paris Frontierland. I will explain to you in details why and how, but first, for those of you who don't know Marc's original project, here is a short description of it, and if you want to know more about this concept, you will find a full information HERE and also in the excellent Jim Hill ten parts article HERE.



The Western River Adventure attraction was a Marc Davis project originally designed for Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom. Marc designed the attraction and characters in the form of drawings and models over a five-year period. Although the attraction had a significant cost, Disney executives such as Dick Irvine and Roy Disney both liked the idea when presented with Davis' concepts.




Originally, this flume ride attraction was located both inside, outside, and around an architectural feature in Frontierland known as Thunder Mesa mountain. Guests would have enter a cave marked "Western River Shipping & Navigation Co" which led to a canyon in perpetual "twilight" lighting. After boarding in a boat - similar to the boats of Pirates of Caribbean although with a different theming, of course - the boat would have glided softly in the canyon where was located the different scenes. The ride's narrator, Hoot Gibson (an audio-animatronic owl) would have explained first the ride's safety instructions.

Western River Expedition was an Audio-Animatronic delight with dozens of new AA figures, and certainly as many as in Pirates of Caribbean. Just like in POTC Marc Davis designed scenes where humour was always present. Potential scenes included:

A stage coach robbery




Banditos where even their horses had bandanas across their faces!



An Indian (Native American) rain dance that causes it to rain



Other gag scenes with desert animals, cactus, buffaloes, bear...





A western town called Dry Gulch with scenes showing a cowboy on horseback on the roof of the town's saloon - and 10 characters, including a bartender ( who is trying to shoot the cowboy and his mount off the roof ), saloon girls, and other cowboys hooting and hollering, and more...





...And a waterfall-drop finale.

If built, it would have been one of the most complex and expensive Disney attractions of its time, housed in one of the largest show buildings (a large warehouse that stores the interior of the attraction) ever created by the WDI. Its projected expense is one reason it was never built. The attraction, would have also shared the show building with a "runaway" mine train themed roller coaster. Other features of the pavilion-style WRE would have included hiking trails atop the mesa, a Pueblo Indian village, and a pack mule attraction.

The Western River Expedition was supposed to be Walt Disney World's answer to Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean. When plans were being made for the Magic Kingdom, Imagineers had no plans to replicate "Pirates" for the Magic Kingdom. It was believed by many Imagineers at the time that Florida residents were too accustomed to pirates, as pirates are a part Florida's local legend and lore. Disney management thought that cowboys and Indians would be more surprising and exciting to Florida residents.

However, when the Magic Kingdom opened, the most common complaint from guests were "Where are the Pirates?" Disney hastily built a second Pirates of the Caribbean in the Magic Kingdom, thus scrapping plans for the Western River Expedition because much of the budget planned to build the Western River Expedition was used in building Pirates of the Caribbean for the Magic Kingdom. Years later, there was the possibility that the Western River Expedition would be built, however various problems plagued the attractions development, and instead, over the course of many years, two complex attractions- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain - each both using elements and inspiration from the Western River Expedition, now occupy the land originally placed aside for the Western River Expedition.

Western River Expedition is something of a legend among Disney Imagineers, especially to those who admire the work of Disney legend Marc Davis and parts of the ride was slipped into other attractions like Epcot's World of Motion.

Let's come back now to Disneyland Paris. Soon after the park opening in 1992, new attractions to increase the park capacity were needed, and as quick as possible. Each land show producer and their team were asked to propose new projects, and here is where the Western River Expedition attraction project makes its comeback.

For Jeff Burke, show producer of DLP's Frontierland, the unique landscape theming of the land was perfect to introduce WRE. You see, at DLP Frontierland don't have all this greenery you can find in the U.S parks with a Tom Sawyer island at the center of the river. In Paris, we have instead Big Thunder Mountain island in the middle of the Rivers of the far west, and a vegetation coming more from the desert - cactus, etc...than from the banks of the Mississipi river. In two words, Paris Frontierland has a more "dry" vegetation. And when you'll know that Marc Davis WRE had a kind of red "canyon" exterior theming, you will understand why DLP's Frontierland would have been ( and still is ) the perfect Frontierland to build Marc's attraction.

So, back in 1993, the imagineers bring out again Marc's artwork and WRE models and thought that the best place to build the attraction in Frontierland would have been in the land available behind the train station - exactly where rumors since the last 10 years keep saying that the park is going to build here Splash Mountain anytime soon. Although it's true that a Splash Mountain attraction was also envisioned by the imagineers at this same location, the first one who almost did it was definitely Western River Expedition.

The location would have been perfect, and the imagineers really thought that this time , that was it, Marc Davis legendary project was finally going to be build!

So, what happenned? Well, what happened is that somebody called Michael Eisner - remember this man who was the CEO of the Walt Disney Company before he became anchorman of his own show on a cable network? - came and had a look to all the different projects. And once again the "cost" curse of Western River Expedition burried the project... Eisner asked for the cost of it - and it's true that WRE is really an expensive attraction, let's say probably not less than 150 M $ - and that was really too much for Michael.

Goodbye Western River Expedition and welcome......nothing as in Frontierland no attractions were built since 1993 at the exception of the Fort scenes. Instead, Indiana Jones and the temple of peril, Casey Jr, Story Book Land, Les Mystères du Nautilus and Space Mountain were built, all successful attractions.

Is there any chance to see a Western River Expedition in the future at DLP's Frontierland? Mmmmh, although the land is still available, i would not bet too much on it. It's a pity, because every guest will love it, but, hey, if you are an Arab Prince who have 150 M $ and don't know what to do with them, please call DLP executives and tell them you're ready to fund a WRE project. Marc Davis - from where he is now, will bless you till the end of your life!


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Artwork: copyright Disney Enterprises

Thanks to Wikipedia for the description text.

Luxo Jr : Revenge of the Pixar letters !

From the College Humor site here is a really funny parody of the famous Pixar opening sequence. Remember how Luxo Jr is "crashing" the "I" of Pixar? Well, it's time for the letters to have their revenge! Don't miss it, it's not only fun but also extremely well done - as good as if Pixar did it!

Hat Tip to Blue Sky Disney and Cartoon Brew!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Video: copyright College Humor

Editor's Note: No surprise, my post on the "Sum of all Thrills" had a lot of comments. Some agree with me, some others were infuriated and i personally answer to these in the comments section of the article.

Innoventions "The Sum of all Thrills" : I don't want to be disagreeable, but...

Last Wednesday, October 14, Innoventions new attraction "The Sum of all Thrills" opened. So, i thought: let's do an article about it and went to the WDW press web site to find some pictures of it. That's where journalists go to find pictures when anything new open at WDW, and generally pictures are available in the next day after the opening or so...

But since last Wednesday there is still no official picture on line, nothing. Pictures of the new ESPN Innovation Lab that open October 16 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex are available, but always no pictures about "The Sum of all Thrills". Not even a press release! So, i began to thought "uh, that's strange..." and decided to go to the sponsor web site to see if there some pictures were available.



Before i go further let's talk one minute about the attraction. As we know the attraction use the famous KUKA robotic arm. I thought that Universal Studios had an exclusivity from KUKA on this robotic arm as they will use it in the E-Ticket ride of the awaited Harry Potter land at IOA, but i suppose that when the robotic arm is not used in a ride, it's probably different... Anyway, to come back to the attraction itself, guests "create their own experience by first choosing a ride theme, including a roller coaster, bobsled or jet plane".



"Using multitouch, object recognition tables, guests use math and engineering-based tools, such as rulers and speed dials, to design and customize their ride by adding corkscrews, inversions or steep hills.



The guest can then experience his or her custom ride from beginning to end on the robotic KUKA RoboSim 4-D simulator. Inside the simulator, guests experience their ride on immersive high definition video combined with stereo sound and controlled air motion for a complete sensory experience".



All the reviews on the net about The Sum of all Thrills are good - Werner on Mice age did a very good one about it - so this new addition to Innoventions seems pretty cool.

Now, to come back to my pictures research, i found two pictures on the Raytheon web site. They're include in this article but because i wanted to find better pictures i went to the Raytheon press section. First you have to know is that i knew nothing about this Raytheon company. May be they're well known in the U.S but in France nobody know them, which is not the problem, of course.

Sooo, i arrived on their press picture section and what do i see - like anybody going to find pictures in this section? Pictures of missiles - yep, WAR missiles, all kind of missiles from the well known "Tomahawk" to the "Patriot", as many as you want others Air-to-Ground Missiles and even a ExoSkeleton for soldiers... In two words, Raytheon is a company working in defense industry, manufacturing war weapons. I suppose that some of you would say that they're creating weapons which will help to protect "our" country but whatever is the angle you take the truth is that missiles are weapons that can destroy planes, tanks, buildings, etc...but at the end generally kill people.

No need to say that i was a bit shocked when i saw this and even more amazed that it seems to don't be a problem for anyone - i didn't see any review talking about it. The first thing i thought was "Is Disney out of its mind to have as sponsor a company manufacturing war weapons? ". Then i talked with an american friend who explained to me that considering the U.S "culture of weapon", it was less shocking out there, on the other side of the Atlantic. I can understand this, but i guarantee you that we will NEVER have at Disneyland Paris an attraction sponsored by a war weapon manufacturer. No way, never, the press reaction all over Europe would be terrible, really.

So, i don't want to be disagreeable - specially because i think to all the work and time it took to WDI Imagineers to design this new attraction - but, frankly, don't you think it's shocking that a Disney theme park sponsor is a war weapon manufacturer? I know that Epcot is no longer the utopia it was originally supposed to be, i.e an "experimental prototype community of tomorrow", and finally is a park dedicated to international culture and technological innovation but, honestly, wasn't it possible to find a sponsor manufacturing something else than weapons which kill people? Seriously.

Well, now that i know about all this may be it explains too why the WDW press web site is "silent" about this Innoventions attraction and why you won't find on it any picture...or even a press release.

EDITED: Please read the comments of D&M readers below which help to understand the situation as apparently Raytheon seems to don't be the first EPCOT sponsor working in defense industry as General Motors, General Electric and United Technologies all have (or have had during sponsorship) weapons/defense divisions.

However, to pay tribute to the Imagineers who did a brilliant job on this attraction, here is a video very well filmed on opening day by Attractions magazine which will show you perfectly the attraction itself. Have a look, and then let me know what you feel about all this.




Pictures: copyright Disney, Raytheon and Orlando Sentinel

Video: copyright Attractions Magazine