Star Wars Weekends 2012 — Awesome Costume Firsts

SWW Logo 2012 / Image: 501st Florida Garrison

SWW Logo 2012 / Image: 501st Florida Garrison

This year at Star Wars Weekends, the 501st and Rebel Legion raised the bar.

Not only did we have our usually turnout of amazing costumes, but we also had some first time costumes. As one member put it, “We showed Disney that we can do more than robes and armor.” As a proud member of both the 501st and Rebel Legion, I would like to show them off. I know these members worked really hard on their costumes and making it to Star Wars Weekends was a huge accomplishment for them.

Dakster Image: Inside the Magic

Dakster / Image: Inside the Magic

This year I marched as Aayla Secura and it was an amazing journey from start to finish. The days I marched in my Jedi are by far my favorite of any this year. I’d been toying with the idea of building a female costume to give me a break from my clone for a while now. What attracted me to her the most was her look and attitude. She also appeared to be a pretty easy build (FYI, I was wrong…). The one thing I didn’t expect was all the attention I received.

It wasn’t until after we were at Star Wars Weekends that I found out not only was my costume a first for the event, but it was also the first time any member had attempted a body paint job like mine for the march. This costume took three months to go from idea to approval, and then several other people to help make it happen each time I marched.  I felt like I had my own little pit crew following me around. It was a lot of work, but in the end I am really proud to say I am the first Aayla Secura to march in Star Wars Weekends.

Everybody loves Chewbacca, but how about we give some love to another wookiee:  Tarfful! This full scale wookie is the work of Jason Rucci.
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GeekMom: Comic Book Corner — July 11th, 2012

Earth 2 Issue 3 / Image: DC Comics

Happy Comic Release Day! Welcome to another installment of GeekMom Comic Book Corner, where we recap our adventures in comics for the week.

Corrina

I feel like the player on both sides of the tennis court concerning my comic reads this week.

First up is DC’s Earth-2 #3. On the one side, the art is terrific and there’s a real sense of menace about the antagonist who threatens to destroy this alternate world of heroes. On the bad side, the story seems to be moving rather slowly. It’s #3 and our antagonist has just been revealed but all our heroes have yet to be introduced properly. On the good side, Alan Scott–a gay man–is chosen to be defender of the planet by the Earth’s mystical guardian. On the bad side, his loved one was fridged (killed) as part of the accident that led to his creation as a hero.

Then there are the Before Watchmen comics. I picked up Minutemen #1 by Darwyn Cooke and Silk Spectre #1 by Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner because I’m a big fan of the creators involved. But other hand, the books are prequels to Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, a story that needs no additions. And Moore has been involved in a long running feud with DC over the rights to the story.

So are the prequels good stories? Yes. But then, I expected them to be. I think Watchmen is a brilliant story but it’s not a story I enjoy. I enjoyed these two comics. I liked the Nite Owl in Minutemen and I had empathy for Silk Spectre in her comic. I didn’t in the original story.

But I’m still ambivalent about whether I should have bought them.

Dakster Sullivan – A look at Avengers vs. X-Men Round 7

AVX Round 7 / Image: Marvel Comics

AVX Round 7 / Image: Marvel Comics

With Cyclops’ finals words in round 6, we see the Avengers acting as outlaws. The storyline felt like it was on overdrive and even after reading it over several times, I’m still a little lost at what is going on. I’ll tell you what I do understand:

The Avengers are on the run from the X-Men. Hope once again looks like she is around ten-years old. The Phoenix Five is terrified of the Scarlett Witch. Namor and Emma Frost have the hots for each other and the rest of the Phoenix Five seem to be losing their faith in Cyclops. The last thing I can understand is that the Avengers are now in Wakanda trying to organize their next move.

The pacing was really hard to keep up with. It felt like it was racing through and I just couldn’t understand everything that was going on. I had to re-read the issue several times and I’m still not 100% sure on what is going on (or who all died). I’m thinking this confusion could be a side effect of not reading the crossover titles.

I’ve really been enjoying this series, but this issue feels like it really messed with my head. My only hope is that the next issue goes a little slower and is less chaotic that this one.

If you have any insight into this issue, PLEASE let me know in the comments. I would really appreciate it.

The next issue is expected to be released on July 18th in comic book stores, Comixology and the Marvel Comic Book app. Don’t forget that included in each printed  issue is a free digital copy!

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Science Fair: Girls Rock

Science Fair CD

Spare the Rock Records

You can take They Might Be Giants’ Here Comes Science off repeat, there’s a new science CD in town, a wonderful compilation called Science Fair. One of my favorite family-friendly albums of recent years is Many Hand: Family Music for Haiti from Spare the Rock Records benefitting Haiti. Now Spare the Rock is back with a new compilation about and benefitting girls in science. So, yeah, I might have been predisposed to liking this album.

The songs of Science Fair are all performed by women and girls, including some kids’ music greats like Frances England, Elizabeth Mitchell, Lunch Money, Renee & Jeremy, and Ashley Albert of The Jimmies. The musical styles represented are as diverse as the science topics, from hip hop to rock to folk, phytoplankton to fossils to outer space. The album name drops Feynman, Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr, Newton, Schrödinger, with a terrific ukelele-filled song dedicated to Marie Curie.

Kids will dig songs like “Rocket Science” from MC Fireworks (with Secret Agent 23 Skidoo), where a girl raps about flying her cardboard rocket up to Mars, and Wunmi’s “Rainbow,” singing through the colors of the rainbow. But I’m particularly taken with a couple of the quieter songs that provide some surprising ways of thinking about science from a kid’s perspective. In thinking about the ability to find life on other planets, Frances England sings about a “Goldilocks Zone.” You know — not too hot, not too cold. Then there’s Lunch Money’s gorgeous “To Be a Fossil” which muses about us and our stuff as future fossils to be found a million years from now. I had to listen to that lovely track several times in a row before I was ready to move on to the rest of the album.

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Book Review: A Parent’s Guide to the Best Kids’ Comics

A Parent's Guide to the Best Kids Comics book cover.

A Parent’s Guide to the Best Kids Comics book cover.

As a French-Canadian, I grew up reading a brand of comics slightly different from the popular choices in the United States. I loved Boule & Bill, Asterix, Lucky Luke, Tintin, Gaston Lagaffe, and Kid Paddle, just to name a few. Now I’m raising my own daughter in California, and while I grew up on comic books, I feel totally clueless in the world of kids comics available in the US.

A Parent’s Guide to the Best Kids’ Comics: Choosing Titles You Children Will Love is a new guide book designed to make the job easier for parents. Written by two librarians, Scott Robbins and Snow Wildsmith, it contains 100 of the best kids comics available on the market today.

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The Mom Engineers Behind The 2013 Chevy Malibu

The Malibu Moms, Image: Copyright General Motors

When you think moms and cars you likely think minivans. There are lots of stories of moms going from their pre-kid car to the minivan that holds the kids, their friends, a dog, a stroller and just about anything they can think to cram inside the thing. What you don’t think of when you hear moms and cars is engineers, but the 2013 Chevy Malibu aims to change that perception with their team of mom engineers.

Suzanne Cody, Julie Kleinert, Kara Gordon and Tracy Mack-Askew are a team of mom engineers that worked on the Chevy Malibu, bringing to it not just a professional perspective, but one infused by their lives as moms. Lead acoustic noise engineer Kara Gordon is the mother of two young boys. She’s had first-hand experience with a child trying to tell her something while getting on a highway and straining to hear over the road noise. It’s frustrating and unsafe trying to drive and figure out if things in the back are okay or if you need to stop.

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Hack Build With Chrome for Pink Legos!

Build With Chrome Easter Egg

Credit: Joshua Rowe

Josh Rowe, the creative director for Build with Chrome, let me in on a little Easter Egg. Legos come in all sorts of colors, but not so for Build. It turns out there were some  issues with “WebGL shaders work and the complexity of the 3D scenes.” In other words, they could make it fast, or they could offer 150 colors. They went with fast. I’d say that’s a good call.

As it turns out, you can add one of those colors back. You’re going to have to go into the Chrome developer console, but this isn’t really that complicated. I’ve tested it, and it works. Here goes: Continue Reading “Hack Build With Chrome for Pink Legos!” »

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Sneak Peek: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Peter Jackson in Bag End (his avatar on Facebook)

For those eagerly awaiting Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, you are in for a treat this week. As we wait patiently for scraps from the table, for any news of what may be one of the defining films of this geek generation, we have been given something nice and juicy.

Pull out your magnifying glass and head on over to Entertainment Weekly for 10 scenes from the upcoming adventure. Just hover over the image to see a close up, and let the anticipation build.

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No Strollers In Panel Rooms At Comic-Con 2012

Sorry, Stormtrooper family. This is not the stroller-friendly con you’re looking for. Image credit: Kalexanderson

Comic-Con starts in two days (preview night is tomorrow), and the following information was just announced:

NEW FOR 2012:
STROLLERS ARE NOT ALLOWED
IN THE PROGRAMMING ROOMS

For safety reasons, the Fire Marshall will not be allowing strollers inside the programming rooms. This includes rooms 2, 4, 5AB, 6A, 6BCF, 6DE, 7AB, 8, 11AB, 23ABC, 24ABC, 25ABC, 26AB, 28E, 32AB, Ballroom 20, and Hall H.

Stroller parking areas can be found throughout the Convention Center. Parking will be free of charge and provided on a first-come, first-serve basis. Please note: Comic-Con will not provide security or check-in/check-out for the strollers.

Although the decision follows in the footsteps of several other large cons in the last year or so, the moms of the Internet are understandably upset at the timing of the announcement.

If you’ve been planning to navigate the crowded con world with a stroller, it’s time to figure out plan B. I recommend a really great carrier–I’m a fan of the mei tai style. If your kids are too big for that now, I recommend a good nap time in the middle of the day, because their little legs are going to need it. If you do decide to bring the stroller along, note that there are no jogging strollers allowed at all, and although there will be stroller parking, don’t leave anything in it, because there’s no security.

Pace yourselves, spend some time at the Children’s Film Festival. Don’t worry about the strollers. You can do it!

 

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Game Review: Lego City Alarm

Lego City Alarm game

Photo: Evan Bordessa

Overview: The Lego City Alarm game pits good guys against bad guys on a micro-scale board. As the robbers, players try to collect enough money to win the game. As police, they work to capture the robbers and put them in jail.

Players: 2-4

Playing time: 20 minutes

Ages: 6 and up

Retail: $19.99

Game play: Players – police officers and robbers – move around the board based on “move bricks.” When a robber lands next to a building, players roll a special Lego die that dictates that they’ll get either two pieces of money, one piece of money and set off an “alarm,” or put the helicopter into play. When the helicopter is placed on top of a building, the robbers can’t steal from that location. When it’s the police’s turn to move, they can capture a robber by landing on exactly the same space as a robber piece. The robbers win by collecting all ten pieces of money. The police win by capturing all four robbers.

Our thoughts: Of course, I love the croissant piece that comes with the game, but second to that what I like most about this game is that the board can be set up in varying layouts. Also, pieces can move in any direction, so strategy and critical thinking comes into play. My 16 year old son and I have played the game a few times, and he played again with a peer. Even though the game’s target audience is probably a bit younger, we did enjoy it.

Lego City Alarm offers enough twists to keep the game interesting, even for an adult who’s sitting down to play with the younger set. Once you’ve mastered the basics, Lego suggests a few alternative ways to play, opening up even more possibilities. The “move bricks” are really the only thing I didn’t like about the game. Having seven pieces (numbers 1-6 plus a bus station piece) to contend with at each turn was a bit cumbersome, plus it wasn’t as random as tossing dice.

In the end, we liked this game more than the Lego Pirate Plank game we have on our shelves and would recommend it to families with younger children who love Lego.

Want to see the game in action? Lego has a video that introduces players to the game that’s worth a look!

Lego provided us with its City Alarm game for review purposes.

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Smart Summer Fun: 30 Ideas For Your Geeklets

smart fun for kids, brain-building activities for kids,

Seeing more than ever before. (Image CC by 2.0 by jurvetson)

1. Make a marble run out of junk.

2. Mail yourselves postcards when you go somewhere for the day, even around town. It’s a hoot when kids get snail mail. Later in the week they’ll be glad to get a card reading, Hi Me. I had a great time today riding a paddle-boat with Grandpa. We both got wet. Bye self!

3. Learn to play a free instrument you already have. (Really, it’s in your kitchen.)

4. Learn chemistry using pennies.

5. Let yeast blow up a balloon. Have kids write their names on balloons with a permanent marker. Using a funnel, let them fill each balloon with 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon dry yeast. Add a little warm water to each balloon, tie shut, and shake to mix. Then put them outside on a hot sunny day. Check to see how big the balloons have gotten every ten minutes or so. Guess what might happen to balloons that get too big.

6. Subversively advance geographic knowledge using a wall map.

7. Designate your yard as a nature area.

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Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla!

Happy birthday, Tesla! Tesla action figure from ThinkGeek, photo by Ariane Coffin.

Happy birthday, Tesla! Tesla action figure from ThinkGeek, photo by Ariane Coffin.

I was wearing my newest Tesla t-shirt when a guy on the street stopped me to say “Tesla? Didn’t he invent, like, everything?”

Yes. Yes, he did.

Today marks NikolaTesla’s birthday. Google, too, is a fan and recognized his birthday back in 2009.

Tesla, Google doodleI am a huge fan of Tesla, much like normal people are fans of actors or singers, so I am happy to share my overzealous excitement with you! It is immensely difficult to summarize this man’s life and accomplishments in a few short paragraphs because he did so very much. If you can find the time, I highly suggest reading through the lengthy Wikipedia article about Tesla. The Oatmeal also has an excellent comic about Tesla and an equally fascinating response to Forbes‘ criticism of said comic. (Consider yourself forewarned about the profanity content on The Oatmeal.)

Tesla was born in modern day Croatia on July 10th 1856, became a naturalized American citizen at age 35, and died in New York at age 86 on January 7th, 1943. Unfortunately for Tesla, much of his work was either the basis for future popular inventions or created in parallel by other inventors. He worked on a radio before Marconi invented his, an X-Ray machine before Roentgen invented his, an induction motor at the same time Ferrari invented his, and conducted an experiment to find “small charged particles” years before Thomson proved the existence of electrons.

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Bring Out Your Cosplay: A Doctor Who Competition

Image: BBC America

BBCAmerica has decided to ring in the upcoming Season of Doctor Who in style, cosplay style that is.

If you have ever donned a fez in the name of the good Doctor, now is your chance to shine. Submit a picture of yourself dressed as Amy, Rory, the Eleventh Doctor or River Song and you could win yourself some Doctor Who goodies. Prizes include a replica of the Eleventh Doctor’s jacket. On July 19th, BBC America will release the top five finalists to the general public for voting on the winner. Check out further rules and regulations at BBCAmerica.com. They will have to try hard, my personal favorite Who cosplayer will forever be the Doctor Who baby.

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Welcome Back Reading Rainbow, We Missed You!

Reading Rainbow App / Image: Dakster Sullivan

From the Reading Rainbow App  © 2012 RRKidz, Inc. / Image: Dakster Sullivan

When I was in school, Reading Rainbow was one of my favorite TV shows. The signature theme song would get stuck in my head for most of the day after watching whichever episode my teacher put on for us. Levar Burton felt like a friend I had met in the library and I looked forward to the books he would use in each episode. The thing I really liked about Levar was how excited and eager he was to read each book. I feel like his enthusiasm to read rubbed of on me a little bit.

As I got older, my love for the show never went away. It wasn’t until I was married and had a child of my own that I started to look for it again on TV. I was surprised to learn that it was canceled in 2009. As a child, I never thought it would go away. As silly as it seems, the show felt like a friend that I only had a chance to see every once in a while.

Reading Rainbow Host, Levar Burton / Image: Dakster Sullivan

Reading Rainbow Host, Levar Burton / Image: Dakster Sullivan

Recently, however, Reading Rainbow was brought back to life in the form of an app for the iPad, and I’ve had the chance to review it.

From the moment I opened it up, it felt like I was seeing my old friend again for the first time in years. The theme song, the opening video, everything about it brought me back to when I was a child in school.

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The Ins and Outs of Community Supported Fisheries

Fishing boat near UCSB. Photo from Community Seafood, used with permission.

Kelp cutting boat near UCSB. Photo provided by Community Seafood.

When it comes to food, I make an effort to buy local items as often as possible. Part of it is to financially support my state, if not my county, and part of it is to minimize the pollution required to transport products imported from far away.

When faced with seafood choices however, my wannabe-environmentalist mind feels racked with guilt and confusion. Is wild seafood really always better than farmed? How do I know if it was harvested in a sustainable way? When, where, and how was the seafood caught? These are the type of questions that leave me so clueless and frustrated that I just walk away from the seafood counter empty-handed time after time.

I was walking around my local farmer’s market last weekend with my husband and two-year-old daughter, and we stopped by the new crab stall because my daughter was mesmerized by the creatures. A young woman with a sunny disposition took the time to let her touch the crabs and label certain parts of its anatomy. As we were leaving, I grabbed her business card. It told me her name was Sarah Rathbone and she ran a community supported fishery (CSF) called Community Seafood. I knew she would be the perfect person to pester with my burning questions!   Continue Reading “The Ins and Outs of Community Supported Fisheries” »

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The 100 Games Everyone Should Play

The Top 100 Games Everyone Should Play

Logo: The100.esidesign.com

I recently attended the 9th Annual Games for Change Festival in New York City. Prior to and during the conference, Games for Change and ESI Design polled the attendees and crowd-sourced the 100 Games Everyone Should Play. It may not surprise you to see Tetris, Portal, Super Mario Brothers, and Dungeons and Dragons in the top 10, but what tops the list may surprise you. I was happy to see my addition of Plants Vs. Zombies get voted up to mid-list. This is a worthy list of games to play through.

What do you think is missing?

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Next Star Trek Villain Unveiled! (We Hope…)

Image: Screenshot courtesy of StarTrek.com

Whether or not you can get behind the Star Trek reboot, we can at least agree that the Star Trek villain is a classic dimension of the show that can make or break a movie.

In the original Trek, there is none to surpass Khan, and with the reboot opening up all kinds of possibilities it was left for fans to debate whether or not Khan could, or should, be recreated. To tackle yet another icon from an alternative perspective, or to let history preserve the Khan that we all know. Personally my favourite Trek villain will always be Malcolm McDowells’s Soran, but then I’m funny like that.

Spoiler Alert!!

Well Trek fans need wait no longer, Khan will not be reinvented for the twenty first century, at least not yet. Benedict Cumberbatch’s villain will most likely be Gary Mitchell, or so Karl Urban hinted in a recent interview with UK magazine SFX. The character Gary Mitchell appeared in the original episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before” in which Kirk was forced to sacrifice the life of his friend for the good of everyone.

Whether or not this is a slip of the tongue or a trick to mislead fans, has yet to be seen.

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He Killed Uncle Ben! An Interview with Amazing Spider-Man’s Leif Gantvoort

Image: Leif Gantvoort. Used with permission.

For a math whiz who spent high school avoiding farm chores by participating in school theater productions, the chance to play any role in a major comic book film is pretty cool. But for Leif Gantvoort, an actor with serious creds as both a comic book fan and geeky dad, the opportunity to play a part in the newly released The Amazing Spider-Man was, well, amazing.

While Leif’s character, “Glasses,” is the villainous thug who murders Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, Leif himself couldn’t be more different from his role in the film. I interviewed Leif after he gave a talk about his career and his role in the movie at the annual gathering of Mensa, the high-IQ society.

Charming and self-deprecating, Leif happily answered questions from Mensans ranging from the highlights of the red carpet premiere to how he spent his college days.

Still enthusiastic, Leif answered even more geeky questions from me about his role in the movie, life as a dad, and Mensan.

GeekMom: Were you a comic book fan prior to the movie? Which universe did you prefer?

Leif Gantvoort: I grew up reading DC titles. The first series I really followed was Swamp Thing and I started reading that right around the time that Alan Moore took over. That then opened me up to more writers like Garth Ennis and Neil Gaiman. I became a huge fan of the Vertigo line of books, once that was launched. Then when I went to college my roommate, Sean McArdle, was a Marvel guy. He convinced me to read Marvel titles and I convinced him to read some DC titles. Needless to say, we both discovered that there was another fascinating universe out there – and we spent four years swapping books. I discovered and fell in love with Ghost Rider. Punisher blew me away. Spider-Man ended up being one of my favorites. Thank God he did that for me, or for the past year or so I would have been forced to lie.

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75 Million and Counting…Is ComiXology the Bridge to a New Age of Comics?

digital comics, Marvel, DC, Comixology

When DC Comics announced their New 52 initiative last fall, the part that struck me as the most revolutionary was not about content.

It was about their choice to make their weekly print comics available as digital comics for the same price on the same day through ComiXology.

The direct market of local comic book shops has long been the only way to distribute weekly comics. It can be an oasis for the long-time comic fan and yet also a barrier to new readers. Some local stores are wonderful, others are clubby and less welcoming to newcomers and some people are not close enough to have access to a shop at all.

With newly released DC comics available digitally on the same day, at the instant touch of a button, a whole new market hypothetically opens up. Marvel Entertainment quickly did the same with their new releases. With the big two companies plus a number of prominent independent companies making their comics available digitally, it’s a good time to have an interest in comics and a tablet device on which to read them.

ComiXology is at the center of all this. According to CEO David Sternberger, there have been 75 million downloads of comics via their app platform and one-third of that total has happened in 2012. Comics began in the Golden Age, morphed into the Silver and Bronze Ages but this decade may well be the beginning of the digital age.

Digital comics, Smallville, Tom Welling

Promotional image for Smallville Season 11, available digital first from ComiXology.

Like most comic readers, I’ve had a lot of questions about ComiXology, how it works, what kind of audience they’re drawing, and where they see digital comics going in the future.

Steinberger agreed to an interview to address some of those questions. While some of his answers–such as about demographics–are less specific that I was hoping, the answers overall are enlightening.

GeekMom: How did the site get started? What led you to a comics app?

David Steinberger:

We’re celebrating our 5th Anniversary this year at San Diego Comic-Con and our 3rd Year App-versary!

ComiXology initially began as a way to bridge the digital divide between brick and mortar retailers and their customers with our Pull List application. That took off and then we added digital comics with the advent of the iPhone. To date, we’ve had over 75 million downloads of comic books and graphic novels on our digital comics platform that is just 3 years old…and one third of those downloads have happened in 2012, so it’s been a wild, expansive year for us!

But one thing I’d like to clear up is that we are not just an app — we’re a true buy once, read anywhere platform. That means when you sign up for an account you can buy and read on the iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Kindle Fire and even the Web. Our great shopping and reading experiences, added together with being able to take your comics with you anywhere is why our customers love us!

GM:  How did the partnership with both Marvel & DC come about? Continue Reading “75 Million and Counting…Is ComiXology the Bridge to a New Age of Comics?” »

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17 Year Old Author Talks About Lego Heavy Weapons

YouTube Preview Image

Other than the occasional Nerf gun, we tend to be a weapons-free household. And yet, when I heard about a new book from No Starch Press that focuses solely on crafting heavy weaponry out of Lego bricks, I wanted to share it here on GeekMom. Not because of the topic — the guns actually make me a little uncomfortable — but because of the author.

Jack Streat was just 16 years old when No Starch Press spotted his automated Lego weapons on YouTube and approached him about writing the book that would ultimately become Lego Heavy Weapons. He became a published author at the age of 17 when the book was released in May.

I recently asked Jack some questions about his work with No Starch Press, his building process, and his plans for the future.

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Geeking Out in Orlando: EPCOT

Monorail Lime Passes Spaceship Earth at EPCOT © Sophie Brown

Monorail Lime Passes Spaceship Earth at EPCOT © Sophie Brown

Welcome to my Geeking Out in Orlando mini-series!

Over the next three weeks we will look at the top ten geeky things to do in each of the major theme parks in Orlando and then ask for you to vote on which has the best geeky attractions. Earlier this week we looked at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and today we move on over to EPCOT. EPCOT (previous known as EPCOT Center) is, in my opinion, not only one of the geekiest theme parks in the world, but simply one of the geekiest places in the world.

EPCOT stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow and was originally planned as a working city for 20,000 people to showcase American industry and serve as a blueprint for all future cities. Sadly, those plans fell through after Walt Disney’s death, due to the loss of such an influential leader. EPCOT Center was built instead as a theme park that would showcase those same ideas and concepts, always changing to demonstrate future technologies and inspire innovation and imagination.

Mark Sumner with the concept model for Soarin' © Disney

Mark Sumner with the concept model for Soarin’ © Disney

10. Soarin’

First on my list is Soarin’, a ride that take you on a hangglider ride across stunning California scenery; everything from rolling surf to Napa Valley and Los Angeles at night. The ride’s content isn’t all that geeky, but its inception and construction really is. The ride mechanism was initially designed using an erector set belonging to head Imagineer Mark Sumner, Mark created the basic concept at home and used his model to show his team how the ride could be built.

7. Captain E.O.

Try to imagine if Star Wars had ended with an overly camp Luke Skywalker flying into the Death Star, being taken captive by the Emperor along with a group of puppet and robot friends and then saving everyone by launching into a huge song and dance number.

You’re now some way to understanding the insanity of Captain E.O. – a fifteen minute 3D movie starring Michael Jackson as the captain of a ship of misfits. The show was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by George Lucas and also stars Anjelica Huston as the Supreme Leader, at the time of it’s creation in 1986 it was the most expensive film ever produced on a per-minute basis; it was closed seemingly forever in 1994 but reopened in 2010 as a tribute after Jackson’s death.

Much of the initial battle sequence looks like Star Wars as the ships fly down a trench over a space station type terrain, after the crew are captured and brought before the Supreme Leader, Jackson explains that he is there to present a gift which turn out to be his big song and  dance number We Are Here to Change the World. Also, he can shoot light beams from his hands that turn enemy soldiers into backing dancers. Yeah, take that Skywalker.

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