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Monday, November 16, 2015

Paris


Je suis française (et américaine). Je n'ai pas peur.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Not-So-Little Boathouse News

They're at it again...Van Eaton Galleries is having another Disneyland auction.

Just like last year, there are so many great things in the auction catalogue, but if you're reading this blog for the Jungle Cruise boathouse updates, pages 194-195 are well worth a glance.

The Disneyland Hotel installed the Safari Adventure remote control boats in 1999. It closed in 2010 due to extensive renovation of the hotel property. I still fondly remember getting lost at Downtown Disney with a friend, accidentally walking into the hotel's pool area, and stumbling upon a sparkling pond with tiny jungle boats. We looked at each other, wordlessly started digging in our wallets, and immediately used up a week's worth of laundry money playing with those boats. Ahh, good times.

Anyway...the Safari Adventure prop boathouse is going to be part of the auction. Also available: the "burning" boat (which would "catch fire" if you steered your boat to a certain spot), the fire department raft (the "burning" boat would be extinguished by a tiny elephant), and one of the original remote control boats.

These items are just begging to be installed in and around a Disney fanatic's backyard koi pond. Alas, they are far beyond my budget (the lower estimate for the boathouse is about 20 times my budget), I definitely do not have enough space (the SA boathouse is mounted on a 7-foot-long, 4-foot-wide base), and I don't have enough mechanical know-how to make them operational again.

So, work continues on my considerably more modest version of the boathouse.

Carved posts and delicate railings are slowly being installed. NOW this looks like a late-Victorian-era structure! I need to make more shutters, but the 6 that have already been installed really work.

View from the back. Remember, that tower wall with the door on it comes off for access to the interior rooms. (The real-life door is a much plainer style and next to a window, but I had to shrink the tower down too much to do both. With so much of the tower visible, I also thought it made more sense to make the door stylistically more consistent with the other walls.)


Two room interiors to finish. Then the hard part begins: removable railings, a (hopefully) removable infirmary, a caved-in roof, and a canopy over the stairwell. I've certainly got my work cut out for me!