The finalists have been posted for the Disney Dream Job contest and I am one of them. You can view and vote for my video here:

http://www.careerbuilder.com/disneydreamjobs/dream-job-applicant.asp?jtid=3&ytid=LhDfxbgsLPU

It says that both votes and views will be counted so please vote for my video and view the page as often as you can! Remember, if I am one of 5 Haunted Mansion winners, I will be flown to Disneyland for a 4-day trip during which the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage will be opening, so I’ll be bringing back HD video and binaural audio (along with other rides, I’m sure) for you to enjoy!

Thanks!

Edit: I have confirmed that you can vote and view the video as many times as you want during the voting period, which ends on March 30th. So please, whenever you have a spare moment, hit the voting link for my video as many times as you can!

Link

The distant creations blog covers not only Disney but also technology, Apple, Pixar, movies, travel, video games, collectibles, and whatever else is of interest. It will definitely be updated more regularly than this one.
I will be porting all of the posts from this blog over there soon.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/insidethemagic/toystorymania.mp4

Sorry for the quality. It was recorded off of the local news on my TV.

For completeness, here’s the recently-released concept art for this attraction:

http://www.distantcreations.com/insidethemagic/store/wol.php

This DVD takes you on a walking tour of the WONDERS OF LIFE pavilion, stopping at its most popular and cherished attractions including Body Wars, Cranium Command, and Goofy About Health. The DVD is mastered in high definition, is 16×9 enhanced, and is presented with binaural audio. This is the first official DVD release from Inside the Magic. If it is popular, more will come!

You can find this year’s year-end wrap-up available as a regular podcast as well as an Enhanced one, in which you’ll be able to view images associated with the topics we’re talking about while we’re talking about them!

Regular podcast (MP3):
http://media.libsyn.com/media/insidethemagic/itms91.mp3

Enhanced podcast (M4A):
http://media.libsyn.com/media/insidethemagic/itms91e.m4a

You’ll need iTunes 7, the latest Quicktime, or a video iPod in order to enjoy the Enhanced podcast.

Here are the pictures (click to enlarge):

I used some of Disney’s lighting as inspiration this year.  I noticed that I really liked how Disney would often group single colors together instead of the usual multi-colored strands.  We have red, amber, green, purple, blue, and white solid-colored strands.  I also found these great multi-colored strands for the left side of the house that were non-standard.  A couple of them are teal/purple/blue and others are gold/red/purple.  I also switched out the bulbs in our landscape lighting in front of our two rock columns to be red and green.  I mirrored that effect with two flood lights (red and green again) facing the garage.

Next year, I may attempt to make them dance!

Here are the photos from the event (click to enlarge on Flickr):

If anyone recognizes anyone else in the photos that is not tagged, please add a note on Flickr
with the name of the person and a little box around their head.

Click the photos to enlarge:

QTVR (click inside image and drag to look around):

As you can see, we have nearly every Haunted Mansion collectible ever released. Most of our pins are not yet displayed, but some are in shadow boxes on either side of the stretch portraits. The closet is filled with the smaller items, with one shelf devoted to Haunted Mansion Holiday. The rest of the room is filled with everything else!

We purchased the furniture from a local antique replica dealer. One of the pieces is an actual antique previously owned by my grandmother.

There are several lenticular changing portraits on the walls, official and unofficial. The largest is the ghost ship from HauntedPortraits.com. The one underneath that is from a Haunted Mansion Holiday event at Disneyland.

The windows are blocked from sunlight using painted foam core boards (seen in the last update). Stay tuned for some window lighting and sound effects.

You’ll also see some random stuff lying around the room, getting ready for the next major steps: wall hangings and populating the shelves!

Any idea what those blue/white boards are for?

Pictures:

Click the pictures to enlarge them.

I carved the Jack pumpkin and Michelle carved the Sally one. The bottom two are fake.

The Hitchhiking Ghosts and lit-up tombstones came from DisneyShopping.com. The giant Haunted Mansion banner came from Mouse Surplus and was used at the Disney-MGM Studios to promote the Haunted Mansion movie’s release.

We had three separate audio tracks and two lighting effects. Booming thunder came from the garage every 30 seconds or so synchronized with lightning effects illuminating the house. The left side of the house had Haunted Mansion organ music playing (alternating between the foyer and ballroom organs) and the right side had Haunted Mansion sound effects (cats, birds, howling, creaky doors, moaning, etc). The interior lighting flickered constantly.

Everyone in the neighborhood seemed to enjoy the show and we even got a few comments from kids who remembered our house from last year, though we had less cool stuff then. I can only imagine what we’ll do next year to top this!