Post #800957 by TheLuckyParrot on Tue, Feb 25, 2020 8:46 AM

SHIPWRECK, PART 1

As I type this it is 2/25/2020 but as we follow the project thread here, to this point it was actually March/April of 2019. I had just bagged up the Trader Sam and Volcano features for safekeeping and turned my attention to the shipwreck feature. Immediately after this first update, life got in the way and I was unable to return to this project until the month of December. (Now aren't you all delighted to have avoided THAT disappointment in progress reports!?)

Lucky us, we can now pretend as if none of that happened.

The Shipwreck feature is the motivation for the entire project. The first time I was sitting at ETB and somebody ordered the Shipwreck cocktail I was sitting in the most perfect vantage point to observe the sinking of a ship-in-a-bottle. I was thunderstruck. Oh, sure, their "bottle" was the size of a Sparkletts Water bottle but their ship was equally huge. That was all simply scaled up for the benefit of the audience. No, it was THE IDEA. As a natural engineer and crafty person I had been fascinated by ships in bottles since childhood and marveled at the skills and patience of seamen going back hundreds of years. That was brilliant enough, but to see Disney Imagineers take all that up a dozen notches by sinking one?!? Well, I had to be a part of THAT! I started thinking about how Disney had pulled that off, and then how I might pull that off, and then how likely it was that I could find an excuse to pull that off...and...well...one thing lead to another and here we are.

Thus I began this whole thing. And this Shipwreck feature was always my ultimate goal. Along the way I had this silly thought: odds are that there is a similar feature in Grog's Grotto, so Disney has two of these things. And those are so novel they might be the only two in existence (they do exist in quite a few cartoons). That would make mine potentially only the third. I love the rarity and the elite company, and the challenge. But not too very long ago I learned a couple of surprising things. First, the ship model itself was created and constructed by Kevin Kidney (Disney artist)...AND...that Disney Imagineers use a Pepper's Ghost trick in their versions!!! Whaaaat??? Yeah. In their versions the only thing INSIDE their bottles is a sheet of glass, which never needs to move. Holy moly! (For those unfamiliar you can look up Pepper's Ghost, but the most obvious example would be the ballroom dancing scene you look down upon in Haunted Mansion.)

So, uh, the entire ship and mechanical workings for that whole effect are NOT inside their bottle after all. It all sits on its side and hidden within the wall of the back bar. Why do I tell this tale? Because I learned it not until I had figured out how to do mine INSIDE the bottle, thinking that this was how Disney was doing it. I didn't know that it was supposed to be impossible, so I did it. And recall how rare I thought this would be, one of three in existence? Well, you can certainly erase two others from that list. You are about to bare witness to the realization of what might be the One And Only!

Oh, and for those familiar with the history of cinema, you will appreciate that this feature is my homage to the great Georges Méliès.