Photo Friday - Luxo Jr.'s brief onstage appearance

 

Time again for another Photo Friday!

This week, let's dive into the recent past at Disney Hollywood Studios for an image from a now extinct attraction that only lasted a few short months - Luxo Junior!

As most of you know, the icon of the Pixar studios is Luxo Junior, the desk lamp first seen in Luxo, one of the first Pixar shorts.

Back in Spring 2009, Disney created an audio-animatronic version of Luxo that would come out every once in a with a short little performance at an area directly across from Toy Story Mania.

Well all good things come at a price, and the price in this instance was a lawsuit by the company that make the actual Luxo lamp.  According to published reports, Luxo had agreed to allow Pixar to use the lamp image as part of the company logo, but when Disney made a physical Luxo (as seen in these photos), the Luxo company Disney - Pixar had taken things too far and filed suit.  To further compound the problem, the Luxo Jr. audio-animatronic was temperamental and often suffered malfunctions.  By Spring 2010, less than one year after Luxo Junior had first debuted, Disney pulled the plug (sorry, had to use the pun) on the project, presumably due to the lawsuit. 

While there's nothing to back this up, I suspect the Luxo company wanted more money and Disney wasn't going to give in.  Personally, I think this was a dumb move by Luxo as it was a golden opportunity to market their product to millions of people each year, but I digress.

Anyway, there you have it - a piece of short-lived Disney history.

Enjoy this obituary for Luxo Jr. by Matt  Hochberg of StudiosCentral.com.

Tip Tuesday: TSMM - the Final Scene

Welcome to another Tip Tuesday!

I'm wrapping up my series of tips to score big on Toy Story Mania.

After exhausing your arms through the other scenes, you finally stop at this scene with a series of mine carts coming out and falling down.  See the two bats at the top?  Hit those bats for 1000 points each.  Hit a few mine carts while you wait for the bats to re-appear.  They will be worth 5000 points each.  Hit them again and the mine cars will now be worth 5000 points each.

Once the final targets appear, pick ONE and shoot away like mad.  If you can shoot fast enough, you can get the target to advance to 2000 points per shot and really rack up!

So there you go... a few tips to score big on Toy Story Mania!

Good luck shooting there cowboy!!

Tip Tuesday: Scoring big during the Alien Toss at TSMM

Welcome to another Tip Tuesday!

This week, I want to continue my series of posts about scoring big at Toy Story Mania. 

Let's head to the Alien Ring Toss game.  This game is pretty straightforward:  toss rings over the aliens to score points. 

Now for the tip:  See that group of eight aliens in the center?  If you can ring all eight aliens before they come back up, the section will open up and a huge gap will open where you can toss a ton of rings for major points. 

This is hard, especially for one person.  If you have a partner, the two of you can more easily cover the center portion and get that bonus area.

In the meantime, don't forget about the higher point total aliens in the top left and right corners.

If you missed some of my previous tips for scoring big at Toy Story Mania, see this list:

• Hamm and Eggs:  http://disneydaddy.blogspot.com/2012/02/tip-tuesday-more-points-hints-at-toy.html
• Dino Darts:  http://disneydaddy.blogspot.com/2012/01/tip-tuesday-toy-story-midway-mania.html