WHAT?!?!?!?!
They made you delete photos and video of things in the park, because you "stood out"? So, if I'm alone, and taking video of the park, I'm suddenly a terrorist? Is that what they were implying?
There are fans all over the world who host sites and create media content based solely around Disney Parks. Heck,
@marni1971 makes extremely detailed videos of the history of park attractions, using a lot of his own footage, and stock footage.
You had to have appeared to be doing something more suspicious looking than just taking video....and after showing them your work, they were still too stupid to understand your innocent motives?
This really irritates me, and I hope you don't stop because of this.
They understood my motives perfectly. I was taking videos with my dslr and one of my wide-angle lenses. I walked from the monorail station towards the area below the station. With the 18mm lens i have a good field of view so for my reference material it was sufficient. I can get quite a good impression of distance with using that particular lens. Anyhow. I went towards the parking lot as i still was missing some reference from the entrance. Took pictures and videos of the area on the walkway left side of the tram, adjacent to beam 209 (?) Then 2 female security officers approached me and started asking me what i was doing, and another minute later they were joined by 2 police officers. One Disney, and a LBV Sherriff. They asked me for my life story. Job. Contacts. Names. The amount of data i had taken, took pictures of my passport, my disney 5 day hopper ticket. Asked me how often i've been on disney property, how long i'm in the US. Sherriff didn't believe my passport was real and checked with homeland security (might have been the lack of accent).
Thing is. I complied and was doing my best to he nice about it. They made clear at several points in the conversation to expel me from disney property if i hadn't though.
Afterwards i told them the least they could do is get me an appointment with Imagineering to at least make up for the hour and a half they held me up.
Of course all i got was a letter from the legal department.
So, to be honest, after that experience i'd rather work for Universal.. And not waste my blood, sweat and tears on a park that no one at Disney seems to care about. The monorail fleet falls apart, the park looks worse than ever, apart from new paintjobs and the employees working their ***** off day in day out. I spent a long time just talking to cms and find out how they think about the current state of epcot. In general they're not in high spirits about Epcot's future.
And if the current concept and general practice won't change soon, Epcot has around another 15 years until it will have to be closed down indefinetly for comtinouously declining attendance. People find it boring, and the irony is, it's not the educative nature of Epcot that bores them. It's something different. But by diving into that topic i would give disney free, precious information i collected over the years by just asking people and staff in my own spare time. I would happily share my insight, but after the recent experience all my data will go into "lockdown-mode" and i will make sure my concepts for Epcot wowill not be on any network Computers. I have recently been to the Potter train in Universal. It's curious how close this idea is to the pre-ride simulated maglev train through Mesa Verde i envisioned for my Horizons V2 concept. So for several reasons, i'm gonna be much less public with these concepts.
It annoys me as i strongly believe passion, and not doing an 8to5 job, is the way to be most true to Walt's vision. And critique is the key to perfection. Disney's current policies do not reflect Walt's legacy anymore.
I think the time has come where the Disney company needs to be very clear about what is ok to record, film, photograph and release. Commercially as well.
Dozens of youtube channels make revenue with ride videos, park walkthroughs and so on. But they make guests delete their pictures at the same time when they do not see it fit their own interest. That is active censorship.
PS: the only other time i was ever asked to stop taking pictures was in Beijing, China. And they didn't even try to ask me to see the material.
The bag checks..useless.. scrutinizing and harrassing guests of the park (who even flew halfway across the globe just to see the parks).. pointless.
Whatever they are trying to prevent.. it's paranoid procedures, not logical profiling.
What do you guys think? Should i just not care and go on with the model? Or salvage some parts and then scrap it indefinetly?
I really don't know what i should do.
This is what i think --> I guess i'm never gonna get a chance at Imagineering anyways after all this so might as well move on to other projects of mine. I still have half a dozen animation short-films written and ready for filming. Still have my Doublespin Album to finish, which is halfway done, loads of stock 3D models to roll out, videos, and my actual job.
I could be all business about this model and the concepts, after all there were a couple of buy offers which i collectively refused.
I think Imagineering needs passionate people like me.
But i'm not a drone (still a team player, though), and i value Walt's mindset more than current
company policies. So maybe it's not for me, if creativity is being forced away like that, it's not what Walt would have done.
PS:
The digital model is my copyright. Excluding logos, names, trademarks and such, of course. But for most parts of the digital model i retain full copyright.
Thank you all for your support! It means a lot to see how many people care about this.
Edited for spelling
