Wow, what a long, strange trip it was! Here’s a recap of some of my crazy adventures at EPCOT’s 30th:

Got in mid-day on Saturday 9/29, received my WeGoShop delivery (12-pack Sam Adams light, 6-pack Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, shit ton of tonic, limes, 4 frozen pizzas, mozzarella sticks, and a bunch of other stoner/drunkard food), met up with my buddy Hackett and his girlfriend (they brought me a box I’d shipped down to them that included a 1.75L bottle of Kinsey Gin and an Iolite vaporizer), and then bolted for the Communicore Weekly event that night, with guest star Ron Schneider.

The Communicore Weekly event was very cool. When we got to the Norway Pavilion nobody was outside to greet us and take us up, so we called Jeff Heimbuch and bitched until he came down to escort us up to the VIP lounge. Once there I finally got to meet George Taylor, of Imaginerding fame, as well as a whole bunch of other people from Facebook. The event was jam-packed with fun Disney Geeks!

The highlight of the evening was being able to see Ron Schneider in person again – I hadn’t seen him since the DSoD party last October, and SO much has happened between us since then. We gave each other a big hug, he got to meet Pentakis, and I gave him a proof of the newly released hardcover edition of his book.Yes, that’s right, a HARDCOVER edition of From Dreamer to Dreamfinder is coming out, just in time for Christmas! Signed copies will soon be available at the Bamboo Forest Store, and it’ll make a great gift for any friends who are into theme parks. Not only that, but the audiobook version has also just been released, and is available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible. Listening to Ron do all of the voices of all of his characters is just an amazing experience, and I’m so glad we were able to make it come together and get it released.

One of the other highlights of the Communicore Weekly event was being able to have free rein of the Norway VIP lounge. I explored that place from top to bottom – video forthcoming! Unfortunately, I missed the “Spaceship Earth with the lights on” ride-thru at the end of the evening because I had to retrieve the acoustic guitars being used by the band; Hackett had generously allowed the Communicore Weekly guys to use them. But luckily Nomeus took this awesome video of it:

The next day was filled with the D23 seminars. For the most part they were entertaining and informative. The two standouts were a panel with a bunch of the Imagineers who had helped build EPCOT Center, and, of course, Ron Schneider’s appearance onstage with Tony Baxter to discuss the Imagination ride. Ron had specifically been told by the D23 organizer (Steve Vagnini, I assume) that, “We will not publicize anything put out by that publishing company!” If the dude had said that to me I would have told him to eat a bag of dicks, but luckily Ron played along… at least until he got up on stage. He probably had them shitting themselves through his entire appearance, because he repeatedly mentioned From Dreamer to Dreamfinder and even gave a shout-out to “backstage exploring”, which received a bunch of cheers from the audience, much to the dismay of the panel host. Ron is such a cool guy.

That night I organized a very successful and fun Monorail Bar Crawl. Unfortunately Mizner’s was shut down (until December), so instead we closed out the bar at Narcoosees and then closed out The Wave. It was an awesome time, I met a lot of cool fans, got a piece of the Spaceship Earth Millenium Wand from Matt Marooney (which I fully intend film myself shitting on for a future video), and there were a ton of shenanigans involving monorail pole dancing and stolen towels. Again, video forthcoming.

The following day was the big day: EPCOT’s 30th Anniversary. Months ago I decided to create a secret Facebook group and invited people who I knew would be down there at that time, and who were cool with our type of shenanigans. One purpose of the group (aside from organizing the Monorail Bar Crawl) was to sign people up for a big “Leonard Kinsey Retirement” event. I created a text group via SendHub and anyone who was interested was added – so all I had to do during the event was send out a single text, and everyone in the group would get it. I had approximately 30 people signed up by the time the trip rolled around! Nobody except me knew where we’d be going, because I didn’t want it to leak somehow. 30 minutes before each event I’d send a text out, saying where to meet next.

As planned, we all met at the Chase VIP lounge in the Wonders of Life Pavilion. Chase was letting each of their cardholders bring 9 additional people into the lounge. Unfortunately, within 10 minutes a bunch of us got kicked out when we tried to board the elevator to get to the 2nd floor lounge. Here’s Adam the Woo’s video of that incident:

That lady was pissed!!!!!

The rest of the day was a flurry of pulse-pounding adventures. All told, it was a memorable experience for everyone involved, and a great way to wrap up my years of backstage exploration.

Which leads me to… my official unmasking!

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be doing lots of cool and crazy Disney stuff and posting stories about it. For example, during the past week at WDW I:

• Saw the Horizons Resurrected virtual ride-thru, to which I’d donated a bottle of Lorange fragrance (the simulation was spectacular, by the way).
• Was interviewed by FOX 4, along with Nomeus and Adam the Woo, for a segment they’re doing on DSoD that will come out during “sweeps” in November.
• Got drinks at La Cava de Tequila with a multi-millionaire/pilot/consulate/playboy who had some very intriguing business ideas….
• Laughed as a bunch of people got completely blitzed off a vaporizer at The BoardWalk (no smoke or smell – highly recommended!) and later hit a gravity bong and coughed like maniacs in an off-property garage.
• Ate my first Citrus Swirl…. Dole Whip, move the fuck over, because we have a new contender for best on-property dessert that should be mixed with booze!
• Played an impromptu set on drums during a rehearsal for a local band. I only sucked a little, which was nice.
• Saw the most number of boobs I’ve ever seen in one room (outside of a strip club, at least). They ranged from the biggest I’ve ever encountered (double-H!?!?!) to one of the nicest A-cups I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing. Thanks, ladies!!!

All told, it was a helluva week. I met SO MANY insanely nice people, and wish I could have spent more time with everyone. To be honest, I didn’t even do the parks much this trip, and I didn’t really miss them. What I do miss now that I’m back home is hanging out with great the friends I’ve made over the past year. But, hey, I have plenty more events planned for the coming months, so hopefully that’ll mean more fun meetups!

That’s right, this week you get TWO videos! Figured I’d release both of my Amsterdam-related videos at the same time. The backstory to both of these is that I was in Amsterdam for two weeks in June. Being there that long gave me a lot of time to really explore the city and the surrounding suburbs.

This first video is a snapshot of the area known as The Red Light District. Yes, that’s where all the prostitutes have their windows (you’re not allowed to take pictures of them – if you do, their pimps kick the shit out of you and throw your camera in a canal), but it’s also where most of the best bars and “coffeeshops” are located. Coffeshops in Amsterdam don’t serve coffee, they serve marijuana. Lots and lots of marijuana. One of the more famous coffeeshops is The Bulldog, which is where we went for our first toke. I soon found out that you’re not supposed to take pictures or video inside The Bulldog, but not before I got some footage of a giant bud and an old dumbwaiter that was used to alert the proprietors of a police raid, back before marijuana was decriminalized there. The second half of this video is me taking a piss. Yep.

The second video is all of the weird and crazy shit I saw at Efteling, which is one of the bigger theme parks in The Netherlands. I absolutely LOVED this park! Tons of trees and water and wildlife – almost like being in a nature park. But what really got me was how batshit insane many of the rides were. They had a Pirates of the Caribbean ripoff that featured belly dancers, prostitutes, slave laborers, and camels. There was a “It’s a Small World” ripoff that had blatantly racist dolls; all of the Oriental dolls were squinty-eyed and buck-toothed, the African dolls were all shirtless savages in blackface, and the British dolls had bad teeth. Awesomeness. But the best ride out of all of them was called “Droomvlucht”, which translates to “Dreamflight”. It had an overhead ride system like Horizons, and was filled with some stunningly gorgeous fantasy scenes. In the finale, you disconnect from the overhead track and roll faster and faster on a bottom track via an inclined, swirling gravity drop, which was something I’d never seen done before. Truly excellent. Finally, we ate dinner at a very nicely themed restaurant that offered unlimited wine and beer. I think I drank two bottles of wine and three beers. The best part was that our reservation was for 6PM, which was when the park officially closed! We didn’t get done with our meal until around 8:30PM, so the park had long since closed and was completely empty. We were pretty drunk couldn’t figure out how to get out of the place, and spent another 45 minutes wandering around, looking for the exit (and sobering up). When we left, our car was the only one in the parking lot. Very surreal.

Up next, a bunch of reviews for DSoD and From Dreamer to Dreamfinder! Be sure to click the links to read the full reviews.

DSoD:

DisneyFanRamblings.blogspot.com says, “Personally, I thought it was pretty fun to read, and that was a tribute to the author’s style, because there was plenty in there that I wouldn’t really care about otherwise.  He made reading about bedbugs and fireants sort of fun!”

And AntickMusings.blogspot.com asserts that, “Kinsey is a youngish man who combines in an unlikely way a deep love for all things Disney and the teenage hell-raiser’s desire to find trouble and/or fun wherever he can.”

From Dreamer to Dreamfinder:

Jeff and George from Micechat.com do a tag team review of the book. Jeff proclaims it as, “…quite possibly the best (unofficial) manual about theme park and entertainment performers ever written.” George agrees, saying, “Ron has a great style and you will find yourself immersed in his world and the worlds of his character.”

Finally, BetweenDisney.com had this to say: “I found this book very surprising. I thought I would find a nicely written memoir that looked fondly on professional experiences and almost exclusively within Disney Parks. What I found instead was refreshing.”

And speaking of From Dreamer to Dreamfinder, it’s now available on iTunes and in the B&N Nook store!

Finally, the price of the Our Kingdom of Dust ebook (all formats) has dropped to a paltry $2.99! If you haven’t picked it up already, head on over to Amazon, Smashwords, or your preferred retailer (prices will adjust soon on iTunes and Nook) and download a copy. Oh, and don’t forget that I’m still blowing out Our Kingdom of Dust posters for only $8.95 shipped at the Bamboo Forest Publishing Store!!!

Well damn, it certainly has been a long time since I’ve posted anything here, or posted any videos to the YouTube channel. I’ve been working nonstop to finish up two huge projects (only one of which I can talk about), spending two weeks in Amsterdam, and losing power for five days. But now I’m all caught up, I have power, and both of those projects are completed!

The one project I can talk about is the release of Ron Schneider’s awesome book, From Dreamer to Dreamfinder, which officially comes out on 7/31/2012!!! Signed copies of the paperback will be available via www.bambooforestpublishing.com/store, and of course, the ebook and paperback will also be on Amazon, with the ebook appearing on B&N and iTunes shortly. This is one amazing book, and I think any fan of Disney, Universal, or theme parks in general will find it fascinating. Hell, even if you don’t like theme parks it’s a great read, just because Ron is such a gifted storyteller and has lived such an interesting life.

From Dreamer to Dreamfinder

And up next, a new video! In this one, Draven, Pentakis, and I demonstrate how to get free parking in The Magic Kingdom, as illustrated in The Dark Side of Disney:

Finally, a bunch of new reviews of Our Kingdom of Dust have been popping up, and they’re all great! If you haven’t bought a copy yet, maybe these reviews will convince you:

ThatDisneyBitch.blogspot.com curses up a storm in her review, saying, “The book is fucking amazing.  The story is fucking amazing, the characters are amazing, and the fucking towel baby had me in stitches, and I don’t care who I piss off when I say that.”

TikiSpaceshipEarth.com agrees, with significantly less cursing, saying that OKoD, “…will teach you a little bit about yourself and make you realize your need for escapism that comes along with a visit to Walt Disney World. It’s also a page turner that you can’t put down.”

MisadventuresOfMrsWhiffo.blogspot.com also loves it, saying, “This is the kind of book I would recommend for my ‘Non Disney’ friends to read, not to try and convert them, but as a really good modern piece of writing.”

P.S. Our Kingdom of Dust is now on iTunes! So if you were holding out because you wanted to read it on your iPad, the wait is over. Click here to go straight to its page.