Nearly century-old lodge destroyed for a second time
The lightning-caused wildfire, which started on July 4, rapidly consumed the lodge and dozens of other structures after winds shifted.
Designed in 1927, the lodge was the only accommodation on the North Rim and was cherished for its magnificent views and tranquil atmosphere.
The destruction has devastated many visitors and historians who considered the lodge an intrinsic part of the park's history and appeal.
This is not the first time the lodge has been destroyed; it burned down in 1932 and was rebuilt in 1938, leading to optimism that it will be regenerated again.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Disneyland at 70: artists on the park's five best rides – and why they still captivate
A visit to Disneyland can be an exhausting experience. The line for a ride can be hours long; there are hordes of overstimulated children and the sheer quantity of gift shops is overwhelming. When the park first opened, on 17 July 1955, an adult ticket cost $1 and kids were 50 cents: now a single day's entry for one person can easily run $200 or more. Despite all the kitsch and cartoon capitalism, though, Disneyland still delivers moments of actual magic, and that's largely due to the inventiveness of its theme park rides. Disneyland's most beloved attractions are not simply rollercoasters or carousels – they're enduring works of immersive art. Teams of visionary designers and fabricators have collaborated to make and remake these rides over the decades: some popular rides from the park's opening in 1955, such as the Jungle Cruise and the Mark Twain Riverboat, are still in operation, while the park's newest ride, inspired by Tiana, Disney's first Black princess, opened just months ago. Alongside its beloved mid-century relics, such as Sleeping Beauty's Castle, Disneyland has constructed new 'lands' to woo new fandoms, including a replica of Batuu, the smuggler's outpost on the Outer Rim of the Star Wars galaxy, which features new tech and more interactive Star Wars rides. Disneyland's new work and its seven-decade creative legacy continues to inspire some of today's leading experience design and immersive theater practitioners. 'You could take any single medium from any of these rides and it would most obviously be art – whether it's sculpture, scenic painting, the sound design, the storytelling,' argues Vince Kadlubek, a co-founder of Meow Wolf, an American art collective that has built interactive art experiences in five cities, including Las Vegas, Nevada, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. But the fact that many of Disney's rides have been designed with children in mind means their creative merit and ambition is often discounted. 'Why is fun not part of art?' Kadlubek asked. 'Why is joy and play not a part of art? Felix Barrett, the artistic director of Punchdrunk, a UK-based immersive theater company responsible for transformative hits like Sleep No More, agreed. A Disney ride 'is a complete hybrid of all the disciplines, and will deploy everything simultaneously', Barrett said. And with an amusement park ride 'you're feeling alive in a way you very rarely are when you experience single-discipline art, because you're physically present'. Even the long wait times for Disneyland rides have been turned into opportunities for creative innovation, Barrett noted. Disney's 'mastery of queue design', particularly on newer rides, is an inspiration: 'It's not just about the ride, it's about the anticipation building up to that ride.' The park turned 70 this week, and to mark the occasion we talked to artists, designers and historians about five of Disneyland's greatest artistic masterpieces, and why these rides continue to inspire new generations of storytellers. It's a Small World is a placid ride, without big thrills or surprises: visitors sit in small boats and glide past arrangements of animatronic figures dressed as children from cultures around the world. The ride's tinkling theme song plays overhead. But six decades after it first premiered as part of the 1964 World's Fair, the ride still has long lines. The mid-century aesthetic of the ride's building, scenes and characters, is mesmerizing in its detail. Mary Blair, the concept artist for Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, designed the look of the ride and chose its bold colors; Rolly Crump designed its gleaming tower and the Sherman brothers, who wrote many of Disney's hits, composed its signature song, with major feedback from Walt Disney himself. The rides' themes of youthful innocence and longing for global cooperation still resonate, said Bethanee Bemis, who curated an exhibit at the Smithsonian and wrote a book on the reflection of American history in Disney's parks. 'All children share the universal language of play,' Bemis said. Today, some of the cultural symbols chosen in the 1960s may read as racial or ethnic stereotypes: there is a snake charmer in one scene, and crocodiles and hyenas in an African tableau. Disneyland has tried to strike a balance between preserving the ride as a nostalgic time capsule and meeting more contemporary expectations about cultural representation, Bemis said. Some of its most successful updates have been adding new touches of cultural authenticity, like including traditional parol lanterns during the Christmas season for Filipino visitors. Long before it inspired the early 2000s film franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean was a standalone ride – one that put visitors in a boat and sent them on a seafaring journey. The ride is the last one that Walt Disney worked on himself – and it's ambitious, both in the quality of its audio-animatronic pirate figures and its narrative sweep – not to mention the engineering challenge of digging the tunnels underground necessary to build the ride, Bemis said. The experience begins gently, with riders drifting through the dusk of a bayou and listening to a banjo play. Then the boats descend into darkness, and with a sudden drop, emerge into the dangerous world of the pirates where cannonballs fly overhead, ships glide past cities on fire and pirate crews fight and carouse onshore. While the ride has been updated with details from the more recent film franchise – such as animatronic figures made to look like Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp's character in the films – what makes it work is the attention to the ride's fundamentals, designers said, from the pirate costumes that the ride attendants wear, to the temperature at different phases of the ride: humid and warm in the bayou, and then chilly when riders plummet into the skeleton-filled 'Davey Jones' locker' under the sea. 'Somehow, they have manipulated the environment to set mood and tone through temperature and humidity control,' said Noah Nelson, the publisher of No Proscenium, a publication that covers the US immersive experience design industry. He called the technique 'super effective'. 'Every single aspect of these rides has been designed with the most care and attention. I don't think we go inside a lot of places like that these days,' said Jeff Stark, who teaches a course on design for narrative space at New York University. 'The craftsmanship that you encounter inside of Disney – the level of thought, of preparation – matches what it is like to go inside a cathedral. The amount of care that was put into Pirates of the Caribbean is far more than the care that was put into the church that I grew up going to.' The Haunted Mansion begins with a group initiation in the dark tower room of an old Victorian house. The tower appears to grow to uncanny heights, as the oil paintings of ancient dignitaries on the walls expand to reveal their deaths. 'We have 999 happy haunts, but there's room for a thousandth,' a deep voice asks. 'Any volunteers?' The ghostly figures and spooky tricks of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion were created in the 1960s, and they're decidedly low-tech, made with old-fashioned smoke-and-mirror devices like Pepper's Ghost. That only makes the ride more appealing, said Kathryn Yu, a Los Angeles-based game designer. 'In a world that's increasingly digital, it is charming to see these physical effects in person.' As candles flicker, visitors are led through the dark halls to the tombstone-shaped 'doom buggies' that will whisk them through one haunted scene after another: a ghostly banquet hall, a seance, a graveyard. Many Disneyland's first 'imagineers' came from backgrounds in animation, 'so they really understood cinematography, and the perspective of the audience as a camera', Yu said. In The Haunted Mansion, as in the Pirates ride, the designers packed each spooky vignette with 'character development, backstory, an emotional connection to one of the ghosts'. One of the famous moments in the Haunted Mansion is when the 'doom buggies' swing backwards before descending into the graveyard, putting viewers on suddenly their backs, staring upwards at skeletal branches, as if they themselves are being lowered into a grave. In creating Punchdrunk's latest experience, Viola's Room, a gothic mystery now playing in New York, the British team repeatedly referenced Disney rides, Barrett said, including discussing how to create theatrical surprises that would affect viewers' bodies in the same way as a sudden drop in a roller coaster. (One tactic they're trying is asking visitors to go through the experience barefoot.) The 2006 cartoon movie Cars, a toddler favorite, might not seem like the most inspirational source material for an immersive work of art. But Radiator Springs Racers, Disneyland's Cars-inspired ride, is massive in its ambition: it's nothing short of a full recreation of the red rock spires of the American south-west, complete with native plants and the replica neon-lined main street of a small desert town. (At a reported $200m, it was also the most expensive Disneyland ride at the time it was built). If you visit Zion national park in Utah or Monument Valley in Arizona after seeing Radiator Springs Racers, Bemis, the Smithsonian curator, said, 'You feel like you've already seen the real thing.' The ride taps deeply into the American nostalgia for Historic Route 66 in the 1950s, Bemis said, an era of nostalgia that came too late for Walt Disney himself to appreciate, but that strikes a chord with the park's other tributes to small-town American life. 'It's really stunning work,' said Kadlubek, the Meow Wolf artist. While the ride ends with a shriek-inducing car race and includes plenty of interaction with fast-talking cartoon automobiles, it begins with a more contemplative cruise through the faux desert landscape. 'There's this really beautiful romanticism to it,' Kadlubek said. The most popular new ride in Disneyland's new Star Wars-themed area 'surpasses everything that's been attempted before' in experience design, Kadlubek argued, calling it 'ambitious to a pretty absurd degree'. The ride is set in a newly built area of the park, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, that allows movie fans to visit a replica of the battered frontier planet of Batuu. There are bars, restaurants, a giant version of the Millennium Falcon and Storm Troopers who stalk the streets, occasionally interrogating visitors. Several designers who are Star Wars fans said the atmosphere feels eerily like being inside the films: Nelson said he's sometimes content just to sit in the replica Docking Bay 7, listening to audio of space ships streaming overhead, and drinking a cup of 'Caf,' as coffee is known in the Star Wars universe. 'My first time stepping into it, I felt like I came home,' he said. Rise of the Resistance tells an elaborate story that begins in the waiting line, where visitors are treated as new recruits to the resistance against the villainous First Order. After an early mission goes awry, they are taken captive. Costumed actors playing members of the First Order mock them while marching them off to an interrogation cell: members of the resistance have to break them out of prison, then lead them on a wild escape journey. The process of moving the visitors into the experience, and even getting them into the 'transports' they ride in, is deeply embedded in narrative. 'It goes from being a 3-minute ride to this 20-minute long saga. They really reinvented what we would expect from a ride,' Stark said. Under pressure from Harry Potter world at Universal Studios, Stark said, Disney introduced newer ride technology in Rise of the Resistance, leaning heavily on trackless ride vehicles, which are programmed to move the visitors through space without physical rails, creating new opportunities for ride tricks and surprises. But like the best early rides, what makes Rise of the Resistance thrilling is the accumulation of tiny details, Stark said, like the moment when 'the sparks from Kylo Ren's lightsaber are showering around you, and you feel like you're in this moment of threat'.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Three things to do in your home before going on vacation
Summer is officially underway, which means many families are leaving their homes for relaxing summer vacations. But before you fly out the door with suitcases in tow, cleaning expert and internet personality Kyshawn Lane recommends you tick a few things off of a simple list to protect your home and save you thousands. Lane is known for his weekly home checks, which teach viewers how to save time, money, and energy while keeping their houses in the best possible condition. His latest video addresses the best way to leave your home prior to a vacation to ensure that you can soak up every second of relaxation while you're away. Daily Mail caught up with Lane, who explained why each tip is so important and provided some bonus advice. The first recommendation is to set your water heater to pilot or vacation mode. That saves energy by limiting unneeded water usage while you're out of town. 'The water heater is something that you know we're unconscious about, that we use it every day and how much energy it uses,' he told Daily Mail. 'So if there's no one home and there's no need for hot water, you might as well give it a break and put some money back in your pocket.' But he warned against turning the water heater all the way off, because getting it restarted can be a hassle. 'You'll have to relight the pilot and sometimes that can put a little stress on its parts,' he said. Second, he said to adjust your thermostat to 78 degrees in the summer, which will keep you from coming back to a musty home, which can even impact your health. 'It's the perfect temperature,' he said. Especially if you have plants or even electronics that can be affected by the heat. Turning your thermostat to a perfect 78 degrees can prevent damage to those items while saving energy and money. 'If you have pets or even electronics and plants, it can be crucial,' he said. Lane warned, however, not to turn your thermostat all the way off. 'It's going to use more energy, trying to get the climate back to where it was or where it needs to be,' he explained. He said it's also crucial at the end of each summer to perform routine maintenance on any over-worked appliances. 'Get your AC checked or tuned,' he said. 'It should be done like every one to three years depending on how you use it so that it's good for next summer. You don't wanna be in a predicament where it's blazing hot outside and suddenly that AC cranks out on you so definitely always be up-to-date with the health of your AC.' Having frozen pipes is also a costly consequence of not taking care of your home before leaving on a vacation in the winter time. 'There are damages that we don't see... when your pipes freeze or they burst,' he said. 'Then you have water in the walls and you have to worry about fighting mold and bacteria growing in the walls.' To prevent costly, often invisible damage, turning the heat to just 55 degrees is crucial. For money and energy saving in any season, Lane said it's a good idea to make sure none of your air is escaping through cracks in windows or door frames. Homeowners often unknowingly crank up their energy bills because regulated air isn't circulating properly in their home. The hack he said is the most important? Turning off the main water valve in your home to prevent leaking. Lane learned this lesson the hard way after forgetting to complete the step and coming home to a water leak that cost him thousands of dollars. 'I returned from vacation. It was around 10 pm at night. I'm thinking I'm just gonna come home and have a chill night and go to bed,' Lane recalled. 'I come home to a leaking ceiling that started from my top bathroom floor and penetrated all the way down to my basement.' He said something as simple as turning off his water valve could have prevented the inconvenience and thousands of dollars he had to spend to have it fixed. 'Just something as simple as turning off the main water valve when you're gonna be away for a few days will give you peace of mind that you won't be returning to a tsunami once you come back home,' Lane said. If you live in an apartment and don't have to worry about water valve leaks and water heater costs, Lane said there are still a few things you can do to save yourself some money and make sure you're coming home to a relaxing space. He said to place electronics like your refrigerator on energy saver or vacation mode before heading out of town and unplug toasters, lamps, and electronics that won't be used while you're away. 'When we go out we always say "I'm unplugging," do the same for the home,' he said. When you return from a trip, Lane said to make sure to turn your water valve back on, switch on the water heater, and set your thermostat to a comfortable temperature once again. But he noted there are a couple of extra steps he likes to take to make sure everything in the home is in order. 'I'm flushing the toilets to make sure that everything is still working. I'm running the faucet,' he added. He said it's good to make sure your space is 'in good shape to move forward since you know it hasn't been used.' Lane frequently shares tips and tricks for homeowners on his Instagram and TikTok page. In any season it's important to make sure you're not wasting your money or energy on unnecessary home repairs and expenses. 'We're about saving money here,' he said.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Cole Palmer and his girlfriend unfollow each other on social media sparking rumours they have split days after Chelsea star won the Club World Cup
Cole Palmer and his influencer girlfriend Connie Grace have unfollowed each other on social media, sparking rumours that they might have broken up. The Chelsea star and his partner have also removed all pictures of one another from their respective accounts. It comes just days after the 23-year-old starred in the Club World Cup final, scoring two goals and claiming an assist for Joao Pedro, as Chelsea beat Paris Saint-Germain to become world champions. Grace had travelled to the US during the tournament but was not among the wives or girlfriends who celebrated the win on the pitch at the MetLife Stadium. Now the pair have both unfollowed one another on Instagram, sparking speculation they might have parted ways. But despite rumours of an alleged split, Palmer this week said he was looking forward to being reunited with his girlfriend, but that he first wanted to visit St Kitts and Nevis. Mail Sport exclusively accompanied Palmer as he returned to his ancestral Caribbean homeland for the first time, where his paternal grandfather was born. He was given a heros welcome as he arrived on the island, 4,000 miles from the Manchester suburb of Wythenshawe where the Chelsea and England star grew up. The 23-year-old even held a reception with the country's prime minister. Meanwhile, Grace is continuing to enjoy a holiday in Miami, posting a picture of herself in the city on her Instagram on Friday. Palmer and Grace went public together in November last year at the GQ Men of the Year Awards and are around eleven months into their relationship. Grace, a nail technician and Instagram influencer with 38,000 followers, is also from Manchester. The duo met when they were 17 through mutual friends. In March she said: 'Cole now is still the same Cole that I met when I was 17. Obviously, he's changed, he's grown up, and his life now is completely different, but he's still the same boy, he's still laid-back Cole. 'Cole will adapt to whatever situation he's in. He's not bothered that he's that far from home because all he wants to do is play football and if it means leaving home and being in a place which is completely different to where he's from, he'll do it. 'He's not bothered about the whole fame side of it and he's not bothered what people think of him. He is only just bothered about scoring goals and doing well for his team, doing well for his country, and you've got to love him for that.' Palmer is currently enjoying his summer break after another impressive season, where he guided Chelsea to the Europa Conference League title. He scored 18 goals and provided 14 assists in all competitions, scoring 15 and assisting nine in the Premier League, as Chelsea qualified for the Champions League for the first time in three years. The Blues take on Erik Ten Hag's Bayer Leverkusen in less than three weeks in their opening pre-season game, before hosting AC Milan two days later.
