Julie Tremaine

The Country Bears are about to sing their last song — at least for a while. The Country Bear Musical Jamboree, an animatronic show that was an opening day attraction at Walt Disney World, is closing on Jan. 27. A new show, featuring the classic singing bears, will open later this summer, though when isn’t currently known. “The Country Bears are getting ready to put on a new show that pays homage to the Opry-style shows of Nashville,” according to the Disney Parks Blog. Most of the upcoming show…

People love to debate the best way to park at Disneyland — and really, it’s no surprise. Parking at the theme park is expensive, and there are very few ways around paying Disney’s prices and using its lots that save you time or money. Trust me, I’ve tried them all. Or, at least, I thought I had. Then, I saw a viral Instagram reel from @multiplythemagic, a Disneyland fan account. “Is preferred parking a scam?” the woman asked. For those of you who don’t speak Disney, “preferred parking” is an up…

The music started before we could see anything, the ethereal dizi flute and erhu strings lilting over the percussive guzheng and tam drums — but then, the procession came into view. A man waved a long red and gold dragon kite, and dancers followed, wearing costumes of enormous flower petals. All of a sudden, we weren’t on Buena Vista Street anymore. We were in Mulan’s China, and we were celebrating Lunar New Year. In some ways, Disneyland’s Lunar New Year Celebration is similar to other festival…

Debuting a new character meet-and-greet, one only available to hotel guests, is a pretty enticing way to introduce a new hotel to the Disneyland Resort. But it’s not the only unique element to Pixar Place Hotel, the only completely Pixar-themed hotel in America. The hotel was a collaboration between the Emeryville-based animation company and Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI). “What an amazing job this team has done to really bring to life this, what I’m going to call canvas, that allowed for amazin…

Regardless of my romantic situation on any given year, I’ve never cared much about Valentine’s Day. The whole thing — elaborate gifts, overpriced roses, fancy dinners — always felt so constructed to me. It just never seemed like the outsized expectations that come with a holiday largely manufactured by commercialism could possibly match up to the reality of the night. Which is a long way of saying, I didn’t have much interest in Disneyland’s Sweethearts’ Nite. But I gave it a shot this year, and…

On Feb. 15, a new restaurant officially opens at Universal Studios Hollywood — and when it does, it will solve one of the park’s biggest pain points: that once you get into the wildly popular Super Nintendo World, it’s very hard to get a seat at its excellent Toadstool Cafe. Now, with the opening of Power Up Cafe, park guests can sample power-ups like Super Mushrooms and Fire Flowers from the Super Mario universe, but in an easy, walk-up way. Since Super Nintendo World opened on Feb. 17, 2023, t…

For years and years, tens of thousands of people walked by Owen and Dolly Pope’s house every day. No one had any idea that there was a private house on Disney property, or that Disneyland had two full-time residents who got to stay when the park shut down for the night. The Popes moved out in 1971, but their house still stands inside the grounds of the Disneyland Resort today. The story goes like this: Walt Disney hired Owen and Dolly Pope in 1951 to advise Imagineers on the use of animals in a…

For most of the night, it seemed like the theater was out to get Adam Sandler. First, someone handed him the wrong coffee as he walked on stage. Then the screens behind him, because of some incompatibility with his team’s gear and the venue, didn’t work for almost all of his more than 90-minute set, even though a lot of the show was supposed to have a video component. While leading into a song, the keyboard fell. “There’s a hole in the floor,” pianist Dan Bulla, who was accompanying Sandler for…

Imagine a hub where infinite paths stretch out ahead of you, and no matter which one you take, you’ll be transported to a corner of the multiverse that defies your wildest imaginings — and has really great roller coasters. That’s the inspiration for Epic Universe, the new theme park set to open next year at Universal Orlando. “Even though we’ve created some really incredible experiences, we’re always looking to how do we make the next one even better?” Mark Woodbury, chairman and CEO of Univers…

It’s officially eating season at Disneyland: The annual Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival runs through April 22 in Disney California Adventure Park, and offers an extensive array of new and returning foods to try. The kitchens at the festival are themed to California cuisine: There’s Garlic Kissed (but unlike in Gilroy, no garlic ice cream), the food truck-inspired LA Style, the spicy Peppers Cali-Ente, the meat-free Earth Eats, and California Craft Brews and Uncork California, t…

When Disneyland broke from its usual tradition and released a year’s worth of upcoming park programming all at once, there was a particular event that got the internet’s attention: Disney Channel Nite, which the company described as “an all-new evening event celebrating iconic Disney Channel TV shows and characters.” When I heard “iconic Disney Channel TV shows,” my head went immediately to Scrooge McDuck diving beak-first into the sea of gold in his money bin. Would there be a “DuckTales” singa…

After a six-hour meeting that included speeches from Disneyland’s president, Disney cast members and a significant number of detractors voicing their concerns, Disneyland Forward has hit a milestone in its progress. The company received approval from the Anaheim Planning Commission to move the proposed expansion to the next round of approvals from the Anaheim City Council. That vote is scheduled for April 16, and Deadline reports that Disneyland is hoping to have the whole project approved this…

It sounds like such a good idea: Leave a tiny piece of a person you loved in a place they felt happiest. But the reality is much different. In fact, there’s really no way spreading someone’s ashes at Disneyland ends well for anyone. But people do it, a lot more than you’d think, and the result is absolutely horrifying. To see this for yourself, all you need to do is view the post on X (formerly Twitter) that went viral on March 17. “Someone spread some ashes on Rise of the Resistance at Disneyl…

It’s like a storyline from “Succession”: an aging businessman worth billions has everything he’s ever wanted except the full respect of his peers. In an attempt to cement his legacy, and to place the grandest feather in his cap, he sets his sights on his most ambitious target yet: the biggest entertainment company in the world. He will force his way through the doors. He will conquer the company from the inside. And he will bend it to his will. It sounds like fiction, but it’s very real. Despite…

It was a love story for the ages. The Hollywood icon with the world’s most beautiful eyes, once the highest paid actor — male or female — in the industry, tucks herself away at the Betty Ford Center to face her personal demons and the sunset of her film career. He’s a proto-Kato, so stereotypically sun-kissed and Southern Californian that he could be an extra from “Point Break.” The twice-divorced construction worker, with the most luxurious mullet on the West Coast, is ordered to the Rancho Mir…

It’s been three years in the making, but after the Anaheim City Council’s unanimous preliminary approval on April 17, it appears the massive $1.9 billion DisneylandForward expansion plan is actually happening. The last hurdle, and one which the project is almost guaranteed to clear, is a final approval from the council on May 7. “We are thrilled that the City of Anaheim has agreed to work together on this legacy project and excited for the city council’s initial approval of DisneylandForward as…

If you try to order Peter Luger’s famous hamburger in the restaurant’s original Brooklyn location, you’re expected to follow certain rules. The first: You can have it for lunch, and lunch only. The second: You can add cheese and bacon, and that’s it. And the third, most important of all: Unless you’ve got the restaurant’s own Peter Luger charge card, don’t try to pay with credit. Now that a Peter Luger Steakhouse is in Las Vegas — Vegas being Vegas, after all — the rules are slightly more relax…

It’s a strange thing to be enjoying a fine dining meal, talking about Michelin stars and desserts that take two days to prepare, and then have Kylo Ren walk past your table. But it’s a strange thing that actually happened in real life thanks to the latest additions at Disneyland. The first restaurants of Downtown Disney’s ongoing overhaul opened this week: Paseo and Céntrico, and the grab-and-go market Tiendita, all from celebrity chef Carlos Gaytán, the first first Mexican-born chef to earn a c…

Perched on a hill overlooking Hollywood Boulevard, the Magic Castle is one of LA’s most storied landmarks, one that it’s impossible to see without wondering what’s inside. It’s a century-old mansion illuminated with dramatic, colorful lights — but it’s also a members-only private club for the Academy of Magical Arts, where some of the world’s best magicians perform every night, making sleight of hand and illusion into high art. A place where the true magic of the experience is the way it makes y…

The first few times I went to Las Vegas, I left thinking I never needed to go back. Sure, there are fun things to do and great things to eat, but those also exist in places where you don’t have to walk a mile through a smoky casino to get to them. I hated the hidden costs when booking rooms (those $50 deals always end up totaling something more like $150 a night), and I hated that when I finally collapsed into my kind-of-icky room at the end of the night, it was impossible to sleep because of al…