Hey I just thought I would let you all know I was a guest on The Hub Podcast. We had a great time Recording the Second Episode and I plan to be available for many more episodes in the future.

The Hub is self described as : The Hub is an unofficial Disney podcast and website, where podcasters from the online Disney community gather to discuss the week’s events.

Some of the topics we discussed :

• Five annoying things about the Dream
• Perils at dock for the Dream?
• Virtual port holes on the Dream
• Disney at the Oscars
• Fantasyland updates
• A look at the new Mermaid attraction
• Memories projected onto the Castle?

and so much more

I have to admit it was great to get online and talk with some of my good Disney podcaster Friends , it was like we were recording an episode of the Travelears at times since Will and Shannon from the Magic Never Ends podcast were on the show also.

Go check it out ! http://thehubpodcast.com

When going to the Parks grab a Disney Gift Card and load all your money you plan on spending in the parks on food, drink and merchandise. This will help you spend only what you have allotted to the Disney portion of the vacation. You can inquire at most cash registers ( that take the gift card ) at the balance or on your receipt after your purchase. Disney Gift Card has also created an iPhone App that can handle multiple gift cards and tell you your balance which is really great.

Thanks to my friend Holly over at http://allthatisholly.blogspot.com/ for telling me about this idea. After trying it out successfully and thinking about other ways to utilize the Disney Gift Card I came up with these thoughts.

Eating or Drink Around the World Showcase in Epcot

This is a favourite event with my friends and I, we start at a country around World Showcase in Epcot, have a snack or drink at that country then move onto the next country and repeat. As you can imagine this can be loads of fun when you are at Epcot in the afternoon evening. Load up your eating / drinking around the world money so you don’t have one of those “I spent how much money last night!?” moments as you go over the receipts in your pockets trying to piece together the events of your big night around World Show Case. Instead you can just look back at the photos on your phone to recreate the evening.

( Always be responsible when enjoying the different spirits from around the world in Epcot )

Trip spending money savings plan

For those that live near a Disney Store you can periodically add money on your gift card so every pay day you can put X dollars on the card as a method to save up for the upcoming trip. Since you can carry a balance on the card and it never expires you can carry over money from this trip to the next.

Teach kids about spending and budgeting

You could give children a gift card with some money on it and let them learn about the value of things and then let them learn about budgeting with out giving them actual cash to experiment with.

Helping foreigners with deal with different currency

For people from outside the US dealing with the US Currency can be a bit of a challenge since most of the bills look so similar. I have a friend form an unnamed country down under that I won’t mention by name ( is that anonymous enough for you AJ ) that almost tipped with a $100 bill because it kind of looked enough like a 10 or a Single in the dimly lit area. with a gift card this would not have happened. As a Canadian I run into this all the time I return home from a vacation to Disneyland with heaps of change, if I use the gift card I never have to try and use up the change in my pocket. When I go to Florida I can thank the toll roads for riding me of the left over change in my pocket.

In full disclosure Disney Gift Card is an advertiser on my website thanks to Maingate Ads.

On the recent trip to Disneyland I was fortunate enough get to spend a day at teh Disney ABC Studios and then Green room access at the Jimmy Kimmel Live.On the Show Greg interviews me … well we more just talk about our day at WDI, Disney ABC studios and Hollywood.

Check out the interview at Imagineering My Way Podcast

direct download MP3: IMW Show 055

That’s right a new DSLR Camera … you might be asking why is getting a DSLR camera going to positively effect the podcast? Well in the past few years Camera makers have been equipping some DSLR cameras with full HD 1080p capabilities. The most exciting parts of this is the DSLR’s have outstanding image quality. What helps to get these great images is the variety of quality lens and low light capabilities.

Some of the most loved attractions in the Disney parks are extremely difficult to record on video because the stage lighting is actually quite low.  To get quality recording of the attractions you either need a lighting set up or all the lights on or a very high end camera ( film or video ). well not so much anymore, for the cost of many consumer video cameras ( less than $1000 ) you can get a DSLR that produces video very close to high end film camera results.

Canon just recently updated their Rebel T series cameras and equipped the new Rebel T2i (North America) / 550 (UK and Asia) to have full HD 1080p at 24 & 30 fps and 720p at 30 & 60 fps. So what is significant about these numbers is it’s full quality and the 24 fps is what film is shot at so the video will look smooth like you see in most movies. 60 fps allows the film maker slow down the video to 30 or 24 and produce some very nice looking slow motion video.