Remember, all links in TPEI open up in a new browser window. So feel free to check stuff out, we’ll be here when you get back! Each photo opens up to a larger version as well, and with that out of the way let’s look back at what happened during the past month, starting with…

*The Great Orlando Freeze

Some months start out “hot” while others start out “cold” and no month in Florida started colder than the end of January leading into early February. When the temperatures are going to drop under 40 degrees, the theme parks put preventative measures in place to help protect the landscaping, because plants in the Sunshine State aren’t made to withstand such freezing weather. At both Universal and Disney, you’d see protective coverings put over a lot of various plants and trees.

With temperatures dropping below 32 degrees, we even got one of the most rare sightings you will ever see in a Florida theme park, actual icicles formed!

Once the theme parks opened, the temperatures were still pretty chilly – especially for Florida standards – so we also got the chance to see characters with some slight modifications to their costumes to help keep them warm.

This also allowed certain characters to have some fun with the situation, as the Vikings in Isle of Berk talked about how unseasonably “warm” the weather was. If you remember, the very first How to Train Your Dragon movie starts off with a voiceover saying, “This is Berk. It’s twelve days north of Hopeless, and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death.”

Once the weather got back to more normal standards, the theme parks had to deal with all the plants and trees that did not survive the freeze.

Its pretty easy to tell which plants in Florida took a turn for the worse…

Areas that have a lot of foliage are obviously the hardest hit, including Jurassic Park in Islands of Adventure.

Let’s close by giving a better look at how the freeze affected landscaping all across the state for Florida. Below is a pic of SeaWorld’s Discovery Cove AFTER the Great Orlando Freeze.

Below is how the trees and plants in and around Discovery Cove normally look. It’s a stark difference, and one that affected pretty much every area of Florida north of Miami.

TPEI Score: – 10 One of the best parts about visiting the theme parks from February to April is that the weather is generally pleasant and “cool.” Florida is not built for freezing though, and when temperatures get so cold for multiple days it can have a drastic effect on the entire state. Not only do you have plants (and animals) not being able to survive, but there is an economic impact in that parks like Universal’s Volcano Bay or Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon have to just completely shut down. Unfortunately, thanks to the prospect of Climate Change looking to almost certainly getting worse in the coming years, this is most likely going to be the start of A New Normal.

*How Cool Are These?!!!

At the end of pretty much every TPEI we take a look at art from members of the theme park fan community, but there are some items this month that are just completely off the charts that you have to see. First up is this amazing 1/1000th scale model of Horizons from Radically Retro Store.

How amazing is this?!!! Brings back so many great memories for those of us who visited the true golden age of EPCOT Center.

These models are hand painted by the artist (@JasonDWS) and are available for pre-order. Interested? You can get yours by CLICKING HERE!

One of our favorite multi-media artists is Cremated Plastic, and this month he revealed his latest creation, a scale model of the “Catch of the Day” at Universal Studios Florida. This is one of the most popular photo-ops at the park.

The attention to detail is just bonkers.

I’m in awe of this craftsmanship. LED lighting is built into the base!

You can find Cremated Plastic at various conventions in Florida – including Scaradise taking place this very weekend (Feb 27th – March 1st) at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa – or see various items at his ONLINE STORE.

TPEI Score: + 4 It’s truly humbling to see the amount of creativity and talent that is in the theme park fan community. Artists like Jason DWS and Cremated Plastic are a true inspiration and part of my Theme Park Multi-Media Artist Mount Rushmore with Phillip Weatherford (AKA the Horizoneer) and Stephen Christ (AKA Design Pavilion.)

*Dinosaurs go extinct (again)

Last year we saw the loss of Chester & Hester’s Dino-Rama, and this month we got phase 2 of the Dinoland USA closure at Animal Kingdom which included Restaurantosaurus, Chester & Hester’s Dinosaur Treasures gift shop, and the E-Ticket attraction Dinosaur.

People came from far and wide to pay their last respects, leading to what must have been an eye-opening and bewildering day in the park for guests who weren’t following theme park blogs to know of the closure before hand….

The last day was filled with nostalgia from fans who grew up with the ride.

Disney did invite actor Wallace Langham to the closing day. Langham played the role of Dr. Seeker in the attraction. This was a great touch, and it’s always awesome to see actors who played iconic theme park roles come back to visit the attraction itself (like Patrick Warburton did last year for Soarin’ Over California.)

Love this photo taken by ThrillGeek on the last night of Dinosaur. Quite serendipitous.

The attraction also has inspired some wonderful art, including this piece from Tiny Artist Jaime S. that follows the attraction from queue to exit. Amazing work and Jaime herself was inspired by the geniuses over at Park Lore and their ride maps.

Love this piece by @Dreamfinder83.

The incomparable Bryan Bindham used the iconic Dr. Seeker (and Dr. Marsh) in this fantastic piece.

TPEI Score: – 20 I’ve heard nothing but great things about the Encanto attraction that is coming to Animal Kingdom, and I’m sure it will be great. However, removing the last remaining dinosaurs in all of Walt Disney World is – and always will be – a mind boggling decision to me. Animal Kingdom has the space. Animal Kingdom needs more attractions. Kids yesterday, today, and tomorrow will always be fascinated by dinosaurs. Getting rid of Dinoland USA for the “latest and greatest IP” as judged by Disney+ viewing metrics seems like an incredibly short sighted decision.

*The Muppets Return!

There have  been several times in recent years when popular TV shows were brought back and us fans are always hoping “please be good…please be good…please be good.” Sometimes, like in the case of Veronica Mars, Party Down and the recent Scrubs reboot, we get lucky. However, you’ll also get cases like Arrested Development season 5 that are pure disappointment.

When Disney announced the return of The Muppet Show it first arrived as a shock, but that shock quickly turned to a combination of fear and hope. Hope that this would be the start of a Muppet resurgence, but mixed with the fear that if this isn’t good we won’t see anything Muppet related for at least another half decade.

The Disney fan community loves their Muppets, and there is no bigger fan than The Horizoneer who created this piece of artwork that pays tribute to a vintage Muppet ad from the 1970s (which you can see by CLICKING HERE.)

The Muppet Show made it’s debut on Disney+ and was a HUGE hit with both the critics and the regular viewers! I personally loved it.

I personally loved it. I laughed throughout the show and thought it was fantastic when Fozzie the Bear had to tell Seth Rogan his act was being cut from the show because they were running long and then Seth coming back later to complain that another Muppet in the show wasn’t canon. Truly sublime. Sabrina Carpenter’s “Islands in the Stream” duet with Kermit was wonderful and the show closing bit using Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” was perfect.

Loved this observation by a fan on social media.

I mean seriously, show me the lie…

TPEI Score: + 4 All we can do is wait and see if we get a Muppet revitalization thanks to this show. As a fan, I couldn’t have hoped for more. In the future, I’d love to be able to see the return of classic Muppet Show bits like Pigs in Space and cooking segments with the Swedish Chef. The Muppets are that rare bit of entertainment that can be just as good to a kid 5 years old as an adult in their 40s and 50s. They are funny (but not mean spirited) and deliver in a way that you can’t replicate with animation.

***QUICK HITS***

*Single Rider? NAY NAY. Double Rider!

This month out in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge out in Disneyland they added a new twist to getting in line by introducing a Double Rider line from Smuggler’s Run. Single Rider lines in theme parks are good, so a Double Rider line must be twice as good, right (I was told there would be no math.)

This Double Rider change gave new relevance to an entrant into Disney’s Merchandise Hall of Shame.

But what’s crazier is that wasn’t even the weirdest thing to happen to Smuggler’s Run this month as Disney announced the new official name for the attraction later this year will be Millenium Falcon: Smugglers Run – A New Mission. Our resident Digital Maestro Scott Walker whipped up a new attraction poster featuring this mouthful.

If we can go back to bonkers Disney t-shirts for a moment, how about this Disneyland shirt that TouringPlans’ own Guy Selga saw in the wild. This must be for those weirdoes perfectly sane people who have their house littered tastefully decorated with Live, Laugh, Love word art.

When blogger-in-the-sky @bioreconstruct wasn’t up in the air taking the latest and greatest aerials of current Disney construction, he was on the ground getting photos at this in Epic Universe showing Pizza Moon got a whole bunch of misprinted pizza boxes and said, “Screw it, we’ll use them anyway.” Seeing this reminds me of that moment from Elf when the book printer shows James Caan’s character that two pages of a kid’s book are completely blank, and James Caan just signs off on them. Hilarious moment in the movie but it turns out it was just a “slice” of life (that’s my pizza word play joke for this segment.)

One of my favorite follows on social media is Rob Bloom, who posts a whole bunch of great historical photos for the Universal parks. For Disney we have a TON of accounts that post daily pictures to spark nostalgia, but for Universal theme park fans there is mostly just Rob, who puts in the hard work day in and day out. Among the photos Rob posted this month was this logo design for Universal Studios Florida that apparently was “limited time magic” because no one remembers it.

The little touches that Scott Walker put into each design above is just ::chef’s kiss:: Would buy both of those shirts immediately.

Speaking of other items I want to buy, let’s check out some upcoming toys that were previewed earlier this month (photos by social media user @preternia.) First up is a line of DuckTales figures that I would have killed for as a kid watching the Disney Afternoon back in the day.

But even better are some new Muppets figures!

*Best of Bio, February Edition

One of my favorite articles every year is compiling the Best of Bioreconstruct, because it gives me a chance to look back at some of the amazing shots he has taken over the course of 12 months. Bio has so many incredible photos each and every month that I end up forgetting about until doing the Best of Bio puts me in that state of awe again. So here’s a look at some terrific February shots that I will somehow completely forget until December when working on Best of Bio 2026.

Let’s start off with some heartbreaking photos he took of Disney making quick work when removing the Dinosaur attraction from Animal Kingdom…

That big pile of debris right in the center of the photo? That’s this guy…

The arrow in the photo below is pointing to what was once part of a large dinosaur skeleton inside the building.

Bio’s photos also allows others to do some pretty fantastic work, such as this piece below from Master Cartographer Tommy Hawkins showing exactly how much land Epic Universe has to expand. Don’t expect too much expansion any time soon though, because one story this month was Universal reaching out to various theme park blogs to explain that the verbiage used by NBCUniversal saying the park was “expanding” was a mistake.

We paid tribute to vlogger Adam the Woo in our In Memoriam series last year, and this month the town of Celebration in Florida dedicated a bench to Adam.

The bench is adorned with one of Adam’s most popular phrases, and one that connected him instantly with millions of fans across the globe.

***Hacker Update

Regular readers of this fine blog series may remember that last month I wrote about my social media account on Twitter (@derekburgan) was hacked and taken over by a crypto scammer. Here’s how the hack worked.

Many members of what I refer to as DisTwitter (theme park fans on the social media app) would get Direct Messages from someone that follow that were like this…

At the time, many don’t realize that the person sending that Direct Message has been hacked. At least I can say that I didn’t know. The link leads to a fictitious website that offers you a chance to “vote” by logging in through your social media account. This is just a simple way to get your password and I walked right into it like a “shave-tail Louie” (hey someone needs to be the first person in history to quote a line from James Cameron’s Avatar.)

Here’s the thing, I thought I was helping someone. Someone that I didn’t even know that well but was an established member of the community. That’s what the hackers are depending on, your kindness and desire to help people.

So, after I tried to “vote,” I noticed that I got an email from Twitter saying that the email address for my account had changed. While I didn’t realize it at the time, at this point it was already over, the hacker had taken over my account.

You can see in the above email that it says “If you did not make this change, please secure your account” with a link. The hacker had already changed my password and there was no way to secure my account. All of a sudden I started getting texts from friends of mine who are also on Twitter asking if I posted the following tweet…

Of course I didn’t. Worse, this hacker was now using MY ACCOUNT in the direct message scam to get people to “vote” for me in this non-existent podcast awards. Now I don’t know exactly who fell into the same trap as me or if I was the Outbreak Monkey/Patient Zero for a new rash of hacked accounts, but it seemed like every day a person on DisTwitter was being hacked and posted the exact same dumb tweet.

Now I can take a joke as well as anyone, but the following tweet hit a little too close to home.

My reaction?

For the most part I was pretty ambivalent about losing access to my “main” account on Twitter, because I already had an established backup account. However, I felt AWFUL that there was a good chance that *I* was the reason that others were hacked.

Every day for weeks I would write Twitter multiple times per day alerting them that my account was hacked and would get generic emails that say their “evidence” shows that I was still in charge of my account. Pure INSANITY. Eventually I got them to turn off the Two-Factor Authorization that would allow me to reset my Twitter password and then set up a secondary passkey.

Now I was finally back in charge of my account. First thing I did was go to my Direct Messages and just had a gut punch seeing all the followers that this douche bag sent this scam to in DM. Had to write a whole bunch of apology DMs. However, I also discovered that the hacker had blocked a whole bunch of my followers as well (because they had called out the scam and tagging my account on Twitter.) Here’s the thing though, these blocks were just randomly mixed in with all the crypto and NFT scammers I have been blocking over the last decade so it was like going through a needle in a haystack finding the theme park people the scammer blocked.

So I had to unblock accounts like the Permit Princess Alicia Stella and Bioreconstruct. This did allow me to be refollowed by the accounts that my hacker blocked, and seeing stuff like the notification below is the closest that I’ll ever get to the feeling of being knighted by the King of England or winning an Academy Award.

My stupidity got me into this situation, and safeguards have been put into place to hopefully ensure that this never happens again. 2-Factor Authentication has been established, I won’t click on links from people I don’t normally interact with, and I’ve brought on a new Password Manager.

The capper to this story? As you can see in all the hacked tweets above, they are all designed to send people to the hackers main scam account. It’s so OBVIOUS all the accounts have been hacked and yet Twitter just does not care. I’ve reported this account daily for spam and this is the response I get…

My reaction?

As dumb as I am for falling for this scam, all I can think about are the people who want to use Twitter for their banking and credit cards. Elon Musk likes to tout “X” as “the everything app” and can you imagine if this scammer could have just wiped me out financially and/or rang up huge charges on credit cards? The clown show at Twitter would just respond with “we don’t see anything abnormal.”  So anyway, Twitter can send me as many denial emails as they want, but I will still keep reporting @Bri_CryptoNFTs as spam and will continue it until the day this scammer is sent back to the fiery pits of scammer Hell that they came from.

*Marvel at the Olympics

I love when things that I love come together, so  you can imagine my joy watching the winter Olympics and seeing sports combined with properties I love including How to Train  Your Dragon, Minions, and even Marvel!

*Marvel in Cars Land!

Meanwhile, out at Disney California Adventure there were some great movie parody posters put up on the construction wall separating Cars Land from Avengers Campus.

Social Media user Tustin Raider got great looking versions of each poster. These mash-ups are so great as they combine the Cars Universe with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Would immediately buy them all as prints.

Digital Maestro Scott Walker made his own poster for the Cars Universe featuring The Manadalorian & Grogu, which released a trailer in the middle of February (which I thought LOOKED AWESOME!!)

Speaking of great art, how can you not love this take on the Haunted Mansion busts featuring Disney CEOs that was made for a Must Read article from Variety.

The Haunted Mansion busts are one of my favorite things to see artists re-create. Absolutely in love with this version featuring Universal Classic Monsters…

We have tiny busts…

How about this fantastic one that features puppeteers involved with the Muppets, including Jim Henson himself!

I even did my own take on these iconic busts for my Batman Visits the Theme Parks benefit comic book.

This Hollywood Tower of Terror piece by Rob Yeo is just off the charts. WOW! “”One stormy night long ago, five people stepped through the door of an elevator and into a nightmare. That door is opening once again and this time, it’s opening for you.”

How can you not love this Tapestry of Nations art by The Dreamfinder?! Just wonderful stuff. Great tie-in to the Horzions scale model we mentioned earlier.

Reminder that this month our annual ARTIST SPOTLIGHT celebrated it’s fifth anniversary with an amazing class including Brianna Garcia…

…Derek Collier (AKA Satisfactual Sign Company)…

…and Andres Orellana ( AKA ImaginaticArt). Very proud of these talented artists and humbled that they agreed to be a part of the Artist Spotlight lineage. Here’s looking forward to next year!

Last month’s Theme Park Enjoyment Index: 80
This month’s net change: – 22
Current enjoyment level: 58

Writer Derek Burgan, when not cleaning Len Testa’s pool, can be found reading comic books, watching professional wrestling, organizing his various Tsum Tsums in alphabetical order, and taking his dog Bacini to Universal and Disney.. He will not, we repeat not, be found at a Disney Outlet Store. An official DisTwitter Influencer, you can interact with him @derekburgan

Digital Artist Scott Walker hails from Scotland and is the fifth most famous person from this country following Alexander Graham Bell, Ewan McGregor, Gerard Butler, and Groundskeeper Willie.