Cars Land, Buena Vista Street, and Mad T Party AP Preview

This week Disney California Adventure hosted an Annual Passholder event to preview new merchandise coming to the resort this summer. Guests who attended this three-day event had the chance to purchase merchandise almost 3 months in advance of the opening of the billion dollar revamp to Disney California Adventure Park. Items included shirts, hats, ears, pins, vinylmation, coin sets, post cards, cookie jars, jackets, attraction posters, blankets, bags, and scarves. A lot of the merchandise for sale at the event had special patches or print indicating Grand Opening 2012, so look for those items on June 15, 2012.

Food

I was hoping to sample exciting new food and beverage offerings, but the selections were very limited. The only sample food item was dill-flavored popcorn. This was better than the Bacon Cheddar Popcorn popcorn Disneyland has offered in the past, but it still doesn’t compare to traditional buttered popcorn. I also previewed two new flavors of slushies: cotton candy and sour apple. Both were extremely sweet, and I had a hard time drinking more than just a few sips of each. Mixing the two flavors together was really tasty but a sugar overload.

Costumes

The new Cast Member costumes for Cars Land and Buena Vista Street were also on display. I really like the Buena Vista Street costumes; they are a great throw back to a different era. The Cars Land costumes are a tribute to the Hawaiian shirt-wearing John Lasseter, the creator of the movie Cars.

Mad T Party

Finally, there were concept art and a few merchandise previews for Mad T Party, the new nighttime show/dance party that will replace the long running ElecTRONica. Based on all the merchandise and concepts going into this new show, it looks like Disney realizes how much money ElecTRONica was bringing into what would normally be an extremely slow part of the park at night. There was special light-up merchandise, along with shirts, hoodies, drinks, food items, and pins.