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MouseStation 61 - All About MouseFest with Chairman Dave Marx
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Run time 0:30:48
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Featured Topic
This week, Mike and Mark talk to MouseFest Chairman Dave Marx (co-author of the PassPorter series of guidebooks with his wife, Jennifer) about everything happening at MouseFest 2007.
MouseFest 2007 is coming up in less than three months, and anticipation and excitement is building. (Note: MousePlanet is an underwriting sponsor of MouseFest.)
For those unfamiliar with the event, MouseFest is a gathering of the Disney fan community with many of the various webmasters, podcasters, book authors, and others in attendance. There are over 50 meets (at least 60 this year) for the land portion, with more on the cruise portion. It takes place in early December, while it's not too cold yet but the decorations are up and the crowds are (relatively) smaller.
The meeting room at the Dolphin won't be announced for a little while yet, as rooms may yet be shuffled due to various convention groups, but it will be announced well in advance.
The origin of MouseFest came after an annual December meet of the RADP (rec.arts.disney.parks) Usenet news group and some other communities. Dave, Jennifer, and Deb Wills (of All Ears Net) got together at the Crew Cup Lounge at the Yacht Club to recap the event, and realized that while the event was growing each year it could be really big if they got all of the online Disney communities involved. The first MouseFest was held in 2003, and it's grown almost exponentially each year.
Due to the growth of the event and the rapidly-increasing cost of putting the event on, the organizing committee (of which Mark is a member) decided to ask people to voluntarily register for the event, with a sliding cost scale based on the number of people in your party. However, since all MouseFest activities have been free in the past (with the exception of sharing the cost of special, paid activities), we didn't want to have people paying for the same old things that they always got anyway. Those who support MouseFest by voluntarily registering will get a number of benefits, which are listed on the registration page at the MouseFest web site.
Another way to help support MouseFest and help yourself at the same time is to take advantage of the great, low rate of $159 per night at the Swan and Dolphin Resort. Rooms reserved at the home resort of the Mega Mouse Meet (which gives you a much shorter distance to carry your swag bags) will help to defray the costs of the meeting room.
Nearly 400 people have already registered to attend MouseFest, and we very much appreciate all of those who are helping to support the event.
All of the scheduled meets at listed on the MouseFest schedule pages for the cruise and land portions of the event. Two of the new events taking place this year are opening the land portion on Thursday, December 6. MouseFest 101, which starts at 1:00 p.m. at the Tomorrowland Terrace Noodle Station, will be hosted by MousePlanet. Mark will join Mike Scopa to give new MouseFesters some pointers on how to best enjoy the event, and to help them prepare for the long weekend ahead. As that event ends, attendees won't have to go anywhere, as the MouseFest Chairman's Kick-Off, hosted by Dave Marx, will take place in the same location from 2:00-3:00 p.m. After the reception, Mike Scopa is in the spotlight again at his fourth annual Dole Whip Meet.
Dave didn't want to pick a favorite between the land and sea portions of the trip, talking about some of the high portions of each.
Mark asked Dave what he would choose if he could pick just one meet (other than his own) to attend. After much discussion, Dave picked the Wishes meet at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party on the opening Thursday night. There was a bit of discussion about various interesting aspects of last year's meet.
A reminder: If you're going to MouseFest and you want to be interviewed on a podcast, go to PodFest. There will be so many podcasters there that someone is bound to interview you.
We chatted a little bit about our Hustle-tini meet. If you're coming down, meet us there!
You never know who you're going to meet there. In fact, you may meet folks from other communities that you never knew existed, but hit it off with them immediately.
Dave ran down all of the "celebrities" currently scheduled to attend. The list is long and still growing.
So what do you think? Are you planning to attend MouseFest? Are you not going this year but thinking about attending next year? Looking for more information about MouseFest? Let us know by sending an email or calling our toll-free feedback line (1-866-939-2278) and let us know what you think!
Changing the Feed?
We've gotten a lot of positive feedback on the new format of shorter, more frequent shows. Currently, we have MouseStation three times a week, with short subjects on Mondays, featured topics on Wednesdays and listener feedback on Fridays. We also have the MousePlanetWatch news on Thursday. We're still currently maintaining the series of three feeds, one for MouseStation only, one for MousePlanetWatch only and one for both shows.
Based on listener feedback, we will be deciding whether to merge the feeds, and return to a single feed with all shows, folding MousePlanetWatch into the main MouseStation feed. That would still leave us with four shows per week, but there would be only one feed. With the current listener numbers being fairly even between MouseStation and MousePlanetWatch, it seems as if there's a great deal of overlap between the shows.
Please weigh in on the idea of returning to a single feed via email or by calling our toll-free feedback line at 1-866-939-2278. Don't forget that we love voicemails because then we can put your voice on the show!
Wrapping up
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Thanks to our audio engineer and sound editor Steven Ng.
Thank you for listening!
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