I wonder if this is related to Starbucks refocusing on customer service and providing good coffee. I was impressed by the local store’s ability to allow a front-line employee who interacts with a customer the latitude to provide a free drink. This is the type of discretion can also be found at my favorite vacation spot, Walt Disney World. I didn’t complain about the wait, but the server provided a pleasant customer service experience for me. She was proactive. And it made me write this post. (Though that won’t get them a lot of free publicity. It is mostly my family who reads this, and they aren’t coffee drinkers.)

I just got done watching all three episodes of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. IT WAS AWESOME! It is a self described “supervillain musical”.

I don’t know too much about how this show came to be, but I was happy it was made. It appears that Joss, Joss Whedon, the creator of the TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer“, was looking to do something different. He was inspired by last year’s writer strike. He set off to create a show without the studios. (The people who the writers were “negotiating” with.) I would say that he achieved his goal of creating a story that was high in quality while independent. I think that what makes the show successful is the story and writing. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t a lot of highly glossy special effects. The writing is so good.

Anyway, go over and see the three acts quickly. They are up until midnight Sunday, July 20, 2008. They have plans to then release the show as a download and eventually a DVD. I definitely plan to purchase the DVD and support everyone responsible for this.

(I was right. The female news caster was Marti Noxon, a producer from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. She was also an actress in the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” portraying the “Parking Ticket Woman”.)

But I don’t have an iPhone. The other big thing is that the Apple iPhone App Store opened. But I don’t have a Mac, so I can’t run the emulator or create my own apps for the emulator.

So, I celebrated by creating my first Android app.

This is the “Hello, World” version of an Android app running in the emulator. It was very easy to make. What made it easier for me is that Android apps are written in Java. (I am a Java developer by day.) The “Getting Started” tutorial even shows you how to use Eclipse.

I have only created the sample app so far, but it looks pretty easy for a Java developer to write an “Activity“. But, of coarse, the apps currently can only run in the emulator. But the emulator can be integrated very easily into Eclipse.

Though, it is not like having real hardware like the Apple iPhone.

[This is only fiction. It was not meant to be taken seriously. NSA, please do not report me. ]

In my opinion, Pleasure Island hasn’t been the same since they removed the gates. Originaly, the whole of Pleasure Island was gated. You had to have admitance material to enter. Once inside the gates, you had free reign to visit any of the clubs. This had the effect of allowing only those people who paid admitance to be within the area. Later, the gates were removed, along with Jessica Rabbit. There was still an admittance fee to get into the clubs, but anyone could walk around on Pleasure Island. This meant that those under 21 could wander the Island. You would see teenagers, even parents with yound kids walking around. The exclusive feel was gone.

The other piece of this news that could be good is that Disney says that the clubs would be replaced with more dining options. Dining at Disney has become very difficult, so any more dining establishments would be welcome. Back when Epcot was first opened, they had a video conference kiosk that you could use to get dining reservations FOR THAT DAY. Now, you have to call 180 days, 6 MONTHS, ahead of time for many of the popular options. So any more dining on property would be welcome.

I suspect that The Adventurer’s Club will be resurrected at some time by Disney. It has been a very popular club. It was more theater than club. There were actors who inhabited the club. You would interact with them and they would tell stories. This was different than a dance club like Motion. There have been rumors that there would a bigger and better Adventurer’s Club in the rumored Night Kingdom.

So, over all, I am not that upset by the closing of the clubs at Pleasure Island. In my mind, the best days of Pleasure Island have been gone for along time. And hopefully adding more dining will provide more choices to reduce some pressure on the Disney dining reservation system.