My Year With The Mouse

You know how I’m always picking on myself for not taking very good pictures because I AM AN AWESOME PHOTOGRAPHER!!!? Well, Disneyland has an answer to that.

Up at the end of Main Street on the corner is the Photo Supply Co. store. This is prime real estate, my friends.

Location, location, location!

Once upon a time, the camera store at Disneyland was hoppin’. You could buy all kinds of stuff for your very own camera. Everything from 35 mm film to those flashbulbs that came in a cube and like totally exploded in order to make the flash, leaving me with a latent childhood fear of flashbulbs bursting past that plastic cover thing shooting hundreds of tiny little flashbulb shards into my eyes, totally blinding me and quite possibly entering my brain, killing me as well.

I had an active imagination.

Anyway, Disneyland doesn’t sell those anymore.

They do sell these:

Which is like totally the same thing, right?

In keeping with the oldey-timey theme of Main Street, the Photo Supply Co. has cool window displays.

Surprisingly sponsored by Kodak

I want to say that the whole mirror-type groovy effect with the crowd moving by and my arms holding the camera is some kind of artistic choice to bring out the true experience of Disneyland, which is both reflective and transparent, coupled with the new and the old, brought together in a montage of gilded definition, but actually I’m just not a very good photographer.

If you look closely at the O in DEVELOPING, you can make out my sneer as I attempt this photograph

There is cool stuff in the actual window.

Like this!

What kind of camera is that? I’m not sure.

ANYway, inside the Photo Supply Co. and two very small reminders of the existence of actual non-digital photography. The first being the disposable cameras above, and the second being this:

A small display of photo albums

The rest is all devoted to PhotoPass.

What is PhotoPass, you ask? Or didn’t ask?

PhotoPass is Disney’s in-park photography system. There are PhotoPass photographers stationed strategically throughout the parks (in front of the castle, for example, or by the flower Mickey at the entrance). They will take your picture and scan a card with a code. Interestingly, the new Annual Passes have a PhotoPass code on them, so if you’re an AP holder you no longer have to worry about carrying around a PhotoPass card!

If you’re not an Annual Passholder, then you will have to worry about carrying around a PhotoPass card.

Anyway, so you take pictures throughout the park, and then you can look at them and get them printed and such. You can do that at home on the internet, or you can do it at…

wait for it…

wait for it…

the Photo Supply Co.!

But here’s the cool part. You can actually go around collecting PhotoPass pictures throughout your whole vacation and then you can buy a CD of ALL of your PP pictures, called the Disney PhotoCD. And that’s cool because then you can get them printed anywhere. And you can go online and add cute little borders and stuff. It’s actually a pretty good deal, especially because it means the whole family gets to be in the picture. And you know how I feel about that.

(if you don’t know how I feel about that, it’s that I feel that it’s really important for people to put down their cameras and experience the park with your whole group every once in a while)

You can also had the PP photographer your own camera and they will take a picture for you.

How much does this cost? Excellent question. I grabbed a shot of the price list:

here it is!

To translate, the Disney PhotoCD is $59.95. The prices on the bottom are for prints of various sizes. The package at the top is the PhotoCD and three 5×7 prints.

But wait! There’s more!

You can also buy “Disney’s Photo Gallery CD.” What’s that, you ask? Or didn’t ask? Well, it’s a collection of professional photos taken around the parks including rides, attractions, characters, and so on. What’s really cool about that is that you know how you spent all that time trying to get the perfect shot of the facade of Small World but your camera is kind of lame or whatever, and you never get the angle right? With the Photo Gallery CD, you don’t have to do that anymore! Because the picture has already been taken for you! And not that I wish to speak poorly about your photography skills, but chances are it’s a better picture than the one you would have taken!

Which goes back to my whole “put the camera down” thing. There’s no point in trying to that perfect picture of the Haunted Mansion to add to your scrapbook later, because that picture has already been taken. So put your camera down and enjoy the park.

The Photo Gallery CD is $39.95.

The inside of the Photo Supply Co. is largely centered around the PhotoPass system. There are computer screens everywhere where you can view your pictures

This kind of reminds me of the computer check-in kiosks at the airport

And also more oldey-timey cameras decorating the wall

Whatever they're called

So swing by the Photo Supply Co. for all of your photo needs, or most of them anyway.

Follow the pointing finger