Posted December 4, 2006
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Walt Disney World will be overrun this week by many of its biggest fans and those who serve them by chronicling the resort's every detail.
MouseFest 2006 invades Disney World on Thursday. The unofficial, international annual convention brings together the people behind independent Disney books, newsletters and Web pages, and those who read them. The conference, which is expected to draw 2,000 people, runs through Dec. 11.
The conference features arranged meetings and activities, and anyone can join in, said co-founder Deb Wills, who runs the Disney fan site, www.tagrel.com. The first events, both starting at 2 p.m. Thursday, will be a Main Street U.S.A. window scavenger hunt at Magic Kingdom, and a tour of Seven Seas Lagoon and Bay Lake, launching from the Polynesian Resort marina.
Among Disney information "celebrities" planning to join in are Louis Mongello of The Walt Disney World Trivia Book; Jennifer and Dave Marx of the PassPorter guide books; Nathan Rose of the www.MagicalMountain.net Disney information site; and Steven Barrett of Hidden Mickeys, the book that details Disney World's penchant for hiding Mickey Mouse's visage in architecture, landscaping and decorations. They are expected at many events, particularly the centerpiece Mega Mouse Meet, Saturday from 1 to 3:30 p.m. in Atlantic Hall A at the Walt Disney Dolphin Resort.
More information and MouseFest guidebooks are available at www.mousefest.org and from organizers during the meets.
Condos for sale
A $1.5 million sales center has opened at the future site of the InterContinental Resort & Residences at Palazzo Del Lago, a planned 1,440-unit condominium hotel in southwest Orlando.
The 4,000-square-foot sales center, at 13760 International Drive, gives the project its first on-site anchor. Construction of the hotel, the centerpiece of a 42-acre resort, is expected to begin early next year.
Prices for the units, which include 778 one-, two- and three-bedroom hotel suites as well as 800 resort condominiums, start in the low $400,000s.
Hospitality Development Group is developing the $800 million project. It will be managed by InterContinental Management (Maryland) LLC, an affiliate of InterContinental Hotels Group.
Bills by e-mail
Marriott International has begun e-mailing bills to guests who stay at seven of its hotel groups and its Marriott International Vacation Club resorts.
The company said it surveyed 21,000 business travelers and found that 85 percent preferred e-mail access to their bills rather than having to go to the company Web site to download them. The system also allows guests departing in a hurry to bypass the front desks for paper copies of their folios.
Jet set
Global airline passenger traffic rose 5.3 percent in October, reversing a five-month trend of slowing growth, as demand for flights to and from the Middle East surged, the International Air Transport Association said.
International traffic, measured as the number of passengers multiplied by the distance flown, gained 5.8 percent in the first 10 months of the year, Geneva- and Montreal-based IATA said in an e-mailed statement. Airlines filled 74.9 percent of their seats in October, the 18th straight monthly gain, though below the 76.3 percent for the first 10 months.
IATA, which represents about 260 network carriers, expects the aviation industry's losses to narrow to less than $1.7 billion this year from $3.2 billion in 2005, as airlines cut costs and manage capacity more efficiently. The group is forecasting a profit of about $1.9 billion next year.
Christopher Boyd can be reached at cboyd@orlandosentinel.com. Scott Powers can be reached at spowers@orlandosentinel.com. Information from Bloomberg News was used in this report.
