Disney Wonder, Magic, Fantasy or Dream Cruise Ships

One of the initial problems was to figure out what scale to build the model.  There's a little more info on the blog but I started by trying to build a little bit of the side.  One thing that seemed important was the balcony details, so it seemed like a plate sticking out might represent that.  A brick for the rest of each deck was "easy".

So the basic size of each deck is 4 plates (one plate for the deck, three for the walls).  Some of the decks are taller, in the big common areas for example, but photos of the model at the cruise terminal provided a sense of relative scale for those taller decks.  After that a bit of sanity checking to see if the ship was actually a "reasonable" size at that scale helped.  And then we also did a little bit of investigation to see if important details like the lifeboats would work at that scale.

The vertical frames were a bit tricky as Lego is more solid in proportion than the actual ship, and I was a little disappointed that I couldn't reasonably show the railings or dividers for the balconies, but over all the scale worked well and I'm reasonably happy with the details.  As a bonus, it's also big enough that little stickers of the characters were feasible.  I'll have to show those in another update.

Please remember to share!! & Thanks to all that said they like my updates!

I realized that I kind of left out the last part of the story - or ran over it really fast anyway - in the last update.  If you haven't read that, please do, then check out the rest of the story on the Mini Wonder's updates - https://ideas.lego.com/projects/128434/updates​

Hopefully after Lego makes this, it'll be easy for you guys, just order it online or bring it home from the store.  But for us it was trickier.

We were going on a cruise and knew there'd be several days at sea, so we planned ahead and brought a bunch of Lego - about twice what we needed probably, but Lego Stores are in short supply in the middle of the pacific!

We missed a little detail though.  Almost immediately after flopping our project down on the table and sticking 4 blue baseplates in a row, people (apparently smarter than us) started asking how we were going to get her home.

Uh, we didn't think about that.  I suppose it's not going to fit in the overhead bin very well, is it?  That was a bit disturbing.

We quickly remembered that after our cruise, the Wonder was going to make a couple more trips and then land in Seattle.  So every time one of the crew members passed by and admired her, we started dropping hints.  "Yea, it might be cool, but we don't know how to get her back to Seattle.  You know, the stop this ship will be at in a few weeks."

Then someone came by with a bunch of stripes on his shoulders.  We barely got the words out and he offered "I have the perfect spot - In my cabin!"  After that, every time Captain Fabian came by, he asked when "his" ship would be done. 

Someone from Disney stopped by to measure her for a display case.  We declined the case, but a board would be nice so she'd be easier for them to carry.  I was thinking maybe a piece of plywood painted blue.  (It's a ship, they have wood, and they have paint).  I was told paint wasn't available, would red velvet be OK?  They showed up one day with a wonderful display board with nicely molded edges and the red velvet.  Wow, thanks to the ship's carpenter!  (I'm told he liked making something different).

AFTER the Lego Wonder went to the captain's cabin, the crew mentioned that now we were in trouble, he'd never give her up!  I hope he enjoyed it.  We did meet the ship a few weeks later and collected our Lego.  (The concept apparently confused some of the customs folks though).  Later we learned that when the Wonder switched cabins, the next captain loved it too and immediately took pictures!

Thanks to the crew of the Disney Wonder for helping get our Lego home, and particularly thanks to her Captains for allowing the model to ride in their cabin.

Please remember to share, as many people pointed out, this is a large project and we'll need to show Lego that it could be viable.

Please remember to share!

For my followers, I've submitted another, even larger (didn't think that was possible, did you?) project.  A full size Kenny Baker style 2 Legged Lego R2-D2. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/63523

Posted because so many have asked for instructions to my working L3-G0 Lego Astromech, (http://L3-G0.blogspot.com and http://youtube.com/MyL3G0) but that isn't practical for Lego Ideas, so this modified model was submitted instead!  Wouldn't this make a brilliant Lego set?

Well, everyone want's instructions, but I don't have instructions (that's what this exercise is for - if it gets approved, then I'll have to put it in LDD to give them or something and it'll have expert instruction tweaking or whatever). 

So, I give you The Micro Wonder! 

Go ahead and make your own Disney Lego Cruise Ship.  I realize these instructions might seem a little overwhelming, and 8 bricks might seem like a lot of assembly.  If you're one of those intimidated by a MOC (model) of this complexity, you might want to consider another hobby! 

(But please feel free to vote for my ships, someone else might want to build one)

• Create the smaller Mini Wonder, including the appropriate parts to make any of the 4 Disney ships, and target them specifically at the Disney Cruise Line customer market.
• Consider a larger model as a very limited edition model, perhaps with a premium price tag to cover the costs associated with a smaller run.  The onboard market could probably bear a $750 price tag, though of course I’d hope it could be less.  Market that in conjunction with the souvenir size model as a premium option for passengers that want to remember their cruise with a coffee table centerpiece.
• If the larger model still appeared too risky, then create a model similar in size to the Maersk cargo ship.  The reduced cost of a smaller ship would provide a broader reach beyond the cruise ship passengers.

At Brickcon 2012 I took the Lego Disney Wonder to the show, along with the Mini Wonder and Micro Wonder for the micro scale area.  At the awards ceremony I was amazed to be chosen as a winner of the "Vehicle Size Matters" category.  There were tons of great competing MOCs, but a deciding factor was that I'd been able to present the same concept in multiple scales.  I was fairly humbled to be chosen, as I said there were tons of great MOCs.

Here's a picture of the trophy, which is a pretty excellent little city.  I like the little cars, elevated train, non-parallel lines, the dock and the cool use of bricks.  I sort of feel like the trophy should've won :)

As a bonus, the Micro Wonder even fits on the trophy itself pretty well!

Please support the little ships :)  And please remember to share, we need more traction!

Please share if you can :) 

Last week's votes are keeping us on "popular this week", but our current pace is less than the 40/day we need to stay there, even on the last page, so please share!  Last time, once visibility dropped, the project stalled and vanished into the depths of Lego Ideas.

I'd hoped that making 1000 would A) grant us an extension, and B) somehow get us a little visibility, but with the current trend we're not going to hit that before falling off, and then it's going to be a huge struggle to come back.

One of the questions I got while I was building the Lego Wonder on the real Disney Wonder was "Why didn't you make the hull black?" 

I was taken aback, the Disney ship's hulls aren't black, so I was surprised she asked, particularly since we were aboard the ship in question.  But its pretty easy to see why she thought so. Next time we boarded, I took this picture of the hull as proof:

All of the Disney cruise ships are based on the colors of, can you guess, Mickey Mouse!  And the hull isn't really black, it's a very dark blue, apparently the Imagineers thought totally black was too sinister.  How it appears in photos depends on the lighting, weather and other factors.  In quite a few colors it looks pretty close to black, and in others it looks pretty blue, like above.

It's only appropriate that the Disney ships have magically color shifting hull paint!

So when I set out to build the Lego Wonder, I remembered that the hull was blue and tried to start from that.  It looked terrible with blue Lego bricks!  So then I tried black, which was significantly better, but still not quite right.  Then I found the "Earth Blue" color, which is really pretty close, a hair better than black, and way better than blue.  What I ended up with is a lot like the real ship.

Take a look at my project's description tab, the "hero" shot up top has a very dark hull.  Just underneath the hull looks pretty blue.  In practice the Lego Disney Wonder, depending on lighting looks somewhere between black and a blue slightly bluer than the real Wonder ever shows. 

The other color choices also follow Mickey colors.  Indeed, to keep the theme, the Imagineers wanted to use mickey's yellow for the lifeboats, however lifeboats are typically a bright orange.  Apparently they did some tests on the visibility and got a special exception to permit the Disney colored boats.

Here's the real wonder showing a blacker hue and a bit of the yellow of the boats (fortunately close to Lego's yellow):

So that's the story of the unique colors of both the Lego and real Disney Wonders.  More info about them at http://disneycruiselineblog.com/2012/07/its-all-in-the-details-the-mystery-...

Don't forget to support if you haven't already, subscribe if you want to find the updates easier, and share please!  A few people have expressed interested in writing about this project, but we really need broad awareness if we have a hope of getting the 9300+ supporters we still need. 

Without more support ASAP, we'll fall off of the "popular this week" list in a few days and our support will tank :(