Connect with us

Spread & Containment

Disney World brings back a fan-favorite activity after 4 years

Visitors to the world’s most popular theme park are getting back a tradition that Universal Studios cannot match.

Published

on

Disney World offers a mix of exciting rides and nostalgia. The Mouse House's four theme parks, especially Magic Kingdom, feature more than just the most modern rides, they're also heavy on making sure the guest experience involves more than just the attractions people ride.

At Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney (DIS) never lets you forget that you're visiting a theme park created by its famed founder. That manifests in some ways that are outdated — you still can't buy alcohol when you're walking around the park, and a few rides are very outdated — but it's also nostalgic in a good way in many places.

Related: Forget DeSantis, Disney plans to take down Universal’s new park

Rides like "The Haunted Mansion" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" would probably not be created now, but they retain their appeal despite their age. You can argue the same thing about "Space Mountain," and "Big Thunder Mountain Railroad."

These are older rides with a little more character than the slick, modern offerings at chief rival Universal Studios. Disney World's four theme parks also embrace some uniquely Disney things like searching for "Hidden Mickeys."

Kids (and adults) love searching for the company's iconic mascot in places where you might not expect to see him. It's an activity that makes long lines and walking around the park a little more fun.

Disney World also offers a robust pin trading market. Since the company's covid pandemic shutdown, that popular practice has been curtailed. Now, with social distancing becoming a thing of the past, Disney has brought back a pin-trading tradition for the first time in four years.

Disney required mask-wearing for many months.

Image source: Matt Stroshane/Walt Disney World Resort via Getty Images

What is Disney pin trading?

Disney sells collectible pins at multiple locations throughout its theme parks. Some of the pins are seasonal and limited edition. Many fans of the company collect the pins and seek out new releases as the company puts them out.  

People who visit Disney theme parks can trade these pins with fellow guests and Disney Cast Members, but there are rules when trading with a Disney employee:

"Only official Disney pins may be traded. The main criteria when judging whether a pin is tradable or not (although other factors may be considered) is that the metal pin bears a “©Disney” mark on the back, representing an official Disney event, place, location, character or icon. A Disneyland Resort Cast Member may determine not to trade a pin in their discretion," the company shared on the Disneyland website.

Pins must also be in good condition and Cast Members do have the right to say no.

"When trading with a Cast Member, guests should offer a pin that is not currently displayed on the Cast Member’s lanyard or trading board," the company added.

Disney brings back a popular pin-trading practice

During its pandemic return, Disney had to place limitations on pin trading. Guests could still trade with Cast Members at designated pin trading boards, but not from the lanyards cast members wore or from smaller boards they carry.

That limited pin trading and sometimes led to frustrating situations where park visitors saw a pin they needed or wanted, but were not able to trade for it.

Disney has kept that restriction in place even after most covid rules have been dropped.

"Pin trading is coming back," the company shared on the Disney Parks TikTok."Cast Member to guest pin trading officially returns to Walt Disney World starting April 7."

Guests can only trade two pins per cast member or trading board daily.

Disney World has multiple shops that sell pins, and some pins are exclusive to each of its theme parks.

Universal Studios, Disney World's chief rival for Florida theme park visitors. offers pin trading but it's not as popular or as common. Owned by Comcast CMCSA, Universal Studios is building a third theme park, Epic Universe, to step up its competition with Disney World for full-week visitors.   

Read More

Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

Japanese Preprint Calls For mRNA VaccinesTo Be Suspended Over Blood Bank Contamination Concerns

Japanese Preprint Calls For mRNA VaccinesTo Be Suspended Over Blood Bank Contamination Concerns

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch…

Published

on

Japanese Preprint Calls For mRNA VaccinesTo Be Suspended Over Blood Bank Contamination Concerns

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Receiving blood transfusion from COVID-19-vaccinated individuals could pose a medical risk to unvaccinated recipients since numerous adverse events are being reported among vaccinated people worldwide, according to a recent study from Japan.

A volunteer draws the AstraZeneca vaccine as members of the public have their COVID-19 vaccinations at Fazl Mosque in Southfields, London, as it hosts a drop in clinic on June 8, 2021. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The preprint review, published on March 15, examined whether receiving blood from COVID-19-vaccinated individuals is safe or poses a health risk. Many nations have reported that mRNA vaccine usage has resulted in “post-vaccination thrombosis and subsequent cardiovascular damage, as well as a wide variety of diseases involving all organs and systems, including the nervous system,” it said.

Repeated vaccinations can make people more vulnerable to COVID-19, it said. If the blood contains spike proteins, it becomes necessary to remove these proteins prior to administration, and there is no such technology currently available, the authors wrote.

Contrary to earlier expectations, genes and proteins from genetic vaccines have been found to persist in the blood of vaccine recipients for “prolonged periods of time.”

In addition, “a variety of adverse events resulting from genetic vaccines are now being reported worldwide.” This includes a wide range of diseases related to blood and blood vessels.

Some studies have reported that the spike protein in the mRNA vaccines is neurotoxic and capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, the review stated. “Thus, there is no longer any doubt that the spike protein used as an antigen in genetic vaccines is itself toxic.”

Moreover, people who have taken multiple shots of mRNA vaccines can have several exposures to the same antigen within a small time frame, which may lead to them being “imprinted with a preferential immune response to that antigen.”

This has resulted in COVID-19 vaccine recipients becoming “more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.”

Given such concerns, medical professionals should be aware of the “various risks associated with blood transfusions using blood products derived from people who have suffered from long COVID and from genetic vaccine recipients, including those who have received mRNA vaccines.”

The impact of such genetic vaccines on blood products as well as the actual damage caused by them are currently unknown, the authors wrote.

“In order to avoid these risks and prevent further expansion of blood contamination and complication of the situation, we strongly request that the vaccination campaign using genetic vaccines be suspended and that a harm–benefit assessment be carried out as early as possible.”

Repeated vaccination of genetic vaccines can also end up causing “alterations in immune function” among recipients. This raises the risk of serious illnesses due to opportunistic infections or pathogenic viruses, which would not have been an issue if the immune system were normal, the review said.

“Therefore, from the perspective of traditional containment of infectious diseases, greater caution is required in the collection of blood from genetic vaccine recipients and the subsequent handling of blood products, as well as during solid organ transplantation and even surgical procedures in order to avoid the risk of accidental blood-borne infection,” it stated.

The review was funded by members of the Japanese Society for Vaccine-related Complications and the Volunteer Medical Association. Authors did not declare any conflict of interest.

Dangers With Blood Transfusions

The review pointed out that the genetic vaccination status of blood donors is not collected by organizations even though the use of such blood may pose risks to patients. As such, authors recommended that when blood products are derived from such people, “it is necessary to confirm the presence or absence of spike protein or modified mRNA as in other tests for pathogens.”

“If the blood product is found to contain the spike protein or a modified gene derived from the genetic vaccine, it is essential to remove them,” it stated. “However, there is currently no reliable way to do so.”

Since “there is no way to reliably remove the pathogenic protein or mRNA, we suggest that all such blood products be discarded until a definitive solution is found.”

The authors pointed out that cases of encephalitis among people who received blood from dengue vaccine recipients were reported as recently as last year. This suggests that the present system of tracking and managing blood products “is not adequate.”

Since genetic vaccines were implemented on a global scale for a massive population, “it is expected that the situation will already be complicated” compared to previous drug disasters.

As such, there is an “urgent need” for legislation and international treaties related to the management of blood products, the authors wrote.

The issue of blood transfusion from COVID-19 vaccine recipients has been highly controversial. In 2022, a court in New Zealand ruled against the parents of a sick infant son after they refused blood transfusions from vaccinated people.

The parents had asked the health system to allow blood transfusion from unvaccinated individuals, with donors who were already prepared to contribute. In its ruling, the court stripped the parents of medical custody of their son.

In Canada, doctors have also reported the trend of people’s resistance to vaccinated blood transfusions. Speaking to CBC in 2022, Dr. Dave Sidhu, the southern Alberta medical lead for transfusion and transplant medicine, said that parents of sick children were requesting unvaccinated blood.

We’re seeing it about once or twice a month, at this stage. And the worry is of course that these requests might increase,” he said at the time.

In Wyoming, Rep. Sarah Penn (R-Wyo.) has sponsored a bill mandating that blood donated by people who have taken COVID-19 shots be labeled. Doing so will allow recipients who do not wish to accept such blood to reject them.

In an interview with Cowboy State Daily, Ms. Penn said, “For various reasons, many people have purposefully strived to keep the mRNA therapies out of their bodies, even to the point that some lost their livelihoods … Their concerns are warranted.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/23/2024 - 19:50

Read More

Continue Reading

International

Wake-Up Call

Wake-Up Call

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“Those who organized the disaster will take advantage of the inevitable…

Published

on

Wake-Up Call

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“Those who organized the disaster will take advantage of the inevitable discontent arising from efforts to overcome it, for if there is one thing that they are skilled in, it is demagoguery.”

- Theodore Dalrymple

Can you feel it? The tension rising to the red-line? It runs clear through all of Western Civ. We are ruled by governments of fiends. But now, the sun rides higher in the sky. The sap is rising in the northern forests. The earth heaves. The buds swell and blush. Something is in the air. The animals are waking from their long winter sleep. The natives are restless.

The two traditional political divisions, liberal and conservative died with Covid. Now there are simply the sane versus the insane. The sane have had enough of being pushed around by the insane. The insane don’t register much of what reality tries to tell them. They have a body of insane ideas to comfort and protect them from the reality’s rigors. To call that body of ideas an “ideology” is way too polite.That the insane call themselves “progressive,” is a signature of their insanity.

Progress toward what better state of things? Toward a supremacy of fiends, sadists, degenerates, and morons seizing riches and power by every dishonest means possible outside the rule of law and common decency? It’s not even suitable to call them “communists.” They lack the necessary idealism for that.

They don’t expect to put their shoulders to the wheel with their fellow man. They just want to grab your stuff and then kill you so they don’t have to hear any complaints.

The insane do not believe any of the theoretical bullshit they want to force you to swallow. They don’t care about climate change. It’s just a cudgel they use to beat everyone over the head so they can steal your stuff. They don’t care about “democracy.” It’s just a line of bullshit to cover up their election-stealing. Do you suppose that sane people would keep using electronic vote-tabulating machines that were demonstrably connected to the Internet, and thus hackable, if they cared about election integrity? Of course not. They would arrange p.d.q. to junk them and use paper ballots, and only in person at polling places, with “absentee” exceptions only for people out of the country.

The insane do not care about public health. Everything that is known about the Covid-19 vaccinations tells you that they are unsafe and don’t prevent infection or transmission of a flu-like illness that might not even be what it was officially labeled as. Our public health officials in the FDA, the CDC, and in other corners of the Department of health and Human Services, lie about everything they’re responsible for. This week, the CDC (under Director Mandy Cohen) released a 148-page study on myocarditis reactions to mRNA shots. Every word on every page of the document was redacted. The CDC printed countless copies of the report with 148 utterly blank pages, and then proffered them to the news media. How is that not insane?

The insane do not care about the rule of law. The conduct of “Lawfare” is the subversion of the law by dishonest means. It is a species of racketeering. And that is why Lawfare rogues such Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Matthew Graves, and Merrick Garland, should be charged under the federal RICO statutes for conspiring to deprive sane citizens of their rights and property in the many cases related to the 1/6/21 riot at the US Capitol.

It is, so far, an abiding mystery of contemporary history as to how New York Attorney General Letitia James managed to get away with prosecuting a real estate case against Donald Trump that was no more than victimless business-as-usual between a borrower and his lenders. Ms. James ran for that elected office promising to “get” Mr. Trump on something, anything. That is not how the rule of law works. Under the rule of law, first you determine that there is a crime and then look for who did the crime.

Letitia James must be insane and/or pretty stupid. The short-term gain of stealing Mr. Trump’s property under a false color-of-law and creating impediments to his election campaign, will, sooner or later, blow back at her as a matter of malicious prosecution and, plausibly, racketeering as well. (With whom did she conspire to bring this case? We shall find out.) She will eventually be disgraced publicly as her teammate Fani Willis has already been disgraced in Fulton County, Georgia. I’ll tell you something that all sane people now know but won’t talk about for fear of being crushed by the levers of Lawfare: this looks like a concerted effort by people-of-color to railroad people of non-color. If you think that is a good thing for race relations in our country, then you are insane.

Here are a bunch of other things that are insane: Re-litigating the first amendment is insane. It means what it says, and states it plainly. The open border is insane. No credible sovereign polity would allow it. It would be opposed with force, if necessary. Turning children into transsexuals on a wholesale basis is insane, and fiendishly so. Everybody knows that it is not good for the children or for our society as a whole. But fiends got to fiend, and if you try to deprive them of being fiends then you are guilty of “hate.”

The war in Ukraine is insane. We certainly didn’t ignite it in the service of “democracy.” Our pawn there, Mr. Zelensky, canceled the national elections last year. The war was arguably an effort by our CIA to deprive Russia of its market for natgas in Europe, and thus deprive Russia of a great deal of money, that is, of prosperity. The project failed. Russia overcame NATO’s proxy army and found other markets for its gas. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines only served to impoverish and weaken our NATO allies, who no longer have affordable gas to run their industries. The leaders of those allies were too insane to recognize that the Nord Stream op was an act-of-war against them. They were also busy destroying themselves, like the USA, with open borders. They will end up in a new medievalism, ruled by savages. You’d have to be insane to arrange that for yourself.

What’s most obviously insane in our country is that the insane party is pretending to nominate the mentally unfit White House place-keeper, “Joe Biden,” for reelection. You would think that if this party wanted to retain power, they would run a candidate who, though insane, was not also visibly senile. But the rank and file of this party are too insane to see that this dodge is not working. They are pretending with all their might that this is okay, that the growing faction of the sane don’t notice.

Sensing the growing impatience with insanity among the voters, the insane party has reached its point of terminal desperation. What will they try next? Murder? Why not? Nothing else seemed to work. They are too far gone in their insanity to understand that winter is over. We’ve entered the season of rebirth and renewal, starting with a renewed appreciation for being sane and for that indispensable ingredient that makes liberty in a free society possible: good faith. Really, the only question left is: how rough do they intend to play to prevent the return of sanity and good faith?

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/22/2024 - 16:25

Read More

Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

Another discount retailer makes checkout change to fight theft

The value retailer is discouraging theft at the checkout counter.

Published

on

Huge retail chains like Walmart  (WMT) , Target  (TGT) , CVS  (CVS) and others have faced a high amount of retail theft, or what they call inventory shrink, since 2020 and have been implementing measures to eliminate those costly losses.

Among the most common measures used by Walmart, Target and some others has been locking up popular items behind glass cases to prevent shoplifting. Customers shopping at these stores have encountered a lot of their favorite products, such as cosmetics, shampoo, over-the-counter drugs and even laundry detergent locked up in those cases.

Related: Target limits self-checkout, makes a change customers will love

Shoppers need to either push a button near the product to alert a worker to unlock the case or, in some situations, run around the store looking for a worker with the proper key to open the case. It's a very inconvenient problem for shoppers, and not all stores are consistent with their lockup policies.

For example, one Walmart store might lock up some of their instant coffee products, while another cross-town Walmart location, or even a Target competitor, doesn't lock up any coffee.

Retail stores have also implemented new self-checkout rules to discourage inventory shrink, but again, stores are inconsistent with their rules. Walmart stores have a 20 items or less rule for their self-checkout lanes to try to steer shoppers with more items to checkout clerks that might help reduce the occurrence of theft. But neither customers, nor workers seem to be observing that rule. Target on March 17 implemented a new 10 items or fewer rule in its self-checkout lanes, but we'll see if anyone enforces it.

These self-checkout requirements are also supposed to speed up the checkout process, but that only works if all the self-check registers are working and an adequate amount of checkout clerks are working registers as well.

The next step for retailers in addressing inventory shrink at self-checkout would be to eliminate self-check altogether.

Shopping in a Five Below store.

Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Five Below cuts back on self-checkout lanes 

After finishing the fourth quarter of 2023 with a "higher-than-planned shrink," or higher level of theft than expected in its stores, value retailer Five Below  (FIVE)  has implemented associate-assisted checkout in all of its stores for 2024, CEO Joel Anderson said on the company's earnings call on March 20.

"In addition, in our high-shrink stores, the primary option for checkout is more of the traditional, over-the-counter associate checkout," Anderson said. "We expect to have 75% of our transactions chain-wide assisted by an associate with a goal of 100% in our highest shrink, highest-risk stores to be fully transacted by an associate."

The retailer also checks receipts and adds guards

"Additionally, in those stores, we’re implementing further mitigation efforts, including receipt checking, additional store payroll and guards. We intend to measure progress as soon as Q2 when we perform a limited number of store counts," Anderson said.

Five Below tested several inventory shrink mitigation initiatives late in the third quarter and into the fourth quarter of 2023, which included product-related tests, front-end initiatives and guard programs, Anderson said in the earnings call. He said the most significant change the Philadelphia-based company made across most of the chain was to limit the number of self-checkout registers that were open, while positioning an associate upfront to further assist customers.

Anderson said he is confident the company's measures will help it over time, but the company has not included any financial impact for shrink reduction in its 2024 guidance. The company, however will aggressively pursue returning to pre-pandemic levels of shrink or offsetting the impact over the next few years, he said.

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending