Top 5 stories of the week: VW drops in-house loans; UAW pressures Stellantis
A quick look at the top automotive stories of the week as determined by reader interest.
Disney auctions: How Van Eaton Galleries sells memories
For three decades, Mike and Janeen Van Eaton have sold and auctioned memorabilia from movies and theme parks. Among the unusual items their Van Eaton Galleries has handled are the head of a Goofy costume, squares of wallpaper from Disney resorts and a Doom Buggy from Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion.
Some of them sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A Disneyland map that was hand-drawn by Walt Disney himself went for $708,000.
In the days leading up to Saturday’s “Disney Parks & Popular Culture” auction, based out of their showroom in Studio City, California, the Van Eatons talked with the Orlando Sentinel about their Disney memories, the search for Dumbo, the mysterious charm of trash cans and the star power that comes with them.
Orlando Sentinel: What came first for you, Disney fandom or the gallery business?
Mike Van Eaton: I first visited Disneyland; it would have been ‘68 or ‘69. So, my grandfather lived in California, and we were in the military, and so we would travel quite a bit. And whenever we were in California, we’d go visit my granddad, who would always take us to Disneyland. So there’s all these fond memories of going to Disneyland. So it started there, and then, of course, especially living overseas, where we didn’t get a lot of regular TV, the “Disney’s Wonderful World of Color,” the TV show. I lived on that show, so I didn’t have to go to Disneyland to know what it was or go to Disney World to know what that was. It was all given to me from this TV show.
Space Coast company’s space balloon takes big step toward 1st human flight
PORT CANAVERAL — The weekend trip was a success for Space Perspective, the company that already has more than 1,800 people waiting for their chance to take balloon rides in a posh capsule up to the edge of space.
The Spaceship Neptune-Excelsior performed its first uncrewed test flight soaring to an altitude of 100,000 feet marking a big step toward the Brevard County space tourism company’s march toward its first trip with humans on board next year.
“I could have been in it,” Space Perspective cofounder Jane Poynter saidThursday while climbing aboard the company vessel MS Voyager that hauled the capsule back into port. “It worked that well. Everything went so well.”
The MS in the ship name stands for “marine spaceport.” It set out last week from Port Canaveral traveling down the coast and into the Gulf of Mexico for the eventual test flight off the coast of St. Petersburg on Sunday.
Many of the company’s 130 employees and their families were on hand to welcome the ship back at port as it docked alongside the likes of SpaceX’s recovery vessels at North Cargo Berth 8 while a lone Carnival cruise ship was docked across the turning basin at the port.
Yanfeng to close Missouri plant, lay off 444 workers, as GM ends Malibu production
Yanfeng International in November will close its plant in Riverside, Mo., around the same time GM plans to end Chevrolet Malibu production at a nearby assembly plant, according to a recently posted layoff notice.
‘Second class’ in Disney Springs: Some restaurant workers push for better pay, benefits
When guests arrive at Disney Springs and eat at one of the entertainment complex’s restaurants, they might assume that all the employees serving them with smiles work for Walt Disney World.
But the magic most people associate with Disney doesn’t exist for some Disney Springs’ employees, say union officials. They argue there is a “second class” of workers at the complex who deserve better wages and benefits.
“We’ve discovered that there is a second class of workers at Walt Disney World, those workers are the subcontracted employees of restaurants that are not operated by Disney,” said Jeremy Haicken, president of the UNITE HERE Local 737, which represents Disney employees. “These are restaurants that are operated by subcontractors at Disney Springs.”
More than 50 food and beverage locations at Disney Springs operate using subcontracted workers, including Gideon’s Bakehouse, Rainforest Café and STK Steakhouse, among others.
Many of these employees do not receive the same level of benefits, such as paid vacation and sick days, provided to employees of restaurants operated by Disney, Haicken said.