Things To Do In SW Florida

Orlando’s Wayne Brady and company recently made the rounds at Walt Disney World, shooting promotional videos for the Freeform series “Wayne Brady: The Family Remix.” In one scene, Brady performs with the Dapper Dans, an a cappella group on Magic Kingdom’s Main Street U.S.A.

The visual results of their trip have been popping up on social media with scenes featuring Brady, his ex-wife Mandie Taketa, their 21-year-old daughter Maile Brady and Taketa’s current partner Jason Fordham in the theme parks. They’re frequently dancing.

One clip edits together several snippets of the reality show’s “core four” doing dance steps near Cinderella Castle and Tron Lightcycle / Run at Magic Kingdom, near the Tree of Life at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, outside Minnie & Mickey’s Runaway Railway, at Toy Story Land and near the Millennium Falcon at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and at the base of Spaceship Earth and inside The Seas with Nemo and Friends ride at Epcot.

There are costume changes, mouse-ear headbands, evidence of a thunderstorm and the sudden appearance of lightsabers. read more

The latest vessel in Disney Cruise Line’s growing fleet left its shipyard home Wednesday making the slow 20-mile river trip so it can complete sea trials ahead of a debut from Port Canaveral later this year.

The Disney Treasure, a sister ship to Disney Wish that debuted in 2022 and also calls Port Canaveral home, left the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany making its way on the Ems River toward the North Sea.

The inland shipyard requires a tugboat-assisted conveyance of the 1,119-foot-long, 128-foot-wide ship traveling on the river facing in reverse.

A live stream of the conveyance was broadcast by YouTube channel Hamburg Port Live.

The vessel is first headed to Eemshaven, Netherlands, before it heads out for sea trials in the North Sea. The shipyard has a lot of practice getting vessels up the river, traveling at only 3-5 mph over several hours.

In the past, parts of bridges had to be disassembled to allow for a ship’s passing, although Disney Treasure, while the largest in Disney’s fleet along with Wish to date, isn’t the biggest transported from Meyer Werft. read more

By ALI SWENSON

NEW YORK (AP) — The video was seen millions of times across social media but some viewers were suspicious: It featured a young Black woman who claimed Vice President Kamala Harris left her paralyzed in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco 13 years ago.

In an emotional retelling from a wheelchair, the alleged victim said she “cannot remain silent anymore” and lamented that her childhood had “ended too soon.”

Immediately after the video was posted on Sept. 2, social media users pointed out reasons to be wary. The purported news channel it came from, San Francisco’s KBSF-TV, didn’t exist. A website for the channel set up just a week earlier contained plagiarized articles from real news outlets. The woman’s X-ray images shown in the video were taken from online medical journals. And the video and the text story on the website spelled the alleged victim’s name differently.

The caution was warranted, according to a new Microsoft threat intelligence report, which confirms the fabricated tale was disinformation from a Russia-linked troll farm. read more

Orlando-based restaurant Hawkers announced this week it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to protect itself from what the company called a “hyper-aggressive” lender.

Hawkers, which serves Asian street food, operates 15 restaurants in seven states and said all locations will remain open and continue normal operations during bankruptcy proceedings.

The company entered into a “debt capital agreement” in early 2023, borrowing $23 million to grow the company nationally. Hawkers was started by four friends who opened the first Hawkers on Mills Avenue in Orlando in 2011.

Scott Shuker, the restaurant’s bankruptcy attorney, said Hawkers has never missed a loan payment. But in the last 60 days, he said, the lending company revealed its intentions to take over the restaurant by replacing its leadership.

The lender is ABC Funding, LLC, acting as an administrative agent for Summit Partners Subordinated Debt Fund IV, based out of Boston, Shuker said. The lending company could not be reached for comment. read more

By DAVID KOENIG

The Biden administration is letting Alaska Airlines complete its $1 billion purchase of Hawaiian Airlines after the carriers agreed to certain conditions, including maintaining current service on routes between Hawaii and the mainland U.S. where they don’t have much competition.

Transportation Department officials said Tuesday that no obstacles remain to the airlines closing the deal and beginning to merge, although some final approvals were still pending.

Alaska Airlines said it expected to close the deal “in the coming days.”

Alaska’s stock closed down 1%, while shares in Hawaiian Holdings rose 4% to $18, the price per share that Alaska agreed to pay for its smaller rival.

The decision to clear the way for the airlines to merge stands in contrast to the administration’s adamant opposition to previous airline deals. The Justice Department successfully sued to block JetBlue from buying Spirit Airlines for $3.8 billion, and it went to court to kill a partnership between JetBlue and American Airlines. read more