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Articles by Sam Marraccini
Disney Celebrates America Echoes Walt Disney World’s 1988-1992 Fourth of July TV Specials
Disney Celebrates America is a major push for the company’s 250th anniversary celebration. Yet longtime Disney fans have seen this playbook before. Between 1988 and 1992, Walt Disney World and Disneyland starred in annual Fourth of July television specials that did far more than celebrate the holiday. One broadcast captured EPCOT Center’s Norway pavilion before Maelstrom opened. Another showed Disney-MGM Studios rise from an unfinished set to a full broadcast stage in just one year.
The Lost Walt Disney World Happy Easter Parade: 15 Years of a Forgotten Spring Tradition
There was a time when Easter morning and Walt Disney World went hand in hand. For many Disney fans, the Walt Disney World Happy Easter Parade was part of the holiday itself. It was a spring tradition that brought Main Street, U.S.A., into living rooms across the country, mixing Disney characters, celebrity appearances, music, and park previews into one televised event.
What Are Those Tracks in Cinderella Castle’s Moat? The Answer Is a Lost Magic Kingdom Ride
The drained moat around Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom is giving guests an unexpected history lesson in 2026. With the water drained for the ongoing castle painting project, what were metal tracks, and are now cement strips visible along the moat floor. They are not construction equipment. They are remnants of the Plaza Swan Boats, a scenic boat ride that carried guests through Magic Kingdom’s hub waterways from the park’s earliest years until August 1983.
JAWS Turns 50: National Geographic Explores the Film That Changed Cinema
JAWS 50 Documentary: A Bigger Boat, A Bigger Legacy National Geographic is diving deep into cinema history with the only authorized documentary on Jaws, just in time for the blockbuster's 50th anniversary. Premiering July 10, 2025, on National Geographic and streaming July 11 on Disney+ and Hulu, JAWS @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story takes viewers behind the scenes of the film that changed Hollywood -and our relationship with sharks.
Summer just got a whole lot more magical. Freeform is back with its popular 30 Days of Disney programming, bringing fans a month of Disney classics, Pixar favorites, and world television premieres throughout June 2025. Whether you want to revisit beloved animated tales, enjoy live-action adventures, or discover something new, this lineup offers something for every Disney fan.
After enjoying Muppet*Vision 3D like so many guests do, did you notice the out-of-the-way Italian restaurant not far from the exit? That is, or was, Mama Melrose's Ristorante Italiano-a tucked-away gem of Disney's Hollywood Studios. It has been serving wood-fired flatbreads, creamy pasta, and crowd-pleasing desserts for decades.
Begin your Walt Disney World morning with a peaceful ferryboat ride from the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC) to Magic Kingdom. This iconic journey across the Seven Seas Lagoon isn't just transportation-it's part of the Disney experience. In our newest video, filmed in March 2025, we capture the full real-time voyage on a cool and quiet morning at the most magical place on Earth.
Win a Trip to the Inside Out 2 World Premiere!
ORLANDO, Fla., May 20, 2024 - Get ready to make some joyful memories with mangos this summer. In celebration of Disney and Pixar's Inside Out 2, the National Mango Board and Disney have teamed up for an epic sweepstakes, offering fans the chance to win tickets to the premiere of the highly anticipated film, only in theaters June 14. The sweepstakes launches May 20 and will run through May 31.
What's Next on Disney+ March 2024
March Magic on Disney+: Premieres, Episodes, and Streaming Delights! From blockbusters to exclusive series, explore what’s coming this month!. This is the Full List! – Morbius Queens – All Episodes Streaming Guided by award-winning actress Angela Bassett’s powerful narration, the upcoming series “Queens” showcases the wildest places on the planet that have always been home to powerful leaders.
Enterprise for All Hits All the Right Notes
Thomas Edison’s voice was the first recorded sound, captured on the phonograph in 1877, as he recited “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Ten years later, the forerunner of the modern record was created. It spawned a century of innovation, with records and record players being improved and standardized—filling our collective ears with music through the jazz era, the pioneering days of rock and roll, and beyond. Yet, music player technology didn’t stop there.
[The Source Podcast] Converging SAP and Oracle
I’ve said it many times on the show, “Without an application, you don’t need infrastructure,” it’s as true today as ever. A cloud is… Infrastructure, sometimes it’s in your data center, sometimes it is managed by someone else. Simplifying the deployment of the infrastructure to support those applications provides the speed to market needed to deploy applications faster.
[The Source Podcast] Making it REAL: for our Partners
During the 2018 Global Partner Summit Keynote, our commitment to the channel was clear. Make it easier for our partners to do business with Dell Technologies is Priority #1. Part of that includes powerful new marketing tools, trainings and materials, created with you—our partners—in mind and based entirely on your feedback, as announced here on Direct2DellEMC by Cheryl Cook.
[The Source Podcast] Partner Spotlight - CDW
In this episode of Dell EMC The Source podcast, our Partner Spotlight is on CDW. CDW is a premier provider of IT services, solutions & technology for business, government and education. They are also one of a very select number of companies to be awarded Titanium Black status in our Dell EMC Partner program — an exclusive status within the Titanium partner tier.
[The Source Podcast] Video Surveillance: Making the World Safer
How IoT and Video Surveillance are Making the World Safer, that’s the breakout session presented by friend of the podcast Ken Mills (@OtherKen) at Dell Technologies World 2018. I was able to catch up with Mills while the Expo Hall was being deconstructed, apologies for the construction noise in the background. From the beginning, Dell EMC’s approach to surveillance solutions has been clear: provide an end-to-end design that’s tailored to your required surveillance workload by a first-tier vendor.
[The Source Podcast] Partner Spotlight - FusionStorm
Dell EMC President of Global Channels, OEM and IoT Solutions Joyce Mullen recently told CRN how we are focusing heavily on driving better collaboration between its direct sales teams and channel partners. Dell EMC partners continue to make the difference, our partners deliver on the promise of IT, digital, security and workforce transformation. In this episode of Dell EMC The Source, our Partner Spotlight is on FusionStorm.
[The Source Podcast] Cloud Consumption on Prem?
Microsoft Azure Stack is an extension of Azure to consistently run hybrid applications on-premises. It delivers unmatched levels of integration, automation and manageability and enables customers to increase IT efficiencies while adopting a Dev/Ops model.
Use Real-World Data to Drive Effective IT Decisions
In today’s fast-moving digital economy, organizations need to modernize and transform their IT to stay competitive. But customers are likely to be reluctant to make the required purchasing decisions without having a clear and comprehensive view of their current IT environment and workloads to hand – especially when budgets are limited. In the past, this has presented a significant problem – because the research and evaluation phase of a typical IT purchase cycle can last 4-9 months.
Put a Spring in Your Application Team
This has been a year of new beginnings for me here at Pivotal. That said, the important things stay the same: everyone is curious, change is urgent, and it’s all around us. It’s a new era for IT architects, IT operations teams, and the application teams they support.
[The Source Podcast] Partner Spotlight - World Wide Tech
Dell EMC partners continue to make the difference. Our partners deliver on the promise of IT, digital, security and workforce transformation. The Global Partner Summit at Dell Technologies World was the perfect opportunity for our partners to get the latest details on our plans and strategies moving forward.
[The Source Podcast] Have you Herd? The World Wide Herd Project and Global IoT
Almost a year ago, Patricia Florissi Blogged about a Distributed Data Analytics platform and the World Wide Herd (WWH). The concept of creating a global network of distributed Apache Hadoop instances forming a single virtual computing cluster.
[The Source Podcast] Channel and Alliances Service
Dell EMC Channel Services’ theme at the Global Partner Summit (GPS) at Dell Technologies World was “Delivering Value Through Services.” Driving more profitability to our partners so they can deliver greater value to our customers. Dell EMC provides a services portfolio and delivery enablement that improves the value our partners deliver to customers.
When Should Your Customers Think About GDPR Compliance?
May 25th was a big day for IT professionals in the European Union (EU) and, more importantly, anyone involved in IT with companies processing goods or services to EU residents, even if those companies are operating from outside the EU. And it can be a big sales and consulting opportunity, not only for Dell EMC Data Protection Solutions but also for a wide range of Dell Technologies solutions. How so? That’s the date when the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provision took effect.
[The Source Podcast] Global Partner Summit LATAM Breakout
“While many consider Dell a “direct” company, it is huge in the channel,” noted Patrick Moorhead, founder, president & principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, who attended parts of our Global Partner Summit at Dell Technologies World.
Position Yourself as the Go-To Technology Partner for IT Transformation
In today’s increasingly digitally driven world, businesses need to embrace IT Transformation and evolve to stay competitive—sometimes to even survive. IT Transformation is a fundamental and essential requirement for organizations of all sizes, in all sectors. Because unless they transform their IT, businesses simply cannot deal with the sheer amount of data and digital economy change that their operations are currently facing.
[The Source Podcast] Transforming Virtual Desktop with VDI Complete
The Dell EMC VDI Complete Solution has one goal: Make it easier to buy, implement and support virtual desktops with unique, end-to-end client solutions including technologies across the Dell Technologies family of companies.
Step into the Dell EMC VR Playground
Are your sales teams and customers ready to explore the recently launched Dell Commercial Client portfolio through the new Dell EMC VR Playground? We’re bringing the power of play to you, our partners. Virtual reality (VR) is being increasingly embedded into commercial workflows, so we want to ensure everyone experiences the true power of VR.
Capturing Value from IoT Data with Federated Analytics
In a recent blog posted to CIO.com, Dell EMC’s Global VP, Global CTO for Sales and Distinguished Engineer, Patricia Florist, Ph.D. outlined how the unique characteristics of the Internet of Things (IoT) create the need for federated analytics, an approach that allows data to be analyzed wherever it resides — at the edge, at the distributed core, and in the cloud.
[The Source Podcast] VMware and Dell EMC Helping our Partners Grow
In the latest episode of The Source, Brandon Sweeney (@bsweeneyatVMW), senior vice president VMWare Channel and Commercial Sales, joins me from the Global Partner Summit at Dell Technologies World 2018. As CRN noted, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger discussed the Virtual Cloud Network on the Tuesday of Dell Technologies World, describing it as the future of networking. It’s clear that enabling our joint partner channel is the key to growth and end user enablement.
[The Source Podcast] Global Partner Summit APJ Breakout
The general session at the 2018 Global Partner Summit at Dell Technologies World provided a perfect stage to showcase our channel executives as they highlight the Dell Technologies vision, and partner enablement programs. The Global Partner Summit also provides an opportunity to address the specific needs of a global organization. The regional/international breakouts are designed to address those specific needs.
New High-Performance PowerEdge Servers Now Ready to Ship
Are your prospects and customers running high-performance computing (HPC), virtualization, database analytics and machine learning workloads? If so, it’s time to start speaking to those businesses about the latest product launches from Dell EMC, the world’s leading server provider.1 Award-winning2 Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, featuring Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, are built from the ground up with a no-compromise approach to deliver a real difference to all sizes of organizations.
Get Your Customers Ready for VR
Once the preserve of the gaming industry, VR is creating serious waves in sectors such as manufacturing, travel and education. Forward-thinking companies are investing in making VR work for them. And while there are some hurdles to clear, the possibilities are great – if they have the hardware to make it happen.
[The Source Podcast] Howling into IoT and OEM solutions with Chris Wolff
The Internet of Things (IoT) is everywhere! IoT is all about smart technologies in packages solutions that can be easily deployed to enable business and human progress.
[The Source Podcast] Rockin with Global Alliances, Services Providers
Jay Snyder, (@JayBOD3) senior vice president, Global Alliances, Service Providers and Industries joins me this time on Dell EMC The Source Podcast. Through Global Alliances, Snyder focuses on several distinct domains; leading the overall relationship for Dell Technologies most strategic global system integrators, the program and sales efforts for the cloud service provider partners, the telecommunications sales vertical and the global industries sales teams.
[The Source Podcast] Enabling Futuremakers with IoT and OEM Solutions
Bryan Jones (@BryanEJones), senior vice president and general manager of OEM and IoT Channel Solutions joins me on this episode of Dell EMC The Source to provide some insight into the Internet of Things (IoT) and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) strategy at Dell Technologies.
Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) Even Easier to Sell
We launched the Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) last year with our channel partners in mind. IDPA is a converged, all-in-one data protection solution that is fast to deploy and converges protection storage and software, search and analytics, and cloud tier for long-term retention—in a single appliance. We have now made IDPA even easier to manage and upgrade – all things that make it easier for our channel partners to sell IDPA.
27 Dell EMC Leaders Recognized as CRN Women of the Channel 2018
During the recent Global Partner Summit at Dell Technologies World, Joyce Mullen, President, Dell EMC Global Channel, OEM & IoT, said, “Together, we are unstoppable.” This holds true for the combined community of Dell EMC and our partners, as well as for the individuals of Dell EMC who work together to advance the organization and the Dell EMC Partner Program.
[The Source Podcast] Global Partner Summit with Cheryl Cook
The event inside the event, The Global Partner Summit brings together over 6,000 Dell Technologies partners. The Summit is designed to enable our partners and equip them to deliver best in breed technology solutions to our joint customers. Cheryl Cook (@CookCherylS), Sr Vice President Dell EMC Partner Marketing joined me just after her Global Partner Summit Keynote with some of the latest details.
Yes, That Happened: PowerEdge at #DellTechWorld
FOMO /ˈfōmō/ (noun): “fear of missing out” Anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere. Our week at Dell Technologies World started out innocently enough. Introduce a few new products, start some great conversations, hear our customers’ stories, and maybe have a little fun. What we got was the most exciting week of PowerEdge action since we launched the 14th generation last year.
[The Source Podcast] Dell EMC Heroes, Reflecting on the First Year
The Dell EMC Heroes Program is celebrating its One-Year Anniversary. The program is designed to enable our Partner Systems Engineering Community by sharing knowledge, best practices, and real-world experience. I sat down with Vince Affatati (@VincentAffatati), Global VP Channel Pre-Sales, after the “1st Anniversary Celebration” at Lagasse Stadium during the Global Partner Conference. With over 300 Partners representing all corners of the globe, to say Vince was fired up would be an understatement.
[The Source Podcast] #DellTechWorld Expo Hall Live Walkthrough
To say that the first Dell Technologies World is an amazing experience is an understatement. From General Sessions, Guru Sessions, Breakout Sessions, Hands-on-Labs Training, Certifications and Customer Briefing Experience all topped off with an incredible Customer Appreciation Event. The Solutions Expo provides a perfect opportunity for direct interaction with Dell Technologies Sponsors and Exhibitors, and every year the Solutions Center gets bigger.
[The Source Podcast] Transforming the Hands on Labs for DTW 2018
Maurice Harty and Joseph Correia have transformed the Hands on Labs for Dell Technologies World 2018. Moving to a modern Software Defined Datacenter stack, the hands-on labs are now able to deliver a common user experience across Dell Technologies products and solutions. Users have the ability to choose from a full lab or individual modules giving them the ability to customize their experience based on their interests.
[The Source Podcast] Global Partner Summit
The conference inside the conference, The Dell Technologies Global Partner Summit was hosted by Global Channel, OEM and IoT President, Joyce Mullen (@Joyceatdell). The theme ROARED off the stage as Joyce highlighted our 2017 accomplishments and new Programs and Solutions specific to our channel partners for 2018. Our #1 Priority is helping our Global Partners and OEMs help our joint customers. I caught up with Joyce just a few minutes after the Global Partner Summit Keynote.
[The Source Podcast] Dell Technologies World Preview
Dell Technologies World is for technologists, thought leaders and executives ready to transform their careers and organizations. Find topics at all levels of technical competency, from application development to infrastructure modernization; from innovation strategy to cloud and security. Tap into the expertise of Dell Technologies engineers, trailblazers and architects who make transformation real every day. With so much happening, where do you start?
Start Exploring and Driving the 4-Socket Opportunity
In today’s fast-changing business world, constantly increasing application and end-user demands drive many organizations to seek server performance and efficiency benefits that were typically previously only achievable with hyperscale solutions. But now the new Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio can deliver almost everything that IT managers are looking for – and more.
A Perfect Blend of Power Efficiency and Cooling
When it comes to specifying an optimum server infrastructure, power efficiency and cooling issues are often key considerations. As well as operating as efficiently as possible, the best-suited servers in this instance will offer built-in automation features and resilient system design to ensure continued, optimal performance even when power or thermal conditions in the data center change.
Dell OptiPlex Celebrates Anniversary with All-New, Space-Saving Solutions
This year marks the 25th anniversary of desktop innovation. During that time, the world’s most secure commercial PCs have continuously redefined “less is more” with revolutionary form factors that deliver increased elbowroom while providing reliable, intelligent performance and flexibility that allow users to truly work the way they want. Now Dell OptiPlex has cleared the path to outstanding productivity even more with the launch of the newest Dell™ OptiPlex™ Micro and All-in-One.
[The Source Podcast] Hyper Converged Infrastructure and the Three P’s
While Hyper-Converged Infrastructure provides the ability to simplify the deployment of cloud and application solutions, it also brings with it some unexpected considerations. Chad Engel (@Engel_Chad), Senior Sales Director Hyper-Converged, likes to consider them the three P’s: People, Process and Politics. In some cases, the three P’s can lead to a delay in adopting the benefits of a hyper-converged infrastructure.
[The Source Podcast] A Canadian Approach to Hybrid Cloud and EUC
With Cloud data center providers embracing Canadian soil, the adoption of hybrid cloud strategies in Canada has increased considerably. Or as Peter Near (@pnear), national director of Systems Engineering VMWare Canada puts it, “Canadians have gone from pumping the brakes to pressing the accelerator,” regarding hybrid cloud adoption.
[The Source Podcast] Dell EMC Heroes Event - Tampa
A few months ago, I sat down with Patty Moy, director Dell EMC Heroes Program. She updated us on the program and the plans for 2018, including the Global Partner Summit, part of Dell Technologies World 2018. Part of that discussion included the quarterly Dell EMC Heroes Exchange events providing an opportunity for our partners to get details on product features, roadmaps, and solutions showcases in the area. I recently attended one of the Heroes Exchange events, Top Golf Tampa.
Powerfully Simple: Modern Management for Dell EMC Data Protection
This modern management enables users to gain control over their data protection through: Dell EMC Data Protection management software is easily downloadable and included without additional cost with Dell EMC Data Protection Software. A comprehensive view across data protection environments allows users to gain a complete picture of their data protection environment.
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