Travel Channel Shows for Disney Junkies

The Disney Traveler blog reminds us this week of the upcoming new Samantha Brown Disney specials on Travel Channel, as well as showtimes for a bunch of re-runs I imagine we’ve all watched, and re-watched, and re-watched.

I know I’ve got my DVR set to record the first new one, on April 11!

The Disney Cruise Line show always makes me want to book a cruise, which is funny because not only have I never been interested in cruises, I have an outrageously strong tendency towards motion sickness (an unfortunate thing for a frequent business traveler, n’est-ce pas?). And the Undiscovered Disney World show makes me laugh, because most of the stuff they cover is not particularly hidden, though they do talk about a number of things I’ve never done (the Chef’s Table at Victoria and Albert’s, for example, since I am a budget traveler). And, of course, if you watch enough of these shows, frequently enough, you’ll start to notice the re-purposed footage (“hey, isn’t that the same woman we always see on Mission Space?”).

So, I’m looking forward to a new batch for sure! I have no doubt I’ll watch and re-watch them as obsessively as the last batch.

Baby Einstein Not So Smart After All

From the DIS News:

Researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle say that baby DVDs and videos – such as “Baby Einstein” – are different from beneficial children’s programming because they have little dialogue, short scenes and disconnected pictures and show “linguistically indescribable images such as a lava lamp.”

The researchers found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than babies who didn’t watch them. Their study was published Tuesday in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Want to help your baby’s language skills? Don’t put on a video, just have a nice little chat.