A few weeks ago we went down to Disneyland for a mini vacation. You wouldn’t think this would have anything to do with droid building, but you’d be surprised.

The night before we were to leave I’d spotted that the Lego guys would be at Downtown Disney building another giant R2-D2, so I fired off an email to Victor to see if he’d like to meet up.

As luck would have it he and Mike were free and we arrange something for both Saturday and Sunday evening.

Here we are with Stephen Gerling, Master Lego Builder, and the mini Artoo they use as reference when building the 8 foot model. I’d met him once before when he was in the Bay Area doing a similar event at the Hillsdale mall in San Mateo.

Sadly, the mall security wouldn’t allow them to bring in their real Artoo’s, but we did get to hang out for a while.

Of course no trip to Disney is complete without a few goes around on the Star Tours ride, which is full of droids

And here’s a few more Star Wars builds at the Lego Store in Downtown Disney

We also watched the “Jedi Academy” attraction in the park – no droids, but lots of action 🙂

Competition was fierce among the kids waiting to get picked to participate, I thought this little girl was very clever with her sign – and she was one of the first selected

Finally here’s a video I shot of Honda’s Asimo in Tomorrowland, almost a Star Wars droid right?

Related:

• Giant Lego R2-D2 Event
• 8-Foot Lego R2 (Victor’s Blog)
  
• Meet up with Chris and Revisited the Lego R2 (Victor’s Blog)
  

We’ve been having a mini heat wave the last few days, but I was still able to get out this weekend with Artoo.

Late on Friday I found out that “Master Model Builder” Stephen Gerling from Lego would be in town building a giant eight foot R2 at Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo. So I just had to take Artoo along to check it out.

With temperatures up in the mid 90’s by lunchtime on Saturday and no AC in my droid mobile we headed out. It felt like everyone was trying to go where we wanted to go, and we sat in traffic for almost an hour while trying to leave the coast side. Usually the mall is only 20 minutes way, but everyone wanted to escape the heat and hit the beaches – so traffic just limped along.

We quickly unloaded and headed into the mall – breezing by security, who must have though we were part of the attraction!

The building had already started on Friday night and it looked like they were about a quarter of the way done by the time we arrived.

There was an army of kids making small section of the Artoo, while Master Builder Stephen orchestrated the placment of pieces.

We were totally mobbed the entire time we were there

This has got to be one of the cutest shots of the day

Thanks to Stephen for being a good sport and allowing us to crash the party 🙂

I’d really like to go back on Sunday to see it done, but I’ve got a previous engagement.

More Photos

Update 5-27-08: I never did make it back on the Sunday to see the finished model, but here’s some photos of it I found on Flickr.