Abraham Lincoln Returning To Disneyland

... at least the robotic Abraham Lincoln is.

The robotic Lincoln will be at Disneyland as part of a new attraction "The Disneyland Story, featuring Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" to commemorate Lincoln's 200th birthday.

The attraction will reopen in celebration of the 200th anniversary year of Lincoln's birthday. The original show was created by Walt Disney and his staff for the State of Illinois Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair and featured the first fully animated, human audio-animatronics figure.

Hum... didn't know that. Man, that Walt Disney sure was busy back then doing a lot of stuff! :)

Zz.

Monsters Inc. 2 in the Works?

Oh, this is such a juicy piece of gossip! Disney Blue Sky is reporting that Pete Doctor is working on the sequel to Monsters Inc. Tentative release date: 2013.

Zz.

Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power

That's a very mouthful title of the event being held at Harvard to view how Disney's movies have shaped children's view of the world they live in.

The documentary incorporated scenes from Disney classics like “The Little Mermaid,” “Peter Pan,” “Hercules,” and “Mulan,” and argued that they negatively shape children’s conceptualizations of race and gender beneath a guise of innocence and fantasy.

For instance, the documentary showed clips from “Aladdin,” “The Jungle Book,” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” contending that they contain highly sexualized representations of females, and that “Oliver Twist,” “Pocahontas,” and “Peter Pan” communicate stereotyped, white supremacist messages.

Of course, we ALL know that just because one can make a documentary does not necessarily translate into facts or valid evidence. If not, one would have to believe that Ben Stein was correct in his argument against evolution. It would have been nice if the news article actually also cited some research work that actually supported such contention. This is, after all, Harvard's newspaper. I should expect a higher level of intelligence and diligence in doing some background and supporting documents.

Alas, that's not to be.

Zz.

Disney Two-Fer: Blu-Rays and DVDs

This article looks at Disney effort in packaging many of their movies in a special edition that contains the Blu-Ray, DVD, and digital copies that can be played on either Windows Media Player or iPod.

It needed to for several reasons:

* The Mouse House realized that an increasing number of families were holding off on investing in Blu-ray until they owned the players; but they weren't buying as many DVDs either, knowing they'd eventually upgrade to Blu-ray.

* Households that did purchase Blu-ray movies also wanted the option to play the discs for their kids while on the road and most in-car entertainment systems don't support Blu-ray.

* Most computers and portable players don't play Blu-ray discs either, making watching a movie on the format while traveling impossible.

It makes A LOT of business sense! It certainly got me to buying such a version, even though I already have a Blu-Ray player.

Zz.

WDW Restaurant Executive Will Take Buyout

After 21 years, Dieter Hannig, the WDW Vice President for food and beverage new concepts, will retire from Disney, taking the recently offered buyout for Disney executives. It will be a major departure of someone who has overseen the creation of some of my most favorite places to eat.

Hannig has overseen the development of dozens of new restaurants at Disney World over the years. Critics credited him for elevating the resort into a top dining destination in the early 1990s, when he began encouraging executive chefs at Disney restaurants to run their eateries as if they owned them.

The German-born chef said his fondest projects included developing the California Grill atop Disney's Contemporary Resort and creating the African-inspired Jiko and Boma in Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge.

He has most recently been developing a third African restaurant, which will feature dishes infused with Indian flavors in the time-share addition Disney is building next to the Animal Kingdom Lodge. The restaurant -- "Sanaa," which is Swahili for "work of art" -- is scheduled to open in mid-April.

We plan on dining at Sanaa this coming June. If this is as good as Boma and Jiko, then Hannig will have left a lasting legacy of classy and amazing restaurants at WDW.

Zz.

Random WDW Picture

Here's a picture I took a few years ago while we were doing the Segway Around The World at World Showcase.



It was a lot of fun!

Zz.

Disney Pin Celebration 2009

The Disney Pin Celebration 2009 - Museum of Pin-tiquities has opened registration yesterday. The website has also finally released the special pins for this event.

While I had rather low expectation for the pins this year and didn't plan on buying that much, I was quite surprised by the number of pins that I would like to get after looking at the pins list. This event is normally held in Sept. of each year, one week after Labor Day. However, they had to push the event this year several months ahead into the busy and hot month of June due to the one-in-a-lifetime 999 Haunted Mansion event at Disneyland that will be held on Sept. 9, 2009. So with all the rescheduling, I wasn't expecting them to put out too many pins that I would want. But surprisingly, I found quite a few (anything with Chip 'N Dale, and Donald Duck are almost automatic for us).

So yes, yours truly will be attending this event. And spending quite a bit of money too!

Zz.

Stitch Kingdom Blog

Thanks to Ralph for pointing this out to me.

This is an interesting blog full of news from Disney. In fact, Stitch Kingdom sounds almost as if it is Disney running its own blog! :)

Whoever is running it, it has a lot of news and stuff from Disney.

Zz.

Recession Is Slowing Down 3d Movie Expansion

There will be a large number of 3D movies being released this year. However, due to the recession, many movie theaters are slowing down or finding it difficult to finance the expensive conversion to the capability to screen these movies. This news article looks at the possible glut of such 3D movies, and not enough screens to show them.

This Friday, Walt Disney Co will release its new "Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience" in theatres equipped for 3-D. But that means Focus Features' "Coraline," which has been a 3-D hit, must cut its 3-D presence to some 300 screens, probably before it has played to all potential fans.

My first preference is always to see it in 3D. So I'm definitely up for "Up" in 3D, especially after all the sneak preview and glowing initial review. They'd better have a lot of theaters here in the Chicago area showing that in 3D or I won't be a happy camper.

Zz.

Random WDW Picture

At the entrance of my most favorite theme park in all of WDW/DL



Zz.

Alas, It Wasn't Pixie Dust

Disneyland's ticket booths were temporarily closed for a few hours on Sunday when while authorities tried to analyze the white dust found at all the ticket booth counters.

Some guests entered Disneyland when the park opened at 8 a.m. (California Adventure was not yet open), Disney spokeswoman Suzi Brown said. But when the powder was found on more ticket booths, park officials decided to temporarily hold back all guests from the ticketing area until police could investigate the powder. The booths were shuttered at 8:45 a.m.

It turned out to be nothing more than fine sand. So it certainly wasn't Tink who was up to her old mischief again. It certainly created a lot of inconvenience (and waiting) for the guests that morning.

Zz.

Rumors of a Dallas-Area Disney Site Persist

This rumor appears to never want to die. It is the often-talked about possible Disney theme site somewhere in the Dallas area of Texas.

The Disney rumor pops up at least once every three months, he said, and people approach him at lunch with fresh Disney gossip. "Don't hold your breath."

Reading the whole news article, it isn't a rumor, but more like wishful thinking on the part of some people there, especially those with commercial properties. And they can certainly doubt Disney's official announcement as much as they want, but ultimately, it will be them who's left holding the bag. With the current economic climate and with Disney focusing aggressively on raising theme park attendance at both of its North American theme parks, I seriously doubt that they would want to build another theme park elsewhere in the US.

Zz.

Wall-E Won Animation Oscar

Wall-E just won the best animated movie Oscar at the Academy Awards. I am very happy!

Zz.

Wall-E Swept VES Awards

On the eve of the Academy Awards, Wall-E swept all the animation category award at the Visual Effects Society award ceremony.

Wall•E, the Pixar-Disney animated film, took all the animation awards, including outstanding animated character, outstanding effects animation and outstanding animation in an animated motion picture. The results give the film momentum going into Sunday’s Academy Awards, after being shut out last month at the Annie Awards.

Here's hoping Wall-E does very well tonight with the Oscars. It would be a good surprise if it wins the screenplay award.

Zz.

American Idol Experience at DHS

Disney Parks has released a couple of videos of the newly-opened American Idol Experience at Disney's Hollywood Studios.





Zz.

Disney Reorganizes Theme Parks In Prelude To Job Cuts

It was bound to happen, but I wish it does not have to get to this point. Disney is reorganizing many parts of its operations, including its theme parks operations, in order to cut overheads and reduce costs. All of this in anticipation of a possible job cut to occur some time soon.

For our part, we are still planning on going to WDW twice this year, which is our normal habit. Nothing will change as far as we have planned.

Zz.

A Forgotten Walt 1933 Interview

Wade Simpson over at MousePlanet has done a tremendous "community service" job by transcribing an interview of Walt Disney he found in a 1933 newspaper. It was done at the height of the popularity of "The Three Little Pigs" and so involved some description of the making of the film. Many of these quotes have never been attributed to Walt, so these are quite a revelation. For example, his attitude about the money he makes out of his movies is quite revealing of the type of person he is:

“I’m not interested in money, except for what I can do with it to advance my work. The idea of piling up a fortune for the sake of wealth seems silly to me. Work is the real adventure in life. Money is merely a means to make more work possible.

Zz.

WDW Offers Locals Discount Tickets

In an effort to get more of the local Florida residents to visit WDW, the theme park has offered local Florida residents 2 single-park admission for $99, which is about a third less than the walk-up price.

Not a bad idea to court the locals, especially if this is the segment that is very weak during this economic slowdown. Still, unlike the aggressive promotion being done to get the tourists, somehow this deal doesn't sound as enticing, especially when compared to the ones being done by Universal and Sea World. Would be interesting to hear how many of the local residents would view this as enticing enough to visit the theme parks.

Zz.

"Bolt" Tops UK Box Office

I often forget that many of the summer movies here in the US either haven't open, or just opened in many parts of the world. "Bolt" had its premier in the UK just this past weekend and bolted to #1 in the box office receipts.

So Disney is still reaping profits out of this movie, and will do so for months, even before counting DVD/Blu-Ray sales.

Zz.

China Ice Festival Makes Room For Mickey

If there's any question about Disney's brand name recognition in China, this should be ample evidence to settle that issue.

It appears that this year, the yearly ice festival in the city of Harbin in China has decided to change the ice creations from before. This time, they have been replaced with Disney characters and Disney themes.

What is perhaps the world’s most famous ice festival has become another of the world’s Disney theme parks, with a Disney licensing company taking over operations from the local Communist government. It is the first time a private company has run the ice festival.

Snow White has replaced snow dragons. Children wander through the frozen hallways of Aladdin’s Castle instead of a Qing dynasty palace. “It’s a Small World” plays in one corner of the park. (What better theme music for globalization?)

“It was too stodgy,” Qi Juwei, 51, the organizer of this year’s event, said of the old festival. “You can’t keep putting the same light in the same block of ice.”

Disney also gets the free publicity since they don't run it, but had a hand in approving the various ice sculptures.

Zz.