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 January 4 - 10, 2009 |
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Saturday January 10, 2009 |
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Disney to install defibrillators at some of resort's thrill
rides Under Walt's Spell Walden Still Committed to Narnia Despite Disney Bail Jeff Civillico will run and juggle simultaneously at the Disney Marathon Disney Channels to be offered in AT&T In-Car Satellite TV Service Disney-branded Pyramat gaming chairs RealNetworks confident of winning DVD copying suit Disney Rep To Address Local Businesses at Luncheon for Red Stick |
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Disney to install defibrillators at some of resort's thrill
rides Orlando Sentinel - Walt Disney World for the first time is installing electronic devices that can revive cardiac-arrest victims at some of the resort's most intense thrill rides. The company plans to install automated external defibrillators at nearly two dozen attractions across its four theme parks, including high-speed rides such as Expedition Everest, Mission: Space and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. The move continues a push that Disney has made in the past year to distribute more of the portable lifesaving devices within its theme parks. It also comes about a year after 44-year-old Jeffery C. Reeb of Navarre suffered a heart attack while riding the Everest roller coaster in Disney's Animal Kingdom. No defibrillator was immediately available to Reeb, who died Dec. 18, 2007. At the time, just three of the 500 devices Disney had so far installed across its 47-square-mile property were in Animal Kingdom. Today, however, at least 14 of the now-700 defibrillators at Disney World are in the Animal Kingdom, with most positioned by restrooms. And the park is scheduled to get four more at various attractions. Disney says the decision to add more defibrillators at individual rides was not spurred by Reeb's death. Medical specialists said at the time that it was impossible to say whether an immediate jolt from a defibrillator could have helped Reeb, who authorities ultimately determined suffered from an enlarged heart. "This decision is really part of our continuous enhancement to safety," Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger said. Speed is crucial Automated external defibrillators, often referred to as AEDs, have become increasingly widespread in recent years, sprouting in airports, health clubs and more. The devices are designed to deliver an electronic shock to the heart of someone in cardiac arrest, causing the heart to rapidly contract and, hopefully, resume a normal beat. But the effectiveness of a defibrillator depends on how quickly it is used. The American Heart Association says the devices are most effective when used within three to five minutes of collapse; a victim's odds of survival drop as much as 10 percent every minute that passes without immediate CPR and defibrillation. Businesses use those rules when determining where to deploy defibrillators, which typically cost $1,500 to $2,000 each, according to the heart association. "You should be able to walk from where the event occurred, get the AED and be back within three minutes," said Scott Weisman, general manager of Pulse America, which provides health and safety compliance and training to businesses. Disney launched its own defibrillator program in 2001, installing about 600 combined at Disney World, Disneyland and onboard its two cruise ships. Many early defibrillators were positioned with trained responders, at security outposts, first-aid stations and on mobile units. But as the devices became easier to use -- some newer models audibly instruct users and sense whether the victim is suffering from a problem that requires a shock before actually delivering one -- Disney began to deploy them in more public areas. State lawmakers have also given businesses that install defibrillators protections from lawsuits. Many added in 2007 In November 2007, a month before Reeb's death, the company announced that it would install an additional 200 at Disney World and 50 more at Disneyland, with a "significant number" to be deployed in public restrooms across both resorts. "As AEDs have become increasingly common in public areas and more people, including more of our guests, have been trained in their use, it's fitting that we enhanced the availability of those devices to complement the efforts of professional emergency responders," Finger said Friday. Disney last year placed defibrillators in some attractions, such as Kilimanjaro Safaris and the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. But it is now deploying them to many more. Altogether, Disney says it is installing another 30 of the devices -- boosting the total number at Disney World to about 730 -- with about two dozen at individual attractions and the remainder in employee areas. A number of the resort's less-intense rides and shows, such as The Haunted Mansion and Mickey's PhilharMagic, are among the rides scheduled to get the devices. The defibrillator at Everest will be installed in the roller coaster's unloading area. Experts say it is not surprising Disney has not already stationed defibrillators at some thrill rides. Other locations are higher priorities, they say. Prime spots for devices Bathrooms are particularly effective spots for defibrillators, said Janet Celli, co-founder of Orlando-based CPR Associates of America, which instructs businesses on defibrillator deployment. That's in part because people who suffer the start of a heart attack or who are choking -- both of which can lead to cardiac arrest -- often head for bathrooms, Celli said. Disney World also has a number of settings beyond its park rides where experts recommend stationing defibrillators. The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association, for instance, says studies show people are more likely to suffer cardiac arrest in locations such as golf courses, ferry and train terminals and sports complexes, among other spots. Experts say other important spots include reception areas, hotel lobbies, restaurants and hard-to-reach restricted areas. Elliott Fisch, president of Atrus, a Boca Raton company that has developed programs to help emergency dispatchers more quickly locate portable defibrillators, said installing the devices at more rides is a logical next step for Disney. He called Disney "the world leader in deployment of these devices." "What it strikes me as is [Disney] being even more diligent," Fisch said. Where are they? Disney will install portable defibrillators in nearly two dozen attractions across its four theme parks. Magic Kingdom: Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, The Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mickey's PhilharMagic, Stitch's Great Escape, Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. Epcot: Test Track, Mission: Space, Soarin', Journey Into Imagination With Figment, Honey I Shrunk the Audience, Gran Fiesta Tour. Disney's Hollywood Studios: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, Star Tours, Studio Backlot Tour. Disney's Animal Kingdom: Dinosaur, Kali River Rapids, Expedition Everest, It's Tough to be a Bug. |
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Under Walt's Spell Washington Post - Something's been nagging me, art historically. Spread in the high halls of Washington's art museums is a broad and permanent semiofficial survey of the 20th century, and it's got a hole in it. Someone who really ought to be there is missing. They've left Walt Disney out.
Though handmade, as drawings had always been, Disney's were made with a studio-factory of his own devising. Anyone raised in this country, or anywhere else for that matter, knows what they look like. They're active and rounded and juvenile, and they perform; they're wholesome and scary, fantastical, folklorical and eerily transmissible. They put into the century a new mode of depiction that wasn't there when it started but was everywhere when it closed. Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966) grew up in the middle of the country, on its farms and in its cities and little unpaved towns, a skinny, strangely gifted kid drawing flip-books for his pals. His art looks American, but not entirely, Disney having gotten a serious jolt of Europe when he drove ambulances in France in World War I. Once he'd seen "Paree," young Disney did not go back to the farm. Instead, he found his way to Hollywood, where, starting in 1928 with "Steamboat Willie," he made "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Pinocchio," "Fantasia" -- astonishing things. Officialdom once cheered him, Harvard and Yale gave him honorary doctorates on two successive days in 1938, but today if you go into the art museums you won't find him, only his reflections. There's a Mickey Mouse at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and another at the National Gallery of Art. The Hirshhorn's is a cartoony-constructivist, round-eared, square-eyed, steel-and-aluminum "Geometric Mouse" by Claes Oldenburg, 1971. The gallery's is an early Roy Lichtenstein oil, "Look Mickey," 1961, in which he's fishing with Donald Duck. These aren't Disneys; they're there only because pop is unthinkable without him. As the pop artists themselves cheerfully acknowledged: Lichtenstein donated "Look Mickey" to the nation. Andy Warhol multiplied the mouse and sprinkled diamond dust on his "Double Mickey" (1981), a silk screen that brought $113,525 at Sotheby's in 2002. Disney's exclusion isn't a conspiracy. Too much of what he made, especially later, looks robotic, less the output of an artist than the merchandise of a brand. He wasn't Winslow Homer. His gag dependence, too, has worked against him. Organized in rows of metal filing cabinets in his studio in California were 1.5 million gags in 124 classifications, and traditional museums, being somber institutions, do not much like jokes. And not even his best work is comfortably collected. What would you buy -- his throwaway sketches, cels (individual frames) that other artists painted, reels of film, DVDs, a watch? But, still. He deserves more than the video store. He should be in the museums for a variety of reasons. Here are six. Walt Disney made drawing move. This is not a trivial accomplishment. Artists in the Ice Age caves gave their horses extra legs to indicate them galloping, and in Greece and Rome, gods were provided with twisting poses and flyings-off of drapery to suggest their godly motions. Disney did more than suggest. Leonardo would have fallen down in ecstasy if his whirlpools really whirled.
Earlier artists had
explored animation -- Georges Méliès in France, Winsor
McCay in America -- but only tentatively. Disney went
way beyond them. First he got rid of its jerkiness, and
then he made it sing ("When You Wish Upon a Star,"
"Whistle While You Work," "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad
Wolf?") and colored it. Neal Gabler's 2007 biography
reports that Disney's studio ground all of its own
watercolor pigments, installed a spectrophotometer to
measure them precisely and kept 1,200 distinct colors on
its shelves.
"Practically every tool we use today," said the great Chuck Jones, of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Wile E. Coyote and Looney Tunes fame, "was originated at the Disney studio." Disney put his art deep inside our minds. Not many artists have that mysterious knack. Warhol had it. He could go into Safeway, scan 10,000 products and then come out into the daylight with a soup can that you can't remove from your head. It's in there, irremovable. Pluto and Jiminy Cricket and Thumper sit on the same shelf. Disney could hang with the surrealists. Sometimes he was one of them. Disney shared the creepiness, the mining of memory, dream and irrational juxtaposition that we attribute to the best of them. No wonder Salvador Dali came to work with Disney. "The night of our meeting," wrote the Spaniard, who was not easily amazed, "I spent almost entirely without sleep."
Disney's most surreal episode is the one in which Dumbo,
drunk by accident, zooms off into a hallucination of
blaring trombones, pink elephants (of course), morphing
blobs and infinite regressions. "I have never seen
anything to approach it," wrote Otis Ferguson in the New
Republic, "and neither have you, because there hasn't
been anything." The waves in the storm scene in "Pinocchio" aren't water, they're also monsters. I had to get away from them, running up the aisle, when I was a kid.
Disney could hang with
the animal artists.
He was one, even though he anthropomorphized shamelessly. Disney used to mime his art as he called it into being. When he wanted his artists to animate a hound, Disney would become that hound right before their eyes. "He would imitate the expressions of the dog, and look from one side to the other, and raise first one brow and then the other as he tried to figure things out. You'd have the feeling of the whole thing," Dick Huemer recalled. "You'd know exactly what he wanted." Bambi is as much a person as a deer, but he sure looks like a deer. While creating him, the Disney studio brought in all the deer film it could find, and shot more in Maine, and got a dead deer for its art school. "Rico Lebrun," writes Gabler, "conducted classes in the afternoon to analyze deer anatomy. He had gotten a fresh carcass from a forest ranger, and at each session he would remove another layer of the skin or muscle until he reached the bone -- by which time Eric Larson was the only one of the staff who could tolerate the stench." Thomas Eakins, teaching in Philadelphia, had done the same, with a horse, just as stinkily. I wouldn't be surprised if lots of green eco-Americans first empathized with animals while watching Disney's films. Politeness says admit him. Disney, let us not forget, did his artly duty. He recognized top quality, as museums are supposed to. He trained artists by the hundreds (since one second of a Disney film required 17 hand-drawn stills). To blackball the good fellow after all of that seems a little rude. He put big money into art schools (the one in his studio eventually became California Institute of the Arts). In 1943, he joined the board of the Museum of Modern Art. And, in many disciplines, he sought collaboration with artists of high rank. Some were conductors and composers (Leopold Stokowski, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky) -- for Disney, after all, was a sort of conductor-composer of images. He also turned to writers (Thornton Wilder, Aldous Huxley), painters (Dali, Thomas Hart Benton) and to Charlie Chaplin and Frank Lloyd Wright. And he stayed loyal to his muse. You can see this in the miniature railway he built around his house. It had a 90-foot tunnel, a 46-foot-high trestle, 2,500 feet of track and a tiny working steam engine just big enough to carry him. Disney rode it often. The setup in his garden was elaborate, nostalgia-soaked, the opposite of grown-up, onrushing and machined, like his art. Time is on his side.
Go to any with-it
contemporary art show, and you'll see what I
mean. Lit-up screens are everywhere; so are
ever-moving images, well-recorded sound effects,
plastic fabrications. In serious museums these
would not have been admissible when Disney was
at his peak, but they are now. The old rules
have been broken, multimedia's in, anything
goes.
All art recalls its precedents. Our electrical, collaborative, shiny, noisy 21st-century art brings with it a distinctive past just as much as painting does. The advanced work of our own time is doing Walt Disney a favor, legitimizing retrospectively the art he made in his. Paris has already seen a big Walt Disney show. Called "Once Upon a Time," it opened at the Grand Palais in 2006. But Washington's still waiting. Someday there may be a big Disney art exhibit somewhere on the Mall. I know what it should look like, and sometimes I imagine it. The Paris exhibition was largely filled with Disney's art. This one should be mixed. It shouldn't be only about Disney (he didn't work alone), and it shouldn't be over-serious (he wasn't), and it ought to entertain. It should include some blobs by Joan Miró and Dali's melting watches, to go with his surrealism, and some dramatic bucking broncos, in bronze by Frederic Remington, to go with Disney's animals, and some ferocious North Atlantic waves crashing on the coast of Maine in oils by Winslow Homer to accompany "Pinocchio's" scary storm at sea. The pop artists should be there, too (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Takashi Murakami), to evoke what came after him, and so should "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1914), a hand-drawn film by Winsor McCay, to show what came before. It also ought to have a whole gallery of cartoonists, including those who worked with him (Walt Kelly, for example) and those who merely paid him homage (say, the great R. Crumb). To demonstrate that first-rate art can be fabulous and funny, I'd include Red Grooms, and I'd put in Norman Rockwell, too, just for company. In darkened rooms with comfy seats, there will be screenings of "Fantasia" and "Dumbo" and the "Silly Symphonies." Sequences of Disney cels will be lined up on the walls. Maybe the guards will all wear Disney watches. I'd include a great Jeff Koons as well. His 1996 "Balloon Dog" would be perfect. That's because it's 10 feet high, polished to a fare-thee-well, toylike and magnificent, inflated, unironic, and completely Disneyesque. It'd be a helluva show. |
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Walden Still Committed to Narnia Despite Disney
Bail |
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Jeff Civillico will run and juggle
simultaneously at the Disney Marathon |
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Disney Channels to be offered in AT&T In-Car
Satellite TV Service A final channel lineup is still being developed, but AT&T says it will include lots of family-friendly entertainment, including Disney Channel, Disney XD, Discovery Kids, Animal Planet, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network Mobile, USA, COMEDY CENTRAL, MSNBC, CNN Mobile Live and CNBC. The system requires installation of a 3-pound, 11.3-by-10.3-by-4.3-inch antenna on the roof of your vehicle. AT&T describes this as "not particularly noticeable," but I'd take that observation with a grain of salt: Check out the rooftop image, above. AT&T says its technology addresses shortcomings of other in-car entertainment systems. For example, the company says, its breakthrough buffering technology keeps the show going even when you're under a tunnel or other line-of-site obstacle. Avis and Budget car rental services have announced plans to make the Cruisecast service available in rental cars at some locations for $9 a day or $63 a week. |
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Disney-branded
Pyramat gaming chairs DVICE -
Sure, grownups want the latest and greatest gear, but little
tykes deserve some kick-azz gear too, don't you think? Pyramat
is showing off a line of chairs designed to enhance the gaming
experience, and the latest versions have the Disney stamp of
approval.There are two chairs in the lineup -- one pink, the other dark blue. Other features are the same. The seat contains a POWERSUB subwoofer, and an array of speakers line the headrest. There are presets for games, movies and music. For even more fun, there are LED lights that flash on the bottom of the chairs. Retailing for around $120, there's no reason that adults should have all the cool toys, right? Multi-player connections let up to 8 chairs connect together for a new way to keep the kiddies entertained for hours. Want to join in on the fun? There's a love-seat design too, made for a slightly more mature crowd. |
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RealNetworks confident of winning DVD copying suit AP - RealNetworks Inc. Chief Executive Rob Glaser is still confident that people will be able to use the company's RealDVD software to copy DVDs to their personal computers — just not now. In an interview with reporters at the International Consumer Electronics Show, Glaser said he expects that the digital entertainment company will win a suit filed against it in October by six major Hollywood studios. He also said that if the company needs to make small changes to its software so that it can be sold, it will, "but we don't anticipate any," he added. The studios argue that the software allows video pirating. The program was launched at the end of September and let consumers copy DVDs that could then be played on up to five computers per user. Seattle-based RealNetworks has said the software does not remove or alter the "content scrambling system," or CSS, encryption that is included on commercial DVDs. It filed a suit against the studios at the same time they brought their joint suit against the company. RealNetworks is currently subject to a temporary prohibition on the distribution of the software, which a federal judge in San Francisco put in place in October. Glaser said Friday he expects an injunction hearing will be held in that city in March. Glaser also said that before it released RealDVD, RealNetworks "assessed there was some risk" of a lawsuit from Hollywood studios regarding the software, but "tried to avoid it." The studios that sued RealNetworks are Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures, News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, General Electric Co.'s Universal, The Walt Disney Co.'s Disney studio and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America Inc. could not immediately be reached for comment. |
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Disney Rep To Address Local Businesses at Luncheon for Red Stick Animation World Network - The Red Stick International Animation Festival will host a luncheon for the local business community on Friday, Jan. 16 to outline the economic development benefits the festival brings to Baton Rouge and tell them how their companies can become part of the event. The inaugural Red Stick Ink & Paint Club Luncheon will take place from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. in the Heidelberg Ballroom of the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center on Lafayette Street downtown. Emily Hoppe, an animation marketing and publicity professional with Walt Disney Feature Animation, will speak during the luncheon to detail the upcoming feature film, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, which is set in Louisiana, and to describe Disney's ongoing relationship with Red Stick. Stacey Simmons, Ph.D., Red Stick director, will discuss the growing international reputation of the Red Stick International Animation Festival, and ways Baton Rouge businesses can capitalize on its success. The fifth annual festival will take place April 22-25 in downtown Baton Rouge's Arts District. The Red Stick festival began in 2005 as an idea by LSU Professors Simmons and Stephen David Beck. It has grown into the largest event of its kind in the United States, bringing renowned animators and artists from leading studios to Baton Rouge each spring. Prominent state and community organizations sponsor the festival, including LSU, Baton Rouge Area Chamber, Baton Rouge Area Foundation, East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President's Office, Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism and Louisiana Economic Development. These groups combined to form the Baton Rouge Area Digital Industries Consortium in 2007, which seeks to recruit new animation, video game and digital media companies to the area to take advantage of the state's lucrative tax packages and local talent in starting a business. BRADIC was responsible for attracting the new Electronic Arts, Inc. North American video game testing and quality assurance facility to Baton Rouge last year. Tickets to the luncheon are $10 per person. To pre-pay and register in advance, call 225-389-7182, or e-mail amoody@cct.lsu.edu. Participants also can register and pay on-site Friday, Jan. 16 from 10:30-11 a.m. For more information on the Red Stick International Animation Festival, visit www.redstickfestival.org. |
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Friday January 9, 2009 |
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Winnie-the-Pooh to return in authorized sequel Disney acknowledges plans to build theme park in China with Shanghai government Disney's Penguin spreads its wings globally Disneyland Resort Offers Incredible Value for Southern California Residents Downtown Disney eateries offering wine discount A Digital Ad Blitz for Cable's Disney XD Fear raises its head at Disneyland Disney’s Anne Sweeney: ‘Can’t Just Build It And Hope Viewers Come’ CES-Disney backs new Intel chip, hints on "Lost" finale Disney gets right to Obama events A 'Sweet' streak for 116 Disney Marathon runners Walt Disney and Touchstone Pictures announce 2009 theatrical slate Updated 2009 “Walt Disney World Notescast” for iPod Released Dabur signs character licensing agreement with Disney |
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Winnie-the-Pooh to return in authorized sequel AP - The world's favorite "silly old bear" is back. Publishers in Britain and the United States said Friday they will publish a new book of Winnie-the-Pooh adventures on Oct. 5. "Return to the Hundred Acre Wood" is the first authorized sequel to A. A. Milne's Pooh stories, which were first published in the 1920s. It will be published in Britain by Egmont Publishing and in the U.S. by Penguin imprint Dutton Children's Books, they said in statements. The new book is written by novelist and playwright David Benedictus, who has adapted several Pooh stories for audio CD, and illustrated by British artist Mark Burgess. The beloved "bear of very little brain" first appeared in 1926 in Milne's "Winnie-the-Pooh," which featured E.H. Shepard's now-iconic line drawings. The book and its 1928 sequel, "The House at Pooh Corner," recount the gentle adventures of Christopher Robin -- the sole human character, named after Milne's own son -- and his animal friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. "The House at Pooh Corner" ends with Christopher Robin heading off to boarding school, separated from Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and the rest of his woodland companions. The publishers would not disclose details of the sequel's plot, but Benedictus said he hoped his book would "both complement and maintain Milne's idea that whatever happens, a little boy and his bear will always be playing." Michael Brown, who speaks for the books' guardian the Trustees of the Pooh Properties, said the Milne and Shepard estates had long wanted to authorize a sequel. He said Benedictus and Burgess had "captured the spirit and quality of those original books." "We hope the many millions of Pooh enthusiasts and readers around the world will embrace and cherish these new stories as if they had just emerged from the pen of A. A. Milne himself," Brown said. For an unassuming stuffed bear, Pooh has proved a highly lucrative character, with a tangled legal history. Milne's books have been translated into more than 50 languages, including Latin. In 1930 Milne sold North American merchandising rights to Stephen Slesinger, who in turn granted his rights to Stephen Slesinger Inc. The company sublicensed certain rights to Walt Disney Productions, which created its own animated version of the character and has generated billions of dollars in revenue from the sale of Pooh products. Slesinger, Disney and Milne's granddaughter have fought long-running legal battles in the U.S. over the rights. |
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Disney acknowledges plans to build theme park in China with
Shanghai government AP - The Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it was going to submit a plan to build a new theme park in China in a joint venture with the Shanghai government.
The family
entertainment giant released a statement
confirming its plans at about the same
time as The Wall Street Journal released
a story on its Web site that said Disney
was working with Shanghai to build a
$3.59 billion park to open as early as
2014.
A Disney spokesman declined to comment on the Journal story. "Discussions have been ongoing about the feasibility of a theme park project in China," said Leslie Goodman, a spokeswoman for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, in the statement. "As part of this lengthy process, we worked on a joint application report with the Shanghai government which will be submitted to the central government for review. No deal has been signed, no project has been approved." Disney shares were down 35 cents, or 1.5 percent, at $22.55 in Friday afternoon trade. The Journal said Disney planned to take a 43 percent stake in Shanghai Disneyland, while a holding company owned by the local government would own 57 percent, citing unnamed sources. The first phase of the project, on about 1.5 square kilometers near Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, would include a theme park, plus a hotel and shopping development and would be built over six years, the paper said. |
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Disney's
Penguin spreads its wings globally Reuters - Every kid in Brazil will have an igloo to live in if the Walt Disney Co. has its way. The Mouse House isn't trying to bring a new Ice Age to the biggest country in South America; the igloo is a digital fixture of Club Penguin, a virtual world for which Disney paid $350 million 18 months ago, a deal that could cost another $350 million if the property hits performance targets. Its first non-English-language version, operating out of Sao Paulo, launched in November. It's just one of the signs Disney is in expansion mode on the franchise, aimed squarely at kids 6-14 and once restricted to the U.S, U.K. and Australia. The Brazilian edition will be followed by virtual worlds for other Latin American countries and France. Disney's first Penguin merchandise and videogame extensions rolled out in October. With the Penguin brand just starting to feel the power of Disney's infrastructure, now is the time for Disney to make good on its investment. But that will mean competing for kiddie mindshare all over the globe and putting the same weight behind the brand that Disney usually devotes to homegrown properties. Does that mean a Pixar movie devoted to the site is coming? Maybe a Disney World ride? Disney isn't saying, but in November, Disney CFO Tom Staggs acknowledged that the company was happy with the acquisition: "Club Penguin actually is doing quite well for us," he said on an earnings call. Launched in late 2005 by three Canadian entrepreneurs under the banner New Horizon Interactive, Penguin allows kids to create and customize their own penguin avatars and then enter a snow-covered virtual world where they can chat, play mini-games or just explore. It wasn't just kids who found Penguin appealing-parents who control online access in most households also liked the site's efforts to provide a safe environment for children. Within two years of launch, Penguin claimed more than 12 million registered users, of which about 900,000 were premium subscribers typically paying $5.95-$6.95 per month for access to additional features and virtual collectibles. "The premium service option has been wildly effective in driving revenue," noted Joey Seiler, editor of Virtual World News. "From what I can tell Club Penguin has been profitable almost since its inception." Lane Merrifield, one of the co-founders of Penguin who joined Disney following the acquisition, suggested one of the reasons they opted to link up with the Mouse House was to drive expansion of the Penguin brand, including internationally. "We're in a unique position where a lot of international growth has already happened, completely unintentionally," he said. "More than 30% of the Club Penguin audience is outside of North America -- we have kids who are playing English-only game, buying memberships in US dollars from around the world." Over the past year, Disney has been busy taking some of its most popular licenses, such as "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Cars" and Tinkerbell and creating virtual worlds around them. But with Penguin, that strategy has been somewhat reversed, giving the property the chance to leverage Disney's retail muscle. The recent launch of a toy line includes plush versions of popular characters, a set of figurines as well as an Igloo Playset. The brand was also extended into the lucrative game field with the introduction of "Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force" for the Nintendo DS. "Internet toys are the hottest trend in the toy industry," said Chris Heatherly, vice president of technology and innovation, Disney Consumer Products. "Kids want to play with their toys online as well as in the real world," Of course merchandising is not new in virtual worlds and has already proven to be far more than a branding play. Toronto-based Ganz is estimated to be earning more than $100 million annually from collectible plush toys and accessories kids buy that allow them to unlock virtual goods online at Webkinz World. Teemu Huuhtanen, president-North America for the teen-centric global virtual world Habbo Hotel, pointed out that virtual worlds essentially have a choice: either go with an advertising-based model or figure out some way for consumes to foot the bill. But with more than 150 virtual worlds for the 18-and-under set already up and running globally according to a recent study by Virtual Worlds Management, companies are getting increasingly sophisticated in figuring out ways to make it all pay. Penguin won't likely alter the formula of subscriptions and merchandise even as it expands into new markets. Portuguese may not be the most obvious choice for a first non-English site, but Seiler noted that with markets such as North America and Korea already crowded, South America is quickly emerging as the next big growth opportunity. "We're seeing a lot of global brands getting into markets like Brazil," he added. "There's not a lot of activity for virtual worlds yet, but it's a hugely connected country with a plenty of interest in online social communities." "South America is one of major growth markets right now, Huuhtanen added. "With the current financial situation, I don't think there will be that many companies capable of building global virtual world brands." But Seiler adds that if anyone can do it, it's likely a U.S. entertainment giant, noting, "Companies like Disney, or a Viacom through MTV and/or Nickelodeon, are able to push internationally because the have well-known brands that can be rolled up into their virtual worlds." Merrifield, who earlier this year was named executive VP of Disney Interactive Media Group, also noted the inclusion of multiple languages within Penguin will have benefits in the domestic market as well. "As language learning is such an important thing right now, we have parents that say, 'If you launch in Spanish, I would love to tell my child that they can play for a half hour in English but then have to play for a half-hour in Spanish," he said. Merrifield is keenly aware that eventually most of the current Penguin audience will eventually age out of the virtual world at some point, but suggested other many in that audience could graduate into other Disney branded worlds. "When we first set out we very obviously built Club Penguin for the youngest users," he said. "But we already have Pirates in that next older stage and we have others in development that we haven't announced yet." Merrifield suggested that many of these in-house virtual worlds will end up reinforcing the Disney philosophy of creating content that appeals primarily to kids, but also has something entertaining for parents as well. "We have is a lot of parents and grandparents who play with their kids in our virtual worlds," he said. "One of the things that I challenge our studios to do is make sure there are elements for parents and grandparents, much like what Pixar's done in 3D animation with its scripts." |
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Disneyland Resort Offers Incredible Value for Southern
California Residents Disney News - Southern California families looking for value and the best way to spend their limited entertainment dollars will find an unbeatable offer at the Disneyland Resort in the new year. With the "Southern California 2fer Ticket," guests will experience the magic of new attractions and high quality entertainment at Disneyland or Disney's California Adventure on one day, and then come back on another day to play in the other park - for free. The "Southern California 2fer Ticket" can be purchased now at Disneyland.com, The Disney Stores, Vons, Albertsons, Ralphs, Stater Bros, Toys R Us, Dearden's, Casa Ley, Korea Daily, Irvine Spectrum and other locations. The 2fer ticket, on sale through June 3, 2009, enables Southern Californians to enjoy all the fun, entertainment, shows and attractions that the two parks showcase. Guests who like the thrills of both California Screamin' and Space Mountain will enjoy the attractions on two different days when they purchase the "2fer ticket" and will experience all the fun that the Disneyland Resort theme parks have to offer for less than $35 per day. The two parks feature a mix of classic attractions and new immersive experiences that will entertain guests of all ages. At Disney's California Adventure, popular attractions and entertainment include Soarin' Over California, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Disney's Aladdin - A Musical Spectacular, a Broadway-style production. Now, guests will have more fun than ever with exciting experiences such as Toy Story Mania!, Blue Sky Cellar, Pixar Play Parade and an all-new show, High School Musical 3: Senior Year - Right Here! Right Now! At Disneyland, guests will enjoy classic attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain along with magical experiences such as Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough, the all-new Pixie Hollow, and - starting in February - "it's a small world." 2fer Ticket Details: 2fer tickets are valid for Southern California residents within ZIP Codes 90000-93599 and Northern Baja California residents within ZIP Codes 21000-22999. Proof of residency is required for admission. Admission is valid for one Park each day, but not for both Parks on the same day. Tickets are valid 30 days from first use. First use must occur between 1/6/09-6/3/09. Each day of use constitutes one full day of use. Guests may purchase up to 8 tickets per person per day with valid ID. Tickets may not be sold or transferred for commercial use. The offer may not be combined with other discounts or promotions. The offer is not valid before 1/6/09 and is subject to restrictions and change without notice. $35 message is based on the purchase price of an adult 2fer Ticket. Check for entertainment show times. Disneyland Resort features two fantastic theme parks - Disneyland (the original Disney theme park) and Disney's California Adventure park - plus the Downtown Disney District comprised of unique dining, entertainment and shopping experiences. The Resort's three guest-welcoming hotels are the luxurious 745-room Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, the magical 988-room Disneyland Hotel and the "day-at-the-beach" fun of the 489-room Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel. For information on new attractions, "What Will You Celebrate?" and vacations at Disneyland Resort visit www.disneyland.com, call (866) 60-DISNEY or contact local travel agents. |
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Downtown Disney eateries offering wine discount OCRegister - If you and your dining partners like to drink the same kind of wine, this deal might work well for you: Several Downtown Disney eateries are offering a 25 percent discount on bottles of wine. The discount is available at any restaurant owned by Los Angeles-based Patina Restaurant Group. The offer is good now until Feb. 28. Patina operates the following Orange County restaurants: Catal and Uva Bar, Naples Ristorante and Tortilla Jo’s in the Downtown Disney shopping center in Anaheim. (In case you are wondering, Tortilla Jo’s does sell bottle by the wine.) Patina also operates Leatherby’s Café Rouge and Pinot Provence, both in Costa Mesa near South Coast Plaza. Remember, the discount is good for wine bottles, not glasses. |
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A Digital Ad
Blitz for Cable's Disney XD BusinessWeek - Remember the good old days when companies launched a new cable channel or TV show with flashy billboards alongside the interstate? Well, the new place for promoting TV channels, it seems, is the digital highway. At least that's the way Walt Disney (DIS) seems to be marketing its latest offering, Disney XD, a new cable channel that will launch on Feb. 13. Disney XD, which replaces Disney's cartoon-centric Toon Disney basic cable channel, intends to build interest by seeding shows on such diverse digital outlets as iTunes, the Xbox360 game player, and cell phones, as well as on various Disney-owned outlets such as its Disney Channel. The channel is aimed primarily at guys, aged 6 to 14, and at its launch is expected to be seen in as many as 72 million of the country's more than 105 million TV households. Along with the new cable channel, Disney will launch Disney XD.com, a site that will feature games, including one in which you can create your own 3D avatar. Daredevils and Teen Crime FightersDisney plans to make heavy use of iTunes, the Apple (AAPL) download site that has often been a Disney partner in showing movies and TV shows. (Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs sits on the Disney board and owns a 7.3% stake in the company.) Two weeks before the channel launches, Disney will start rolling out preview episodes of three of its episodes free of charge on the Apple service—a live-action adventure series, Aaron Stone, about a teen crime fighter; an animated comedy series, Kid Knivel, about a daredevil; and an alien comedy series called Kid vs. Kat. A week after its Jan. 20 debut on iTunes, Aaron Stone will also be available free of charge on Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox 360. Disney intends to bring in other partners when it officially launches the channel. When the Aaron Stone show premieres on Disney XD, it will be simulcast on the flagship Disney Channel and on the wireless networks Sprint TV and MobiTV. Aaron Stone will also be available as a video-on-demand offering through Comcast and Verizon's FIOS service. Down the road, Disney expects to add some high-profile content, including animated shows featuring Spider-Man and Iron Man from Marvel (MVL) and Batman and Superman from Time Warner's (TWX) DC Comics unit. |
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Fear raises its
head at Disneyland
The Register-Guard - A friend of mine once experienced the ultimate Disneyland fear: getting stuck for an hour on the Small World ride. The theme song repeated itself so many times that the guy was permanently traumatized regarding international relations. But Sunday I experienced Disney fear of a different kind — through the eyes of my 3 1/2-year-old grandson on his first visit. Fear, I realized, is relative. As an adult, I know the piranhas on the Jungle Cruise are fake, but Cade doesn't. I know the train on Thunder Mountain isn't going to fly off the rail and into Tomorrowland, but Cade doesn't. Though he's just above the "must-be-this-tall" line, he turns down the Matterhorn, having heard there's a monster inside the mountain. (Smart kid.) OK, so his cow-loving Grandmoo and I take him to the Finding Nemo Submarine ride; how scary can that be? The hatch closes. Cade's mouth opens. "I don't like this," he says, gripping my finger like a handscrew clamp. "I want out of here." He survives the 15-minute trip, despite the simulation of the sub being swallowed by a whale and, apparently, being shot out the blowhole. We head for Pirates of the Caribbean. This is not the kind of "scary" that John Candy confesses to in "Home Alone" — accidentally leaving his little boy in a funeral parlor. Still, a pirate's life apparently isn't for Cade. Time, I'm thinking, for something more innocent. We ferry to Tom Sawyer's Island. I see an interactive setup where you can raise an underwater treasure chest by winding up a rope. "Go ahead, Cade," I say. "Lift the treasure." He starts twisting the handle and, indeed, up comes the chest. Cade's eyes light up with wonder — now, we're talking! — until, that is, he sees the skeleton hanging from the bottom of the chest. "Uh, let's go check out the tree fort," I say. Ryan, Cade's father, talks him into going on Thunder Mountain. "It's just a train ride," he says. Thunder Mountain is "just a train ride" in the same way that King Kong is just a gorilla, but fathers trump grandfathers. Cade walks off the ride with the look of a man who's been snookered. On to the innocence of the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters ride, in which you sit in "star cruisers" and zap colorful aliens with hand-held laser guns. Paired with Ryan, Cade offers light resistance that grows heavier as he sees the star cruisers we're about to board. In Ryan's arms, Cade starts squirming like a just-caught trout — "No, no, no!" — but ultimately gets on board. Then it happens: midway through the ride, it suddenly stops. I assume this is scripted. But, no, the lights come on. A whoop-whoop-whoop alarm pierces the air; a voice on the loudspeaker implores us to "evacuate … evacuate!" An attendant ushers us toward the exits with a brusqueness that suggests something beyond mechanical failure. Frankly, I'm scared; this is worse than the nauseating feel of the teacups. Fire? Bomb threat? Interestingly, Cade seems fairly calm. Later, I surmise why: his "God-please-get-me-off-this-ride" prayer was apparently answered. That night, as we're returning on the hotel shuttle, he is in that state of Disney bliss — half asleep, clutching an Indiana Jones map and a glow-in-the-dark Mickey Mouse getup that, at $13.99, I said no to but his weak-willed father caved into and bought. "Cade," I say. "What was your favorite ride of the day?" "Buzz Lightyear," he says. We all laughed. It was like an Amity resident recalling his favorite summer as that one when the sharks attacked. "So, do you want to do that ride tomorrow?" "No thanks," he says without hesitation. "I've had enough." |
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Disney’s Anne Sweeney: ‘Can’t Just Build It And Hope Viewers
Come’ paidcontent - The ABC.com episode player has delivered more than a half-billion episodes and a billion ads while ABC and Disney (NYSE: DIS) have sold “tens of millions” of episodes through iTunes, Anne Sweeney, co-chair, Disney Media Networks, and president, Disney-ABC Television Group, said during an Industry Insider session at CES this afternoon. The numbers came along with an early Valentine to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) (with iTunes’ Eddy Cue sitting in the audience), as Sweeney talked about the value of a simple user experience after showing screenshots of the way she uses her own iPhone: “We can’t just build it and hope viewers will come. ... One of the reasons so many of us have iPhones and iPods is because Apple gets this fundamental fact. The user interface is intuitive.” The two companies have close ties: Steve Jobs is on the Disney board and Disney was the launch tenant in the iTunes video store. Sweeney referred back to that decision: “We upset a lot of people but it was a new way to give consumers what they wanted.” Lots more after the jump... When I went back to check the iTunes video launch date, it was almost a shock to realize we’re more than two years into the portable video download era. Sweeney came at it a little differently: “It’s hard to believe that just three years ago we were still debating the possibility –and wisdom – of putting TV content on other platforms.” What she didn’t mention is that the debate continues in a variety of ways, including the Time Warner Cable-Viacom fee dispute “settled” in the wee hours of the new year without really addressing TWC’s contention that online video devalues the programming delivered via cable. Sweeney’s simple message—we’ll provide good content, you make it easy to find, watch and navigate—was aimed at CEA members, not financial analysts or the consumer press. Revenue was mentioned in only the vaguest terms: “What we haven’t seen yet is how much content we will consume, and how much revenue we can generate from it. But all indications are that the more ways consumers have to watch content, the more their appetite for it grows. How fast and how much it grows is up to us.” —International efforts: Sweeney said they closed more than 50 new media deals abroad last year. One international example is a Disney Channel partnership with Starhub in Singapore—a linear channel, a VOD service and a mobile loop service. |
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CES-Disney backs new Intel chip, hints on "Lost" finale
Reuters - Walt Disney Co on Thursday threw its weight behind a new Intel chip that lets TV viewers interact with their favorite programs, underscoring a continuing effort to merge computers and media. Anne Sweeney, President of Disney-ABC Television, said viewers may be able to access complementary content during the series finale of the hit ABC-network series "Lost" next year through the chip, designed to power Internet-based applications on household TVs. The new chip from Intel could offer content providers like Disney and electronics manufacturers new ways to collaborate on programming, Sweeney said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The chip, which Intel launched last year specifically targeted at the consumer electronics industry, is designed to be included in TV sets and contains software that lets networks, content creators and other developers add their own applications. It has the "potential to make TV viewing more functional and more fun," Sweeney said. ABC's "Good Morning America" and Lost -- both popular shows with millions of viewers -- were good candidates for this type of add-on programming, she added. Sweeney said they could work on widgets -- small software applications -- that allow GMA viewers to cast votes or comment in real-time on stories being broadcast. ABC could even build widgets that take viewers through the step-by-step instructions for recipes shown on GMA's cooking segment. And ABC may also develop an application specifically for the series finale of "Lost", next year. The show follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a tropical island and will kick off a new season later this month. "We know fans of Lost have a huge appetite for insight and information into the show," Sweeney said. "Using the Intel Widget for the series finale could be a great way to give our fans an extraordinary viewing experience for the end of a truly iconic show." U.S. households are rapidly accessing content through channels other than traditional broadcasting. About 30 percent of U.S. homes have a digital video recorder and 39 percent have video-on-demand, Sweeney cited latest research as saying. About 38 percent of wireless subscribers have a video-capable cell phone, and U.S. viewers watch as many as 7.5 billion online video streams in any given month. |
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Disney gets right to Obama events Variety - ABC and the Disney Channel have landed exclusive rights to televise two of Barack Obama's inaugural events, including the new president's first appearance at one of an array of inaugural balls on the night of Jan. 20. ABC will broadcast "The Neighborhood Ball: An Inauguration Celebration," a first-ever event expected to include Obama and his wife Michelle's first dance of the night, along with performances from musicians and other personalities. Obama also is expected to deliver his first speech of the evening at the event, to be held at the Washington Convention Center. The ball was announced earlier this week by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, with plans to feature Webcasting and text messaging to link with neighborhood celebrations around the country. The night before, on Jan. 19, the Disney Channel will show "Kids' Inaugural: We Are the Future," an inaugural concert where Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President-elect Joseph Biden, along with their families, are scheduled. The event will be simulcast on Radio Disney and streamed afterward on Disney.com. Earlier this week, Obama's Presidential Inaugural Committee announced a deal with HBO for the exclusive rights to televise a star-studded inaugural kickoff event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 18. HBO will make the event available for free for all cable subscribers. The exclusive arrangements mirror deals made by Bill Clinton's team for his inauguration in 1993. That year, HBO showed an event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and the Disney Channel televised two live events at the Kennedy Center for children and youth, with Fred Rogers and Barney the Dinosaur among the acts. No terms were disclosed for the exclusive arrangements. |
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'Sweet' streak for 116 Disney Marathon runners MiamiHerald - Hollywood resident Bill Wagner, 72, now uses European-style hand crutches in the Walt Disney World Marathon to maintain his participation streak. 'Several years back I made an off-the-cuff remark, `I hope to run every Disney until the 20th,' '' Wagner said. ``The first year of the Disney Marathon I was 56. I think that was wishful thinking that I would be running that long!'' But like other devotees, he is set to run in the 16th annual Disney Marathon in Orlando on Sunday. Of more than 22,000 participants registered for the marathon, Wagner is one of 116 marathoners who are part of the ''Sweet 16.'' The group is for competitors competing in their 16th consecutive Disney Marathon. Some competitors, such as Coral Springs resident Anita Allen, are pulling double duty. Allen, 54, is doing the Goofy Race, running in the half-marathon Saturday and then the marathon Sunday. Allen, who is in the ''Sweet 16,'' said this would be the third straight year of competing in both, and conceded it's nerve-racking. She said she does not push herself too hard in the half-marathon, fearing possible injury. `A BIG DEAL' ''I have to do the marathon,'' said Allen, who has run 126 marathons. ``It's a big deal to me. That's what keeps me coming back -- you don't want to blow the streak.'' Allen became hooked as Disney began recognizing perfect participation. Participants have received congratulatory plaques and wear special T-shirts designating they are part of the select group that has run every Disney Marathon. ''I don't have any plans to stop ever,'' said Allen, who works for Broward County Water Supply Planning. ``I don't really think of trying to set a record, but I don't want to ever quit. I'll have to be crippled or deathly ill. Even if I have to walk through the whole thing, I'll do it.'' Wagner, Allen's friend, said even though he has a chronically bad left knee from water skiing, he never contemplated skipping the Disney Marathon. This is the third year in a row that Wagner will use hand crutches. He said it takes him at least six hours to finish the marathon, and instead of having sore feet, his hands hurt. Wagner said to use the crutches he lifts his body off the ground similarly to how one would walk holding a cane in both hands. ''I've tried to avoid being a streaker,'' said Wagner, who noted he has run 150 marathons. His most recent was last year's Disney. ``I want to keep it alive because it's a self-commitment.'' Wagner said he expects to reach his goal of competing in a 20th consecutive Disney Marathon when he's 76. He works at Gold Coast Beverage Distributor, the largest beer wholesaler in Florida, and said he does not feel leg pain despite being on his feet much of the day. GOOD ATMOSPHERE Wagner and Allen said part of the marathon's appeal is the race course that begins and ends at Epcot, and winds through Disney's theme parks. About 45,000 participants have registered for events that include a 5K and kids races. Disney weekend concludes with Sunday's marathon, which begins at 5:50 a.m. Cutler Bay resident Al Kormesser said he has run 21 marathons, 15 of which have been at Disney. He said the race is his favorite, partly because of the atmosphere. ''I have done a couple other marathons and don't feel the same urge to finish,'' said Kormesser, 53, who is part of the ``Sweet 16.'' Last year, Kormesser said as he ran alongside his girlfriend he was especially eager to reach the finish line. That's where he proposed to her, and Kormesser was carrying the ring in his pocket throughout the marathon. She said yes and Sunday Kormesser and Kimberly will compete in the marathon for the first time as a married couple. Kormesser said when he started running the Disney Marathon he did not envision making it a tradition. Now? ''I don't see any reason to stop,'' said Kormesser, manager at X-treme Rock Climbing in Miami. ``It's something special, my claim to fame.'' Kormesser said he relates to other ''Sweet 16'' competitors, and believes few will decide not to sign up for years to come. ''I may be in the 50th one -- hopefully,'' Kormesser said. |
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Walt Disney and Touchstone Pictures announce 2009 theatrical
slate Monsters and Critics - Walt Disney and Touchstone Pictures 2009 releases range from the return of “Toy Story” to a re-telling of a classic Christmas story. Walt Disney and Touchstone Pictures have announced their 2009 theatrical slate – which includes the adventures of a “Shopaholic,” a 3-D concert film from the Jonas Brothers, the Hannah Montana Movie, and the Bruce Willis sci-fi adventure flick “Surrogates.” 2009 Walt Disney and Touchstone Pictures films include: CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC – Release Date: 02/13/09, Genre: Comedy, Rating: PG, Cast: Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, Joan Cusack, John Goodman, John Lithgow,Kristin Scott Thomas, Leslie Bibb, Fred Armisen, Julie Hagerty, Krysten Ritter, Robert Stanton, Christine Ebersole, Clea Lewis, Wendie Malick, Stephanie March, Director: P.J. Hogan, Screenplay by: Tracey Jackson and Tim Firth and Kayla Alpert, based on the books “Confessions of a Shopaholic” and “Shopaholic Takes Manhattan” by Sophie Kinsella. Synopsis: In the glamorous world of New York City, Rebecca Bloomwood (Fisher) is a fun-loving girl who is really good at shopping - a little too good, perhaps. She dreams of working for her favorite fashion magazine, but can’t quite get her foot in the door - until ironically, she snags a job as an advice columnist for a financial magazine published by the same company. As her dreams are finally coming true, she goes to ever more hilarious and extreme efforts to keep her past from ruining her future. JONAS BROTHERS: THE 3D CONCERT EXPERIENCE In Disney Digital 3-D™ - Release Date: 02/27/09, Genre: Rockumentary, Rating: G, Cast: Kevin Jonas, Joe Jonas, Nick Jonas, Demi Lovato, Taylor Swift, Director: Bruce Hendricks. Synopsis: The Jonas Brothers head to the big screen - in Disney Digital 3-D™ - in a high-energy Walt Disney Pictures rockumentary feature film event from director Bruce Hendricks (“Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert”). The film blends excerpts from the Brothers’ red-hot “Burning Up” concert tour, including guest performances from Demi Lovato and Taylor Swift, with exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, off-the-wall segments, a never-before-heard song ("Love Is On Its Way"), swarming fans and a lot of JB-style humor - giving fans never-before-seen insights into the lives of Kevin, Joe and Nick. RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN – Release Date: 03/13/09, Genre: Action/Adventure, Rating: TBD, Cast: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Carla Gugino, Ciaran Hinds, Alexander Ludwig, Tom Everett Scott, Christopher Marquette, Cheech Marin and Garry Marshall, Director: Andy Fickman, Written By: Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback and Andy Fickman, Based on Characters Created By: Alexander Key. Synopsis: For years, stories have circulated about a secret place in the middle of the Nevada desert, known for unexplained phenomena and strange sightings. It is called Witch Mountain, and when a Las Vegas cab driver (Johnson) finds two teens with supernatural powers in his cab, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of an adventure he can’t explain. When they discover that the only chance to save the world lies in unraveling the secrets of Witch Mountain, the race begins, as the government, mobsters and even extraterrestrials try to stop them. Race to Witch Mountain is a fun and thrilling adventure featuring incredible special effects. HANNAH MONTANA THE MOVIE – Release Date: 04/10/09, Genre: Family/Comedy, Rating: G, Cast: Miley Cyrus, Emily Osment, Margo Martindale, Jason Earles, Peter Gunn, Melora Hardin, Mitchel Musso, Lucas Till, Barry Bostwick, Moises Arias, Rascal Flatts, Taylor Swift, with Vanessa Williams and Billy Ray Cyrus, Director: Peter Chelsom, Written by: Dan Berendsen, Based on Characters Created By: Michael Poryes and Rich Correll & Barry O'Brien. Synopsis: Walt Disney Pictures takes the Disney Channel phenom to the big screen in a feature film extravaganza. Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) struggles to juggle school, friends and her secret pop-star persona; when Hannah Montana’s soaring popularity threatens to take over her life - she just might let it. So her father (Billy Ray Cyrus) takes the teen home to Crowley Corners, Tenn., for a dose of reality, kicking off an adventure filled with the kind of fun, laughter and romance even Hannah Montana couldn’t imagine. earth – Release Date: 04/22/09, Genre: True Life Adventure, Rating: G, Narrator: James Earl Jones, Directors: Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. Synopsis: The first film in the Disneynature series, earth, narrated by James Earl Jones, tells the remarkable story of three animal families and their amazing journeys across the planet we all call home. earth combines rare action, unimaginable scale and impossible locations by capturing the most intimate moments of our planet’s wildest and most elusive creatures. Directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, the acclaimed creative team behind the Emmy Award-winning “Planet Earth,” combine forces again to bring this epic adventure to the big screen, beginning Earth Day, April 22, 2009. UP In Disney Digital 3-D™ - Release Date: 05/29/09, Genre: Animation/Adventure, Rating: TBD, Voice Talent: Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, John Ratzenberger, Delroy Lindo, Jordan Nagai, Director: Pete Docter, Co-Director: Bob Peterson. Synopsis: From Disney•Pixar comes “Up,” a comedy adventure about 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America. But he discovers all too late that his biggest nightmare has stowed away on the trip: an overly optimistic 9-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell. From the Academy Award-nominated director Pete Docter (“Monsters, Inc.”), Disney•Pixar’s “Up” invites you on a hilarious journey into a lost world, with the least likely duo on Earth. “Up” will be presented in Disney Digital 3-D™ in select theaters. THE PROPOSAL – Release Date: 06/12/09, Genre: Comedy, Rating: TBD, Cast: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Malin Akerman, Craig T. Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, Denis O’Hare and Betty White, Director: Anne Fletcher, Written by: Peter Chiarelli. Synopsis: When high-powered book editor Margaret (Bullock) faces deportation to her native Canada, the quick-thinking exec declares that she’s actually engaged to her unsuspecting put-upon assistant Andrew (Reynolds), who she’s tormented for years. He agrees to participate in the charade, but with a few conditions of his own. The unlikely couple heads to Alaska to meet his quirky family and the always-in-control city girl finds herself in one comedic fish-out-of-water situation after another. With an impromptu wedding in the works and an immigration official on their tails, Margaret and Andrew reluctantly vow to stick to the plan despite the precarious consequences. G-FORCE In Disney Digital 3-D™ - Release Date: 07/24/09, Genre: Comedy/Adventure, Rating; TBD, Cast: Bill Nighy, Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, with the voices of Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Jon Favreau, Penelope Cruz, Steve Buscemi, Tracy Morgan, Director: Hoyt Yeatman, Screenplay by: The Wibberleys and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Tim Firth, based on a story by Hoyt Yeatman (credits not final). Synopsis: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer brings his first 3-D film to the big screen with G-FORCE, a comedy adventure about the latest evolution of a covert government program to train animals to work in espionage. Armed with the latest high-tech spy equipment, these highly trained guinea pigs discover that the fate of the world is in their paws. Tapped for the G-FORCE are guinea pigs Darwin (voice of Sam Rockwell), the squad leader determined to succeed at all costs; Blaster (voice of Tracy Morgan), an outrageous weapons expert with tons of attitude and a love for all things extreme; and Juarez (voice of Penelope Cruz), a sexy martial arts pro; plus the literal fly-on-the-wall reconnaissance expert, Mooch, and a starnosed mole, Speckles (voice of Nicolas Cage), the computer and information specialist. Directed by two-time Oscar-winning visual effects master Hoyt Yeatman - G-FORCE takes audiences on a high-octane thrill ride, proving once and for all that size really doesn't matter. WHEN IN ROME – Release Date: Summer 2009, Genre: Comedy, Rating: TBD, Cast: Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Will Arnett, Alexis Dziena, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, Kate Micucci, Bobby Moynihan, with Danny DeVito and Anjelica Huston, Director: Mark Steven Johnson, Written by: David Diamond & David Weissman. Synopsis: An ambitious young New Yorker (Bell), disillusioned with romance, takes a whirlwind trip to Rome where she defiantly plucks magic coins from a “foolish” fountain of love, inexplicably igniting the passion of an odd group of suitors: a sausage magnate (DeVito), a street magician (Heder), an adoring painter (Arnett) and a self-admiring model (Shepard). But when a charming reporter (Duhamel) pursues her with equal zest, how will she know if his love is the real thing? SURROGATES – Release Date: 09/25/09, Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller, Rating: TBD, Cast: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, James Francis Ginty, Boris Kodjoe and Ving Rhames, Director: Jonathan Mostow, Screenplay by: Michael Ferris & John Brancato, Based on the Graphic Novel by: Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. Synopsis: FBI agents (Willis and Mitchell) investigate the mysterious murder of a college student linked to the man who helped create a high-tech surrogate phenomenon that allows people to purchase unflawed robotic versions of themselves - fit, good looking remotely controlled machines that ultimately assume their life roles - enabling people to experience life vicariously from the comfort and safety of their own homes. The murder spawns a quest for answers: in a world of masks, who’s real and who can you trust? TOY STORY In Disney Digital 3-D™ - Release Date: 10/02/09, Genre: Animation-Comedy/Adventure, Rating; G, Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, John Morris, Erik von Detten, Laurie Metcalf, R. Lee Ermey, Director: John Lasseter, Original Story by: John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft, Screenplay by: Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen and Alan Sokolow. Synopsis: They’re toys, they talk - at least when people aren’t around - and they’re back…celebrating the return of the “Toy Story” franchise - in Disney Digital 3-D™ this time! TOY STORY, the film that started it all, takes moviegoers back to that fantastic fun-filled journey, viewed mostly through the eyes of two rival toys - Woody (voice of Hanks), the lanky, likable cowboy, and Buzz Lightyear (voice of Allen), the fearless space ranger. The comically-mismatched duo eventually learn to put aside their differences when circumstances separate them from their owner Andy and they find themselves on a hilarious adventure-filled mission where the only way they can survive is to form an uneasy alliance. Disney•Pixar’s TOY STORY kicks off a Disney Digital 3-D™ Toy Story celebration, which includes “Toy Story 2,” opening Feb. 12, 2010, and culminates in a brand new adventure starring Buzz and Woody: “Toy Story 3” - in theaters June 18, 2010. DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL In Disney Digital 3-D™ - Release Date: 11/06/09, Genre: Fantasy Adventure, Rating: TBD, Cast: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn, Cary Elwes, Fionnula Flanagan, Director: Robert Zemeckis, Screenplay by: Robert Zemeckis, Based on the Classic Novella by: Charles Dickens. Synopsis: DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL, a multi-sensory thrill ride re-envisioned by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, captures the fantastical essence of the classic Dickens tale in a groundbreaking 3-D motion picture event. Ebenezer Scrooge (Carrey) begins the Christmas holiday with his usual miserly contempt, barking at his faithful clerk (Oldman) and his cheery nephew (Firth). But when the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come take him on an eye-opening journey revealing truths Old Scrooge is reluctant to face, he must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it’s too late. OLD DOGS – Release Date: 11/25/09, Genre: Comedy, Rating: PG, Cast: John Travolta, Robin Williams, Kelly Preston, Seth Green, Ella Bleu Travolta, Lori Loughlin and Matt Dillon, Director: Walt Becker, Written by: David Diamond & David Weissman. Synopsis: Two best friends - one unlucky-in-love divorcee (Williams) and the other a fun-loving bachelor (Travolta) - have their lives turned upside down when they’re unexpectedly charged with the care of six-year-old twins while on the verge of the biggest business deal of their lives. The not-so-kidsavvy bachelors stumble in their efforts to take care of the twins (newcomers Ella Bleu Travolta and Conner Rayburn), leading to one debacle after another, and perhaps to a new-found understanding of what’s really important in life. THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG – Release Date: Christmas 2009, Genre: Animated Comedy Adventure/Musical, Rating: TBD, Voice Cast: Anika Noni Rose, John Goodman, Keith David, Jim Cummings, Jenifer Lewis, Directors: Ron Clements, John Musker. Synopsis: Walt Disney Animation Studios presents the musical THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, an animated comedy set in the great city of New Orleans. From the creators of “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin” comes a modern twist on a classic tale, featuring a beautiful girl named Tiana (Rose), a frog prince who desperately wants to be human again, and a fateful kiss that leads them both on a hilarious adventure through the mystical bayous of Louisiana. THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG marks the return to hand-drawn animation from the revered team of John Musker and Ron Clements, with music by Oscar-winning composer Randy Newman (“Monsters, Inc.,” “Cars,” “Toy Story”). |
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Updated 2009 “Walt Disney World Notescast” for iPod Released |
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Dabur signs character licensing agreement with Disney Disney characters Winnie the Pooh will feature on all honey packs. The company is a market leader with a 75% plus share in organized honey market. The bulk of honey consumption remains with the unorganized sector. Shares of the company gained Rs 0.45, or 0.52%, to end at Rs 87. The total volume of shares traded was 195,729 at the BSE (Wednesday). |
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Thursday January 8, 2009 |
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Investigation launched into Disneyland Paris drowning Oh, Boy! Disney Sets It Sights On 6-To-14 Year Olds Walt Disney: No Agreement On Shanghai Theme Park Disney's Space Mountain to close for renovations Aussie actress swept off her feet by "Apprentice" ‘Kim Possible’ spies search for clues in new Disney World game 3rd 'Narnia' Film to Set Sail Without Disney |
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Investigation launched into Disneyland Paris drowning
Telegraph - Thomas Cook has launched an investigation into the death of a five-year-old British boy at one of its Disneyland Paris properties. Colum Canning, from Londonderry, Northern Ireland, was found unconscious in the swimming pool of the Explorers Hotel on December 19 last year and died in hospital two days later. Canning, his twin brother, seven-year-old sister and parents David and Karen had arrived at the hotel just hours before to celebrate the festive season and the twin's birthday, on Boxing Day. The five-year-old, who suffered from autism, is believed to have wandered off and fallen into the swimming pool, which was unsupervised at the time. "The report will determine whether this incident could be prevented in the future," said a Thomas Cook spokesman. "Our deepest sympathies continue to be with the Canning family at this difficult time and we will continue to provide support to them." French police ruled that Canning's death was accidental and re-opened the swimming pool two days later, without a supervisor or lifeguard. The spokesman confirmed that the pool remains unmonitored, but said that while French law does not require a lifeguard to be on duty the situation may be addressed in the report, which is expected in the next few weeks. The 200-metre indoor heated swimming pool is the centerpiece of the three-star Explorers Hotel, situated in the north eastern Paris suburb of Magny-le-Hongre, around two miles from the main entrance of Disneyland Paris. Peter Cornall, head of leisure safety at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), a health and safety organization with charitable status, called on parents, hotels and holiday companies to co-operate in order to reduce the number of Britons drowning overseas. RoSPA's figures report that around 70 holidaymakers die each year from drowning. "Tourists need to be aware that many pools will not be supervised constantly, even if their is a lifeguard on duty," he said. "Hotels should spell out exactly which swimming pools are monitored and which are not and make this clear to parents. Far too many British children are drowning while abroad." Mr Cornall said that the majority of deaths occur on the first day of a holiday, when parents and children are tired and unaware of their surroundings. He suggested that parents should consider booking swimming lessons for their children before departure and spend time researching the resort or hotel they plan to visit. |
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Oh, Boy! Disney Sets It Sights On 6-To-14 Year Olds MediaPost Publications - Having captured the fancies of girls with the likes of Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers, Walt Disney is out to vanquish the market for boys whose longings have yet to turn to things other than action, adventure and sport -- namely, those aged 6 to 14, although some ladies I know would argue that the market is much broader than that. It is rebranding its animation channel, Toon Disney, as a boy-focused entertainment brand called Disney XD next month, Peter Sander reports. The offerings will consist of a new cable channel and a comprehensive Web site with games, music, videos and social networking. The TV show "Aaron Stone," which blends action, adventure and videogames, will be the centerpiece of the TV programming. Another new show, "Zeke & Luther," will be a comedy filmed about two boys trying to become world-famous skateboarders. "We looked at the landscape and feel that girls are being served -- if not super-served, and preschoolers are also well served, but boys really haven't been," says Rich Ross, president of Disney Channels Worldwide." |
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Walt
Disney: No Agreement On Shanghai Theme Park Dow Jones - Walt Disney Co. said Thursday it hasn't signed any agreement with the Shanghai government to build a theme park in the city, denying a Chinese media report. "There is no agreement and no deal has been reached," Disney spokeswoman Huang Chen told Dow Jones Newswires. She didn't give other details. Huang's comment was in response to an article in the state-run Shanghai Securities News on Thursday that cited unnamed sources as saying the entertainment and media giant and the Shanghai municipal government had reached an agreement to build a theme park. The paper said the park will likely start operations in 2013. |
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Disney's Space Mountain to close for renovations AP - Disney said Wednesday the ride in Orlando, Florida, will close April 19 so the 34-year-old attraction can be refurbished. Park officials expect the ride to reopen later in the year, but no date has been set. Workers will replace the track, but the track layout won't change. A new enclosure will be added to the ride's waiting area, along with a new ceiling inside its prominent, white dome. The renovations are the first substantial work on the ride since September 1999. |
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Aussie
actress swept off her feet by "Apprentice" Reuters
- Australian actress Teresa Palmer, currently in theaters with
"Bedtime Stories," will join Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel in
Disney's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."Taking its cues from the classic Mickey Mouse cartoon that was inspired by a Goethe poem, the live-action feature centers on an apprentice (Baruchel) who is left to tend to a magic workshop when his sorcerer master (Cage) leaves it in his hands. The apprentice gets a broomstick to do his chores for him, but things get out of control when the broom develops a mind of its own. Palmer is playing Baruchel's love interest. The film will be directed by Jon Turtletaub, who previously worked with Cage on the hit "National Treasure" movies. Palmer starred in "December Boys" opposite Daniel Radcliffe, and will appear in the upcoming comedy "Kids in America" opposite Topher Grace. |
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‘Kim Possible’ spies search for clues in new Disney World game Los Angeles Times - Walt Disney World visitors may soon spot deputized secret agents scouring Epcot for clues to help save the world from super-villains bent on destroying the planet. Debuting Jan. 28, the “Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure” at the Orlando, Florida, theme park blends an old-fashioned treasure hunt with high-tech spy gadgetry. The interactive game is based on the Disney animated TV show “Kim Possible,” about a high school cheerleader who fights crime in her spare time. Using a hand-held “Kimmunicator” device, Epcot visitors receive clues and trigger hidden surprises on a series of missions in seven World Showcase pavilions: Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Japan, France and the United Kingdom. Visitors sign up for “Kim Possible” missions at Innoventions or on the bridge connecting Future World to World Showcase. Kimmunicators can be picked up at kiosks in Norway, Italy and the International Gateway. The game, included in the cost of park admission, takes about 45 to 60 minutes to complete. |
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3rd
'Narnia' Film to Set Sail Without Disney Christian Post - Before heading into the Christmas holiday, Walt Disney Pictures announced that it will not be co-producing and co-financing the third installment of the “Chronicles of Narnia” movie series. Citing "budgetary considerations and other logistics," Disney pulled out of its partnership with Walden Media, leaving the rights-holder of the Narnia books to scout for a new partner to produce “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” which they had planned to release in May 2010. The latest move casts a cloud of doubt over the third Narnia film, which may cost around $200 million to produce. It has also drawn criticism from fans of the original book series, who blame Disney for the less-than-expected success of the second Narnia film, “Prince Caspian.” “Disney flatly refused to have any pre-screenings of Prince Caspian and would not pursue any special marketing of the film to churches and other Christian markets,” observed the C.S. Lewis Society of California. “In direct contrast, for the first film an extensive and highly effective marketing campaign directed by Motive Entertainment (the marketing experts from Passion of the Christ fame) produced an enormous response from Christian movie goers.” In 2005, the first Narnia film, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” raked in $745 million in ticket sales worldwide on a $180 million production budget. The second, however, pulled in only $419 million despite a larger $200 million budget. “Unlike the first ‘Narnia,’ which had a holiday release, the sequel came out in the spring, and it was up against superhero summer fare like ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Indiana Jones,’” observed media analyst James Hirsen in a commentary for Newsmax.com. “Disney tried to market it as an action flick, with limited success.” “Disney … presented Prince Caspian as a strictly secular and violent, fantasy/adventure/romance, and the result was all too predictable,” the C.S. Lewis Society added in its statement Monday. The organization also blamed “Prince Caspian” director Andrew Adamson, who they say “refused to embrace the full story and theme of the book,” thus leading to a “weak and mangled script.” Without Disney, some predict that Walden Media’s new partner will be Fox, which already markets and distributes Walden films using the Fox Walden banner. Regardless of what happens, however, Walden Media says they remain committed to C.S. Lewis’ remaining books. "We're disappointed that Disney has decided not to go forward," said David Weil, chief executive of Walden's parent company, Anschutz Film Group, according to the Los Angeles Times. "But we regard 'Dawn Treader' as an extremely valuable property and remain committed to the franchise." Walden said that it hoped to find a new financial partner and proceed with plans to shoot the film in the first quarter of 2009 with director Michael Apted. |
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Wednesday January 7, 2009 |
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Little
known actor lands lead in "Tron" sequel Academy lauds Ed Catmull Disney to rebrand cable channel with 'Aaron Stone' Brought Together by Disney Parks Hanes opens retail store at Disney World Grand Opening Date: Friday, January 9 Disney To Purchase EA This Year? McG To Direct Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo" Time running out on "Disney's Dreams Come True" parade Disney will include DVD with Blu-ray releases and confirms BD titles for 2009 Disney Unwraps XD on Friday the 13th Creative students have chance to win Disney passes How Would Walt Disney Market in 2009? |
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Little
known actor lands lead in "Tron" sequel Reuters
- Disney has picked a relative unknown to play the lead role in
"Tron," its $150 million sequel to the 1982 cult classic by the
same name.
Garrett Hedlund, who has until now acted in larger ensemble pieces such as "Friday Night Lights" and "Eragon," will play a man pulled into the world of a computer. He retraces the steps of a character from the original movie named Kevin Flynn. Disney cast a wide net to find the right actor. Such potential leads as Ryan Gosling and Chris Pine met on the project, while Michael Stahl-David ("Cloverfield') was among those who screen-tested. Hedlund has been considered one of those actors on the cusp within the industry. The 24-year-old Minnesota native made his debut in 2004's "Troy," and also appeared in such films as "Four Brothers" and "Georgia Rule." "Tron," which was previously known as "Tron 2" and "Tr2n," is expected to start shooting in the spring with Joseph Kosinski at the helm. Jeff Bridges will reprise the role of Flynn, who was a computer programmer but ended up as the CEO of a software corporation. Olivia Wilde and Beau Garrett have also been cast in the project. |
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Academy lauds
Ed Catmull Variety
- Disney-Pixar's Ed Catmull has
been tapped to receive the Gordon E. Sawyer Oscar for technical
contributions to the industry.
"Ed is one of the rare individuals who can bridge the space between science and art," Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences prexy Sid Ganis said in announcing the kudo. A computer scientist by training, Catmull is a co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios who now serves as prexy of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studio. "I had two heroes: Walt Disney and Albert Einstein," Catmull said. "I never thought I'd go down this path. It's been a great adventure." Acad has previously bestowed two Scientific and Engineering Awards, a Technical Achievement Award and an Academy Award of Merit on Catmull. He will receive his Oscar statuette at the Scientific and Technical Awards banquet to be held Feb. 7 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. |
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Disney to rebrand cable channel with 'Aaron Stone'
AP - Hannah
Montana, meet Aaron Stone.
With a series
that appears to
mimic the
success of teen
idol Miley Cyrus
except with a
boy lead, The
Walt Disney Co.
said Wednesday
it was launching
a new series
called "Aaron
Stone" to help
rebrand its
sagging "Toon
Disney" channel
on basic cable.
The series debuts with a preview episode on iTunes Thursday, and features regular kid Charlie Landers becoming the larger-than-life crime fighter Aaron Stone, much like Cyrus, a normal girl who leads the secret life of a pop star. Disney is hoping the series helps bring new audiences to its 24-hour basic cable channel, which it is rebranding as "Disney XD" on Friday at midnight with a renewed focus on boys aged 6 to 14. "Boys, like girls, place incredibly high standards on their entertainment choices," said Gary Marsh, president of entertainment for Disney Channels Worldwide, in a statement. "They demand complex, multifaceted characters that, while not perfect, are smart, selfless, determined and brave. Disney XD will deliver those kinds of characters and stories." |
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Brought Together by Disney Parks Disney Insider - Abraham Faust, Jr., says "Disney World is a magical place for families." No one knows better than Abraham -- a military communications expert, he spent a year and a half in Baghdad, setting up satellite communications systems for American bases there. He was helping soldiers stay in touch -- and missing his own, close-knit family terribly all the while. "It's a different world over there, and it gets kind of stressful sometimes," he says. "I want to call them every day!" Upon his return, the Fausts vowed to make the most of their time together, by gathering the family for the reunion of a lifetime at Walt Disney World Resort last July. Abraham invited his parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews to join him at the place where dreams come true -- a party of 10 in all. They gathered from as far away as Hawaii to check into Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge for four days of fun. The Faust family wore matching shirts and explored the Parks from top to bottom during their stay -- but Mary Faust, Abraham's mother, says that the highlight of the trip was simply the chance to bring everyone together. "We've always been a very close-knit family," she explains, and "to share this with our children who have never been here before is just an amazing experience." The family had one particularly special moment when Abraham Jr. was invited to participate in the daily flag-lowering ceremony at the Magic Kingdom Park, in honor of his military service. Abraham snapping a salute, in his Faust family reunion shirt, was truly a heart-stopping moment. The Fausts have returned to their busy lives. Abraham's sister Shellie Milford has now moved to Japan with her husband and two children, Kenny and Destinee, so future gatherings will be far between, but the memories from their grand reunion will last a lifetime. Building those kinds of memories is what a visit to the Disney Parks is all about. Whether it's welcoming home a serviceman and reuniting a family, like the Fausts, or celebrating true love with a romantic getaway -- honoring a graduate or making a birthday truly the best ever -- we all have wonderful events to celebrate in our lives. And that's why Disney Parks are asking "What will you celebrate?"- any of life's special moments can be magnified if you celebrate them at the Disney Theme Parks. The dream makers at Disney are devoting this year to making special occasions just a little more special for Guests from around the world. As the Faust family discovered, there is never a better time to celebrate than now -- and this year it's easier than ever at the Disney Theme Parks. |
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Hanes opens retail store at Disney World Grand Opening Date:
Friday, January 9 Los Angeles Business - Clothing maker Hanesbrand Inc. is opening a retail outlet in Disney World’s Downtown Disney that features a kiosk in the store that allows customers to design their own T-shirt.
The kiosk launched by
Hanesbrand (NYSE: HBI) at the allow customers to create
designs for both short- and long-sleeve shirts, allowing
them to choose from more than 100 Disney (NYSE: DIS)
animation and movie characters. The store, Disney
Design-A-Tee, prints the shirts after the designs are
completed.
Disney Design a Tee Presented by Hanes Only in the Downtown Disney Marketplace Event: Disney Design a Tee Presented by Hanes Grand Opening Grand Opening Date: Friday, January 9 Grand Opening Time: 11:30am The first 100 guests at the Grand Opening of Disney Design A Tee presented by Hanes will receive: A Complimentary Lanyard, Button, Mini Souvenir Tee, plus a $5.00* off coupon toward the purchase of your Design A Tee! Disney Design a Tee Presented by Hanes allows you to design your tee your way! Choose a short or long sleeved tee shirt in a variety of vibrant colors and create your personalized tee by choosing from over 300 pieces of Disney art and add up to four lines of text! Here you can have your name imprinted on specially designed commemorative t-shirts. Your tee shirt is printed while you wait and you can event watch them being made on the video screens in the store! So, whether you are celebrating your birthday, commemorating your recent nuptials or identifying your family members with our special “Family Reunion” tees, you’re sure to come away with a special memory that will last a lifetime. |
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Disney
To Purchase EA This Year? PSX Extreme - Big fish eat little fish. It's just the way of the world, even in business. Especially in business. In the video game industry, we're always waiting to see who our big fish will swallow next. Last year, EA chased Take-Two around in circles for quite a while, but ended up with an empty stomach (it may have been a bitter-tasting fish, anyway, considering Take-Two's current stock price). But that's only our world; what happens when the biggest fish in the sea start chasing EA? Jill Goldsmith, Wall Street reporter for Variety, has suggested that Disney may try to buy EA in 2009, saying- "Disney is seen as a buyer, with market speculation centering on videogame company Electronic Arts as a possible target." Variety's Ben Fritz echoes this same sentiment over at The Cutscene, and adds that with the market in the condition it's in, we may see more in the way of huge media conglomerates snapping up video game publishers. As Fritz says: "The videogame business has been having problems, with growth slowing of late, but it's still red hot compared to movies, TV, and music. And many videogame publishers, not just EA, have seen their stocks take major hits in the past six months, much more than the declines for big media shares. That means videogame publishers are more affordable for the conglomerates than they were a year ago. Which means we could just see a Disney-EA acquisition, or others like it, in 2009." Seems like a logical mode of thinking, right? Everyone has been hurt by the economy, but as many analysts predicted, video games have flourished within a home entertainment (people stay home in a bad economy) cocoon of sorts. Perhaps "flourish" isn't the right word, but they've been staying fairly steady, so it's no surprise if Disney wants to expand their global domination with a play for EA. Gamers didn't like the idea of EA taking over Take-Two...we wonder how they'll respond to this. |
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McG To Direct Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain
Nemo" AHN - Director McG has been tapped to helm a new family film by Disney, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo." The film will see Nemo, the Jules Verne novel character and not the famous animated fish, creating the Nautilus submarine. It has been reported that McG will be paid $8 million against the 7% of the film's gross. The studio hopes to start the production this year, as per Variety. Bill Marsilli will pen the script. Disney released the original "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" in 1954, that Kirk Douglas starred in. It became the second-highest grossing film that year and won three Academy Awards. |
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Time running out on "Disney's Dreams Come True" parade Theme Park Rangers - For those who love the catchy "Disney's Dreams Come True" parade, time is running out to catch it. The parade undergoes a revamp later this month. The last performance of the current parade will be Thursday, Jan. 22, I am told.
Some changes to the current
parade have already occurred: The "Mickey through the
years" float is out of commission. (Mickey is riding at the
very end of the parade on the castle float with the other
VIP characters.) And that castle float has a new banner,
proclaiming "Celebrate today!"
I've really enjoyed this parade, a revamp of the deadly dull snowglobe parade, so let's hope the new parade has a similar upbeat spirit. With a "celebrate" theme, how can it not? Click through for more tidbits on the new parade.
From what I've heard:
* The Mickey float will return to the parade but in a new form, as it is the lead float. The other floats will stay the same. * New music. * Show stops throughout the park, presumably with a Celebrate theme. * Some new characters... I have heard that Snow White's Prince will join her. * A big change for our furry friends, such as Stitch or Baloo. They won't have to walk on the street any more; they will be accommodated on floats. Get ready to celebrate. |
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Disney will include DVD with Blu-ray releases and confirms BD
titles for 2009 DVDTown - Disney will include a DVD version of the movie with many high profile Blu-ray releases. Titles confirmed to include a DVD version by Disney at CES include High School Musical 3: Senior Year (February), Pinocchio: 70th Anniversary Edition (March) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (October). They also said that they would continue their Blu-ray DigiFile series that include a digital version for your portable device. Titles for 2009 include High School Musical 3: Senior Year, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Monsters, Inc. and A Bug's Life. The company has also confirmed other Blu-ray releases in 2009 including Swing Vote, Miracle at St. Anna, Morning Light, Space Buddies, Pretty Woman, Microcosmos, Rounders: 10th Anniversary Edition, Lost: The Complete First and Second Seasons, Miracle, Sling Blade, The Greatest Game Ever Played, Pulp Fiction: Special Edition, Good Will Hunting: Special Edition and Sin City. |
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Disney Unwraps XD on Friday the 13th Multichannel News - The Walt Disney Co. will launch its rechristened Toon Disney as Disney XD on Friday, Feb. 13 at midnight. The transition will premiere with a transfer from The Disney Channel, the animated comedy Phineas and Ferb. The first day of programming will also include the debut of the original series Aaron Stone, a live-action series about a video game player who, using a game called Hero Rising, plays under an avatar until the game's billionaire creator asks the teen to become a real-life crime fighter. The first episode of Aaron Stone will also be available at DisneyXD.com and on demand through providers including Verizon FiOS and Comcast Corp., as well as mobile platforms. Previews of the series will be distributed via Xbox 360 and the iTunes store. In addition to Aaron Stone, the launch schedule includes two new animated series: Kid vs. Kat from Studio B Productions in Vancouver and Jimmy Two Shoes from Breakthrough Animation and Teletoon of Toronto. A previously announced animated series, Kid Knievel, won't debut until later in the year. Two short-form series will be RoboDz, a 3-D, CG animated and live-action series produced by Disney with Toei Animation of Japan; and Bruno the Great, an animated series produced by Studio Bozzetto & Co. SRL of Italy. The revised channel target young boys, since company executives said The Disney Channel, with hits like Hannah Montana, tends to skew toward young girls as its core viewership. The Disney XD channel will be seen in 72 U.S. homes. |
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Creative students have chance to win Disney passes Gainesville Sun - Florida's fourth and fifth graders who are talented artists and high school students who are skilled writers have a chance to take their family to Walt Disney World for a day, three days or a year. The passes are among the prizes offered in the state's 2009 Kids Weather Survival Week poster and essay contests.
Florida Emergency Management
officials coordinate the annual contest as part of the
state's annual awareness week in February. In a news release
about the contest, Craig Fugate, director of the Florida
Division of Emergency Management said he and his staff are
"Looking forward to seeing the new entries and want students
to get involved to show-off their skills and talent."
The poster contest is open to fourth and fifth graders in all 67 school districts. To be entered, posters must arrive at the Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross in Tallahassee by January 26, 2009. The best posters will be displayed inside the State Emergency Operations Center and at the Historic Capitol. Complete contest information is available at http://redcross.tallytown.com The essay contest open to high school students in all 67 school districts involves writing a 500-word essay. This year students are being asked to use the following scenario: "Imagine that a devastating natural disaster has occurred in your community. There is damage to your home and to the homes in your neighborhood and there may be injuries. Tell us your story of how having a plan in place beforehand helped you, your family, and your pets survive the disaster." Essays must be electronically submitted by January 20. Complete essay contest information can be found on the Just Read, Florida! website at: www.justreadflorida.com/hwaw/EssayContest.asp The top prizes this year include weather radios and Walt Disney World theme park passes for a family of four for one day up to an annual pass. More information on the entire 2009 Kids Weather Survival Week is at www.FloridaDisaster.org |
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How Would Walt Disney Market in 2009? BusinessWeek - Walt Disney, the man, was equal parts technological genius and ancient story teller. He drew upon stories that reverberated with our humanity and told them in sizzling new ways that shaped memorable experiences. Simultaneously he knew how to leverage every powerful method of engaging the consumer and he swarmed them with multiple modes of his message always reinforcing the central stories. For example, Snow White was a movie, a ride, a doll, a book, a dress, a television show, a cartoon, and a set of experiences which all were touchstones to the magic of it all. As companies try to get their voice "out" in the overcrowded, fragmented, 24x7, blog-filled, multi-dialog, Mad Money Cramer kind of world of 2009, executives need to think carefully about their core stories to customers, employees, and investors—and to use all relevant media to orchestrate the message across the global information network. In that spirit, I'd like to outline what I think are the core principles that we can all learn from Disney: 1. Know the story is king. Humans like to read about humans and whether you are selling CAT scanners, or auto insurance, every message must have a story that resonates with the human condition at its core. Almost all great stories have ancient roots. 2. Utilize the newest technology to tell that ancient story in a new way. For example, if your firm serves businesses but does not have a marketing message that can be consumed over a BlackBerry then you're behind; if you serve consumers and don't have applications in the Apple App Store, you're out of touch. 3. Coordinate the message across the media. When you leave Disneyland you stroll down a Main Street populated with dolls, and shirts, and hats, and media that all are linked to the wonderful experiences you just had. In today's fragmented world, executives must reinforce key messages by having multiple, consistent, coordinated touch points for the same idea. 4. Have the courage to innovate. Walt Disney initially funded both Disneyland and Disneyworld out of his own pocket, and then sold them back to the corporation because they did not want to take the first risks. Be braver. 5. Ride your uniqueness. Disney received enormous press coverage and accolades because he was doing new things. For example, if you have a direct sales force, what new stories have you given them so they can market themselves on Facebook or LinkedIn or over the BlackBerry? How have you helped them tell a great story about your firm and its services? If you do it, they will talk about it and the media will report on it. 6. Stay on message. With Disney, you only had to see the Castle to conjure up the entire set of thoughts and dreams. I am optimistic that this downturn will cause people to do more with less. We can draw wisdom from Walt Disney, who understood the multi-media, multi-channel, multi-experience world four score years (what are you thinking of now?) before the rest of us. As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot just by watching." |
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Tuesday January 6, 2009 |
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Disney
Resorts Rate Among World’s Best Hotels Become an 'American Idol' at Disney World Hong Kong Disneyland offers spectacular new beginnings year of the ox – Corporate Spring Dinner Package Environmental Tectonics in settlement with Disney Disney alums in benefit for Crohn's Disney Parks Celebrate U.S. Military With Free, Multi-day Admission to Theme Parks in 2009 Architect designed Disney resorts Can Bob Iger really turn Disney's stock around? Creative students have chance to win Disney passes Academy Award Nominated Actress Angela Bassett Joins Walt Disney World Moms Panel with her Disney Vacation Tips Eros' Raj Malik joins Walt Disney Studios India as sales head New 2009 'Walt Disney World Notescast' for iPod Classic and Nano Released Disney Cinemagic claims HD boost |
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Disney
Resorts Rate Among World’s Best Hotels Disney News - Travel + Leisure magazine, known as the authority for the discerning traveler, ranked four Disney resorts on its annual list of the 500 best hotels in the world.
Walt Disney World Resort earns distinction with three hotels on the list: Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge (scoring 83.10), Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa (79.95) and Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (79.31). Disneyland Resort’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa (80.60) also won recognition for its quality and sophistication.
Now in its seventh year, Travel + Leisure’s prestigious list is pulled together by an international team of reporters and editors that use reader reviews as a guide as they comb the globe to find the most magnificent hotels, resorts, inns and lodges. |
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USA Today - An attraction inspired by the American Idol TV show officially opens at Disney's Hollywood Studios Feb. 14. Walt Disney World guests can register to audition in front of a Disney casting director for a chance to take part in the theme park show. Contestants who make the cut must then audition for a Disney producer. Those selected by producers will perform in front of an onstage panel of judges and an audience of park guests who vote on each show's winners. Performing guests with the highest votes compete in an end-of-day grand finale show at the attraction. The winner of that competition gets a guaranteed reservation, with no waiting in long lines, for a future regional audition for the real American Idol TV show. Details — including age restrictions and other eligibility requirements — at disneyworld.com/idol. |
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Hong Kong Disneyland offers spectacular new beginnings year of
the ox – Corporate Spring Dinner Package
Hong Kong Disneyland - Spring dinners are a time for new beginnings and in celebration of the auspicious soon-to-arrive Year of the Ox, Hong Kong Disneyland will launch a Corporate Spring Dinner Package that will help clients create magical memories for Chinese New Year. Available from January 5 to March 31, 2009, the Resort's package will combine the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel's elegant setting with exquisite Chinese menus and Disney elements, to create an exclusive experience that cannot be found anywhere else. h "Withh the launch of our all-new Corporate Spring Dinner Package, coupled with our dedicated Convention Sales and Services team, Hong Kong Disneyland will be the best and spacious location for clients to host their end of year and annual spring dinners," said Peter Lowe, Vice President, Hotel, Sports and Recreation Operations of Hong Kong Disneyland. Adding to the excitement, the Resort will present its innovative, imaginative and creative Chinese New Year campaign – Mickey Celebrates the Year of the Ox from January 16 to February 8, 2009. All-new entertainment offerings and attractions will create unlimited opportunities for clients to enjoy the auspicious times1 and partake in the energy, unity and good luck found throughout the Resort. As an extra option unique to Hong Kong Disneyland, clients can arrange special Disney Character photo opportunities2 for their event. Decked out in traditional Chinese New Year finery, these colorful photo moments will allow guests to interact with famous Disney Characters and to take home some magical memories. The Corporate Spring Dinner Package will also include exclusive raffle items: six (6) Hong Kong Disneyland Park tickets, one night's stay at Disney's Hollywood Hotel and offers from the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel's Victorian Spa – worth over HK$6,000. Beginning from HK$4,8883 per table of 10 to 12 guests, clients can choose from three splendid Chinese menus that will suit any business or celebratory occasion. Additional items include free corkage for one bottle of wine per table; pre-dinner mahjong set up with Chinese tea; complimentary parking, two complimentary 49-seater coaches for a one-way transfer to or from downtown and the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel; and a complimentary red backdrop with lettering. The end of the year is fast approaching and Hong Kong Disneyland invites corporations to take advantage of this limited time offer, and share the magic of Disney with all their hard working employees. For more information about Hong Kong Disneyland's Corporate Spring Dinner Package, please call (852) 3510 6868 or e-mail mice.reservations@hongkongdisneyland.com |
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Environmental Tectonics in settlement with Disney Los Angeles Business - Environmental Tectonics Corp. and Walt Disney World Co. said Tuesday they have reached a confidential settlement in a legal dispute over the Mission: Space ride at Epcot in Orlando, Fla. The dispute began in late July 2003 when ETC (AMEX:ETC) sued the Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) and three Disney subsidiaries over Mission: Space, which was scheduled to open about two weeks later. In the suit, ETC sought:
Mission: Space uses centrifuge technology developed by ETC for air-crew training systems to give riders the experience of an astronaut on a mission to Mars. Two people have died after completing the ride — a 4-year-old boy in 2005 and a 49-year-old woman in 2006. In both cases, the deaths were attributed to pre-existing conditions. ETC is based in Southampton, Pa. In addition to entertainment rides, it develops air-crew and disaster-management training systems, sterilizers, environmental testing products and hyperbaric chambers. |
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Disney alums in benefit for Crohn's
Orlando Sentinel - Here's a chance to see some friendly favorites from Disney's defunct Adventurers Club and Comedy Warehouse -- and it's all for a good cause, the fight against Crohn's disease.
Several former AC and CW cast members will take part in "The
Number 2 Revue," a variety show to benefit the Crohn's and
Colitis Foundation of America. The event takes place Monday
(Jan. 12) in the Edith Bush Theatre at the Orlando Rep, 1001
E. Princeton Street, Orlando. (That's in Loch Haven Park,
north of downtown, off Mills.)
A reception starts at 7, with
the performance at 8.
Disney performers Billy Flanigan and Sheila Ward host;
among the entertainers scheduled to appear are: Karl
Anthony, Andrea Canney, John Cannon, John DeHaas, Anne
Hering, Laura Hodos, Julie Ohrberg, Kyle Mattingly, Krista
Miller, Marissa Montigney, Meghan Moroney, Layden Sadecky,
Justin Sargent, Stacy Schwartz, Amanda Wansa, Terry Ward,
Cory Warren and Jenn Warren.
There's a $20 suggested donation at the door, and organizers
ask that you pay in cash only, please.
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Disney Parks Celebrate U.S. Military With Free, Multi-day
Admission to Theme Parks in 2009
Disney News - As Disney Parks ask “What Will You Celebrate?” and invite guests to turn their personal milestones into magical family vacations in 2009, America’s military personnel will have one more reason to celebrate: Free multi-day admission to Disney’s U.S. theme parks. With the “Disney’s Armed Forces Salute” offer, active and retired U.S. military personnel, including active and retired members of the United States Coast Guard and activated members of the National Guard or Reservists, can enjoy complimentary, multi-day admission into Disney’s U.S. theme parks, great rates at select Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort hotels, and additional special ticket offers for family members and friends. “For so many of the men and women who serve in our U.S. military, time together with their families is cause enough for celebration,” said Jay Rasulo, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. “We are grateful for their service and hope ‘Disney’s Armed Forces Salute’ will allow our troops to create wonderful, magical memories with their family and friends.” At the Disneyland Resort in Southern California: Through June 12, 2009, each active or retired member of the U.S. military can receive one complimentary three-day “Disney’s Armed Forces Salute” Park Hopper ticket valid for admission to both Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure parks. During the offer period, active or retired U.S. military personnel also may make a one-time purchase of an adult or child three-day “Disney’s Armed Forces Salute Companion” Park Hopper ticket for up to five family members (including spouse) or friends for the price of an adult 1-Day Park Hopper ticket. Disneyland Resort hotels are also offering special room rates for active or retired military personnel. For example, at Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel, active or retired members of the military and their families may find hotel rooms starting at $119 per night during value season, with great savings during other times of the offer period. This offer is available through June 12, 2009, and the number of rooms available at these special rates is limited. For information regarding “Disney’s Armed Forces Salute” at the Disneyland Resort, or to make reservations, military personnel may call 714/956-6424. At Walt Disney World Resort in Florida: Through Dec. 23, 2009, each active or retired member of the U.S. military may obtain one complimentary 5-day “Disney’s Armed Forces Salute” ticket with Park Hopper and Water Park Fun & More options. This ticket is valid for five days of admission into the four Walt Disney World theme parks, plus a total of five visits to a choice of a Disney water park, DisneyQuest Indoor Interactive Theme Park or certain other attractions. During this offer period, active or retired U.S. military personnel may also make a one-time purchase of up to a maximum of five 5-Day “Disney’s Armed Forces Salute Companion” tickets (one theme park per day) for $99 per ticket, plus tax, for family members (including spouse) or friends. Although this ticket for family members and friends does not include either the Park Hopper or Water Park Fun & More options, this ticket can be upgraded to add either such option, or both, for an additional $25, plus tax, per option. All tickets and options are non-transferable and must be used by Dec. 23, 2009. Ask about the great rates that may be available at select Walt Disney World Resort hotels for active or retired U.S. military personnel during this offer period. For information on the “Disney’s Armed Forces Salute” offer at Walt Disney World Resort or the Disneyland Resort, or to make reservations, active and retired U.S. Military personnel may call the ITT office on their base. Information about “Disney’s Armed Forces Salute” offer at Walt Disney World Resort is also available at www.disneyworld.com/military. Through the years, The Walt Disney Company has demonstrated its support of United States’ servicemen and women through a variety of initiatives. Disney’s support for the U.S. Marines’ Toys for Tots program started 58 years ago – when Walt Disney became one of the original sponsors. Since 1995, Disney’s Operation Uplift program has sent over 90,000 postcards to troops worldwide, thanking them for their service. The company also supports U.S. service members and their families as a sponsor of the USO and its centers. Each year, Operation Disney Care packages, containing Disney DVDs, books, magazines and games, are sent to centers around the world to help entertain the servicemen/women and their families, Disney Minnie Grants are used to host family appreciation events, while Disney VoluntEARS donate many hours participating in local USO projects. Other Offer Details:
“What Will You
Celebrate?” |
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Architect
designed Disney resorts
Orlando Sentinel - Denver architect Peter H. Dominick Jr. always said a turning point in his illustrious career came in the early 1990s, when he presented his design for the Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World to Michael Eisner, then chairman of Disney. Dominick, 67, died Thursday, apparently from a heart attack, while cross-country skiing near Aspen. For decades, Dominick designed hotels, office buildings, homes and interiors throughout the country. For Disney, Dominick's firm also designed the Animal Kingdom Lodge in Central Florida and the Grand California Hotel in Anaheim, Calif. His initial presentation to Eisner made a deep impression.
"Michael Eisner leapt up from the conference
table to examine the drawing more closely, challenging his
creative team to accept our idea," Dominick wrote about the
meeting. |
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Can Bob
Iger really turn Disney's stock around? BloggingStocks - I was reading an article from Fortune yesterday about Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Bob Iger. When I got to the end of it, I had the biggest feeling of deja vu that I had ever experienced. Yes, I had heard it all before. You've heard it all before, too, I'm willing to bet. Here's the basic gist of the piece: Bob Iger knows what he's doing. He's a genius. He's a creative powerhouse, a business wunderkind, a man who has studied the Disney brand, knows it inside and out, and is capable of leveraging that brand over multiple platforms to create immense economic value for shareholders. You know the examples,: you've got your Jonas Brothers, your Miley Cyrus, your Zac Efron and the whole High School Musical gang migrating from Disney Channel to concert stages to DVD releases to the silver Iger was the prescient exec who realized that Pixar should be acquired (take that, Michael Eisner!). Only problem is, none of this seems to be working. I base this statement on the fact that Disney really hasn't broken out of a really long-term range. I honestly have to wonder if shareholders will ever see Disney at better than $50 per share in their lifetime. I can't be the only one wondering this. That's why I get a little annoyed when I read puff pieces like this one on Iger. Is he really that much of a visionary? And is he doing anything that original? Did he invent the concept of synergy? As far as I know, he did not. One of the main points of the article centered on the major franchises that Disney has going for it. Just once, I'd love to hear about Disney's plans to take one of its existing Disney Channel properties that has not hit franchise status and turn it into the next Hannah Montana phenomenon. To be fair, there may have been a few articles here and there on the subject, but none have studied it to my satisfaction, certainly.
I know Iger is facing a tough
time with the recession, but let's be honest: those who have
owned Disney stock for a very long time know firsthand how
tough the market has been on the shares over the years. They
go up, they go down, but they haven't broken long-term
resistance. When was the last time the stock saw $40 per
share? It's been a while. And while I feel that Disney may
be a decent trade here, I'm not so sure I have overwhelming
confidence in Iger as far as the long-term thesis goes.
Yes, I've heard it all before. Iger is the man with the golden synergistic touch. But until the stock finally gets past $40 per share (and stays past that level), I don't think I'll sing his praises. |
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Creative students have chance to win Disney passes
Gainesville Sun - Florida's fourth and fifth graders who are talented artists and high school students who are skilled writers have a chance to take their family to Walt Disney World for a day, three days or a year. The passes are among the prizes offered in the state's 2009 Kids Weather Survival Week poster and essay contests.
Florida Emergency
Management officials coordinate the annual contest as
part of the state's annual awareness week in February.
In a news release about the contest, Craig Fugate,
director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management
said he and his staff are "Looking forward to seeing the
new entries and want students to get involved to
show-off their skills and talent."
The poster contest is open to fourth and fifth graders in all 67 school districts. To be entered, posters must arrive at the Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross in Tallahassee by January 26, 2009. The best posters will be displayed inside the State Emergency Operations Center and at the Historic Capitol. Complete contest information is available at http://redcross.tallytown.com The essay contest open to high school students in all 67 school districts involves writing a 500-word essay. This year students are being asked to use the following scenario: "Imagine that a devastating natural disaster has occurred in your community. There is damage to your home and to the homes in your neighborhood and there may be injuries. Tell us your story of how having a plan in place beforehand helped you, your family, and your pets survive the disaster." Essays must be electronically submitted by January 20. Complete essay contest information can be found on the Just Read, Florida! website at: www.justreadflorida.com/hwaw/EssayContest.asp The top prizes this year include weather radios and Walt Disney World theme park passes for a family of four for one day up to an annual pass. |
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Academy Award Nominated Actress Angela Bassett Joins
Walt Disney World Moms Panel with her Disney Vacation
Tips
Disney News - Celebrating an exceptional opening year, Disney Parks has launched its second consecutive Walt Disney World Moms Panel, www.disneyworldmoms.com. Academy Award nominated actress Angela Bassett, star of television's "ER" and the movie "What's Love Got to Do with It" welcomes vacation planners to the two-year-old site and shares her own vacation planning tips. A mother of toddler-aged twins, Ms. Bassett joins 16 other travel savvy parents, The Walt Disney World Moms Panel, in giving free, tried and true advice for planning an unforgettable Walt Disney World Vacation. This interactive online forum consists of 15 moms and one dad, who have proven their Disney knowledge and ability to field vacation-planning questions from all park-goers. Truly an eclectic group of parents -- from the suburbs of New Hampshire and Louisiana to our neighbors abroad in Ottawa and England -- these panelists are equipped and eager to share insights to make trips to Disney magical for every family. Featuring a grandmother from Indiana who treasures celebrations at the parks to a New Jersey mom whose mastered Disney vacations with a special needs child, these Walt Disney World experts will ensure that no hidden Mickey is left undiscovered. "We are extremely excited for our 2009 panelists to share their unique secrets, suggestions and personal traditions with other families looking to enhance their Disney vacation experience," said Meg Crofton, president of Walt Disney World Resort. "Our 2008 panel answered close to 12,000 questions in its first 10 months, which further emphasizes how invaluable the Moms Panel has been for families planning a Walt Disney World vacation." Welcoming the moms into their new roles is former inaugural panelist, Kim LaPaglia from Annville, Pa., who will continue to lend her Disney smarts -- this time to families sailing aboard Disney Cruise Line. Get to Know the 2009 Walt Disney World Moms Panel The members of the Disney Parks 2009 online Walt Disney World Moms Panel are:
For more information and to "meet" the new panel members, visit www.disneyworldmoms.com. |
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Eros' Raj Malik joins Walt Disney Studios India as sales head Business of Cinema - Eros International AVP India theatrical distribution Raj Malik has joined Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio (India) as head of sales. Malik will be reporting to Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio (India) managing director Mahesh Samat and Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio Asia Pacific senior vice president sales and marketing Jeff Forman. Walt Disney India official spokesperson confirmed the development to Businessofcinema.com. Malik joined office on 5 January, 2009. It may be recalled that Disney recently inked a deal with UTV Motion Pictures, wherein UTV will handle the sales and distribution of all of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures' Hollywood releases in India. Prior to this deal, Sony Pictures Releasing of India used to handle the distribution of Disney movies. Malik will be overseeing the relationship between Disney and UTV. At the time of filing this story, Malik was not available for comment. |
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New 2009 'Walt Disney World Notescast' for iPod Classic and Nano
Released
TimeStream Software - TimeStream Software, the leading developer of Notescast titles for the iPod, announced today the release of its newly updated 2009 'Walt Disney World Notescast' for the iPod Classic, iPod 5th Generation and iPod nanos. The 2009 Walt Disney World Notescast may be downloaded from www.Notescast.com for only $1.99. Developed following Disney's 'Guidelines for Guidebook Media', the new 2009 Walt Disney World Notescast installs to the interactive iPod Notes feature found on nearly every iPod Classic, iPod 5th Generation and iPod nano and presents a comprehensive guide to all of Walt Disney World® Resort in nearly 200 interactive pages of copy in 19 different categories, complete with links to related photos-all on your iPod. 'We've added even more great content to this Notescast title and now being newly updated for 2009, it's like having all of Walt Disney World Resort right in the palm of your hand on your iPod.', said Mike Westby of TimeStream Software. 'iPod owners are finding it to be a complete vacation planning guide, as well as a valuable and fun tool while in the parks themselves.' Easily downloaded and installed to your iPod, the newly updated 2009 Walt Disney World Notescast includes nearly 200 pages of content covering Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney's Animal Kingdom and Disney's Hollywood Studios.-
The new 2009 Walt Disney World Notescast may be downloaded for only $1.99 at www.Notescast.com or www.TimeStream-Software.com |
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Disney Cinemagic
claims HD boost Broadband TV News - Disney says its premium movie channel Disney Cinemagic has enjoyed record ratings since the launch of an HD feed in the UK market on December 1. The start of December saw Disney Cinemagic double its audience share when compared to the year to date average. However, the growth in audiences may be equally attributed to a series of top name premieres screened on the channel in the pre-Christmas period. This includes Night At The Museum, Flushed Away and Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. The Disney-Pixar animation Ratatouille brought the channel its second highest ever audience. The rat-invested premiere attracted 261,000 individuals with a 1.3% share including 110,000 kids (aged 4 -1 5) Disney Cinemagic debuted in the UK in March 2006 and is a part of the Sky premium package. |
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Monday January 5, 2009 |
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Bob Iger rocks Disney |
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Bob Iger rocks
Disney Fortune - Bob Iger is inside the Royal Festival Hall in London on a September afternoon, geeking out with some young guys about two of his favorite things: tunes and technology. The CEO of Walt Disney Co. pulls out his iPhone and thumbs through his playlists, looking for a particular live U2 track from an Italian concert. Briefly the conversation is drowned out by the squeals of teen girls standing behind a nearby barricade of security guards and velvet ropes. "They're screaming for me," Iger says, glancing up. He's joking, well aware that they're really screaming for his companions: Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas, a.k.a. the Jonas Brothers. The collectible-lunchbox-cute trio, with a median age of 18, are pop heartthrobs who a few weeks earlier became the first musical act ever to occupy three spots in the Billboard top-ten album chart in a single week. They're in London to promote their Disney Channel TV movie "Camp Rock." And Iger is there - along with requisite Mickey and Minnie mascots working the red carpet outside. Not only do the Jonas Brothers sell bushels of CDs and downloads via Disney's Hollywood Records label; in the past year they have performed live before more than a million people, were fixtures on Radio Disney, released a book via Disney-owned Hyperion that has already sold 750,000 copies, and are preparing to star in a Disney feature film. On the Disney Channel, their own show is scheduled to debut in the spring. Action figures, T-shirts, throw pillows, and sheet sets are just the beginnings of the retail onslaught. The Jonas Brothers neatly fit Disney's tween machine: They are polite, reputedly abstinent boys, whose father is a musician and former pastor and whose mother is a former singer-actress. On the other hand, as their father, Kevin, 43, points out, "they are not characters" - his boys were not "imagineered" in any Disney product lab; they've been playing and writing their own music for years. (Rolling Stone called their latest release "as assured as any American rock album released in 2008.") Just two years ago the boys were signed to Sony's (SNY) Columbia label and playing mostly to friends. The breakout stardom and screaming girls and the private jet across the pond would not have been possible, their father says, without Disney. "This is the natural place for them to be," he says. The Jonases are emblematic of a creative and financial revival at the Magic Kingdom that has taken place over the roughly three years since Iger became CEO. Against long odds, Disney (DIS, Fortune 500) is back at the head of a frazzled and uncertain bunch, the fraternity of media conglomerates. In revitalizing the company, Iger has built a compelling case that integrated, cross-platform leviathans like his still make sense in the Digital Age. Who knew?
Seismic shift
A lot of what's new comes from two big and related strategic changes Iger has made at Disney, and the way he has managed the business. One was his subtle but seismic decision to refocus the company and most of its more than 150,000 employees around its roster of "franchises," like the Jonas Brothers - Iger defines a franchise as "something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time." The second change was unsubtle: Just days into Iger's new job, Disney acquired Pixar Films, bringing Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) Steve Jobs onto the company's board in the process. In recent weeks these moves have contributed to a string of hits at the box office, including "High School Musical," "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," and the animated "Bolt." The Disney Channel, which has emerged as a centerpiece of the company's strategy, is expected to finish 2008 as the second-most-watched cable channel in primetime. For the third straight year it was first or second and the leader among small kids and tweens. Meanwhile, Disney has been touting Pixar's - sorry, Disney Pixar's - "Wall-E" as a Best Picture contender for the Academy Awards. Should "Wall-E" prevail, it would be the first time Hollywood's top honor went to an animated film, not to mention to a picture released under the Disney name. In home video, the company released "Tinkerbell" in October, the first of five DVD films that are part of its new "Fairies" franchise, which, following the success of its "Princesses," has elaborate publishing, online, and consumer products offshoots. (Check out Disney Clickables Fairy Charms, a new line of bracelet toys. When one wearer's charm is held up to another's, both people become fairy friends in Pixie Hollow, a virtual world for the more than 7.5 million fans who had created their own fairy avatars before Tinkerbell or Clickables even hit the streets.) There is more to Disney, of course, than Disney. It counts ABC and part-ownership of cable channels Lifetime and A&E among its assets. Sports juggernaut ESPN - 80% owned by Disney - is estimated by Doug Mitchelson of Deutsche Bank to have generated around one-third of the company's $8.4 billion in 2008 operating income. But what Iger has done, as Andy Mooney, head of Disney's consumer products business, puts it, is "widen the aperture" of one of the world's most valuable brands. A decade ago the Mickey Mouse and Winnie-the-Pooh franchises accounted for 80% of the company's consumer products business; today it's closer to 50%. You can still buy a $1 Disney T-shirt at Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), but a Mickey Mouse T-shirt from Dolce & Gabbana sells for $1,400. There's even a posh Four Seasons hotel under construction at Disney World. And when it comes to overseas growth - the perennial holy grail for U.S. media firms - Iger has put creative executives on the ground in Russia, China, India, and elsewhere with the aim of producing, for the first time, original, local-language movies under the Disney name. So far it's working. Over the past three years Disney, which ranked 67th on the Fortune 500 last year, cruised to the head of the media pack in terms of both its stock performance and its return on invested capital. Even after losing 30% of its value in the past six months amid the financial blowout, Disney has held up better than the S&P 500 and rivals like Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500) and News Corp (NWS, Fortune 500). Under Iger, who turns 58 in February, Disney has become the world's largest media conglomerate by market value, worth around $40 billion. There is so much of what Iger calls the "Disney difference" in the company's stock price that some wonder if its premium is sustainable. Analyst Michael Nathanson at Sanford Bernstein noted that by late December, Disney's trading multiple, based on forecast 2009 earnings, had "ballooned" to 9% above the S&P's and more than 70% above those of its media-conglomerate peers, "the widest margin in recent history." He thinks either Disney needs to start trading down or the rest need to start trading up. And even at these levels, Disney stock is now slightly below where it was when Iger took over (he has two million options likely to expire worthless in February). As he put it to his European management team in a strategy meeting hours before joining the Jonas Brothers: "Unfortunately, all this success creates the ever-greater demand for more success." Between the impact of the economic crisis on tourism and the digital upheaval in the media business, the headwinds now are no less intimidating than those young Walt Disney faced when his first Mickey Mouse cartoon, "Steamboat Willie," debuted in 1928. Even so, Iger says, "We felt like we were the last to feel the pain, and we think we could be the first to heal."
Under the radar
It 's hard to overstate what a surprise Iger's early impact as Disney's CEO has been. A hard-working and likable hand who had been in the media business for more than three decades, Iger had no big claim to fame when he took the top job, having dwelled largely in the shadow of his boss, Michael Eisner. Eisner's run as Disney CEO is an oft-told tale: In the 1980s and early '90s he was credited with reviving an American icon, and in the mid-'90s he smartly acquired Capital Cities/ABC, tacking ESPN and a broadcast TV network onto the company's film and theme park businesses. But his later years saw a feud with board members, management chaos, and an unwanted takeover bid from Comcast. Eisner ran hot and cold on his top people, so it was unclear to anyone - even to Iger - what the succession plan would be. But when Eisner resigned, he did recommend Iger and the board eventually agreed - news that was received coolly by some investors. "There were many naysayers," recalls one. "People would call him 'mini-Eisner,' his yes man." Iger says the criticism didn't get to him. "I don't know that I was necessarily on a mission to prove people wrong," he says. "But I wanted very much to exceed expectations." Iger grew up middle-class in a housing development on Long Island, N.Y., where his father, a jazz trumpeter, worked in advertising and publishing, and his mother tended to Bob and a younger sister. He remembers watching the "Mickey Mouse Club" and wearing his coonskin cap from Disney's "Davy Crockett"show. "A couple of years ago I downloaded the Davy Crockett theme song onto my iPod and thought, 'Wow, have I come a long way,' " he says. Graduating from Ithaca College, he aspired to be a news anchor and worked briefly as a weatherman, but in 1974 he joined ABC as a low-level production supervisor. He earned his stripes working under ABC Sports legend Roone Arledge and rose quickly through the company's ranks. As its entertainment chief, he greenlighted the longest-running program on ABC to this day - "America's Funniest Home Videos." In 1994, Iger's career took a turn that might shed light on his quiet readiness for his current job: He was named president of Cap Cities/ABC by its longtime leader, Thomas Murphy. Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway was the largest investor in the company, once called Murphy "the top manager in the U.S.," and Iger was his protégé. In naming him president, Murphy informed Iger that he planned to retire, and that Iger, then 44, would succeed him. "That would have been the plan," recalls Murphy. But before that could happen, Eisner made a $19 billion offer for the company that it could not resist. Iger says he was philosophical about the sale to Disney and is grateful for the decade he worked under Eisner, but he adds, "It's a lot more fun being CEO."
The invisible man
Unlike his predecessor, Iger doesn't host Disney TV shows. He pens no florid letters to shareholders. He uses an alias for his e-mail account - one that plays on his wife's name. "Personally I would prefer staying completely invisible or anonymous," he says, "but I don't think it would be good for the company." Iger made an early decision that most of his time as CEO would be spent "managing inside the walls" of the Magic Kingdom. He says hello to everyone on the Disney campus in Burbank and leads the Disney team that raises money by competing in the Malibu Triathalon. Iger is devoutly, if not obsessively, fit and disciplined, working out at his Brentwood home at 4:30 each morning, then taking a break to read the papers and download music before driving his BMW to the office, often making the first pot of coffee when he gets there. This fall he put himself on a diet, dropping more than 13 pounds from his already buff frame because he "didn't feel comfortable." He jokes that his wife, Willow Bay, a journalist who is a former model and TV anchor, "has a diet that mainly consists of arugula." He and Bay have two young sons, and Iger has two grown daughters - and a granddaughter - from a first marriage. At work Iger is fixated on quality and the ways that it can be measured and studied in everything from consumers' attitudes toward the Disney brand to waiting times for theme park rides. When Kevin Jonas had lunch with Iger one day last year in Disney's dining room, he was struck by how much Iger knew about the rotation his boys' songs were getting on the radio that morning. John Pepper, the retired Procter & Gamble CEO who is now Disney's chairman, says the company's approach to measuring data is very similar to P&G's, and that Iger's push to organize the company around franchises echoes the way consumer products giants like P&G manage their top-selling brands. "Disney," Pepper says, "is a zealot for data."
A bold move
Jeff Bewkes , CEO of Time Warner (which owns Fortune, among many other things), says Iger's easy manner and good nature should not be confused with a lack of ego or competitiveness, but rather signifies his lack of pretense. "Part of management is just getting everybody to see that we're not changing the rules every day," says Bewkes. "I deal with Bob a lot, and he's a very straightforward, easy-to-understand guy." When Iger articulated his big new strategy for Disney after taking over, it sounded pretty much like every other major media company's: Growth would come from an emphasis on creativity, technology, and international markets. But the first indication that Iger was going to shake things up came on his very first day as CEO, Oct. 1, 2005. Meeting with the board, he said his top priority was to fix Disney's slumping animation business. At the time, the company's deal to distribute releases from Pixar was coming to an end because of clashes between Jobs and Eisner. But in the six months since he had been designated incoming CEO, Iger had formulated another idea that he now shared with the board: Buy Pixar. (The initial reaction, he recalls, was "stunned silence.") Iger was given the go-ahead, and his first move had tongues wagging - not just because Disney paid an outsized $7 billion for Pixar, but because the deal made the brilliant but mercurial Steve Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder with a 7% stake. Iger had been working behind the scenes to mend the relationship with Jobs, and had also put in time with top Pixar executives Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, who initially balked. Iger noted that he too had been acquired, twice: when Cap Cities bought ABC in the mid-1980s and then when Disney bought ABC. Plus, Catmull and Lasseter would have a bigger canvas because Disney animation would now report to them. Jobs told Fortune that Iger won him over when he said that as soon as he found out he was going to be CEO, he spent a day at Disneyland going on every ride and watching every show - and observed that all the new ones were based on Pixar characters. Today, Jobs gives Iger and the board input on everything from store design and videogaming to China. "I consider Bob Iger a friend," says Jobs. "I don't have a lot of friends. I just really like him, and he's a really solid guy." (Try to put a dollar value on that.) Aside from Pixar, Iger quietly tried to put out whatever fires remained from Eisner's era. He settled shareholder litigation with dissident former directors Roy Disney and his advisor Stanley Gold and patched things up with Comcast. Internally, in a move treated like D-day, Iger dismantled a corporate strategic-planning department that had to clear most of the company's major decisions. "When he took that job, Disney was really messed up," recalls Jobs. "Bob looked at the guys running the divisions and said, 'You're in charge of your businesses now.' " Giving more authority to division heads was a page out of Iger's Cap Cities playbook. "People have plenty of room to make decisions, and they should feel amply empowered and trusted. But everybody has got accountability and responsibility," he says. The problems Iger sought to fix by buying Pixar were linked to another troubling issue. For years, Disney had struggled with "brand fatigue." Also, analysts warned of "age compression," meaning that Disney had become identified mainly with young children, and rivals, particularly Viacom's Nickelodeon, had attracted older kids by exhibiting more edge and attitude. Iger commissioned an analysis that showed that the most value the company had created over the years stemmed from films done under the Disney banner - everything from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" to "The Lion King." Then he and Disney Studios chief Dick Cook pored over the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest movies and found that while very few were Disney releases, a lot of them might have been, if the studio had thought more broadly about its brand. The decision to refocus on the Disney brand was cemented by the success of the first "Pirates of the Caribbean film," released just a few weeks after he was named CEO. The studio had asked producer Jerry Bruckheimer - known for high-octane romps like "Top Gun" and "Armageddon" - to make the film based on one of Disney's most popular theme park rides, and he had insisted it be the company's first PG-13 film. "I don't think Disney had ever done this before," Bruckheimer recalls. Another light bulb went off with the growing success and centrality of the Disney Channel. Iger and Anne Sweeney, the head of ABC and Disney's cable networks (apart from ESPN), had shrewdly migrated the channel in the U.S. from premium to basic cable, while launching localized versions around the world. The channel pursued the tween audience with shows like "Lizzie McGuire" while still dedicating time to shows for preschoolers, like "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse." One consequence of the renewed Disney focus is that the company slashed production of films under the Touchstone and Miramax studio names. And one risk is that Iger has limited growth by becoming over-reliant on family-oriented fare, however broadly defined. Though making non-Disney movies remains part of the plan, Iger says he'd rather do fewer of them. "I don't care if a Touchstone movie does $100 million on $30 million of cost," he says. "Its success doesn't breed any other success in the company." What does get Iger excited is the idea that global franchises can be drawn from any division of the company. "Hannah Montana" came from the Disney Channel, "Princesses" and "Fairies" out of Disney's publishing arm, the Jonas Brothers out of music, Pirates out of the theme parks, and so on. Also, 70% of most employees' bonuses are based on companywide performance. It's not a universally welcomed concept: Over a recent dinner, George Bodenheimer, who runs ESPN, asked Iger how best to sell the structure to executives who have little or nothing to do with, say, attendance at Disney World.
Franchises writ
large
Several years ago - with Eisner's blessing - Iger began convening monthly meetings with the company's top executives in which binders are handed out for particular brands, showing how they are doing across divisions and in different markets. Recent topics have included new animated shorts for Winnie-the-Pooh, and brand extensions of the Pixar films "Toy Story" and "Cars." "Cars" may be exhibit A of Disney's franchise machinery at work. Three years after the movie came out, sales of licensed merchandise are running at more than $2 billion annually. A "Cars" sequel is in production. Disney will soon launch an elaborate Cars virtual world. But the biggest bet on "Cars" is Cars Land, a 12-acre stretch of Disney's California Adventure theme park set to open in 2012. On a Monday afternoon not long after Iger's trip to London, he was at Disney's famed (and so hush-hush there's no sign outside) Imagineering offices in Glendale, Calif. He was joined by John Lasseter, who was enjoying the early buzz on "Bolt," the first decent Disney animated film in years, and one on which the Pixar folks had made major modifications. Lasseter and Iger were eyeballing wood and foam scale models of Cars Land. The biggest draw in the mini-park will be a ride featuring animatronic characters from the movie and "cars" that go 40 miles an hour but seem much faster in places, thanks to new projection technology. Lasseter crouched as he made his way through the 1/8 scale mockup, adding his own sound effects for each twist and turn. "Look at this! Have you seen this, Bob? Lean down and take a look. It's like the movie, except you're there." Upstairs, designers were doing what's called "pre-viz" work, wearing headgear that allowed them to explore a virtual 3-D rendering of the ride and stroll around (or fly above) Cars Land. In an industry with a miserably low success rate for mergers, Iger gets high marks for Pixar. And he notes that Cars Land would not have been possible on this scale - or with Lasseter and his colleagues' hands-on input - if not for the acquisition. Iger isn't done buying. He says he hopes to use Disney's position of relative strength and a reasonably clean balance sheet to make further acquisitions along the nontraditional lines of videogame publishers and Club Penguin, the kids' social network it purchased last year. (Electronic Arts (ERTS) and Discovery Communications (DISCA) are often mentioned as potential fits for Disney - not that Iger is telling.) One thing that's definitely not in the cards - sorry, conspiracy theorists - is some kind of Jobs master plan leading to an Apple-Disney merger. Asked what his long-term intentions are as the company's largest shareholder, Jobs says, "I think there are some companies that transcend just being businesses. Disney is one of those very special companies, and I think it's very special companies that prosper in the long run. I've never worried about my investment. I know that it's going to be just fine. Family is a renewable resource." Iger, meanwhile, perhaps best sums up his mission at Disney as he walks out of the Cars Land meeting and pauses to say hello to a woman who works in the building. "It's the happiest place on earth," Iger tells her as he turns to go. "Let's keep it that way." |
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New ESPN.com formally
launched Los Angeles Business - ESPN formally launched the redesigned ESPN.com on Monday after keeping the design in a beta test setting for a month.
The site was available for
testing to subscribers of the ESPN Insider and
released to the general public on
December 16 .
The new site provides a greater emphasis on video, including a player that offers clips in a 16x9 aspect ratio. ESPN is a division of The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS). |
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Disney dining bargain is all in the planning
Philadelphia Inquirer - There are a lot of decisions to make when planning a trip to Florida's Walt Disney World, and they don't end after you've selected a date, chosen a hotel, and booked your airfare.
Perhaps the biggest
challenge remains: Where to eat? Although that might
seem like a minor concern, with all the choices of
restaurants at the four main theme parks, the resort
hotels, and locales such as Downtown Disney, deciding
where to eat, and when, can take hours.
One of the hardest choices - and the subject of much debate on Disney Web sites - is whether to participate in the Disney Dining Plan. This prepaid option provides most of your food for each day at the parks and hotels, but it comes at a hefty price. The dining plan was introduced in 2005, and although it has changed - most significantly last year, when appetizers and tips were removed - it is popular among resort guests. That's why reservations are now required for most Disney World sit-down restaurants, which can fill up months in advance. Here's how the basic Disney Dining Plan works: It gives each person in your group one counter-service meal (where you walk up and order), one table-service meal (at a sit-down restaurant), and one snack for each night. The meals include an entree, a dessert and a nonalcoholic drink. Snacks include a variety of items usually priced at $4 or less. So why the controversy? At about $38 per adult per day, and $10 per child (ages 3 to 9), the cost can add up quickly (and it is scheduled to increase by a few dollars this year, with several different dining plans to choose from). What did we do? During our six-night stay, our family of five opted for the basic Disney Dining plan, which added about $635 to the cost of our trip. That gave us 30 snacks, 30 counter-service meals, and 12 adult and 18 children's table-service meals. Our verdict? Unless you are a very light eater, the plan is worth the money if for no other reason than most of your food is paid for in advance. The meal plan broke down to about $125 per person for the week. I don't see how you could spend less than that over the course of seven days at theme parks where a hot dog costs $5.79 and plenty of sit-down dinners cost $30 a plate before adding on drinks or dessert. However, there are disadvantages. Table-service meals require reservations, which Disney recommends you make six months in advance of your visit. Also, if you plan to spend days away from Disney, the dining plan is probably not for you. Could you eat for less? Yes, especially if you bring much of your own food and drinks, which Disney allows. |
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Even in
Narnia, profits beat prophets
guardian - Should the news that Disney has bailed out of the third big-screen Narnia adaptation dismay or delight fans of the original novels? Those who feel that a Hollywood treatment of a beloved book – especially with the Disney corporation calling the shots – inevitably dilutes the source material's charm and power will either not care or be secretly pleased that the company will now not be financing The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But Disney is merely the holder of the purse-strings. The real brains behind the adaptations is Walden Media, a company set up by Christian conservative Philip Anschutz predominantly to adapt classic children's books for the big screen. These movies, he says, need "to be entertaining, but also to be life-affirming and to carry a moral message". The Christian message of the Narnia books makes them perfect for Walden, which has also adapted Charlotte's Web, Bridge to Terabitha and Nim's Island. It's the Christian aspect that detractors of CS Lewis's work typically home in on. Indeed, Polly Toynbee wrote in the Guardian when the first movie was released in 2005 that "most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sick-bag handy for the most religious scenes." In a neoconservative Christian America, the Narnia movies were given a sound and positive reception. Perhaps in Barack Obama's America, the message hidden in the Narnia books won't be as commercially attractive. Could it be that the Disney executives have sensed the way the wind is blowing? More likely it comes down to a question of profits, or "budgetary considerations", the official reason Disney cited for the pull-out. Last year's Prince Caspian grossed $419m, far less than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe's impressive $745m. As someone who has (on a neighboring blog) bemoaned Hollywood hijacks of my favorite books I should feel glad that the project is in flux. However, I'm not. I enjoyed the movies of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and to a lesser extent Prince Caspian (it's darker and takes longer to get going … half an hour before we meet a talking mammal is just too long). More to the point, my children love the movies. They are too young to read the books but thanks to the films are aware of Lewis's work and have keenly voiced their intention to read it as soon as they can. As Toynbee predicted, I did wince at the Christian imagery. Then again, the books weren't written and the films weren't made for either her or me. They were created for children, and are thumping good adventure stories. If my children raise awkward questions about the subtext of the books later on, then I'll do my best to tackle them. If a book, and its cinema adaptation, entertains and provokes discussion, then to me it's doing its job. Besides, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader isn't cancelled. Walden Media has clout, and one strongly tipped suitor to fill the funding vacuum left by Disney is Fox Media, which already has a strong working relationship with Walden. What are the implications for the Narnia franchise if that happens? Certainly Fox's neocon credentials seem to dovetail quite nicely with Walden's professed Christian ethos. For those who criticized the "Disneyfication" of Narnia, it may even be enough to make them ponder the old adage about the devil you know. |
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A
Success Lesson from Walt Disney
PWO - The reporter expected a “warm and fuzzy” answer. He imagined that Disney would mention the joy of the creative process. He thought that the creator of Mickey Mouse would be proud of his enduring character. He thought this icon of family entertainment might smile and wax eloquent about the laughter of children. Instead, Disney replied without hesitation, “I built the whole thing myself.” While that answer is not what you might expect, it reveals how Disney overcame challenge after challenge after challenge. Although many of his movies took on “storybook” and “fairy tale” proportions, his rise to success was anything but “storybook” or “fairy tale.” Well, whose is? Success is never neat, elegant, or pretty. It only seems that way after the fact and then only to the naďve or ill-informed. It may have a happy ending. However, you can bet there online golf course many thrills, spills, and narrow escapes along the way. If you’re looking for the proverbial “walk in the park,” forget about being a success. Join a hiking club. Show me any successful person and I’ll show you someone with grit, backbone, and steely determination. And I’ll show you someone with a powerful driving force for success that does not always meet the eye. For Disney, I’m guessing that the drive to build something himself was the unseen and mostly-overlooked part of his character that kept him going. He suffered more than his share of setbacks. Without this driving force, we might never have heard of Walt or Mickey. So what’s your driving force of success? Here’s a simple technique that will help you discover and harness it. Imagine your life without the success experience you desire. Just for the sake of this exercise, let’s say you quit and resign yourself to just “get by.” If you’ve been at online golf course serious about success, you’ve had the thought once or twice anyway. We all have. However, let’s imagine life if you “gave in” and quit your quest for success. Now fast-forward to your deathbed. After a long life of mediocrity, what do you wish you would have done and what would it have meant to you? What might you have said if you had chosen another path and someone asked you “What’s the most satisfying part of your success?” What would you say if you hadn’t given up and let mediocrity instead of excellence rule your life? It’s not a cheery thought. However, it does offer a new and perhaps unique perspective on what drives you and makes success worth more than money. And it helps you verbalize this unique driving force without which you might well give up and make this exercise a sad reality. So find that driving force of success that propels you around, over, or even through obstacles. Like Walt Disney, it may not be obvious to anyone except you. However, it will make your success a virtual certainty even as you encounter the inevitable “thrills and spills” along the way. |
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Typical Florida winter weather makes for great Disney travel
Examiner - The winter weather in Central Florida has always been from one extreme to another. With temperatures last December reaching as high as 85 degrees and then diving as low a 35 degrees. Lucky for us, Mother Nature will be much nicer to us as we start of the New Year. I have checked out the forecast for the upcoming week and added some tips on which day will be best suited for your Walt Disney World Travel plans. Monday, Jan. 5 Monday's forecast calls for a few showers with a high of 83 degrees and a warmer low of 61 degrees. Since there is a 30 percent chance of rain, I would suggest to head to Disney's Hollywood Studios. Many of the attractions there are indoors, only a few are outside and if it does rain, you can make your way to those attractions after the rain clouds have passed. Hollywood Studios will be open Monday from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. with Extra Magic Hours from 7 until 10 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 6 The nice thing about Walt Disney World is that they have created an attraction that is open through most of the day, fun for everyone and great for those days when there is a high chance of thunderstorms. DisneyQuest is the best spot to visit, especially on a day like Tuesday is expected to be. The high on Tuesday is expected to reach 83 degrees with a low of 61 degrees and there is a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms. DisneyQuest is the perfect option, when thunderstorms roll in, because some attractions, including water parks, close for the duration of the storm. It is a five-story arcade, with activities for the whole family. Old-school Atari games, new virtual reality games and interactive games will keep everyone busy from opening (10:30 a.m.) until it closes (11 p.m.) Wednesday, Jan. 7 With another rainy day in the forecast, I would suggest hitting EPCOT on Wednesday. There is a 40 percent chance of rain and many of EPCOT's attractions are inside. Along with the rain, cooler weather is expected to begin on Wednesday with a high of 79 degrees and a low of 46 degrees. Make sure to bring a jacket if you plan to stay through the end of the day and see Illuminations. It is going to get chilly around the World ShowPlace Lagoon that night. EPCOT will be open on Wednesday from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. with Extra Magic Hours from 8 until 9 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 8 Today is going to be cooler, but finally sunny. With a high of only 71 degrees and a low of 48 degrees, it is the perfect day to see Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge. The animals tend to be more active when the weather is in the low 70s and they will be out in the sun to keep warm. Disney's Animal Kingdom's park hours for Thursday will be 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. with Extra Magic Hours from 5 until 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 9 Friday is the best day to visit Magic Kingdom since many of the attractions are outside it will be sunny and no rain is forecasted. The high is expected to still be only 71 degrees, with a low of 52 degrees. Also, the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend begins today and many will be participating in the Marathon events, so park attandance should not be as busy. But, expect traffic delays, since many of the roads this weekend at Disney will be closed and re-routed for the Marathon. Magic Kingdom's park hours for Friday are 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 10 The Marathon weekend continues with a 30 percent chance of rain in the forecast. The high will be around 75 degrees with a low dipping into the mid-40s. This is the best day to head for Downtown Disney and check out many of the shops. This way, should it rain, there is always a store nearby to duck into and stay dry. Downtown Disney's Marketplace will be open from 9 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. and Pleasure Island and WestSide will be open from 10:30 a.m. until midnight. |
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Segway tours at Disney's Fort Wilderness campground
 Examiner
- The Fort Wilderness campground offers a tranquil escape
from the hectic Disney theme parks. Now you can enjoy a
Segway tour of the quiet side of Disney World on the
Wilderness Back Trail adventure, one of several Segway
experiences offered at Walt Disney World.
Disney promises a "nature tour like no other," with participants whizzing along through the back trails of Fort Wilderness. The two-hour adventure starts off with a training session to make sure you can operate your Segaway safely. Then the group heads off, along with two guides, for a journey past swampland and along the lake, where you'll pause for a photo opportunity. You'll do a drive-by of the Wilderness Lodge and stop at the Tri-Circle-D ranch to meet the ponies and horses. Water is provided, as is a potty break. If you're lucky, you may even see deer or wildlife. Take the earliest tour for the luck with critter spotting. You don't have to be staying at Fort Wilderness in order to take the tour. If you're driving, you can park in the main Fort Wilderness lot and take a bus to the back of the campground (the tour meets near Pioneer Hall, where the Hoop-Dee-Doo Review takes place). If you're staying on property, you can take a boat from the Magic Kingdom. Some hotels may have direct boat or bus service, so ask at the concierge desk. If you're wondering how a Segway can navigate through the wilderness, this tour uses the X2 model, which has thick tires and is built to handle rugged terrain: Although most of the paths aren't too challenging, there are a few spots on the trails where participants can choose to do a bit of "off-roading." The guides have great personalities, and their trivia and tall tales will keep you entertained throughout the tour. At the end, you receive a pin commemorating your adventure. This tour is limited to guests age 16 and over, and participants cannot weigh over 250 pounds. The cost is $85 per person, and discounts may be available for annual pass holders so be sure to ask if you have an AP. You'll need to be able to stand for the length of the tour, and be warned that your legs might get tired from the shifts and jounces of riding a Segway! To book the tour, call 407-WDW-TOUR. Each tour accommodates a limited number of people, so it's best to book this one as early as possible. |
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Magic Kingdom guest 1st in nation to receive free Disney
admission in '09
 Orlando
Sentinel - Using an oversized park ticket created for the
occasion, Seattle, Wash., resident Andrew DaCosta (in hat)
entered Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom this morning as
the first person in the nation to receive free admission to
a Disney theme park on a birthday, as part of Disney's "What
Will You Celebrate?" campaign.DaCosta, who turns 49 today, redeemed his "free on your birthday" registration at a Magic Kingdom Guest Relations window at 7:31 a.m. Then he, his wife, Carolyn, and their daughters, Alana and Kathryn, then entered the Magic Kingdom when the park opened at 9 a.m. In addition to offering free admission to everyone who visits a Disney World or Disneyland theme park on a birthday in 2009, the company's "What Will You Celebrate?" promotion features new theme-park entertainment, added celebration experiences and other attractions and activities geared toward celebrations. The campaign aims to encourage people to take "celebration vacations" for annual milestones, such as birthdays, honeymoons and anniversaries, at both U.S. vacation resorts. |
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Cinderella Castle Royal Suite will stay open in 2009
Orlando Sentinel - Cinderella is keeping the light on. Walt Disney World confirmed Wednesday that the Cinderella Castle Royal Suite -- created in early 2007 for overnight stays by winners of Disney's two-year "Million Dreams" promotion -- will remain open for selected guests next year, though on a more limited basis. The suite is in a tower of Cinderella Castle, in the middle of the Magic Kingdom theme park. During the Million Dreams promotion, which ends Wednesday night, there has been a nearly daily sweepstakes prize for a family picked at random on Disney World property. The suite's creation captured the imagination of Disney fans worldwide, and its availability as a daily door prize for Disney World visitors created enormous buzz for Disney's marketing campaign. Set into space originally reserved as a possible apartment for company founder Walt Disney's family when the castle was first built, the 650-square-foot, three-room Royal Suite offers a mix of 17th-century French luxury, 21st-century convenience and 1950s-era motifs from Disney's Cinderella movie. Features include stained glass, a mosaic floor, original Cinderella movie concept art by renowned Disney artist Mary Blair, a display case containing a single glass slipper, and a whirlpool tub. A concierge is on standby outside. Almost from the start, the suite inspired widespread speculation about what Disney might do with it once the Million Dreams promotion ends. On Jan. 1, that campaign is to be replaced with the "What Will You Celebrate?" promotion that strives to get people to bring their personal celebrations to Disney World. The room will continue to be available for use as the prize for promotions, including some run by outside companies, Disney spokesman Rick Sylvain said Wednesday. For starters, the room is being offered as a prize in a sweepstakes called "Inside Your Celebration," organized by the Internet travel portal Orbitz. "This ties in nicely with our 'What Will You Celebrate?' " Sylvain said. "Other uses and opportunities for the suite are still to be determined. "We will continue to evaluate all options," he added. "It's all about 'right fit.' Not unlike a certain glass slipper." |
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Disney
Housekeeper attacked on the job
WFTV - Cadilia Juste, a housekeeper at Disney's Pop Century resort claims that she was badly beaten by a co-worker while cleaning a room at the hotel last week. The woman, recently released from 3 days in the hospital, is also claiming that Disney threatened to fire her if she didn't show up for work. Another Disney cast member - 26 year old Hasan Tashpulatov was arrested in connection with the attack, and has been suspended pending the outcome of the case. Juste claims that Taspulatov beat her, tried to choke her and climb on top of her - but she was able to fight him off and run for help. Disney told WFTV news in Orlando that there was a 'language barrier' in communicating with Juste (she spoke to reporters via an interpreter) and that they would do everything they could to help her through this ordeal. Follow the "Source" link below to view video of the story from WFTV news. |
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Now
that it's over, and receding every day, and steadily
becoming just another episode in art history, how can you
look back at the century and pretend to see it whole, and
then completely omit what Disney's drawing did to its
visuals? Come on, that can't be right.