Walt Disney Co. feels her pain. Since it bought Miss Piggy, Kermit and crew in 2004, executives have struggled to figure out how to put them to work. Efforts in 2005 to rejuvenate the furry creatures created by Jim Henson sputtered as the Muppets got lobbed between corporate divisions.

Now Disney is giving it another go. This time the Muppets are getting the Hannah Montana treatment, being blasted into every pop-culture nook and cranny that the company owns.

"We think there is a Muppet gene in everybody," said Lylle Breier, a Disney executive who is the new general manager of Muppets Studio.

Disney Channel is presenting new specials – the first ran last month, the second will be shown in October – in which Muppets interact with High School Musical stars and the Jonas Brothers.

A stream of comic videos is in production for Disney.com, where a new Muppet channel recently made its debut, and videos have been unleashed on YouTube. NBC will broadcast a Christmas special in December, and special skits will arrive on certain ABC DVD releases.

And then there is the merchandise: Muppet clothing at Urban Outfitters and Limited Too stores; a Muppet boutique at FAO Schwarz.

Disney does not want to create a flash in the pan, but creating any flash at all is the challenge. With the exception of a guest appearance here and there, the characters have largely been in cold storage for the last three years. Ms. Breier said recent focus groups indicated that some children could not even identify Kermit and Miss Piggy.

It has been a rough decade for the Muppets. After Mr. Henson's death from a rare bacterial infection, at 53, in 1990 his five children took control of the company. The last Muppets movie, Muppets From Space, sputtered at the box office in 1999.

The next year Mr. Henson's heirs sold the family business to the German media company EM.TV and Merchandising for about $680 million. But as the German conglomerate slumped under crushing debt and an insider-trading and fraud investigation, the Muppets stagnated. The Henson children later bought back the classic Muppets and the characters from the HBO series Fraggle Rock for $78 million (before selling the classic characters to Disney in 2004 for $75 million); the Sesame Street Muppets were sold to Children's Television Workshop.

But even Disney has struggled to rekindle the Muppet spark.

Gently attaching the Muppets to today's touchstone issues – healthy living, the environment – is one way Disney hopes to make them more relevant to the young and the trend conscious. Hence Miss Piggy's donning of workout gear and Kermit's recent appearance on ESPN (yet another Disney outpost) chatting with athletes about being environmentally friendly.

Well, it should be stated that Disney has not said that it will definitely do this. According to the article, Bergman just mentioned that it's possible that Disney could do this if it wanted to. My opinion? End outside financing. Hey, if I want to go and make a film, I'm going to have to use other people's money, I have no choice. But Disney? The company is big enough to not need any help in financing. The problem here is that human nature comes into play. When a studio division is doing poorly, then co-financing seems attractive. When a studio division is firing on all cylinders, then becoming risk-averse doesn't appear so fetching. Well, I think any media company producing films these days should really stop and try to understand the movie business for what it is. It's always going to be a risk. Doesn't matter if you have a huge star in a picture or not. It might fail either way. But when the windfall comes, when that big hit is found, you want to own 100% of the profits. This not only goes for Disney, but it applies to others such as Viacom (NYSE: VIA), General Electric's (NYSE: GE) Universal, and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX).

Yet the mostly charmed circle of stage life -- which started with Beauty and the Beast in 1994 and The Lion King in 1997 -- is about to expand.

Beyond the animated titles, the company is seeking more-varied sources for a new cycle of family-oriented musicals, according to Thomas Schumacher, president and producer of Disney Theatrical Productions.

Schumacher discussed the past and future of Disney while visiting Columbus to help oversee a backstage revamping of The Lion King.

The second tour in central Ohio continues through next Sunday in the Ohio Theatre.

"The sweet spot of the business is Disney musicals for the broadest-possible family audiences," Schumacher said.

Hitting that spot, he said, remains the goal.

As the culture shifts, however, Disney is changing to come up with material that connects with new generations and a new era.

Among the new musicals in development:

• Peter and the Starcatchers -- Author Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and director Roger Rees are adapting the Peter Pan prequel, billed as a play with music, from a 2004 novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson about the young orphan battling pirates in a high-seas adventure. The first workshop production will run Feb. 13 to March 8 at La Jolla Playhouse in California.

• The Man in the Ceiling -- Author-cartoonist Jules Feiffer (Little Murders) and composer-lyricist Andrew Lippa (The Wild Party) are adapting Feiffer's 1995 book about a boy cartoonist who dreams of becoming a successful artist. The show recently had its first reading.

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame -- Disney's first original foreign-language production, which ran from 1999 to 2002 in Berlin, is being revamped for its U.S. premiere. The 1996 animated film inspired by Victor Hugo's novel was rewritten for the stage and directed by James Lapine (Into the Woods). Songs by Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast) and Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) were added as well.

Following in the footsteps of Disney's first "original" musical, Elton John's pop adaptation of Verdi's Aida, Schumacher is seeking more books and live-action films as sources for new shows because not every animated film can or should be adapted for the stage, he said.

"Animated movies are a form of haiku. You create a series of visual images and thematic concepts and move through it very quickly in 74 minutes," he said.

Moreover, most fairy tales are too similar -- and skimpy -- in plot and character to justify a worthwhile two-act production, he said.

Even with director-designer Julie Taymor's imaginative puppetry and stagecraft for The Lion King, the 88-minute film was expanded into a live show running close to three hours only with a deepening of the characters and their stories, Schumacher said. He shepherded the animated film during his former tenure as president of Disney's animated-film division and later guided its Broadway incarnation.

"Who is Nala and why did she leave Pride Rock? In the movie, she just leaves," Schumacher said.

"The stage version shows that she left because of the drought, . . . and because Scar is making advances on her. Nala sings Shadowlands to explain that she can't stay anymore."

Using the next Disney musical slated to tour as an example, Schumacher said Mary Poppins works well onstage because its story -- a blend of the original novel and the 1964 film -- expands the dynamics of a family that was broken.

Other than The Lion King -- the 1998 Tony winner for best musical -- most Disney musicals have met with a mixed to negative critical response in New York.

From Ben Brantley's January review of The Little Mermaid in The New York Times: "Loved the shoes. Loathed the show. OK, I exaggerate. I didn't like the shoes all that much. But the wheel-heeled footwear known as merblades, which allow stage-bound dancers to simulate gliding underwater, provides the only remotely graceful elements in the musical blunderbuss."

Meanwhile, reflecting the Broadway community's still-wary response to Disney's "invasion" of its turf, the Tony awards have often overlooked Disney musicals or relegated them to lesser design nominations.

Even so, The Little Mermaid and other Disney shows have found an audience.

His words right before the photo was snapped: "This is the life!"

Our family's Disney Cruise vacation was nearly a year ago, but we still talk about it with eyes-glazed-over rapture. And we didn't even take the deluxe version, opting instead for the four-night Bahamas cruise we figured would be a test: Does our family like cruising?

Here's a glimpse of our cruise journal:

Day One

We board the Disney Wonder at 1 p.m. and the tone is immediately set. As we board, we're "announced" like royalty by the white-gloved crew: "We welcome the Hamilton family!" Then they applaud as we trudge past, wide-eyed. Is this for real?

At 4 p.m., we join the other goofily grinning passengers for the Sail Away Celebration, dancing on deck with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Chip and Dale as streamers fly, music blasts and we pull away and head out to sea.

Already, deckside servers are everywhere with tall, frosty smoothies -- get 'em with alcohol for mom and dad or without for the kids. And the tab begins ...

But 14-year-old Tate is in for a cool surprise when he discovers he can eat all the hot dogs, burgers, fries and pizza he wants -- "SWEET!" -- at the ship's numerous snack stands. For free! Mom and Dad already paid, kid, so eat up and get our money's worth. (And that was $2,300 for our family of four.)

We eat dinner at the Animator's Palate, one of several restaurants on board. We'll eat at a different place every night, but our servers, Tino and Colleen, will follow us, dishing up seafood in puff pastry, fillet wrapped in bacon and plenty of kid-friendly grub. The floor shifts slightly beneath us as we munch peanut butter pie. Oh, yeah -- we're ON A SHIP!

We head happily back to our state room and discover that Ron, our room host, left chocolates on our pillows and created a swan out of one of our bath towels.

Our huge port hole looks out on the tumbling waves, and we fall asleep to the hum of the ship's engine.

So far, so fun ...

Day Two

We wake up in Nassau, the Bahamas. We eat the breakfast buffet -- waffles shaped like Mickey Mouse! -- on the deck with the breeze in our hair.

We booked our shore excursion ahead of time -- Blackbeard's Cove stingray experience. This is not included in the cruise -- it's an extra $49 for adults, $39 for kids 3-9 -- but worth it. We take a pretty blue boat for a 25-minute ride over the remarkably turquoise sea to a small island. My husband, T.J., and oldest son, Tate, don snorkeling gear and hang out with about 30 stingray, stingers removed for safety. Tanner and I wade in the water and giggle as the flat brown creatures nudge and bump our calves. We marvel as we feed them handfuls of slimy squid.

Dinner later is at restaurant two -- Parrot Cay. Tino impresses Tanner with magic tricks and squirts ketchup on his plate in the shape of Mickey Mouse.

We catch the live show "Hercules the Muse-ical" in the opulent theater (the current show is "Toy Story") and head to bed, discovering Ron has left us a towel in the shape of a monkey, hanging from Tate's upper bunk.

Tate heads up to Aloft, a cool teen hangout where he plays "Guitar Hero," dances and enters a food-eating contest during which he has to catch marshmallows in his mouth. Great video camera fodder, but no grown-ups allowed.

Day Three

We wake up at Disney's private tropical island, Castaway Cay. Tate begins a blissful day here with a four-hour, teens-only excursion called The Wild Side (an extra $35), which includes biking, sea kayaking and snorkeling. Tanner spends an hour at Scuttle's Cove, a supervised activity area for kids. He digs for whale bones and finds a cool gold coin on a treasure hunt. T.J. and I settle into lounge chairs on the beach and think, "Imagine how fun this would be without the kids!" (I mean, "What a great family vacation!")

We end the night with a Pirate Party on deck, wearing eye patches and pirate hats and partying with Mickey and friends. Fireworks light up the sky. Ron's bath towel creation at bedtime: an elephant -- wearing Tate's sunglasses.

This is the life.

If you go

Disney cruise

The Patriot Ledger - California native and miniaturist extraordinaire Dale Varner of Milwaukie, Ore., arrived in Marceline, Mo., on Wednesday to begin arranging, touching up and making minor repairs to the scale version of Disneyland that he has been working on for more than 40 years.

The miniature is on permanent public display at the Walt Disney Hometown Museum in the Missouri town.

Varner, who suffered a somewhat debilitating case of rheumatic fever as a child, became interested in creating miniatures with the encouragement of his parents.

His brother made model cars and planes, which did not appeal to him; however, he was interested in creating miniatures. So, the budding artist turned his love of Disneyland into a serious lifelong hobby of recreating the buildings, rides, and scenery back in the early ‘60s.

To date, he has visited Disneyland no less than 50 times. He has also been to Disney World, but feels that Disneyland is the place that truly brings Walt Disney’s dream to life.

The miniaturist contacted Walt Disney by letter in 1964, asking if he could obtain photos of the park. Disney forwarded the letter to the publicity department, and Varner has since collected literally hundreds of publicity photos. He has also taken a vast number of photos himself when at the park studying the particular architecture of the different buildings.

When Varner first began creating the miniatures, he used colored paper, which meant the structures would last two, perhaps three, years at the most. Since that time, he discovered that if he used pebbleboard, which is lightweight and about 1/16” thick, to create texture and paint the individual pieces, he can extend the lives of his creations from two or three years to 30 years.

He said that oftentimes, people who view his work will ask him where he gets the ‘kits’ to build his miniatures from. They are almost always surprised to hear that he has never used a kit. Every piece that he has created is the result of a plan he has drawn for the different buildings, with the exception of the Matterhorn.

Some of the materials he uses in addition to the pebbleboard are small pieces of wood, thread, hat pins, straight pins, and lace. He uses gelatin capsules for the street lamps and makes the individual bricks for some of the buildings with ordinary file cards.

Varner said that in the beginning, he used colored paper for the buildings, but now paints each structure so that if the color scheme changes, the models can be painted to reflect the change.

The very first Disney miniature Varner created was the Sleeping Beauty castle. However, over the years he has recreated it many times, with the one that will be on display being the newest. It is his favorite piece, and feels it embodies what Walt Disney originally wanted the park to be, a place where fantasy comes to life and families can have fun.