Mousekingdom Blog

Can’t get enough of the Disney parks and want to see even more when your home in front of your PC? Then maybe DIS TV is the channel for you. It’s promised to run 24/7 with all kinds of Disney park and resort stuff. I already had some fun watching Epcot on it.

It’s a good thing I work with two screens on my main computer and even better I have multiple computers as with all the Disney stuff that is out there one screen (or one PC) is no longer enough.

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For a Disney geek like me it would be a dream to live near Walt Disney World (something that might still happen somewhere in the future, just not right now for multiple reasons). For sure I am not the only one who would love to own a house near the magic so home are getting build around the park. Celebration is the most known Disney-like community, but a new one will be added to this exclusive family as Disney will free some of their land for development. It will not be for all of us because the price will be high for the planned luxury houses.

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I was surfing the web as usual for some nice Disney news and for some information so to pin point the last details of my next trip (next week that is) to Tokyo and the ever marvelous Tokyo Disney Resort. Well i stumbled on this photo taken by the ever present board member TDLFAN . Well it seems that Stitch is taking over Tokyos enchanted Tiki room, which already since the late 90’s was playing its own version of the show entitled “get the fever”!  I’m not one of those who wants to get into the debate “never change attractions etc” (plus this is Tokyo ad not Disneyland Anaheim) but i am actually excited to see what WDI-Japan (guided by the great Joe Lanzisero) will come up with here!The Stitch AA in the Magic Kingdoms Stitch encounter attraction was really impressive (besides being the only good thing about the attraction ) so I’m actaully looking forwards to seeing this one! 

DVC… one more… as in one more contract added to my small collection. 50 points of Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas. Was thinking for Saratoga Springs but as I love the Animal Kingdom Lodge and I don’t mind being a little further away from the parks I called the Timeshare store and the contract is mine. That’s if Disney doesn’t use their Right of First Refusal. If not I can add the 50 points to my 65 points I have at Old Key west. With 115 points in total I would still be a “small” owner, but for me and my family and our Disney needs that is sufficient.

… for now at least, as you never know what the future will do. Who knows, after a couple of years I might want some more.

Picture Copyrights Disney

Most of you might already have heard the news about the changes in the Disneyland attraction “it’s a small world”.

New Disney characters, including Alice in Wonderland, can be expected in an upgraded version of the classic ride. Together with the new figures one of the scenes will be changes too. If reports are indeed correct the Papua New Guinea rainforest show scene will be replaced with a tribute to America.

Not everybody is happy with this decision so it didn’t take long before people would react.

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Disney has unveiled their Japanese version of Stitch’s television animation series, where he will be accompanied by a young Japanese girl who is skilled in karate. The Japanese version will take place on a fictional island in the subtropical southern chain of Okinawa.

In the three-minute pilot version, the girl, tentatively named Hanako, and other characters dance to the tunes of traditional Okinawan music while eating a bowl of rice with chopsticks. (AFP)

Picture copyrights Disney

Several people have mentioned that the Beastly Kingdom expansion for Animal Kingdom is back in the rumor mill. Several concepts are on the table, with constant changes that are or could be made to the original idea.

I guess Disney is well aware that expansion brings in the people. Especially Expedition Everest has proven that guest will come and return to the park. With all that is happening in around the Orlando area I am convinced Walt Disney World will bring us some news in the near future of their next big project to make sure that Disney will not loose (to many) guest to Universal and their Harry Potter expansion. Beastly Kingdom might well be the answer.

Remember, these are rumors and my vision, but in a couple of months, weeks or maybe days this might be different again. Nothing is solid until Disney says so.

While there have been several rumors and news been spread around the Internet that there are problems with the new Disneyland Mark VII Monorail system, the L.A. Times ensures us that there are no problems. The monorails are doing nightly test rounds and the Blue monorail can be expected somewhere between Mid April and Early May.

Sending the new Mark VII back to Canada was never considered.

After the test-and-adjust phase, Monorail Red will undergo state inspections, and Disney employees will be trained in the operation of the five-car burgundy train before visitors get their first ride. (L.A. Times)

Picture copyrights Disney (via L.A. Times)

What happens if you want to write an article about spending 5 days at Walt Disney World without kids but are not open minded towards this experience. Seth Stevenson does it in his “well-traveled: Dispatches from the front lines of travel The Mecca of the Mouse” article. He already starts the article with the false assumption it’s a place for adults with children only. (and adds, later in the article, that all visitors are annoyed and cranky by the end of the day)

Why on earth would I, a childless adult, visit Disney World by myself? (Slate; Part 1)

Walt Disney World was not even given the chance. A negative view was needed, for whatever reason (Page Hits?), and that’s what you’ll get when you read these first two parts of what will be (I think) 5 part negative Disney rant.

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It may seem odd to be focusing on 2009 already, but Susan and I certainly have to have at least one eye on next year as we have recently started the process of up-dating our Brit’s Guide to Orlando and WDW for the next edition.

With that in mind, we would like to invite people to share in (some of!) the process with us as we will be posting (semi-)regular blogs on our Veness Travel Media website of our travels, meetings and park visits along the way for the next few months.

So, for a little insight into travel-writing, researching and also having a bit of fun with our work, join us on the following Blog link and we’ll try to keep it up to date and interesting!

http://www.venesstravelmedia.com/id75.html

If you want to go to Walt Disney World you need some (actually a lot) of money. Some people try to make some extra, selling some of their collectables on Ebay, using the money to sponsor the trip.

In 2002 I paid my flight trip like this myself.

While I tried to make a little extra with my more “normal” collectables, other people will try to get some of the money together by selling food in the form of one of the US states…

The Great Illinois Corn Flake is one of them. It has been offered on Ebay before and reached about $200.000 before Ebay pulled the auction for violation. (Food cannot be sold when opened).

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Disney / Pixar recently managed to fill all five spots in the all time top 5 list for the opening weekend grossing, pushing out Dreamworks’ Shrek. But last weekend Fox / BlueSky Animation (the studio behind Ice Age as well as Robots) moved into this “Disney / Pixar only territory”. As USA Today reports Fox’ “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!” managed claim the highed weekend opening of the year for any movie with $-US 45.1 million (in the US, excluding the international box office). With this performance, which was way more than projected, it moved into the top 5 on rank 5.

The new Top 5 of the hiest opening weekend grossing in the US consist of Finding Nemo, Monsters, In.c, Cars, Ratatouille and finally “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!”. It will be interesting to see, whether Disney manages to reclaim total control of the Top 5 with the upcoming Wal-E release and how Dreamworks’ next Shrek release will fare…

1 more day and the yearly Flower and Garden festival at Epcot starts. Visitors will have the time until 1 June to go and see the festival and to enjoy many topiaries, beautiful flowers and amazing colors.

But don’t take my word for it! Just look at the gorgeous collection of pictures on MouseSteps.

A picture says more then a thousand words!

Picture copyrights MouseSteps

Imagine you could own a piece of Disney animated art for only a couple of dollars! This was the case back in the 1960 when fans could buy the art in Disneyland for only a couple of dollars. Today this original art would make more into the region on $20.000 to $30.000.

Nearly 5 decades ago Disney shipped some of its 1959 animated movie Sleeping Beauty artwork to Japan. It was presented to the public at Mitsukoshi Department Store and toured to another16 stores after that. Once the exhibition finished the artwork stayed in Japan, locked away for most of the time, an “almost” forgotten treasure.

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As an add-on to my earlier review of the third episode of “Me Tarzan, You Jane” I have to report about the ratings of the episode - and those are even worse than the actual tv show. While the show was able to gain some ground from an entertainment point of view it seems the tv audiences have given up on it - and who couldn’t understand this considering the first two episodes? The third episode managed to attract pretty much the same number of viewers as thes econd episode, to be “exact” 1.37 million viewers (in all age groups) equaling a total marketshare of 4.4% (see report by Quotenmeter).

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TEA and ERA published their annual report on amusement attendance for year 2007 and to nobodies surprise Disney dominates the list again. The top 25 of the world has 10 places reserved for Disney parks. Even better then that, the first 8 places are Disney park.

1 MAGIC KINGDOM at Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, FL, USA 17,060,000
2 DISNEYLAND, Anaheim, CA, USA 14,870,000
3 TOKYO DISNEYLAND, Tokyo, Japan 13,906,000
4 TOKYO DISNEYSEA, Tokyo, Japan 12,413,000
5 DISNEYLAND PARIS, Marne-La-Vallee, France 12,000,000
6 EPCOT at Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, FL, USA 10,930,000
7 DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS at Walt Disney World, Lake Buena V 9,510,000
8 DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM at Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, FL 9,490,000

And the other 2 parks also in the top 25 are at place 13 DISNEY’S CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE, Anaheim, CA, USA 5,680,000 and at place 21 HONG KONG DISNEYLAND, Hong Kong, SAR, China 4,150,000.

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August 1, 2007 The Walt Disney Company proudly announced that it had acquired “Club Penguin” an online virtual world targeting kids, which at that point already had won over700,000 paying subscribers since its launch only in October 2005 (see press release regarding the acquisition). The price tag: $-US 350 million plus another $-US 350 million if certain predefined earning targets would be met.

I had forgotten about that since I really fall not into the target audience of the site (age 6 to 14) … until I found an interesting overview of the development of social networking sites on Mashable. The interesting observation: while Club Penguin managed to increase the number of unique visitors in a comparison of February 2007 to February 2008 by 46% percent (quite good) it had to deal with an impressive reduction of the time each user spent on the side: down 80% (!) from 45:37 min to just 9:04 min. To me that is strange - and if correct shocking. Afterall in February 2007 Club Penguin did not yet have any Disney material to use nor could it use the creative minds of Disney, but by February 2008 it could use Disney content and make use of the creative minds of TWDC. So what did happen here? Anyone with a clue? Anyone who has subscribed to the site for his kids? We’d love to hear from you with a few comments or even a short report!

I promised it (or should I say: I threatened it?) - I would review the third episode of what in the meantime can only be called the failed attempt to promote the Disney stage musical TARZAN in Germany … the casting show “Ich Tarzan, Du Jane” (Me Tarzan, You Jane). Enough introduction…

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As many of you might know I am in love with music from the Disney movies and theme parks. Therefore, I was especially excited, that Randy Thornton - producer of the most recent “Official Album” releases for the US Disney resorts and thereby responsible to decide which tracks make it onto the 2-disc sets - over on MagicMusic.net  has revealed which new tracks will be found on the new OAs for Anaheim and Walt Disney World.

Interested? It is all revealed under the break…

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Already explained how I feel Disney is missing the opportunity to get more European visitors in the previous Dollar vs Euro blog entry I wanted to take the time and take it even a little further, proofing that the Disney Company should really look into getting those Europeans to their parks. The European market is a big one, one that could generate a lot of extra guests and money. Other players on the market will not wait for the European to find out about their offers, they’ll make sure to make themselves noticed on that market. Look at Dubai (again), will they wait and only try to fulfill there goal by only targeting the Arabic world? I don’t think so. The European market will be a big one for them and they will make enough advertisement around the whole of Europe to make sure they will visit their new parks.

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