Mousekingdom Blog

About a month ago rumors popped up on the internet about a possible new Disney experience for Walt Disney World. While I didn’t talk about the “Night Kingdom” on the blog myself yet, I did try to follow and get informed about the possible new project. Rumors , forums and news sites talked about a new gate or experience during night time where a possible encounter with animals would be the central concept. Animal Kingdom quickly became the rumored park that would be a nightly experience where a more adult orientated public, with a little more than your normal average to spend, would be the target audience.

(more…)

A couple of days ago I got a CD in my postbox from Lou Mongello who brings us Disney news every week via his WDWradio site and podcast. Lou started a new project where you can listen to a CD full of Disney tidbits, knowledge, information and more; The Audio Guide to Walt DIsney World. His first CD takes us to Main Street USA in Walt Disney world. I took the CD, got into the car, put it in the player and started listening. A couple of minutes later I felt like I was walking around Main Street and enjoying the magic that so many people forget about or don’t even notice.

(more…)

Condolences to all family and friends of Dave Stevens, born July 29, 1955 in Lynwood, California, who died way too young at the age of 52 on March 10, 2008. The Illustrator, comic book and graphic artist Dave Stevens might be best known for his 1982 created character “The Rocketeer” (the same year in which he received the Comic Con International’s Russ Manning Award). In the early 1980s he worked as a storyboard artist for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” as well as for “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark”) before he started developing a “Rocketeer” movie proposal in 1985. He finally managed to sell the rights in it to The Walt Disney Company, which lead to the 1991 movie “The Rocketeer”.

(more…)

Another update for fans of ABC’s hit series “LOST” in Germany: Quotenmeter contacted the German pay-tv station Premiere to inquire about the fourth season of LOST. Since Pro7 announced that it will broadcast the fourth season of the show as of fall 2008, the silence of Premiere, which broadcasted season one to three prior to their free tv premieres, was rather surprising.

The official statement of Premiere regarding the 4th season of LOST? Premiere is interested in once again obtaining the pay-tv rights for the latest season but hasn’t acquired them yet. Instead negotiations are ongoing… so let’s all hope Premiere get’s rights and we once again can enjoy the episodes without any ad-breaks!

The travel industry is doing good business. It’s a trend that seems to be a standard all over the world. Even while “normal life” is getting more expensive. Most people with regular jobs are not able to save anymore, so the little extra they have might as well be spend on a couple of weeks holiday. Of course, this doesn’t count for everybody, but it does seems like a trend at the moment.

While the travel industry isn’t doing to bad it’s the Disney parks that are really proofing how people will still spend there little extra they have to enjoy some fun. The numbers have been good for most of the Disney Theme parks (let’s leave the troubled Hong Kong park out of the list for the moment) and it doesn’t look like the trend will stop.

(more…)

A new WALL.E High Definition trailer has been put online (regular versions available too). We get to see his girlfriend and a lot of the other places he is going to visit during his adventure. The Trailer is fun, but I think filled with spoilers, so if you want to be surprised stay away from the trailer, otherwise enjoy it.

Picture copyrights Disney (Via apple.com)

You might be in luck if you have experience with hand drawn (aka traditional, aka 2-D) animation and happen to be in the greater LA area. Your potential employer? The Mouse House!

After cutting down its force of animators at feature animation in the past years to transition from 2D animation to CGI The Walt Disney Company is now back on track to re-establish what used to be at its core with several 2D projects in different phases of preparation or production.

And those upcoming hand-drawn features just require more animators again. As the The New Zealand Herald says “Disney’s Burbank animation studio today is still not bursting with animators as it was in its heyday, but many of the laid-off employees are back working” - and it should be more soon, as the paper in its March 8, 2008 story cites Andreas Deja saying “Right now we have a basic staff, but we are adding on more this month”. Great news!

P.S.: once again, credit where credit is due - the TAG Blog pointed me to the interesting article of the New Zealand Herald.

We have recently got involved with helping a new fan-based Disney organisation in Orlando who are geared towards helping fellow WDWophiles have more fun in the parks for specific occasions.

It is the same group (essentially) who pioneered the superb Celebration 25 event at Epcot last October for the park’s 25th anniversary, and they have translated their efforts there into a new, year-round fan-based organisation called WDWCelebrations.com.

(more…)

Planning your Walt Disney World visit right now? Ready to call in for restaurant priority bookings? Want to be among the first to call when the lines open to secure a place at Cinderella’s Royal Table? Then you better be warned: since past Sunday (March 9) the US has switched forward to Daylight Saving Time (aka “summer time”)! Since Europe will only move into Daylight Saving Time on March 30 for the time being the US is one hour less behind Europe than “normally”. Just something to keep in mind when scheduling your calls in time for the opening of the hotlines each morning.

It’s part of the business - and part of the real world: just as brands are ubiquitous in today’s world (just look around your desk, there is a brand on your monitor, your keyboard and many other items lying around) so are they in the movies. The only difference between the movies and the real world: movie producers in some cases get paid to present certain brands and their products in a favorous position. Sure, not all brands popping up in a movie (or tv series) might actually be paid for product placements as some might just be necessary in a director’s view to present ouor real world corrently, but quite a few are paid for.

Anyway, everytime a brand pops up on the screen (whether paid for or not) influences the image of the brand and how we as viewers recognize it. Therefore it is really interesting to see which brands show up in which movie. BrandChannel.com does a great job with this in its weekly BrandCameo category for the movies ruling the US box office. Right now there are two Disney features in the list…
(more…)

With Disney attractions it is easy: Disney owns the rights. So if you want to enjoy them there is only one way: visit a Disney theme park. Other parks might try to copy a ride, but that’s that (just think about the many bad copies found in EuropaPark, Germany, such as “Pirates of Batavia”). But it seems a different thing with some theme / amusement park attractions based on material of other studios. At least that is the only way I can explain to myself how suddenly a Dreamworks / Universal attraction is ending up in Germany…

(more…)

Just a short shout to all fans of LOST in Germany: According to an interview with Jürgen Hörner on the website DWDL Pro7, the free tv station which aired season 1 to 3 of ABC’s mega hit, announced that it will broadcast the fourth season as well - despite the not so stellar ratings of the third season. At this time it is assumed that prior to the free tv broadcast on Pro7 the German pay-tv station PREMIERE will broadcast the fourth season of LOST (as it also did with season one to three).

And now on to the fans of DESPERATE HOUSWIFES: Pro7 is also the German home of ABC’s “Desperate Housewifes” which are a rating hit in Germany as well (different than LOST). As Pro7 already did last year, it currently airs the same season of Desperate Housewifes that is airing on ABC in the US. And just as last year the season will be aired in two halfes: one right now and one after a summer break. The summer break will come rather soon, though, as only the first 9 episodes will be shown before the break - on the other hand this gives Pro7 a great (rather windy) cliffhanger. It also solves the problem of the strike related delay of new episodes in the US, which are only now being filmed.

This might be old news (really old news, in fact news from 2004) but I came across it only today and just had to share it: in 2004 the (at least) third child born in the USA was named after Disney’s sports network: ESPN - to be pronounced as Espen in the boy’s name. Prior to Rebecca and Michael McCall naming their son ESPN Malachi McCall, a couple had named their son “Espn Curiel” in 2000 in Chorpus Christi and enother boy in Michigan had been named “Espen Blondeel” in the same year. According to a report on the website of ESPN the McCalls actually got they idea to name their son ESPN by hearing about another couple naming their boy after the Disney sports network.

(more…)

It started out bad and has become worse - at least rating wise. Past Friday the second episode of the casting show “Me Tarzan, You Jane” was broadcasted on Sat.1 in Germany. And the search for the future Tarzan and Jane in the German premiere of Disney’s musical version of its animated hit movie “Tarzan” managed to loose parts of its way too small audience. From a total of 1.54 million viewers (5.0% of the market) the show went down to 1.35 million viewers, equaling only 4.4% market-share - as Quotenmeter reported. Whatever one personally thinks the show has to be considered a bomb by now. The German media business website DWDL even calls it a “megaflop”.

This is especially true if one considers that the second episode was the last episode covering the actually auditioning phase. Starting this Friday the “recall”-phase will beginn, in which the jury reduces the number of contestants during singing and dancing classes before viewers will be entering the game later-on in live shows. If the successful German version of “Pop Idol” is anything to go by, ratings have a tendency to go down (at list a bit) once the auditioning phase and the more serious recall-phase starts. If this trend should show up for “Me Tarzan, You Jane” it might spell doom for the show, as there isn’t much of a viewer-base to loose audience from in the first place. Just for comparison: the 5th season the German version of “Pop Idol” past Saturday had its first live show (after the auditioning and the recall recaps) and even with a slight downturn in the numbers it sill managed to attract more than three times as many viewers as “Me Tarzan, You Jane”: 5.15 million viewers (17.3% market share) according to Quotenmeter.

(more…)

If you follow the economic development of theme / amusement parks a bit you frequently will get across the various calculations showing what a large part of the profit is actually not generated by the ticket prices but all the small and not so small extras guests open their wallet for. One of the main costs that come on top of the ticket price certainly are food and drinks - whether it is a small snack, fast food or an outstanding dinner at a table service restaurant.

But how big the food business is for theme / amusement parks is still missed very often. Sure the total numbers are released by some companies - but how do they compare to other food locations. Well here comes an answer…

The German magazine “Food-Service” (a business magazine for the food industry) demonstrates the importance of this business factor with its recently released of the Top 100 system gastronomy businesses in Germany according to total revenue. Certainly such companies as McDonald’s are leading the list, but there are three amusement parks with their gastronomy in the top 100 as well!!

(more…)

Let’s get this out of the way first: besides families animated Disney features and the theme parks always have had a notable amount of gay fans. But while some minorities regularly raise a ruckus about their underrepresentation or any supposed to be “inacceptable” representation there has been but a peep from the GLBT corner - and when was it that you saw a character in an animated Disney feature that would be a member of the GLBT team?

[Keep reading after the break ... especially if you want to find one of the best spoofs ever of a scene from Aladdin!!]

(more…)

I’d like to come back to Andrea’s post about last year’s Halloween Parade at Tokyo Disney from a few days ago … cause there is a really interesting backstory to one of the guys behind “Disney’s Halloween Happy Haunted Parade” as the 2007 daytime parade was officially called.

While the catchy song “One More Ghost” (I wonder when Vasile Sirli will re-purpose it for Disneyland Resort Paris) plays during the stop of the parade, the loop playing while the parade moves includes another all-new song specifically written for Tokyo Disneyland: “Our Halloween Party”. The latter song was composed by Rick McKee!

You ask: what’s so special about that?

(more…)

Day-in, day-out on certain days even twice do the big shows entertain thousands of guests on New York City’s Broadway - and that includes certainly Disney Theatrical’s latest production The Little Mermaid (if you are interested in the Original Broadway Cast recording of that one, check out my post from the past Monday). This is only possible thanks to large casts, which include so called “understudies”. Understudies are actors and actresses often performing in a smaller part of the show but have been trained to perform in one (or more often:) several lead parts of the show, requiring to memorize not only the signs, lines and the staging for one but several large roles in the show! And while they may not perform in the parts for months they always need to stay ready to jump in on a second’s notice if the lead gets ill.

(more…)

And now Six Flags has announced they will be building a park in Dubai… A deal has been announced that Tatweer, member of Dubai Holding, will build Six Flags DUBAILAND. It will bring attractions like The Wiggles, Tony Hawk but also new original shows and concepts to Dubai. Included in the deal are also Six Flags hotels, restaurants, other theme pars and waterparks to be build in the Arab world. Ground breaking for the Dubai park should begin in 2009.

Tatweer has now several theme park projects for Dubai including the Tiger Woods Dubai, Universal Studios Dubailand, the Dreamworks Animation park, the Hit Entertainment park and the Global Village project.

With the announcement of Shamu going to Dubai and all the other projects that are going on one wonders if Disney isn’t missing an opportunity here.

Picture Copyrights Six Flags

… under this title (OK, it’s German translation “Ich Tarzan, Du Jane”) the Stage Entertainment group is currently casting the male and female lead for its German production of “Disney’s Tarzan - The Musical” on TV. Wary of the bomb the show turned out to be on Broadway the show is now trying to garner enough pre-opening ticket sales on the German market to get it going at least long enough not too loose any money. How?

Easy more than 6 months prior to its opening in October 2008 in the Neue Flora Theater in Hamburg (originally constructed for the German premiere of Andre L. Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera) the show is getting a weekly prime time tv presence: the casting show of the before mentioned title on the German channel Sat.1. The same ploy was already used in the Netherlands, where a re-staged version premiered, that many critics lauded as better than the Broadway original. Unfortunately so far there are no reports which version Germany will get. But back to the TV show…

(more…)