Mousekingdom Blog

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…

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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.

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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.

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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!!

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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!!]

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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?

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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.

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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…

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The High School Musial franchise has become a jack of all trade for The Walt Disney Company. It all started with an innocent, small made for tv musical movie on the Disney Channel which then become a ratings juggernaut around the globe, has seen a record breaking sequel, makes it’s move to the big screen with the third movie this fall, has occupied top spots in the download and CD charts around the globe with various CD and single releases, moved countless additional merchandise items and has resulted in concert, ice show and theatrical shows plus widely popular theme park streetaculars in Disney’s California Adventure, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and the Walt Disney Studios (at Disneyland Resort Paris). And now the next chapter is being prepared:

According to the VARIETY website ABC (also part of the Disney empire but so far not involved in the HSM franchise) is developing a concept for a “High School Musical” casting / reality show!

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Dirk beat me on the Tron story; and boy am I excited (about the movie )!

Don’t blow it Disney! Make this one work. Like I said. I was late on the story (second time Dirk beats me on a story this week – see the Shamu story ), but I couldn’t resist sharing one of those memorable moments I love in the movie with the above picture.

Picture copyrights Disney

As you can see I am filling in for Andy for a change to keep his back covered for a bit as the real life keeps him busy - this allows me to also provide you with an update on one of Andy’s pet topics: Disney’s 80’s classic TRON!

Today’s TRON update comes courtsey of the TAG blog I already mentioned last week (which has some critical comment regarding the scoop factor of this news). The TAG blog in turn points us to the report by Neil Miller on FilmSchoolRejects which got his information from the well known site Ain’t It Cool News - it’s funny how “news” and “rumors” travel on the internet… But back to the real story here…

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… How many wonders can one cavern hold Looking
Looking around here, you’d think
Sure, sh’s got everything
I’ve got gadgets and [glitches] a-plenty…

Sorry to interrupt Ariel, but “glitches”? Shouldn’t it be “gizmos”? Ok, bad pun, I admit it … but I couldn’t resist. Sorry? You don’t know what I am talking about. OK, guess I should start telling the story from the beginning.

Originally I wanted to entertain you all with a short report about the Original Broadway Cast recording of Disney’s The Little Mermaid that was released last week.

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We all heard of themWe all know Walt Disney’s first company with Ubbe  Iwerks was called Laughogram inc, but how many of us actaully ever saw those classic Alice Commedies ? We here you have a good link for some of them on youtube http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alice+commedies&search_type have fun (I’m still surfing through them and adore it)