Mousekingdom Blog

Disney is doing very well again with a better than expected 22% rise in profit. Especially the movies National Treasure: Book of Secrets and the fairy tale “Enchanted” together with Disney theme park attendance are taking care of the big profits in their last quarter.

Even with the frightening economic situation at the moment, Disney seems unstoppable boosting their profits and making their shareholders happy.

“All of the big media companies are doing fundamentally very well and the market just refuses to acknowledge it,” (Reuters)

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Hong Kong Disneyland has opened their version of “It’s a Small World” only days ago. Their version differences itself from other worldwide version by adding 38 Disney Characters to the classic ride. Disney fans and purist where horrified by the idea that a classic ride would contain Disney Characters. Especially since the news came out the Disney company would be adding the same Disney characters in the Disneyland Anaheim version. Disney fans stood up and let themselves be heard by expressing their thoughts and feelings all over the web about the upcoming changes Disney wants to do. (Example Save the Rainforest website). They didn’t like it…

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Night Kingdom rumors have been going for a while and although I thought that’s it, those plans are shelved, the rumors are alive again. This time you can find some info on the always great screamscape.com site where it is claimed that Disney is creating some new experience.

The big attraction and icon of the park, right now, appears to be a large central Disney-made mountain structure where guests will be forced to ‘rock climb’ to the top, take zip lines down again and explore a serious network of caves. The goal is for this to be a very interactive game based adventure experience, with both mental and physical challenges. (Screamscape.com

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Ed Grier, Disneyland Resort president, is talking about a possible third gate for the Disneyland Resort. While many thought that with the big rehab of Disney’s California Adventure a third gate would be something not for the near future but now Disney talks about it themselves. Obviously they did not give any more information other then the location of the possible 3rd gate expansion.

A third theme park was hinted at by Grier on Wednesday. “We do see a tremendous opportunity on our 88 acres of land,” Grier said. (OC Register)

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Last year’s visit of the Disney Cruise Line to the Mediterranean wasn’t much of an event for the European markets. Sure DLRP did do a small event in Spain but due to the selection of invited press the event pretty much turned into a non-event. What could have been the big entry of the Disney Cruise Line into Europe’s booming cruise market (especially Germans are more and more turning to this type of vacations) and could also have opened a new market for DLRP of guests combining a Disney cruise with a visit to DLRP just didn’t do anything.

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Disney has started a new film label to produce nature documents from world top documentary filmmakers. The label, named DisneyNature, will release movies about the beauty of our planet. On of them called simply “Earth” (April 22, 2009)., a movie that will be produced an directed by the award winning British Alastair Fothergill who already gave us the “Blue Planet” and the “Planet Earth” series. Darth Vader, oeps, I meant James Earl Jones will be the narrator of this new production.

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Today, April 22, 10 years ago Animal Kingdom opened its gates to the general public for the very first time. The park opened with 5 attraction, 9 exhibits and 12 live entertainment show on a 500 acres location. The main attraction of the resort are its inhabitants, the many incredible animals.

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Disneyland Resort Paris has a new chairman. Philippe Gas, a 17 year Disney veteran, and currently Human Resources director, will be taking over the wheel from Karl Holz. Karl Holz has been the Chairman for the Paris park since May 2005 after Andre Lacroix left. Holz will go to the USA and will start a new role as the president of the New Vacation Operations for the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.

For more Disneyland Resort Paris news and information  make sure to also visit our DLP.Info site

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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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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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!

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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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.

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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.

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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…
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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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Can I have Your Credit Card Number Please? How often do you get asked that? And how often do we give it without thinking about the risks attached to it? Especially when you’re at Walt Disney World, do you expect to be conned by a scam artist. (they really should find another name for them as they are NO artist.)

Unfortunately since a couple of weeks people are being scammed while they are at WDW.

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Dubai has been putting itself on the map big time! To become the biggest vacation destination they have already surprised us many time. If it is the islands they build, or the amazing theme parks that are announced, it all sounds awesome. Next on the list; Shamu! (See Previous Entry from Dirk “Where can you find Seaworld and Universal”

On The Palm Jebel Ali on the section known as “the Crown”, 4 new parks will be build in one big resort; “Worlds Of Discovery” including SeaWorld, Aquatica, Busch Gardens, and Discovery Cove. The resort will be on the tip of the palm and will be in the form of “Shamu”.

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Jan van Morkhoven, Sales Representative of Maurer Söhne, the builders and creators of the Crush’s Coaster track in the Walt Disney Studios in Paris, said in an interview he gave at the Euro Attractions Show 2008 in Nice, France that Disney was very happy with the coaster. (The show took place from 23 to 25 January) He also said something else that is very interesting…

“The where very, very happy with what we made for them. We will be making more for them. They will be back”

While he doesn’t say what they’ll be back for, we can start speculating; Will they make clones of Crush in other parks or are we going to see some of the other spectacular Maurer rides appear in a Disney park.. Visit the Parksmania website to see the interview, including some footage of other Maurer coasters.