Progress City, U.S.A.

Yes folks, I’m back. I apologize to the small but valued handful of “regulars” here for taking a powder without notice, but c’est la vie. A too-short holiday in the mountains, a backlog of “real” work, some downtime as my web host moved its servers, March Madness (go Heels!) and the general azalea-blooming weather lately has been a distraction. More importantly, though, is the fact that most of the news out of the House of Mouse lately hasn’t been very inspiring.

Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t 2001 and we aren’t facing the constant strikeouts of the Eisner-Pressler regime. But perhaps my hopes got the better of me with the management change and I expected more than the singles and weak doubles we’ve been seeing lately. I certainly expected a damn sight more than this, but there will be more on that later. The point is that while many things in the Disney empire are OK on the micro level, at the macro level there’s a distinct lack of vision. Things are continuing to slide, and that’s a problem.

But I’m back, and here are a few tidbits to get the pump primed:

Thankfully the EPCOT Central blog is back at work, and have a post about EPCOT’s current state that touches on the themes I mentioned above.

Alain Littaye hits us with a slew of concept art - from Disney’s America (with props to me!), California Adventure before its budget was slashed, and the Disney-MGM Studios (1, 2). He also has some interesting photos from the Carousel of Progress.

The Hallmark Channel has acquired a 99-film library of classic Disney films to air on their network. According to the press release, the deal includes:

Disney’s “The Shaggy Dog,” “Flubber,” “Old Yeller,” “The Parent Trap,” “The Incredible Journey,” “The Princess Diaries,” “Freaky Friday,” “The Santa Clause,” “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” “That Darn Cat,” “The Love Bug,” “The Shaggy Dog,” “Mighty Joe Young,” “Babes in Toyland,” “The Cat from Outer Space,” “Gus,” “Return to Snowy River,” “Snowball Express,” “White Fang,” “The Apple Dumpling Gang” and “Swiss Family Robinson.”

While it’s great that people are going to be able to see these films on television, and they’ll be made available to a new generation of fans, I can’t help to think that it’s sad that Disney doesn’t have their own cable outlet to show their classic films. Why, maybe someday there could be an entire “Disney Channel”, so to speak, that could show Disney material 24 hours a day! Oh I know, it’s just a pie in the sky dream… but wouldn’t that be a great idea? Man, I know I’d watch that channel all the time! But what do I know? I’m old enough to drive so Disney doesn’t really care what I think…

Old EPCOT geeks like myself will remember SMRT-1 from the glory days of CommuniCore. The Paleo-Future blog has a nice piece of concept art I’d never seen before, but the point of the link is the blog itself. You should definitely check it out, as it’s one of my favorites.

Page down for some nice side-by-side comparisons of scenes from Enchanted.

Indeed.

And finally this. Change your life, it will:

I’ll be back soon with more…

While I continue to futz around working on some story ideas, the tubed interwebs thankfully continue to produce stories of interest and worthy of linkage. Here are a few for your late-weekend perusal.

First, I’m glad to report that EPCOT Central seems to be up and blogging again. These folks are die-hard EPCOT traditionalists like myself, and I’m glad that there are people out there keeping Disney’s feet to the fire concerning the park’s current lack of unifying purpose. A few recent pieces of note:

- A story about management dropping the ball on EPCOT’s 25th anniversary last year. I was fortunate to be able to make it down for the celebration and, while the fan organizers did a magnificent job setting things up, they shouldn’t have had to. I’ve been planning a series for the site entitled “Why Won’t Disney Take My Money?” and one of the first of these will be about EPCOT’s 25th. It’s shocking to me that, as a fanbase, Disney fans practically have to beg corporate to be recognized and catered to. It has to be a fairly unique situation - rabid, dedicated fans that are sneered at by the company they seek to celebrate. It’s reached the stage of an abusive relationship and Disney really needs to get their act together on this front.

- A story about the necessity of criticism and the need to hold management’s feet to the fire concerning the revitalization of EPCOT. I link to this post because it makes almost verbatim an argument I’ve been making for years:

Disney is a company that needs to make money. It’s a for-profit company. It needs to grow revenue and income. Those are also common explanations. To that, I counter that only by offering something truly revolutionary, truly out of the ordinary, can a company grow for the long term. Walt Disney knew that, that’s why he was never content to continue doing what had made him successful. An artistically driven company like Disney has to take risks, and if that turns the stomach of its top managers, why did they get into this game in the first place.

Disney is filled these days with people who got into it for one key reason: to make money for themselves. That’s not a bad motivator, I have no qualm with that. But they wanted to make money fast, to do it the easy way. With projects like ABC’s flagging ratings, the theme-park design fiascoes and the death of traditional animation, they’re learning the lesson the hard way. It’s not about the quick buck, it’s about the long haul. It’s about doing what’s right.

People forget that Walt did things the right way and made a lot of money. You don’t have to sell your soul for a profitable company, but you might have to obsess a little less about the quarterly reports. The Disney Frontier blog agrees.

- A story about the fact that despite the departure of Eisner, Pressler and Stainton, all is not well at Disney. While I mostly approve of Iger’s moves lately, he’s still a corporate guy with no real Disney allegiance. The Disney loyalists in the company, like Lasseter, are mostly Disneyland-obsessed and so the Florida property continues to be ignored and looted and - even worse - sold off piecemeal. No one seems to grasp the philosophy under which the Florida property was purchased and organized and so, slowly, irreparable damage is being done. More interestingly, the author suggests EPCOT as a new branding strategy for Disney to reach audiences immune to the charms of Hannah Montana and I think it’s a brilliant idea. If someone at Team Disney had an ounce of gumption they’d look into this ASAP.

More from this great blog in future updates.

A few interesting facts about Adventureland.

Euro Disney continues its economic turnaround as it announces a twenty percent increase in first quarter revenues. The resort, which hasn’t operated at a profit since 2001, has had seven consecutive quarters of revenue growth. The increase in attendance, hotel occupancy, and per-guest spending is attributed - shockingly! - to the addition of new attractions (gasp!). This will presumably only continue as the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror opens at Disney Studios Paris this month. Hopefully this innovative new strategy of “adding new things” will continue, making the Disney Studios worth visiting and refreshing the long-stagnant Disneyland Paris itself.

Apparently actress Suzanne Pleshette died last weekend while I was off in the mountains and “off the grid”. I learn this from Isn’t Life Terrible, which posted a tribute to Pleshette last week. While the she had a large body of work, I of course grew up knowing her from her work at Disney.

Pleshette starred in four live-action films for Disney over the years; these included The Ugly Dachshund, Blackbeard’s Ghost, The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin, and The Shaggy D.A.. While two of these I never saw as a child, and even as a kid I knew The Shaggy D.A. wasn’t very good, I was an enormous fan of The Ugly Dachshund. My brother and I were fairly obsessed with the film, watching it over and over as only fanboy kids can. Pleshette starred, as she would in two of her other Disney films, opposite Dean Jones - himself another childhood obsession. Jones, alongside Han Solo and Cary Grant, made up a weird childhood trifecta of male role models and embodied all that was cool, mod and hip and provided a worthy subject for emulation. Pairing Jones with the ultra-foxy Pleshette provided a Disney power couple par excellence.

Check out the tribute via the link for some interesting facts about Pleshette’s career and time at Disney, as well as some words about her role in 40 Pounds of Trouble. This film is definitely an oddity - a Universal picture featuring extensive footage shot within Disneyland itself. Definitely surreal, and a great time capsule of Disneyland itself.

Finally, wrapping things up, is my dear and beloved Tina Fey. Have a great Sunday!

Here’s some bits and bobs to clean out my stack of interesting stories that have been piling up…

First, we have Mickey Mouse from the Year 900!!!

The “Stuff From the Parks” blog has posted this fascinating diagram from 1954 of a proposed layout for Main Street at Disneyland. Notable are the early ideas for shop themes, the Nautilus set walk-through in the Opera House and accompanying animation studio demonstration, and most interestingly the International Street concept that would never be built but resurfaced nearly thirty years later as World Showcase at EPCOT Center.

One of the stories that kind of slipped under the radar recently was that Scott Trowbridge, vice president of Universal Creative Studios, was hired away by Walt Disney Imagineering and is now the new vice president of creative research and development. This is big, big news as Trowbridge was senior show producer on The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, a perennial contender for the title of best dark ride ever created. This is a huge coup for WDI and I can’t wait to see what it leads to.

Staying in the parks, about.com has an interesting talk with Imagineer Tony Baxter about Disneyland’s new Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage and the path that the attraction took from the original Submarine Voyage’s senseless closure in 1998. While a great story, it underlines how my ‘home park’ in Florida has suffered from the lack of a powerful champion in WDI’s brain trust.

MiceAge tours Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disneysea, as well as providing a look at some rare conceptual art for EPCOT Center’s Spaceship Earth.

John Lasseter talks about animated shorts, WALL-E, and Pixar’s future slate and animation’s chances at the Oscars. WALL-E has started having sneak previews, and Leslie Iwerks’ documentary The Pixar Story has started a round of public screenings.

Women build shrine to Cars on Route 66!

Disneyland in Malaysia! Disneyland in… Siberia? Malaysia and Siberia might want to call Hong Kong, who’s going to have to bail out the faltering Hong Kong Disneyland, which continues to fall below attendance expectations due to the glaring lack of any actual amusement in their amusement park.

Finally, I should mention the passing of renowned Imagineer and author Bruce Gordon who died November 6th at the far too young age of 56. Gordon was a fan favorite at various conventions, and authored or co-authored a number of authoritative books on Disney parks, animators, and imagineers. He was currently working with the Disney family on The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco and had a number of books in the pipeline for publication. He will be greatly, greatly missed.

And… this. Umm…

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Hi all,

I’m going to try and regularly post links to interesting or newsworthy stories from around the tubed intarwebs. Here’s your first batch for weekend reading:

- Kevin Yee gives some thoughts on MiceAge about the dividing line between nostalgia and stagnation at the Magic Kingdom.
- Cartoon Brew has the list of cities and dates for showings of Leslie Iwerks’ newest must-see documentary The Pixar Story.
- Rotten Tomatoes interviews Brad Bird about Ratatouille, John Lasseter about Pixar in general, and Fred Willard (!) about WALL-E - he’ll be the first ever live-action actor in a Pixar film.
- Duck fan builds Money Bin. Nice.
- Remember cute lil’ Bobby Driscoll from Song of the South and Treasure Island? Well…

- Re-Imagineering drops the truth bomb on recent Disney promotional art - something I found hilarious since I had thought the same thing. Herb Ryman, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you…

- And something special just for Ol’ Beacon Joe…