Marc Davis artwork for The Enchanted Snow Palace, a planned but never built attraction designed for Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom
Hi, remember me?
I apologize things have been dead around here for so long, but finally the fruits of my offline efforts are starting to appear. As you might have seen, Disney’s D23 fan club opened a brand new and enhanced website yesterday. It’s a quantum leap over what was available previously, and the focus is now on generating new content of a historical nature to better take advantage of the nearly endless amount of archival material kept by the Disney company. Basically, it’s like a Disney history blog but with a ridiculous amount of resources that would be off-limits to a “civilian” researcher.
For the last few months I’ve been working with the Disney Archives and D23 to prepare material for this new initiative. Basically, digging around and finding interesting things to talk about. D23 has put together a quality roster of contributors including David Gerstein and Jim Fanning, among others. They have also inexplicably included me, so you can count on the occasional bit of retro weirdness you’ve hopefully come to expect.
The bulk of the site is reserved for D23 members, but the good news is that you can now register for free to view the site. This is only the beginning for the site, as lots more content is on the way. Already the full contents of Dave Smith’s Disney A to Z are online as a reference, and it will continue to be expanded and updated as we go. The site’s design also allow’s for “sister sites” – these are already up for the Disney Archives and Disney Legends – and in the future they’re going to add the Animation Resource Library and other company resources.
In the meantime, I wanted to point out some of the choice elements from the first few days of posting. My stories include a piece of Disney ribbon cuttings (after all, we’re cutting the ribbon on a new website), and this look at story sketches from a lost Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon.
Other pieces I enjoyed include:
- An amazing lost Disney Afternoon program called Justice Ducks that I really, really, really wish would be made.
- Some of Walt’s family photos.
- A great piece on the Star Wars Disneyland storyteller records.
- Pieces on Walt’s early Laugh-o-grams and Julius the cat.
- Videos about Marceline, a fascinating look back by Kevin Kidney at Anaheim’s Katella Avenue, and Chris Sanders talking about Stitch and Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida.
- Mickey’s Birthdayland!
- Lastly, terrifying Mickey costumes from the past.
And I still can’t sign up as an international member because it won’t accept my valid UK phone number that I – for some reason – need to give them in order to receive a free online membership.
I’m a fancypants D23 charter member, and as I reward I’ve … spent two days trying unsuccessfully to log in. I realize relaunches are never bug-proof, but jeez.
I’m glad you’re a part of the site, though, Michael! Any chance of a D23 podcast to replace our beloved PCRH? An RSS feed would be nice, too, but I have a feeling that’s not gonna happen.
Shoot, sorry you guys are having problems logging in. I’d seen where there were problems with international members on the first day, but they said it would be taken care of by midnight that first evening. Hopefully it’s taken care of soon. Thankfully I didn’t have any problems (I had to register just like anyone else) but maybe it got swamped once everyone started signing on. I have no idea who is even involved with the tech side of things, but hopefully it gets sorted soon.
A podcast would be AMAZING but that might be too far-out for them to go for. If anyone wants such a thing, though, I’d say email in to D23 and ask. You never know. And hopefully we can get the PCRH going again soon, too.
As to RSS, I’d heard that they were going to have a feed but I hadn’t checked to see if it was there. Hopefully that’s coming soon; I’ll be sure and ask about that, because I think it’s important.
Thanks for the feedback guys
Thanks for the mention, Michael. I’m very honored to be in such good company at the D23 website!
Also, to your readers, I too had trouble registering on D23.com (and like Jeff I too am ” a fancypants D23 charter member”). I suspect it was some first-day glitches that have since been fixed. And by the way, the folks at tech support for D23 were very polite and helpful.
Oh yeah, for the record, D23 customer service replied really quickly to let me know that my original D23 login wasn’t actually valid for the new site—after creating a new account I just linked it to my membership and had no problems from there. I’m really enjoying all the content and looking forward to seeing what you guys do in the future!