Not much to report yet but word has come to me that Mort, the animated feature which Ron Clements and John Musker had planned to adapt from Terry Pratchett’s 1987 fantasy/comedy novel, has been abandoned. I’ve been given no explanation yet for why this happened, but it’s yet another promising project down the drain at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. The known animation slate at Disney remains remarkably bare; no wonder some animators might be looking to other studios, where they actually make movies.
UPDATE: I’ve just now come across this post and comment thread at the Animation Guild blog, which echoes these rumors, while also pointing out how bare Disney’s development slate is these days. According to the anonymous nabobs on the Guild site, the issue with Mort came down to rights. Apparently Disney couldn’t secure them, which is naturally a problem when you’re trying to make a film based on a book. I haven’t heard this personally from my sources, but I guess it’s as good a reason as any to abandon another interesting premise for an animated film. Hey, maybe they’ll greenlight and cancel Snow Queen again just to keep things interesting…
In fact, there have been a series of minor revelations about changes both expected and not, and the online Disney realm seized accordingly. A rather hit-and-miss record in the parks over the last fifteen years has left fans somewhat shell-shocked, and that can make things a little touchy when beloved attractions are altered without a heads-up. It also means announcements are meet with a skepticism that would previously have been unheard of. This leads to some interesting conversations.
First thing’s first. Following the closure of Toontown Fair, bulldozers have swooped in to clear the way for Storybook Circus. Mickey’s house has been demolished; check it out courtesy of this video by Jeff Lange:
You have to wonder why they’ve left the construction fence completely devoid of artwork or signage, leaving the poor conductor to improvise something that will keep people in their seats while the train is watered. You might also notice that the recorded narration in the train mentions the return of the Barnstormer. While we knew that the existing kiddie coaster would be retained for the new area, to this point the re-themed attraction has been referred to only as “The Great Goofini.” Apparently the Barnstormer franchise is just too vital to lose, as the full name of the refurbished attraction will be The Barnstormer Starring Goofy as The Great Goofini. Succinct, right?
Apparently WDI is trying to set up some battle royale between their beloved characters over who will lay claim to the mantle of “Great”, as judged by this concept art for the new meet-and-greet for Mickey in the old Main Street Exposition Hall:
Why even bother anymore? And what in God's name is wrong with that one kid's hand?!
Yay – more angular people with genetic abnormalities aggressively enjoying themselves. A kid standing on a trash can. Another apparently vogueing. Others flat-out sprinting towards the building – why are you sprinting if you have a Fastpass? And what’s the weird spectre looming on the second floor?
This rendering accompanies Disney’s announcement that the new Mickey meet-and-greet will utilize the Fastpass system for booking encounters with the characters. The building, formerly used for the Gulf Hospitality House, the Walt Disney Story, and a preview center for future attractions, has had its vintage infrastructure torn out so that the facility can be reconfigured as the Town Square Theater. It’s unknown if there will actually be any theater left – one of the two former Walt Disney Story auditoriums is currently used to screen classic Disney animated shorts – as the meet-and-greets will be themed to Mickey’s backstage dressing room. It sounds that very little will be left of the building’s past; the fairly famous character mural, painted by the great Disney artist Bill Justice, has already been destroyed.
The new meet-and-greet will feature an interactive standby queue to entertain those not using Fastpass to reserve time with the characters. Also note that Disney takes pains to state that Main Street is Mickey’s “new permanent home” – looks like he’s here to stay! So now we have the Town Square Theater (which may or may not have a theater) and the Main Street Cinema (which doesn’t actually show movies anymore).
Meanwhile, there’s the Haunted Mansion, where a massive queue redesign is underway. Pictures of the work can be found online, and reveal a number of references to obscure Mansion lore from the Sea Captain to Phineas Pock. It works in theory, but the brief glimpses we’ve seen really concern me that this new interactive queue is going to be way too on-the-nose. The pipe organ player’s crypt is shaped… like a giant pipe organ. With skulls coming out of the pipes. Just like in the ride! And the Sea Captain’s crypt has a bronze statue of a sea captain drowning! Right on the crypt! I know that I personally plan on having my cause of death commemorated in life-sized recreation on my own tombstone.
I know this is all nitpicking, but the more cartoony the attraction’s entrance becomes, the less effective it will be. The Mansion is great because it starts off as this mysterious, abandoned house – where nothing is obviously amiss but where there is an atmosphere of forboding. Slowly that unravels, and by the time Leota has her seance things go berserk. I’m not keen on scattering the queue with wackiness – especially wackiness that steals the thunder of the show’s original gags.
Yes, yes. Nitpicking.
The other big event on the Mansion front came a few days ago when, with no prior announcement, the “hitchhiking ghosts” segment was covered up and replaced with rather… inelegant… digital projections of the ghosts. Take a look, via Inside the Magic:
Word has emerged that this is only a temporary fix while the animatronics that usually inhabit this area are refurbished, but without any prior announcement from Disney the change caused widespread panic. In this atmosphere of change, with interactivity being added to the queue and “NextGen” on the way, I think that people had horrific visions of bad CGI projections interacting with the guests who had shelled out $85 extra for the magic NextGen RFID wristband. Thankfully, though, it appears that the animatronics will indeed return – the effect used for this scene since 1971 gives the ghosts a wonderfully dimensional and tactile appearance that projectors would be unable to achieve.
There’s one last thing we should mention while we’re at the Magic Kingdom. We’ve all continued to wonder what’s happening to The Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Managment since its fire last month. We’ve rooted, of course, for a return to the original show, but while Disney has neglected to reveal their plans a June re-opening appears to be on the cards. This has led most to assume that the Under New Management show will return as-is, but we’ve been told that Disney has not ordered a new Iago animatronic to replace the one that burned. This would preclude a mere restoration of the existing show, but what will appear instead is anyone’s guess. The original show? A hybrid of the two? Additional fuel for these rumors was added last week when one of the animatronics from the pre-show was removed; this could mean anything from mere repair work to something more significant. It would be nice to hear from Disney on this matter, but at least we still have a glimmer of hope that the terrible Under New Management show has gone the way of the dodo.
So that’s what’s happening at the Kingdom… for now. There are still rumors as to what happens next after the Fantasyland expansion – whether big things will be afoot for Tomorrowland or Frontierland – but that’s a story for another day. In the meantime, if you hear something, say something!
It’s 1993, you’ve spent the last few years polishing your koopa-stomping skills, and you’re looking to challenge yourself? The solution, obviously, is to head to Pleasure Island at Walt Disney World for Super Mario Nights at the Super Nintendo Power Dome.
That’s right kids (excluding unaccompanied minors), in the monstrous inflatable dome you’ll be able to play – for free! – thirty of the latest Nintendo games from 7 PM until midnight every day. And every night from 8-9 PM you can test your mettle in the Game Boy Challenge, competing with your fellow gamers for a free Nintendo Game Boy! Read all about it:
The Mario madness was the result of a summer-long promotion for Disney’s truly, truly abysmal film adaptation Super Mario Bros. The Hollywood Pictures production held its world premiere at the Pleasure Island theaters on May 25th, 1993, as Disney tried to fan the flames of the “Hollywood East” movement it had attempted to kindle with the opening of the Disney-MGM Studios in 1989.
This was actually the third world premiere that Disney had held in Orlando, following other screen phenomenons Dick Tracy and Encino Man. As a Disney spokeswoman said at the time, ”We would like to establish ourselves as a place for movie premieres. It’s a great opportunity for us to get the stars in here.” After the premiere, which counted among its 1,000 invited guests the film’s stars Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Fiona Shaw (a very well-respected actress otherwise; you might know her as Harry Potter’s Aunt Petunia), the VIPs were treated to a private party. Everyone had taken part in a motorcade and parade the previous day at the Disney-MGM Studios, where they placed their handprints in the cement of the Chinese Theater’s courtyard.
The Super Mario Nights at Pleasure Island lasted far longer than the film remained in theaters; the nightly free-gaming marathons inside the giant, decorated inflatable dome lasted until the end of October 1993 (This couldn’t have been a desperate ploy to get people to pay to enter Pleasure Island, could it?). Even competitor Universal got in on the act, placing Sega kiosks outside their Nick Studios tour so that people waiting in line could test the latest titles from Nintendo’s biggest rival. Later that summer they started test-marketing Sega games in front of live audiences in “Game Lab competitions.”
But don’t think the monstrous inflatable dome was only about meaningless shenanigans – it had a social consciousness as well! Following summer floods in the midwest, Nintendo held a 24-hour “All-Stars Mariothon” from August 24-25th. Guests paid to play, with donations going to the American Red Cross. Members of the local Boys and Girls Club were also brought in for the occasion, and even allowed to skip school on the 25th. The Orlando Sentinel reported that halfway through the evening, the event had drawn more than 500 and raised about $350.
Competitors tackled several games, with Team Nintendo “counselors” on hand to assist “with the finer points of the games.” A focus of the promotion was clearly the newly-released Super Mario All-Stars collection, as the Nintendo staff seemed intent on explaining the cartridge to the assembled press.
So, with Pleasure Island now fading into the mists of time, and bulldozers clearing away the remnants of the once-bustling nighttime district, let us doff our hats and pay tribute to the Monstrous Inflatable Dome from that summer of ’93. Now you’re playing with power!
Disney has just completed their 2011 Investor’s Conference, wining and dining the analysts who will be setting arbitrary goals for the company in the upcoming year and punishing or rewarding them accordingly. Part of the presentation involved the still-officially-unannounced Shanghai Disneyland, and we now have another frustratingly vague piece of concept art to obsess over.
Alain Littaye has given a nice summary of why Disney is keeping their cards so close to their vest, but hopefully we can actually get some concrete details about the park’s makeup if its official unveiling occurs as rumored in early April. I’m practically about to go berserk waiting for this, both because of what we don’t know and what we do know.
This is going to be a “Magic Kingdom”, but a different kind of Magic Kingdom. The layout will differ greatly from all of the other Disneyland-class parks, and from everything I hear from people working on the project they really want to do something unique and special and very high-quality. Unfortunately, while what I hear is good it’s also maddeningly vague. I hear about how everyone wants to do this right, with a classic WED-era ethos, but (obviously!) I hear no details. These are evil, evil people, folks, and they’re obviously conspiring to make me snap from trying to divine meaningful detail from cloudy, hazy, distant renderings. Maybe there isn’t even a Shanghai project at all! It’s a conspiracy.
But, just for fun, let’s look at this rendering and list what we do know about the new park:
It will not have a traditional hub-and-spoke layout, and will not incorporate the traditional lands in a traditional way. There might also be some innovation in the way the park is integrated with areas outside the berm.
Water will play a large role.
There will be no Main Street area.
The resort will have two hotels.
If you look closely at the rendering, you will see that the entrance appears to be a large, circular plaza with Mickey’s face in the center. After lots of water and greenery, a path reaches a castle – just whose castle, we don’t know. There’s also a brightly-lit area to the left of the entrance, which many believe to be the local equivalent of Downtown Disney.
It appears that Adventureland or its equivalent is located to the right of the park, where Tomorrowland would usually be. The one attraction we do know is going in the park, the pirate-themed flume ride originally designed for Hong Kong, can be seen looming over the area where Space Mountain might typically be sited.
Tim Delaney's concept art for a proposed Hong Kong Disneyland project shows the attraction that will be built in Shanghai - all the excitement of Splash Mountain combined with the franchisability of Pirates of the Caribbean!
The only other attraction widely discussed for the park is based on TRON, but we don’t yet know the nature or location of this ride.
One random thought that occurred to me is that with the water taxis and fountains on the lake, this will be the only other Disney park aside from those in Walt Disney World to be located adjacent to a navigable, Disney-owned body of water. Will this be Shanghai’s version of the Seven Seas Lagoon? Will it actually be able to, for once, match the ambiance of the approach to the Magic Kingdom? Wouldn’t that be nice? Here’s hoping that the details on the hotels and the resort itself live up to that challenge.
So, the long, long wait for details continues. I can be patient, right? Right?
Here’s a little look at the development of an idea that never appeared in the parks; these sketches by Imagineer Herb Ryman show the evolution of a concept for a “buffeteria” dining area in EPCOT. The sketches are undated, but we can divine that they are from fairly early in the park’s development – most likely somewhere between 1976 and 1978. First, they’re labeled as “United States Pavilion” instead of American Adventure, and we also see the monorail in two of the sketches which indicates that this was indeed the earlier version of the pavilion that was to be built between Future World and World Showcase.
Notes on the sketches indicate that the facility would seat 150 inside the “shell” and 100 on an outside terrace. The restaurant is labeled as “World Buffeteria” – perhaps that indicates that it was to feature a variety of cuisines? Buffeteria, of course, is one of those great old coined words that Disney used to create for their parks; this invented vernacular helped create a sense that you were truly in a unique place set apart from the regular world. Other buffeterias included the original incarnation of EPCOT’s Le Cellier as well as the beloved Trail’s End Buffeteria at Fort Wilderness.
Take a look at this progression of sketches:
While few will argue that this was Ryman’s most compelling assignment, and, in fact, details of the building itself are frustratingly vague, there’s one thing that’s really entertaining about these sketches – the people! Ryman’s art was famous for the cast of characters that circulated in the foreground, and it looks like Herb might have been more interested in the people in these sketches than in the buffeteria. I especially love the Edwardian gent in the bowler hat with his stogie, with what appears to be Carmen Sandiego on his arm. In that last sketch it even looks like Mr. Smee is in attendance, and, in a strangely prescient touch, Princess Jasmine. Some of these characters are so detailed, I wonder if they were based on real people.
Maybe the World Buffeteria won’t wind up being as lamented a lost attraction as Equatorial Africa, but the cast of characters there would have been really interesting!
Special thanks to John Donaldson for sharing these images
From the Progress City archives comes this collection of 33 tall tales and true from Disney history. Available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats.
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