"Life is a Kumquat!" - Let's watch the Grand Opening of Walt Disney World!

You didn't think I'd head down to the 50'th Anniversary Celebration of Walt Disney World without sharing a vintage Disney Parks special did you?  Well strap in, because what better special to watch for the anniversary of Walt Disney World than the Grand Opening of Walt Disney World?

I love this.  It's not as insane as the Tenth Anniversary special (what could be?) but it is very close.  That running subplot about the campers is extremely special.  So is the catchy song about how, if you think you do not have to visit WDW because you've been to Disneyland, you are very wrong, because WDW has MORE!!!  We get extended looks at the Country Bears and the Hall of Presidents, and rare footage of the Mickey Mouse Review.  Arthur Fiedler conducts a huge marching band, Bob Hope gives a weird speech, Glen Campbell sings existential songs in the woods, and Julie Andrews sings and watches a good chunk of the Animated Canon!  All this and the amazing Vault Disney bumper!

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Art of the Day!

It's still Faebruary, so here's a portrait of the best Disney Fairy.

"Positive Attitude Reflects Todays Youth" - Let's Watch "The Party In Concert"

Goodness, I can't wait to experience (vicariously, through Disney Blog People who can actually afford this thing) the Galactic Starcruiser Interactive Experience can you?  In the meantime, let's travel back to the early days of Disney Hollywood Studios, especially for those of you who were longing for a weird vintage Disney special the past few weeks.

The audio quality on this one is kind of bad but it's pretty fascinating.  This is "The Party In Concert" from 1990, and early-90's Disney Channel doesn't get much more pure than this.  (Like, look at the schedule for the rest of the evening right at the beginning of the video.  Late-night Disney Channel was basically uncharted space back then, and you could tune in and see anything.  Classic movies, a documentary, a concert, maybe even an actual vintage Disney thing, or a combination of two or more of these!)

I'm not even sure if the special itself is as interesting as The Party itself as an entity.  The Party (and yes, it does stand for "Positive Attitude Reflects Today's Youth, and that's maybe the funniest aspect of the whole thing) was composed of five particularly popular and talented teenagers with Disney sanctioned attitude plucked from the ranks of the 90's Mickey Mouse Club: Albert Fields, Tiffini Hale, Chase Hampton, Damon Pampolina, and future Pearl voice actress Deedee Magno.  They were pitched to us kids as our new favorite band ever and promoted as such, starring in specials and on a regular segment on the Mickey Mouse Club and recording a cover of a Rubinoos song (one which would be the center of a small controversy later) which was the style at the time.

Now even at the time, I thought, "Clearly Disney saw how popular New Kids On The Block were so they made their own pop group.  I am sorry for The Party, but I am already too much of a fan of NKOTB!  And by 'a fan' I mean, given my as-yet-undiagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, 'I start vibrating through several formes and dimensions with an intensity that could shatter glass when I see that one Magic Can commercial.'  Anyway.  I am not falling for this."

Now as an adult, I wondered if that really was The Party's origin story.  Surely there's more to it?  Well, not really.  Disney really did see how insanely lucrative NKOTB were, so they reverse-engineered their own even more wholesome group (and later created an even squeakier clean, no reckless use of the word "Hell" version of them with the MMC group).  They lasted into 1993, releasing a final album ominously, wonderfully titled "The Party Is Over", and reunited a few years ago.  Last I checked, they're scheduled to perform for Walt Disney World's 50'th Anniversary at Disney Springs.

So that's The Party.  A weird Disney moment from the weird 90's.  More dinosaurs and/or animation next week, I promise.

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Art!  A beautiful fellow who visits the Cornell Panama Fruit Feeder sometimes.  Lizards really are the best live models:

Yesterworld's History of "The Black Cauldron"

I've got a soft spot a mile deep for "The Black Cauldron" as you well know.  Here's an excellent recent documentary that finally shows us some of the scenes infamously cut from the production:

Of all the animation history books I've read, surprisingly few of them talk about animated productions in their historical/pop culture context.  I bring this up because I feel like the fact that "Black Cauldron" just happened to be released around the same time as "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" should warrant a mention, if only because that is incredible.

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Art of the Day: Have some jolly toucans.

Let's go Under the Sea!

It is Pisces Season my friends, and I can think of no better place to spend it than deep under the sea.  First, lets travel on a virtual ride on the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea attraction from the early, weird days of Disney World.  This comes from our friends at Defunctland, and is intended to be experienced on a VR headset.  I played it on my phone held right up to my face, which worked... okay.  It is a phenomenal recreation of a ride I got to experience one time ever and I look forward to other attraction recreations.

Next, an episode of the wonderful "Eyewitness Video" series about the ocean.  I really like this series and want to binge it at some point - after "The Muppet Show" of course.

And finally, Blank Check Podcast is doing a series on John Musker and Ron Clements and the Disney Renaissance.  So far, it's fantastic and their recent "Little Mermaid" episode is wonderful.

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Art of the Day!

A little water sprite for Faebruary

Roger Rabbit is Our Easter Bunny - Let's Watch the 1992 WDW Easter Parade!

I think it's fair to say that the good folks at Retro WDW.com helped save a very very weird holiday weekend by sharing this particularly good seasonal weird vintage Disney Parks special.



Highlights include:

* - The commercials!  The ads for Sea World ("Make contact!!!"), Kissimmee St. Cloud, and "Adventures in Wonderland" especially slammed a nostalgia button I didn't know I had.
* - Roger Rabbit as a walk-around character!
* - Never mind him, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as walk-around characters?!
* - Never mind them, the Sinclair family from "Dinosaurs" as walk-around characters?!?  I bet you can't guess what song they get to dance to!!! 😔
* - The Spring Break montage!  Possibly cut down from an entire Spring Break at Disney Parks television special I seem to remember and which in hindsight feels ill-conceived.
* - The fabulous finale and musical number!  I don't have enough gigantic frilly dresses in my life.
* - The "Fantasmic" preview.  All of it.  The whole thing.  This is worth watching the entire special for because it is bonkers.  And very definitely something made in the immediate wake of "Home Alone".  Trust me, you'll be able to tell.

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Art!

Random Colorful Dinosaurs

Let's Binge "Gargoyles"!

I can't offer you much in these Interesting Times, but I can offer you some recommendations what to binge watch while we're all stuck indoors.

I've done a few series marathons in the past in the good/bad old pre-streaming days and thankfully it's easier than ever to binge some of my favorites like "Gummi Bears" and "Fraggle Rock".  The former is available with Disney+ over which quite a lot of digital ink has been spilled and my extremely controversial opinion is that it is Good.  For one thing, it enabled me to finally, finally binge "Gargoyles", something I've been meaning to do since at least the late 90's and has been really difficult, up until Disney+ gave ready access to nearly every Disney Afternoon series.

Here's the trip report.  It gets a little spoilery the further in I get so either read it after or watch along with me.  My other really controversial opinion is that "Gargoyles" is excellent; easily one of the best animated series of the 1990's.  I'd go as far as to say that this is a series that tells as elaborate an ongoing saga with as well-developed characters as "Game of Thrones" except it's much more consistently good at it.

All that and you're internal dialogue will be voiced by Keith David for a while.

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Art!

Spring Is Maaaaaaagic! Let's Watch The 1985 WDW Easter Parade!

I am heading down to Walt Disney World very soon!  Goodness I can't wait to experience the whole Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group insanity for myself!  Ha ha ha (please keep my family and I in your thoughts and prayers) ha ha!  😨

So as is tradition, let's travel back to the long-long ago and watch a weird vintage Disney Parks special.  Now this particular special is mostly here due to unabashed nostalgia.  I haven't seen this in ages and can't believe how much I remembered from it; it's almost certainly my first encounter with most of these songs and artists.  I'm not going to say it's outright good, you don't even see much as far as vintage Walt Disney World goes.  But among the wonderful things you do see and hear are Doug Henning!  A very young Bobby Brown!  Upsettingly wrong-sounding Goofy!  The star of the brand new Disney movie "Baby"!?!



Stick around after the parade for a couple local news shows and a pledge drive!  Ah, YouTube.

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Art of the Day!

The coming spring season is a time for animals to get flashy, so here is an extremely speculative Triceratops couple:

"Defunct TV: Jim Henson"

While I love the Defunctland channel anyway, they've completely outdone themselves with this fantastic six-part tribute to Jim Henson.  A wonderfully edited tribute to a wonderful man, it covers everything from "Sam and Friends" to "The Muppets at Walt Disney World".




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Art of the week:

"I've been singing you songs all day! I'm not a bloody jukebox!?!" - Thoughts on "Mary Poppins Returns"

By all means, I shouldn't like "Mary Poppins Returns."

I was really dreading this one.  The whole idea of a decades after the fact "Mary Poppins" sequel left a sour feeling in my gut.  This was intensified by the fact that we got "Saving Mr. Banks" a few years ago, and in hindsight, doesn't it feel like the Disney studio was testing the waters for interest in more Mary Poppins?  A lot more Mary Poppins.  Not as much more Mary Poppins as more Star Wars but still, more Mary Poppins.

(Side note that "Saving Mr. Banks" is also, just as a reminder, an almost completely fictionalized and, so help me God, masturbatory depiction of historical events.  Where it turns out the Disney Studios version of P.L. Travers' stories is just the best and wasn't Walt Disney right all along and Travers was wrong and it's very good and right that Disney ignored all her criticisms and did his own thing despite her reservations, and by golly Travers even ended up loving the movie -she loved, loved, LOVED it!  This is true because the Disney studios say so in their movie about the making of "Mary Poppins" and that's now the version of events everyone is going to assume is true and there's nothing you can do about it!  I am not for even half of a second going to pretend that "Saving Mr. Banks" isn't gross.)

So anyway here we are with "Mary Poppins Returns".  And it's... good!  Look it was never going to be able to hold a candle (or gas lamp) to the original, but it is, all things considered, pretty good.  I'll never understand why Rob Marshall is The Musical Guy at Disney (I mean I know why, it's cause of that one weird year "Chicago" swept the Oscars, but I'll never understand why), and I cannot fathom why you'd hire Lin-Manuel Miranda and not have him write a single song (and the songs are fine, mind, they got me laughing and crying and humming along and everything), but it's all good.

For sure the reason all of this works is Emily Blunt.  The key is that her version of Mary Poppins is not different from Julie Andrews'; it's different from how everyone remembers Julie Andrews.  Even in the original film, Mary Poppins was a bit of a trickster, gently sarcastic, mischievous, magical, and terribly mysterious.  Chaotic Good, if you will.  "I never explain anything," she says.  Blunt's Poppins has a bit more of an edge though, and I can't help but wonder if it's because the adult Banks children don't seem to remember any of their wondrous whimsical adventures.  (Which is a plot point that sticks in my craw.  I don't think a tea party on the ceiling or a day out in an animated painting is something you just forget about.)

So how about the traditionally animated sequence then?  It's absolutely wonderful!  It's got a whole theater full of excellent character designs, a couple terrific songs, and it's over way, way too soon.  It left me yearning for more.  Man, some day some American studio's going to be brave enough to do a traditionally animated feature, I can only hope.

For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Art!

"My God... it's full of *ads*!" - Thoughts on "Ralph Breaks the Internet"

I finally watched "Ralph Breaks the Internet", and thanks to my obligation from the early, early days of this blog to review every Disney Animated Canon feature film, I must now review it.  Thing is, I've got a lot of conflicting thoughts here, so I guess I'm going to just transcribe my internal dialogue, kind of like I did with "The Muppets" all those years ago.  Strap in...

First Thoughts: "It's good!  'Ralph Breaks the Internet' is very good!  It's as funny and heartwarming as the first film and it does everything a good sequel should do.  It brings back the characters we love, sets them off on an exciting new adventure with fun new characters, and has them grow and change and learn from their new experiences.  This is a damn good movie."

Second Thoughts: "I know right?  We know fellow Disney nerds who were wailing about the end of the world (or at least the end of this recent streak of good Disney Animated Canon films) when this movie first came out, so it's really nice to finally see it.  Goodness, this is that not-quite-as-rare-as-everybody-thinks sequel that's as good as the first movie.  Heck, we might even like it a little bit better than the first movie!

"... ... ...But..."

FT: "I'll let you get to that 'But' in a minute.  We need to talk about sequels, and Disney sequels specifically.  Even though we live in a world of franchises, there seems to be a particular feeling of dread associated with 'Ralph 2' and 'Mary Poppins Returns' and 'Frozen 2'."

ST: "We're all still traumatized by the DTV Disney sequel era."

FT: "Right, right."

ST: "A lot of that dread seems to be building off all the damn Live-Action-For-An-Extremely-Strange-Definition-Of-Live-Action Remakes.  Which, by the way, we will not be considering part of the Disney Animated Canon.  Direct theatrical sequels to films we've already reviewed here are fine, but remakes?  Ugh, no.  Anyway, this can be a nice segway into my 'But...'"

FT: "Yes, go ahead."

ST: "But on the other hand, this very funny and heartwarming movie is also very definitely what Disney has been referring to as a Brand Deposit.  So are all the sequels and remakes and whatnot.  Hell, 'Ralph 2' is particularly blatant about it: There is a whole sequence set inside the official Disney website and so help me if the opening to that sequence, taking in a vista of everything Disney owned the rights to circa last Thanksgiving, doesn't feel like 'Look upon how much pop culture we control, ye mighty, and despair!'"

FT: "I mean, that's true.  But didn't the first 'Ralph' have a lot of (ahem) Brands involved as well?  All those officially licensed video game characters hanging out?  And anyway, without that visit to the Disney website, we wouldn't have the amazing Princess hangout scene, which we loved!"

ST: "It is a great scene, but consider this dismaying observation: Disney's not only all about Brand Deposits but about Brand Integrity; the fear is that if they don't take all their property super seriously, nobody will.  That means no more 'Star Wars' characters shaking their butts to pop songs and a 'What if all the Disney Princesses had a slumber party' scene that feels like a really heckin' neutered version of a killer idea.  And it cost us a scene where Vanillope would've been all, 'Ah, shut up, Emo kid' to Kylo Ren and tell me we wouldn't do anything within reason to see that."

FT: "Oh damn.  But we still really like this movie, even with all this... this stuff that's making us slightly uneasy."

ST: "Yes, yes we do.  Still, uneasy is a good word for it.  Heck, we have 'Mary Poppins: 2 Practical, 2 Perfect' up next and, honestly, the fact that it seems to have had NO pop culture impact at all, good or bad, is worrying.  I don't think we're going to like it as much as 'Ralph 2'."

FT: "Probably not, but if it sucks, we'll have fun ranting about it."

ST: "Same format as this?"

FT: "God, no."

For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Art of the Day!


I saw a trailer for another movie about video game characters getting into various shenanigans and made this regretful thing:

Hello, Nostalgia Bomb. Let's Watch "A Dream Called Walt Disney World"

The early days of Walt Disney Home Video were... something.  But among the seemingly random films and specials in the first few runs of home video releases was this very nice short film about Walt Disney World circa 1980.  It's basically a visual guide to the park presumably for tourists.  But in it's brief half-hour it provides a lovely document of what Disney World had to offer back then.  The Bob-around Boats, Top of the World dinner show, and River Country may be gone now, but goodness, there are still a few early attractions I've never experienced!



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Art of the Day!

More Mary Blair-ish things!

Grim, Grinning Osmonds Come Out to Socialize! - Let's Watch "Disneyland Showtime"!

"Trish," you ask, "I know you like sharing the weird vintage Disney Park specials you like to watch before heading down to Disney World to get yourself hyped.  But why in the world are you sharing one from 1970 set in Disneyland?"

Oh, boy.  Just watch:



So the main point of this here weird vintage Disney Park special from 1970 is to advertise the debut of the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland.  And eventually we do get there but not before one of the very oddest Disney specials I've ever seen.  The thing is, I know I saw this as a little kid and it almost certainly was my first encounter with nearly all the songs included in it.  Including the unforgettable "Oh, Please Be Him", which has to be one of the most hysterical-in-every-sense-of-the-word songs ever created. 

And I'm almost positive this was the first time I ever encountered The Osmonds.  Whew boy...  

Unless you're a huge Osmonds fan, this gang of smiling white 70's boys with unsettling teeth are by far the least interesting aspect of the special.  They sing smiling white versions of contemporary songs, they are among the first people to ride the Haunted Mansion (I promise we're getting there), and they emphasize the crucial importance of having a designated spot to meet when your party gets separated.  Then again, this is a version of Disneyland where the costumed characters openly kidnap people.

I think this must have been made smack in the middle of what would eventually be unofficially known by Disney nerds as the Walt Disney Presents Weird Sh*t Happening to and/or Around Kurt Russel Series (not to be confused with the John Carpenter Presents Weird Sh*t Happening to and/or Around Kurt Russel Trilogy, which is generally considered better), because Kurt is our host here.  And he narrates the very best part of the special where we get a look at the effects and characters that populate the Haunted Mansion.  He also gives a STORY for the beloved ride that's much nicer than any business with rings stuck in the sidewalk.  We get to ride the ride along with the Osmonds and get a reminder of how mind-blowing those effects must have been for the first visitors.

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Art of the Day!

Cute, Mary Blair-esque birds



 

A Salute to All of America, but Mostly Mickey's Birthdayland? Let's Watch the 1988 WDW Independance Day Special!

It's February and you know what that means: I'm going to Walt Disney World this month!  And as is of course tradition, I am hyping myself up by watching weird vintage Disney Park television specials.

And because I also felt it was kind of weird keeping a Christmas post up top for so long, here's a... Fourth of July special?  Well, why not?



A special with this much stuff is right for any season.  Highlights include wrong-sounding Mickey announcing the whole entire new Magic Kingdom land built for his birthday, the very odd "Spirit of America" parade, a look at the then-new Norway pavilion, the Electric Light Parade complete with circus floats, a special preview of the Disney/MGM Studios, and the triumphant return of our lanky tap-dancing friend Tommy Tune in a patriotic musical finale that seems to go on forever. 

I hope that everyone in the coming year brings as much enthusiasm to their creative endeavors as Uncle Jessie does playing percussion here.

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Art of the Week!

I drew Pluto from memory and this happened:

The "Return to OZ" Tweetmentary

For this week's Tweetmentary, I have a movie that I find endlessly fascinating: 1985's "Return to OZ".  I had quite a lot to say about it: