February 2009

It’s a Disneyland Resort Paris tradition to accompany their newest attractions and events with a flashy, flash-based “mini site” separate from their main website, from the opening of Walt Disney Studios Park right through countless seasons and carnivals to the 15th Anniversary. In fact, they’re really the only Disney Resort which spends such money and effort on these kind of sites.

For Mickey’s Magical Party, we’ve got yet another to explore. Officially launched on Monday, you could arrive at the landing page to find only a few languages available — and not the ones you might expect, either. Denmark, Switzerland and Austria were the first countries officially launched, but with a bit of guesswork you can easily find the actual English-language site for the UK at www.mickeymagicalyear.com/uk/uk.

Currently, the landing page now also features Ireland and Italy, as well as the general “Other Countries” international option.

Though mickeymagicalparty.com redirects here, they apparently weren’t interested in mickeysmagicalparty.com when these domain names were registered last year. In fact, on the UK version of the new website there seems to be a little confusion about the celebration’s name — getting us off to a bad start, the title in your browser will instead read “Mickey’s Magical Year“.

Let’s begin our full commentary and tour here…

Pick your language and a pink balloon flies into view from the bottom of the screen, carrying an envelope. These carrier balloons are also being used extensively in the marketing campaigns for the US parks this year, although the balloons, for some reason, have a completely different design.

Gradually, more balloons float up into view on the screen. Immediately you’ll notice something different about this website compared to those of the past — it fills the entire screen, and resizes itself accordingly.

All the resort’s previous flash mini-sites have been a static size within the middle of a regular page, whereas this new style offers a more involving experience. The introduction continues with the tagline “Celebrate the greatest part of the year” and the Disneyland Resort Paris logo — which curiously has a little miniature balloon graphic floating above it… see it? That probably shouldn’t be there.

The introduction ends with five much larger balloons floating into the sky decorated with images of the five key new events of the celebration. You’ll notice throughout that the website doesn’t use the “daytime”, blue skies style we’ve seen in earlier marketing images or even on the Central Plaza fences. The entire design style appears to have suddenly been changed to a purple twilight sky with foil rather than rubber balloons.

The homepage features an animated backdrop of locations from around the resort, with simply the celebration logo inviting you to “enter”. The style here is obviously meant to be busy and informal, with some of the graphics cut out of photos and others properly drawn. The animated characters of Stitch, Minnie and Mickey seem to clash with the neater style of Tinkerbell and Dumbo floating in the sky — especially the thick-outlined, puppet-like Mickey. In previous websites, we’ve come to expect live-action characters to be superimposed into the flash animation.

Click “enter” and you’re actually taken across to the “Toonificator”, but we’ll head there later. Instead, we’ve clicked “Calender” (yes, rather than the correct spelling of “Calendar”) to find not so much a list of dates but five simple, floating balloons displaying the five new events.

Click an event and you’re given a very (very!) brief description lifted straight from that slightly baffling marketing text, along with the event’s poster artwork.

The next option along displays the three key special offers they’re running to launch Mickey’s Magical Party — the seemingly eternal Kids Under 7 Stay, Play & Travel FREE, a continuation of the 15% discount on tickets booked in advance, and another extension of that huge package discount that has been running since late last year. With both the economic problems of the moment and the awful GBP/Euro exchange rate, British guests are now being enticed with a huge 40% off their package booking, with the offer now extended to arrival dates right up to September!

And now, we reach the main section of the website — Disney’s Toonificator. This seems to be inspired both by the cartoon-style images offered by instant messaging providers such as Yahoo and Windows Live and, probably more so, by a feature on The Simpsons Movie website which swept the internet a couple of years ago, allowing users to create themselves as a Simpson character.

For this Disney version, you’ve got a seemingly endless range of hairstyles, face types and colours to Toonify yourself with, along with several special Disney costumes and accessories. Such a range, in fact, that you can create some rather bizarre Toons indeed (see above). You can also upload a photo and have it “Toonify” yourself automatically.

We settled for something a little more ordinary, and we’re now in the “virtual” Mickey’s Magical Party, a globe-type horizon filled with more cut-out landmarks and locations, which you explore by using the left and right arrow keys.

You’ll immediately notice that it’s not only the Mickey’s Magical Party events featured here — you’ll wander across landscapes representing both parks, with most of the resort’s recent attractions featured, such as Crush’s Coaster.

It’s good to see Disneyland Resort Paris realising many people might not yet have experienced these brand new attractions for themselves, with pop-up boxes providing brief descriptions and photos.

For the actual Magical Party events, however, you’ll find something a little more — a special game for each one. Here, we’ve arrived at Playhouse Disney – Live on Stage!.

Luckily for us, all the games are incredibly simple and easy to complete. For Playhouse Disney, you need to simply remember a very short series of colours. This, perhaps, confirms the far younger age group Disneyland Resort Paris appears to be marketing itself towards lately…

We pass by a bizarre landscape of Toon Studio lampposts, Stitch Live! and… giant mushrooms?

Cars Quatre Roues Rallye, some large fireworks and a strange machine decorated with shapes.

Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars finally rolls around.

Here you’re shown a lineup of five of the cars and have to click on the one which is illuminated for it to beep its horn, as simple as that.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, CinéMagique, and the Studio Tram Tour billboard entrance we’ve not seen for over 18 months.

Discoveryland is represented fairly well, with airships and plently of ironwork…

…Only disturbed by the Dance Time going on at its centre. This game actually gives a very accurate preview of the real event, with visitors having to use arrow keys to step their feet on the segments of the coloured floor mat in sync with the counter at the bottom of the screen.

Disneyland Park seems a little barren from here, though Disney’s Once Upon a Dream Parade does make a welcome appearance.

Several of the background graphics also animate when you click on them. Here, Mickey Mouse pops out of a giant cuckoo clock as fireworks explore behind. Because, that makes you want to visit the resort, right?

Minnie’s Party Train steams into view…

…with an interesting party game which seems to invite you to connect up a webcam and then move around to guide the train into position. Or, you can just use your mouse to trace the figure-of-eight path.

Finally, we arrive in front of Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant where It’s Party Time… with Mickey and Friends is happening. Take a close look at the Castle — see anything different?

For the new Central Plaza show, you’ve simply got to stop balloons floating into the air.

And there we have it, a little journey across the resort’s newest attractions with a few ultra-simlistic “party games” thrown in. The audience here is obviously intended to be very young, whilst the overall design style leaves a little to be desired — especially since just last year we were wowing over that spectacular and spectacularly well-built Tower of Terror website.

The Toonifyer game has obviously been given the majority of the effort put into this website, but the result is made slightly pointless since your created character only serves to walk left and right through the virtual world. You can enter an email address and save the character, but there seems to be no option to save an image of the character to use as a forum or instant messenger icon/avatar, for example.

Ultimately, this website also includes little to no real information about the new events of Mickey’s Magical Party — some of which, especially those at Walt Disney Studios Park, are actually probably well worth visiting for.

In fact, upon arriving at the website, visitors will surely be confused as to the overal purpose or theme of the event, since it jumps straight to the point of the Toonifyer game and the events, without a real introduction. A 15th Anniversary speaks for itself, but what’s the point of this celebration? What’s the reason for visiting? We fear guests won’t find the answers here…

• Take a look for yourself here and leave your own comments below!

Will Disneyland Park be decorated for Mickey’s Magical Party? You bet it will. Though perhaps not as strongly as for the 15th Anniversary, you can expect to spot the year-long celebration even when none of its three Disneyland Park events are happening.

The first item on the (small, it should be said) list of decorations is a new look for Main Street’s “seasonal” giant white lampposts. “Seasonal” because they were first introduced as the Princess chandeliers for Christmas 2005, before being converted to hold the large, blue, LED-encrusted Lumière banners we’ve enjoyed for two whole years of the 15th Anniversary…

…And the resort’s Entertainment department doesn’t plan on retiring them any time soon.

From late next month, expect to see Main Street, U.S.A. lined by lampposts transformed into a whole new style, covered with bright, multi-coloured streamers (similar to those seen at the American parks), topped with yellow “Mickey Mouse” shapes and holding blue circles showing an image of not only Mickey, but Donald, Goofy and Pluto too.

Retlaw on Disney Central Plaza forum managed to capture the first photo of the first “test” lamppost to be converted, hiding behind a backstage hedge:

The design is… eclectic, shall we say, and certainly far more modern than the classically-styled 15th Anniversary banners. The bright mixture of colours and the overall design of the streamers wrapped around the white poles closely resembles designs seen at the entrances of Disneyland in California and Magic Kingdom in Florida for their various celebrations over recent years, a sign that perhaps Paris has been swayed into following suit (by a “suit”) — or that our resort’s Entertainment team merely saw and liked the design.

As DLRP Times blog reported in January, the old 15th Anniversary banners have already all but disappeared:

If you’d been planning to join the advertised “finale” of the 15th Anniversary this Winter, you’d miss both the regular Candleabration and the beautiful illuminated decorations.

With all the lampposts now backstage being prepared for the Party, it’s a chance to enjoy a brief spell of Main Street, U.S.A. as it was originally designed by the Imagineers (remember them?). Expect the bright colours of the party to begin arriving in the second half of March, ready for the 28th March 2009 press events.

Photos as credited.

Guests had the unique opportunity to meet both Mickey and Minnie Mouse together, at once, in Town Square, or both Donald and Daisy Duck near Casey’s Corner.

As the Characters Photos Blog reports, Mickey and Minnie came dressed for the occasion in special costumes — Mickey with red hearts decorating his shirt and Minnie in a bright pink polka-dot number:

Never one to miss a new trend, however, Minnie was also spotted in a different — even more loved-up — dress over the weekend by Scrooge at Disney Magic Interactive forum:

A scattering of white hearts replace the classic polka dots on her dress, which has longer sleeves and extra red trims!

Between their regular clothes, Christmas and Halloween costumes, Welsh and Irish dress and individual park and land outfits, the wardrobes of the happy couple continue to grow!

Photos as credited.

Though Stitch Live!, the interactive “living character” show at Walt Disney Studios Park, was an instant hit upon opening last March, its pre-show areas inside the re-purposed Walt Disney Television Studios building weren’t quite as successful.

Part of this was fixed in August 2008 when the main pre-show video — an advertisement for Disney Channel — was completely replaced by a new introduction featuring the stars of Lilo & Stitch beginning the storytelling before you enter the main theatre.

Now, you can finally take a seat while you enjoy this part of the show! Most guests would previously congregate at the back here before, leaning awkwardly on the covered windows, so this is a smart sign of spotting where the guest experience can be improved — if only with a simple bench.

The outside waiting area has also received a new screen as part of the latest changes. In its 2002 incarnation, this area featured a block of nine rear-projection screens which were both rather faint and rather dated in appearance from their introduction.

This time, the Imagineers have gone with a giant plasma/LCD flatscreen, housed within an indented border. The frame which surrounded the old screen has been entirely changed and the screen now displays an animated space scene and displays updates counting down each minute until you can proceed inside.

However, the screen does appear to have some issues with reflections in this covered outdoor space… and was it a good investment just to flash up how many minutes we’ve got left to wait? Why not explain how TV satellites work, or the history of Disney and television, such as the old ‘Disneyland’ TV show?

• Discover our brand new guide to Stitch Live! — find out how the technology works, the defunct attractions which used to be housed in the building and more!

Photos courtesy of our friends at WDSfans.com!

Unlike Main Street USA, based on a turn-of-the-century American town where consumerism is developing and developing fast, with shopfronts dazzling your vision and leading right off the street, the Front Lot of Walt Disney Studios Park is closely — perhaps, it seems, rather too closely — modelled entirely on the glamorous, calm administration courtyards at the entrance to the grand old Hollywood studios.

The nondescript — though pretty — buildings you’ll find in those, set well back from the main thoroughfare amongst sedate greenery, aren’t exactly ideal for large stores that need to command your attention, not least when you’ve the huge, overpowering presence of Disney Studio 1 just metres away.

As you enter Walt Disney Studios Park, all giddy with excitement, drawn toward Disney Studio 1 and distracted by the Fantasia Fountain, how often do you completely forget for a moment that the Walt Disney Studios Store even exists?

That’s exactly the problem they’ve begun to solve…

As you can see, much of the upper section of the store has now been surrounded by construction walls, which, though not at all related to the celebration, are decorated in the same Mickey’s Magical Party style as those currently surrounding Central Plaza.

Except, of course, customised with a different message — “The store remains open”…

This project was actually first mentioned in a video interview on the now-defunct 15th Anniversary Blog, when a backstage Cast Member from Merchandising stated they’d like to “open up” the store.

The desire seems to be make it “address” Place des Frères Lumière much better than it currently does, with some rumours suggesting the windows now covered by walls to the right of the red canopy could become extra doors leading inside. Since the walls cover such a large area away from the boutique itself, some changes to the planters — which did in the past seem to shield the building from the courtyard a little too much — could also be in line.

(Photos taken before works began)

As admin Kristof on magicforum reports, however, changes are already being seen inside with the layout of merchandise. Outside, the removal of the store’s Christmas decorations also finally saw the end of the out-of-place Disney Princess covering on the red carpet canopy entrance.

Perhaps a larger problem lies exactly here — what is the focus of the store? Front Lot effectively has two, very large Emporium-style stores selling a very general selection of merchandise, with little differentiation between Studio 1‘s Legends of Hollywood and Walt Disney Studios Store here.

Though criticism that “every boutique sells the same thing” is strong as ever over in Disneyland Park, it can at least be said that Main Street‘s stores — from The Storybook Store to Boardwalk Candy Palace — mostly each offer something different…

Photos by Mouetto, Disney Central Plaza forum; DLRP Today.

Disneyland Resort Paris have long looked to main French TV network TF1 for television promotion when it comes to new attractions or events, and Mickey’s Magical Party will be no different. In fact, they’re due to launch one of their most substantial tie-ins to date: a special dance contest for children aged 5-10, in the same vein as the telephone-voting talent contests which seem to have taken over almost every nation on the planet.

In France, the two biggest shows of this kind are Nouvelle Star and Star Academy, so what to call Mickey’s own version? Mickey Star, bien sûr!

The show’s casting website has already gone live at www.castingmickeystar.fr, which actually redirects straight to www.mickeymagicalyear.com/mickeystar/, also confirming the web address of the upcoming mini-site of the actual celebration.

Star Acamedy‘s own Nikos Aliagas will present the broadcast, which, from 6th to 18th February, is accepting video uploads of children aged 5 to 10 dancing to a song of their choice for one minute.

Then, from 19th February, a jury of professionals at Disneyland Resort Paris will pick the best of the entrants, who will be invited to the resort on 21st or 22nd February (yes, it’s all happening very fast) to join the final auditions.

And what does the young winner receive? Why, the chance to dance live on that new Central Plaza Stage alongside Mickey, to launch the entire Mickey’s Magical Party celebration to millions of viewers on TF1 on 29th March 2009!

The first short trailers for the new tie-in have appeared on TF1 this week:

Things will actually play out a little differently to the schedule mentioned earlier, with TF1 viewers seeing adverts to check out the final auditions at the website from 8th to 19th March, with the final result announced on 20th March.

Then, from 21st March, viewers will see advertisements for the big event and the final winner’s moment of magic will come in a special extended advertisement on 29th March 2009 just before the 8pm news. The entire thing, really, is merely a series of special advertisements, with most the action being broadcast instead online.

According to the official website, though, Nikos will be on the judging panel alongside not only Mickey but Stitch and Donald Duck. Listen closely — well, perhaps you won’t have to listen too close — and you’ll hear something special in the background too: the full version of the “It’s Party Time” dance remix, all 6 minutes of this controversial, noisy, europop mash-up of the actual, really very different theme song of the year.

If you’d like to listen away from the Mickey Star website — though judging by several readers’ comments we’re not sure if you’ll appreciate knowing — you can also listen on Vasile Sirli‘s very own MySpace page. The resort’s musical director also has a few more, rather more — dare we say — “listenable” tracks on there from his archive, too.

Video uploaded by newsdlrp.

The roof canopy we saw being constructed so faithfully to the design of the Walt Disney Television Studios it joins onto was only the beginning. The third new attraction in Production Courtyard has finally unveiled its entrance — and the look is every bit in-keeping with the location.

Photo: Mathieu, Disney Central Plaza forum

Well, admittedly the bright yellow Mickey Mouse shape and its colourful text is a slight departure, but the pink border actually matches the circa-2002 column of Stitch Live! next door, as does the new Playhouse Disney column itself…

Photo: Mathieu, Disney Central Plaza forum

Though, with that pre-designed pink border in place, and to give a bit of variety compared to Stitch, the Imagineers have instead gone with a classic deep red column for the alien’s new TV partner. And, rather than a satellite dish, a fancifully-designed, smaller antenna.

The Playhouse sign and column also sit slightly to the left of the show times indicator below, rather than at its middle. This provides an end point to the extended canopy and allows both signs to be seen easily between the trees of the courtyard.

But they weren’t done there… It’s worth remembering that Playhouse Disney doesn’t have the same widespread recognition it does across the USA, with some Europeans perhaps never encountering it before either through lack of a premium TV subscription or its plain lack of availability in their country.

Photo: Disneytheque.com

So, to give a little idea of the characters to be found inside, four new images of the four groups of characters popping out from colourful TV screens has been added next to the main logo, as seen above.

The attraction has also been announced as officially opening on 4th April 2009 in the ‘Backstage’ Cast Member magazine, though so-called “soft opening” previews/open rehearsals are expected during the week or fortnight before then.

Photos as credited.

Hearing the news of hip hop beats and jazzy street dance that are to come when It’s Dance Time… in Discoveryland premieres, the dreams of visionaries and the historical future held by Discoveryland may have cracked just a little.

But, if the latest word is true, it won’t the more classical, Verne-inspired area of the land welcoming DJ Stitch and his loud party tunes, but the other side of Discoveryland… that arguably even more strange, 1980s/90s corner which houses Star Tours and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Discovery fans, breathe a small sigh of relief.

Current work going on over by Star Tours has seen the entire ground dug up around its towering entrance sign, from Videopolis right across to Star Traders.

View from the Fastpass entrance to Space Mountain:

Photo by Mathieu, Disney Central Plaza forum

And, in a light dusting of snow, from Discoveryland Station:

Photo by dlrp team, Disney Central Plaza forum

This would be a completely new location for a live show in the park, since the few other entertainment events held in the land have been positioned further toward its entrance. You could even suggest that, by positioning a live Stitch-hosted show here, they might also be trying to drum up more trade for Star Tours and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience themselves, both taking noticeable dips in guest numbers in recent years.

Why do they need to dig up the ground, if this is work for the new show (which is supposed to be hosted by Stitch atop a moving podium, with just coloured dance mats on the floor)..? Unfortunately, we don’t know yet. If only this were a true Tomorrowland like all the others…

Photos as credited.