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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!

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 special video sees Mickey Mouse rushing from corner to corner all over the resort, meeting up with other characters who are shown to be preparing their entertainments for the upcoming Magical Party.

Several of the scenes were obviously filmed at the same time as some of the still photo shoots we’ve been seeing this past week, but — along with giving a first look at the Stars ‘n’ Cars vehicles as they’ll appear in Paris — there is one huge, enormous spoiler in here… the music!

We posted the lyrics just yesterday and only introduced the concept of this new song — “It’s Mickey’s Magical Party Time” — just last week, but already, here it is! Well, almost… as you might guess from the synthesised opening, this is actually a special remix of the song. Far more “dance” flavoured than the true number, and in fact likely to be the version heard during It’s Dance Time… in Discoveryland.

Here’s the video:

And a series of stills:

Mickey rises bright and early to begin another day of hard work…

Another close-up of the Minnie’s Party Train concepts — note that the third carriage will be different again from both the first and second.

Mickey arrives in the Stars ‘n’ Cars garage to surprise Goofy

Mushu steals the show in Mulan’s car

Characters polish up their cars

Mickey peers through a curtain to see Playhouse Disney — via greenscreen!

In the Radio Disney studios, Stitch prepares his beats to some wild camera work

The characters rehearse their moves for “It’s Party Time… with Mickey and Friends” backstage — with the show’s additional stars from The Jungle Book and The Lion King

Mickey emerges from the baloons…

That’s Mickey’s Magical Party!

As for the “It’s Party Time!” song, hearing a slightly wacky dance remix before the real thing maybe isn’t the best way to be introduced to the new theme music of the year, but what do you think so far? Is this another Disneyland Resort Paris song destined to stay with you almost every hour of the day?

Released just hours ago and available to watch in full here, the new video preview of the Mickey’s Magical Party celebrations sees the mouse rushing around the resort checking up on the preparations for his year-long party.

Amongst the special photoshoot set-ups, there are several surprising backstage glimpses, including one into the parade storage building which currently houses the vehicles of Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars…

We’ve seen inside here before, in fact, when some sneaky photos of the cars were published online just after they’d arrived in Paris. Now,eight months later, we can them in their final Parisian state… although, as confirmed in an earlier update, very little actually changed at all in the end.

One car is “new”, however, and that’s Donald Duck’s. Now dark green all over with similar movie reel motifs to Mickey’s black and grey old-timer, the Duck polishes off his takeover of The Muppets’ old car neatly. On the bonnet, an old fashioned movie camera points toward the driver!

Also note Mushu appearing alongside Mulan’s car — a character who has certainly been hard to spot in recent years, especially since the end of the Videopolis show.

Only three of the cars are featured in the video, you can see the full final lineup here.

It has also been confirmed recently that the performance of this event will now involve two separate, small cavalcades entering the park from Toon Studio and Backlot, travelling along the parade route to apparently meet and park-up around Place des Stars.

A kind of doubled-up version of the old Good Morning Walt Disney Studios — with far better cars — if you like.

Following on the welcome trend begun with Crush’s Coaster and Cars Race Rally to use the resort’s main parking lot and its moving walkways to push the events or attractions you should return for soon, Mickey’s Magical Party began taking over the area late in December.

First, with banners and placards above the walkways:

Photo: Scrooge, Disney Magic Interactive

With a second style for the smaller spaces:

Photo: Mouetto, Disney Central Plaza

Then, with posters filling all the display cases along the route back to the car parks:

Photo: Scrooge, Disney Magic Interactive

Of course, if you’d like to start the advertising in your real home, you can do that too! The new Spring/Summer 2009 brochure is available now online to order or download, and has been taken over almost entirely by previews for the upcoming celebration year:

The general style and layout remains faithful to that set up for the 15th Anniversary brochures, merely redecorated with these new brighter colours. The back cover even reuses the same tagline — “The only one missing is you!”.

Like much of what we’ve seen of the party so far, the general idea seems to be “if it ‘aint broke, don’t fix it” — just make it brighter!

Photos as credited; brochure images © Disney.

Just like the new Central Plaza show and the redecorated Party Train, Discoveryland’s brand new daily street spectacle — It’s Dance Time… in Discoveryland — has been given the full Disney marketing treatment with its own logo and a full poster-style visual:

Certainly the most ambiguous visual of the lot, this one might take some extra explanation. It’s Dance Time will be an outdoor street show in Discoveryland — the land’s first for over a decade, perhaps? — somewhat in the same vein as the High School Musical shows over at Walt Disney Studios Park.

How exactly? Because, several times a day, DJ Stitch will roll out into the land aboard an apparently jet-powered set of mixing decks, styled to look similar to his rocket ship from Lilo & Stitch (as also seen at the end of Stitch Live!). Therefore, there won’t be a permanent stage for this event but a designated area of the land — as yet, not confirmed — that will be covered in brightly coloured dance mats.

The inspiration here is clearly the home video games such as “Dance Dance Revolution”, with the audience then invited to step up onto one of the mats and follow Stitch’s directions to dance along to the contemporary music.

In French, the show will be known as ‘Place à la Danse… à Discoveryland’:

As you’ve no doubt already guessed, this new daily entertainment event is hardly going to be a winner for those fans of the “true” Discoveryland. It seems unlikely there’ll be any reference to the great dance moves of the visionaries such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and the searing colours of the logo above will likely allow those same Discovery fans to even forgive Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast entirely for any wrongdoing.

But, pitched against the land’s often bizarre history for live entertainment, it is a better match than African animals or Californian beach festivals… isn’t it?

Whether you’re convinced or not, Mickey Mouse seems to be happy with the preparations. After taking a look at Minnie’s concept art for the new Party Train, he hopped over to the Radio Disney studios — housed in those infamous areas at the back of Videopolis which were meant to connect to Discovery Mountain — to hear Stitch’s rehearsals…

With the red mixing decks dotted with bolts and a view of Space Mountain through the Nautilus-inspired window, these scenes are almost worthy of the fans’ Discoveryland seal-of-approval… were it not for the grey skies, dirty glass and reflections!

Stitch won’t be alone for this show, though — it has been revealed that the little blue alien will bring along a special dance troupe to help get each show going and encourage the audience to take part. Auditions have been held alongside those for this year’s High School Musical show, particularly pushing for dancers with “street and hip hop” ability.

Here’s the casting notice:

The Talent Casting Department are organising auditions for the positions in the stage show: HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL ON TOUR!, IT’S PARTY TIME… WITH MICKEY AND FRIENDS and IT’S DANCE TIME… IN DISCOVERYLAND.

It’s Dance Time… in Discoveryland, good jazz technique, strong stage presence, knowledge of hip hop/street dance is a plus, girls should be 5’4 – 5’7 and boys should be 5’7 – 6’0.

Jules Verne must be spinning, grinding and bopping in his grave…!

All photos, logos and visuals © Disney.

One of the undoubted hits of the 15th Anniversary years, providing both plentiful meet ‘n’ greets and a mini-parade in one, it might have been enough just to keep running Disney Characters’ Express with its ’15’ plaques removed. Not for Mickey’s Magical Party!

Instead, entire control of this former Dumbo/Casey Jr. Wonderful World of Disney Parade float has been handed to Minnie Mouse. She’ll be leading the way on board Minnie’s Party Train each day and, crucially, giving the train a rather radical cosmetic update. Blue and gold are out… red polka dots are in!

The full visual above cheats the eye a little with its seemingly never-ending line of carriages, but it’s a smart photo edit of the current train to convey the idea. Whereas the 15th Anniversary version was plainer and more generic, the new Mickey’s Magical Party events will be entirely character-led and as bright as possible.

Minnie has also prepared for her home audience, with an alternate French title and logo — Le Train en Fête de Minnie:

And, just yesterday, she officially revealed her final concept art for the brand new Party Train at Art of Disney Animation in Walt Disney Studios Park, watched over by Mickey Mouse!

Sketching with an oversized pencil and cutting pieces of polka dot fabic with oversized scissors, Minnie gives us a very first look at exactly what will be changing to turn the Express into the Party Train. At first glance, it certainly seems that the advertising visual above was a very conservative depiction of the final result…

For the most part, the blue of Characters Express has turned to red and white polka-dots, but the entire train is now also covered in multi-coloured streamers, with bows atop the flagpoles and a ‘Minnie’s Party Train’ logo inside a blue Mickey Mouse silhouette on every carriage.

Also note the carriages themselves — in the image we’ve zoomed into above, you can see that the middle wagon will be given an entirely different design, almost completely golden, with more whimsical safety rails, perhaps closer to its Casey Jr. circus train origins…

— Find a new preview guide all about Minnie’s Party Train here.

All logos, visuals, photos © Disney.

Check your calendar, it’s not April 1st. Yet DLRP Today can this morning confirm that Mickey Mouse will be given a starring role in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

In fact, this news broke online just yesterday evening, only hours after it was announced to Cast Members and the resort’s sales offices. But we can go a little better than that…

Want to *see* Mickey Mouse in his new Western role?

Hold onto your hats and glasses!

Mickey Mouse stands proudly in the spotlight in these brand new images released today, with Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull behind.

So, will we be seeing “Mickey’s Wild West Show” in the not-too-distant future? Absolutely not! This is still Buffalo Bill’s classic event, simply reworked with the addition of the Mouse to give the show a wider appeal amongst Disneyland Resort Paris guests and make it more pleasing to families who might otherwise not see much reason to cough up the high dinner price.

OK, sure, this may not come as the best news to those die-hard fans of the resort’s Old West experiences — particularly just days after Buffalo Trading Co. next door closed. But, with the show now reaching 17 years old and guest satisfaction levels said to be sliding somewhat, it looks set to be a modest change that will at least allow Buffalo Bill to keep the Wild West Show playing.

And when can Old West diners expect to see a mouse roll out into the buffalo ring? No date has been set — indeed, no official text of any kind accompanies these images just yet — but the change is said to be happening around the same time that Mickey’s Magical Party launches, the weekend of 4th April 2009, which would helpfully allow for a wider relaunch of the show generally.

Then, who knows what we’ll get to experience… the West being won by a Mouse?

You saw it here first, folks!

Visuals © Disney.