For two months from March to May, the Epcot theme park at the Disney World Resort was in full bloom during the 18th annual Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival. This year’s festival, hosted by HGTV, celebrated spring with more than 100 topiaries, including 75 Disney character topiaries arranged throughout the park.
Mickey and Pluto topiaries at the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival, photograph by Samantha McElhaney
2011’s brand-new topiaries: Toy Story 3, Winnie the Pooh, Cars 2, and Rapunzel’s Tower, joined perennial favorites Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and Aladdin. The fairies of Pixie Hollow appeared live and in topiary form in the Pixie Hollow Fairy Garden to promote Tinker Bell and the Pixie Hollow Games, coming this Fall on the Disney Channel. The festival also featured the brand-new Bambi’s Butterfly House with Bambi character topiaries and hundreds of native butterflies to celebrate the release of the Diamond Edition of Bambi on Blu-ray and DVD.
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=1011
Walt Disney World’s The Haunted Mansion is one of my absolute favorite theme park rides. One of my earliest Disney memories is seeing the hitchhiking ghosts during my first visit to Disney World when I was four. During my honeymoon visit last fall, I saw the moving eyes of the Madame Leota tombstone for the first time, but most of the cemetery surrounding the line queue was under construction.
Leota's tombstone in the Haunted Mansion graveyard, image from insidethemagic.net
For years, the line queue’s graveyard has featured tombstones with the names of Disney Imagineers and humorous epitaphs such as Dear Departed Brother Dave, He Chased a Bear Into Cave, and Here Lies Good Old Fred, A Great Big Rock Fell On His Head. After months of renovations, the graveyard has been revamped and expanded into a longer, interactive line queue.
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=1001
In the fall of 2009, the Walt Disney Company made a deal to acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4.24 billion, a purchase which transferred control of Marvel’s comic book and movie library to Disney, along with a library of 5,000 characters, including Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Daredevil, and Captain America – all of whom have inspired major motion pictures in recent years.
As of now, Disney has held off on incorporating the Marvel heroes into any of its theme parks, although the company is free to do so everywhere except for Walt Disney World in Florida, due to Marvel’s existing contract with Disney competitor Universal’s Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure theme parks.
Concept art for Dubailand's Marvel Superhero Theme Park, image from disneyandmore.blogspot.com
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=988
One of my favorite places to waste time online is Sporcle.com, a trivia quiz website which features more than 180,000 timed trivia games that have been played more than 500 million times. Sporcle’s slogan is “Mentally Stimulating Diversions” and these diversions are categorized by theme: Geography, Entertainment, Science, History, Literature, Sports, Language, Just for Fun, Religion, Movies, Televisions, Music, Gaming, Miscellaneous, and Holiday.
There’s something for everyone at Sporcle, and the majority of the quizzes are user-created and cover a wide range of trivia topics, from the common (U.S. Presidents, Countries of the World, etc), to the obscure (20 Weakest Evolved Pokemon, Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Sector, etc). Disney fans will be pleased to find hundreds of Disney-themed trivia games at Sporcle.com.
Below are links to a few of my favorite Disney quizzes. Beware of addiction!
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=974
There is a strong gender imbalance in Hollywood these days (and throughout the history of film) that has resulted in most studio films being very male-centric and featuring few (if any) female characters of substance. The Bechdel Test, originated by Alison Bechdel in her 1985 comic “The Rule” from “Dykes to Watch Out For”, is a litmus test for gauging the active presence of female characters in films and how well-rounded and complex those characters are.
Screenshot from Disney's Tangled, image copyright Disney
The Bechdel Test Rules:
1. There are at least two (named/significant) female characters who…
2. Talk to each other about…
3. Something other than a man
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=952
