Hi all,
This week saw the launch of a brand new show at Disney's California Adventure Park, Disney Dance Crew. The show replaces the now closed Drawn to the Magic. The show, performed at the Hollywood Pictures Backlot Stage, involves Mickey Mouse and some of his performer friends getting hip with the latest moves in a seven minute production that is energetic and loud. The most unique thing about the show, despite the Big Cheese proving he still has all the moves after 80 years, is the fact that this debuts the "talking head" technology that is used for Dream Along With Mickey in the Magic Kingdom, Florida. Robert Daps reported on it here, and YouTube user jayaraiza posted this video.
Staying in California, last weekend saw the annual CHOC Walk back at Disneyland. The charity organises the event with Disneyland each year to raise money for the local children's hospital. Of course the reason I am reporting this is because along the route participants get to meet some rare and interesting characters not normally seen in the parks (see, there was a character link!). Mr DAPS was there and posted lots of good pictures on his website.
Jon found this article online and suggested I posted it. Not character related, but cool in a weird sort of way! Apparently Lady Gaga and Elton John are to get together to record a song for the upcoming (and perpetually postponed) movie, "Gnomeo and Juliet". With the unique music style and unusual fashion sense, I'm sure it will be very interesting to see what they come up with! (Not that their clothes have any bearing, but we thought it was funny given that they both have rather unusual styles).
Chinese media suggested this week that construction on Shanghai Disneyland will begin next month, with the land from the Shanghai World Expo being utilised. I personally had not realised that they had planned to build the new Land in the same location as the current Expo, but I guess it makes sense to use existing infrastructure, and of course save money by having another company already construct it, then just purchase it later! I haven't provided a link, but you can go to Google News and just search "Shanghai Disneyland" to read more.
I wanted to mention the blog page of our good friend and Disney fan, Hilde Heyvaert. Hilde visits Disneyland Paris often and always posts her trip reports to her LiveJournal page afterwards. Her latest entry was about her day trip down to DLP for Halloween Season, so be sure to check it out!
We continue to add more content and improve the features and functionality of the site, working tirelessly sometimes to be the best character news source on the Internet. I understand that there is still a lot of work to do though, so if you find a page with little of no information on it, be rest assured it is on my list! With over 300 characters and over 200 locations (and more being added all the time), it takes a long time to get it all perfect! Latest additions can always be found by going to the blog page and looking at the left hand side panels. These show the last ten character and location additions to the site. The latest show to be added was Minnie Oh! Minnie from Tokyo Disneyland.
We also work seemingly endlessly to add pictures to our Flickr accounts - we are still uploading Tokyo and California pictures! All the latest pictures on our streams can be accessed by going to the links page and selecting the correct links, or by going to the Flickr side panel on the blog page (bottom right), and selecting any one of the latest images.
Finally, we are going on more Disney adventures from next week. We are going to see the Disney On Ice production "100 Years of Magic" at the O2 Arena in London, so stay tuned for all the pictures from that! I will add a page for the new show to the Disney On Ice section of this site in due course. After Disney On Ice (literally right after!) we are driving to France and will be at Disneyland Paris for the Halloween Season. Again, expect many pictures from that, as well as a trip report on the blog (eventually).
Ok, that's all for now.
Dan :)