Not to be outdone by The Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom or Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Epcot now has a new Starbucks “You Are Here” mug for sale at the Fountain View Starbucks.
The new mug does away with other park icons, now focusing on just World Showcase, including IlliumiNations: Reflections of Earth.
With all of the road work and traffic on Buena Vista Drive, Walt Disney World is rerouting some buses to take traffic off of the troublesome road and provide a better experience for guests.
Buses to Disney Springs from Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge and Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort are now traveling north of Epcot from World Drive to Epcot Center Drive, skipping over most of Buena Vista Drive. It is unknown for how long these new routes will be in effect.
New at the Disneyland Resort, guests will find mugs featuring the blueprints of some of Disneyland Park’s most classic and beloved attractions.
The four mugs include the Main Street Railroad Station, The Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, and Sleeping Beauty Castle.
The mug handles on each mug are shaped like the classic Disneyland “D” icon as well.
The mugs retail for $15.99 each and are ceramic. They are available now at various locations at the Disneyland Resort.
We have seen two separate tests to date of “Jake” the droid by Disney, inside Star Wars Launch Bay at Disneyland and at the Parks and Resort pavilion at the D23 Expo 2017, but now the roaming character developed for the upcoming “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” is going through some outdoor testing in Tomorrowland at Disneyland.
Guests will also encounter some signs pertaining to Jake as they roam around Tomorrowland. The test is occurring on most days, and Jake is being attended to by a undercover Imagineer who is watching over him.
This is good, because by the looks of the video below, Jake is going to need some protection…
The droid takes quite a beating during the short period where we watched him, getting kicked and pushed around by some children who he meets. Luckily, Jake was designed to handle such events, but one has to wonder just how much such a complicated piece of machinery can take. Well, this is why he is being tested years before his debut in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in 2019.
Disney has stated that multiple droids and alien creatures will be roaming Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge when it opens at both Disneyland Park and Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
The Disney Movies Anywhere service debuted in 2014 as a cloud-based digital movie service, with an iOS and Web experience that allows users to discover, purchase, manage and watch movies from Disney, Pixar and Marvel from home or away. Since that time, Disney has been actively courting other studios to join the system, in an effort to combat dwindling DVD sales, poor box office performance, and the threat from streaming providers like Netflix.
Now it appears that 5 of the 6 major Hollywood movie studios will have content on the system as soon as next week.
Bloomberg is reporting that major studios such as 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures are among those joining the service. By banding together, the makers of the world’s most popular films are betting they can succeed in attracting more users than their previous attempts did.
Paramount Pictures is the only one of the six major studios that isn’t joining Movies Anywhere, because of a disagreement over financial terms, although they are reportedly supportive of the idea and may join later.
Disney Movies Anywhere uses a proprietary storage technology called KeyChest to let customers store and access movies at a single site, whether they’re purchased from iTunes, Amazon.com, Google, or Wal-Mart.
UltraViolet offers a competing product: an online locker with movies and TV shows from Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Sony, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and dozens of other providers. Apparently UltraViolet isn’t performing as well as hoped, leading the studios to take another shot at the concept by backing Disney’s product.
Disney is releasing a soundtrack for the upcoming featurette Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, which is set to release in theaters ahead of Pixar’s Coco on November 22.
The soundtrack will release on November 3 and include four all-new songs written by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson. Additionally, the soundtrack will include the 21-minute featurette’s score written by Christophe Beck, who also wrote the score for Frozen.
The original songs that will be included on the soundtrack are “Ring in the Season,” “The Battle of Flemmingrad,” “That Time of Year” and “When We’re Together. The full track listing is included below:
“Olaf’s Frozen Adventure” Soundtrack Track List:
1. “Ring in the Season” – Performed by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel and Josh Gad
2. “The Ballad of Flemmingrad” – Performed by Jonathan Groff
3. “Ring in the Season” (Reprise) – Performed by Idina Menzel
4. “That Time of Year” – Performed by Josh Gad and Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell and
Cast
5. “That Time of Year” (Reprise) – Performed by Josh Gad
6. “When We’re Together” – Performed by Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell and Josh Gad and Jonathan Groff
7. “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure” Score Suite – Composed by Christophe Beck and Jeff Morrow
8. “The Ballad of Flemmingrad” (Traditional Version) – Performed by Jonathan Groff
9. “Ring in the Season” – [Instrumental Karaoke Mix]
10. “That Time of Year” – [Instrumental Karaoke Mix]
11. “When We’re Together” – [Instrumental Karaoke Mix]
You can pre-order the CD here, and Disney has also released a couple of song snippets for “That Time of Year,” “When We’re Together,” and “Ring In The Season.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter:
Gigantic, Disney Animation’s original feature project that was to have been released in 2020, is being shelved.
The project was being developed as an updated take on the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale, in which Jack befriends a female giant.
Inside Out co-writer Meg LeFauve and Nathan Greno (Tangled) were directing the project while Frozen songwriters Robert Lopez and Kirsten Anderson-Lopez were to have written songs for the film.
But according to the studio, creative walls were being hit.
“It’s impossible to know when we begin a project how the creative process will unfold, and sometimes, no matter how much we love an idea or how much heart goes into it, we find that it just isn’t working,” said Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios president Ed Catmull. “With Gigantic, we’ve come to that point, and although it’s a difficult decision, we are ending active development for now. We are focusing our energies on another project that has been in the works, which we’ll be sharing more about soon, now set for Thanksgiving 2020.”
Details regarding the new project were not revealed, although insiders said it would be an original feature.
Animation is known for its long development process and it is not uncommon for projects to be put on the shelf or to morph from one concept to another. It is also not the first time Disney Animation or its sister company Pixar have taken projects off the schedule either to further work on them or shelf them indefinitely. King of the Elves and Newt were titles that had been actively in the works in the last decade that are now inactive.
Disney Animation next has Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 which opens Nov. 21, 2018 and Frozen 2 for Nov. 27, 2019.
Disney has recently launched the ability to purchase an entire family holiday as a gift, calling it “The Gift Of Disney Vacations“.
Starting today, you will be able to purchase multiple options, from a $25 Disney gift card to a full vacation abroad with Adventures By Disney.
To introduce the service, you can now purchase a 6 night, 7 day Walt Disney World vacation staying at one of Disney’s All-Star Resorts for $96 per person, per night.
The offer is valid for 2018 and available until November 15th, 2017.
Find out more information here.
What do you think of the service? Let us know in the comments.
A few days late, but the Figment Epcot 35 lady’s backpack was finally released today at Epcot.
The bag retails for $75 and is made of a plastic faux leather.
The bag has a repeating Figment pattern on the outside.
Inside, the lining has a The EPCOT Center icon repeating.
The bag was found today at ImageWorks, but should eventually be available at multiple locations.
SOUTHWEST UNVEILS “COCO”-THEMED BOEING 737-700 AIRCRAFT,
CELEBRATING DISNEY•PIXAR’S ALL-NEW ADVENTURE IN HIGH-FLYING STYLE
Southwest Airlines Co. celebrated Disney•Pixar’s all-new, big-screen adventure “Coco” in high-flying style today, unveiling a Boeing 737-700 aircraft emblazoned with the vibrant “Coco” logo and artwork inspired by the film. The aircraft will fly among the carrier’s nearly 100 destinations throughout the United States, Mexico, Central America, and Caribbean through the end of 2017. As the largest domestic carrier in the U.S. serving more than 115 million passengers yearly*, Southwest Airlines connects people every day to what is important in their lives. With Disney•Pixar’s “Coco,” Southwest connects its customers to an all-new story that’s both exciting and inspiring. The film opens in U.S. theaters on Nov. 22, 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLWcUciIxJc&feature=youtu.be
“Southwest specializes in bringing unique and meaningful moments to our Customers,” said Southwest Airlines Vice President Controller and California Executive Leah Koontz at the aircraft unveiling event in Oakland. “Disney•Pixar’s ‘Coco’ centers on the universal themes of heart and family, core values we celebrate every day with our employees and customers.”
“‘Coco’ is about a boy with big dreams and a strong connection to his family,” says Director Lee Unkrich. “These themes really lend themselves to teaming up with a company like Southwest. And after working for nearly six years to bring this story to life, we were all so excited to see ‘Coco’ on the side of an airplane.”
Coco plane. Southwest Airlines. Stephen M. Keller
Customers are encouraged to spot the “Coco” plane and share their photos using #CocoAndSouthwest. Additionally, Southwest is sharing the adventures of “Coco” with Customers onboard flights beginning Nov. 1, with the launch of the Disney∙Pixar “Coco” OnDemand Channel, featuring complimentary movie clips and trailers to get everyone excited about “Coco” in 3D this Thanksgiving. Be sure to tune-in ahead of the film’s Nov. 22 theatrical debut.
Later this fall, the music of “Coco” will come to life onboard the “Coco” aircraft with a Live at 35® inflight concert performance by Anthony Gonzalez, who voices Miguel in the movie. Customers will experience the sounds and culture up-close and in-the-moment as Anthony sings a song from the upcoming film accompanied by a guitarist.
