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NEW Disney Dooney & Bourke “it’s a small world” and Lovebirds Release Party
It has been a while since a Disney Dooney & Bourke design has made my heart skip a beat, but they have finally done it again with this new “it’s a small world” collection. It’s hard not to love the amazing artwork and designs inspired by Mary Blair, but the color palette and artwork is really well done in this new collection. Steven Miller of the Disney Parks Blog has just shared that they will be welcoming in these new designs, along with Disney Dooney & Bourke MagicBands at a release party at Cherry Tree Lane at Disney Springs’ Marketplace Co-Op. Mark your calendars for July 23 and get ready to add to your collection!
Here is all the official info from Steven on the Parks Blog below:
A few weeks ago, I shared a Disney Parks Blog Unboxed video about new Dooney & Bourke items coming this summer to Disney Parks. Today, I have additional information about the release party that will be held on Saturday, July 23 at Cherry Tree Lane inside the Marketplace Co-Op at Disney Springs.
At this event, we are releasing two new collections including handbags inspired by the classic Disney Parks attraction, “it’s a small world.” The four silhouettes in this collection will include a Shopper Tote, a Pouchette, a Wallet and a Wristlet.
The second collection, called “Lovebirds,” will include a Shopper Tote and a Letter Carrier.
For the first time, we will introduce four limited edition retail MagicBands containing Dooney & Bourke-inspired designs. Each MagicBand will have an edition size of 1,500, and each MagicBand will contain a specially designed slider with the Dooney & Bourke logo. The MagicBands will be packaged in decorative boxes.
Finally, guests attending this release party will have an opportunity to meet Ian Ray, Creative Director for Dooney & Bourke. He will be appearing at Cherry Tree Lane from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. that day.
For guests at Disneyland Resort, look for the “it’s a small world” and the “Lovebirds” collections in select merchandise locations after this event.
Don’t forget to check DisneyStore.com for sales of select current released Disney Dooney & Bourke purses and Zannaland’s Disney Dooney & Bourke page with ALL handbag photos and info.
*DisneyStore.com links are affiliate links, which means it costs you nothing extra to click or buy, but if you do, I get a small commission. Thanks for reading!
New Beauty and the Beast Teaser Trailer Revealed!
With all of the recent live-action remakes of Disney classic animated tales, it can sometimes be hard to get excited about the next new thing. However, I will fully admit I’m officially excited. This is just a teaser, but it’s definitely doing what it promised. March 17, 2017 can’t get here soon enough.
See the official teaser trailer below, including the first sneak peek at Belle herself, played by Emma Watson. We also hear the voices of Lumiere and Cogsworth too! Click play:
I grabbed some screenshots to take a closer look at some of the details from the trailer:
The official synopsis from Disney:
Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” is a live-action re-telling of the studio’s animated classic which refashions the classic characters from the tale as old as time for a contemporary audience, staying true to the original music while updating the score with several new songs. “Beauty and the Beast” is the fantastic journey of Belle, a bright, beautiful and independent young woman who is taken prisoner by a beast in his castle. Despite her fears, she befriends the castle’s enchanted staff and learns to look beyond the Beast’s hideous exterior and realize the kind heart and soul of the true Prince within. The film stars: Emma Watson as Belle; Dan Stevens as the Beast; Luke Evans as Gaston, the handsome, but shallow villager who woos Belle; Oscar® winner Kevin Kline as Maurice, Belle’s eccentric, but lovable father; Josh Gad as Lefou, Gaston’s long-suffering aide-de-camp; Golden Globe® nominee Ewan McGregor as Lumiere, the candelabra; Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci as Maestro Cadenza, the harpsichord; Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Plumette, the feather duster; six-time Tony Award® winner Audra McDonald as Madame Garderobe, the wardrobe; Oscar nominee Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, the mantel clock; and two-time Academy Award® winner Emma Thompson as the teapot, Mrs. Potts.
Directed by Oscar® winner Bill Condon from a screenplay by TBD based on the 1991 animated film, the film is produced by Mandeville Films’ David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman with eight-time Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken, who won two Academy Awards® (Best Original Score and Best Song) for the 1991 animated film, providing the score, which will include new recordings of the original songs written by Menken and Howard Ashman, as well as several new songs written by Menken and three-time Oscar winner Tim Rice. “Beauty and the Beast” will be released in U.S. theaters on March 17, 2017.
Tangled Takeover on Disney Cruise Line’s Re-Imagined Magic Ship
My family and I recently took a cruise on the newly Re-Imagined Disney Magic which re-debuted back in October of 2013. I was able to attend the relaunching festivities back then, and I had wanted to bring my family aboard so they could see the changes and experience the first ship in the Disney Cruise Line fleet for themselves (my husband had been on before, as had my oldest son with me back in 1999 – however at 10 months old, he didn’t remember much). When that same son’s 17th birthday rolled around and I saw this 5 night sailing out of Miami come up, I figured what better way to celebrate?
I was excited to show them what cruising on a smaller ship would be like (relatively speaking, compared to the Dream they had been on before) and since we traditionally enjoy the ship vs. many activities or shore excursions, I thought this would be perfect. We were all quite excited to get to see the all-new Tangled: The Musical show on the Magic as well. In fact, it was really what we were looking forward to the most (except maybe the food). I’ll write more about our impressions of the Disney Magic in a future post, but for now, let’s talk Tangled!
The first pleasant surprise was to see that the Tangled theming extended beyond the nighttime show on stage, but also to the forward elevator area on deck 4, and the Snuggly Duckling took over in place of O’Gills Pub. I stopped by the Snuggly Duckling before the takeover to see the decorations. There’s also a scavenger hunt where you look for various Thugs all over the ship which we had lots of fun locating. See the Snuggly Duckling Takeover below:
The anticipation of the Tangled: The Musical show did not disappoint, it was an amazing production. The way they did the sets and Rapunzel’s hair were so clever and unique to this show. One of my favorite parts (and the rest of the audience’s too) was Max the horse. Created by Master puppet designer Michael Curry, whose extraordinary creations are featured in Disney’s Tony Award-winning musical “The Lion King” on Broadway, Max was even more animated and full of personality than he is in the movie, and was a joy to watch on stage with his puppeteer performer inside.
Award-winning composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater, who created the original soundtrack for “Tangled,” teamed up again to adapt the score and story for the stage. Complementing the score from the film, three new songs have been added, which weave a delightful combination of narrative, humor and theatrics into the performance.
In addition to new melodies, audiences enjoy live performances of favorite songs from the movie, including “When Will My Life Begin,” “Mother Knows Best,” “I’ve Got a Dream” and the Grammy Award-winning ballad, “I See the Light” – which of course, brought me to tears and was adapted perfectly for the theatre. It’s hard to imagine how one of the most beautifully animated scenes in history can translate to a theatre show, but they did it so well. You’ll feel engulfed by lanterns.
“Tangled: The Musical” premiered aboard the Disney Magic during the Nov. 11 four-night Bahamian sailing. The ship will continue to sail four-night Bahamas and five-night Western Caribbean cruises from Miami through the new year.
Disclosure: This cruise was entirely paid for ourselves and not sponsored or complementary. These opinions are my own. As a side note: I was recently invited to experience Tangled: The Musical on the Disney Magic when it is docked in Port Canaveral and have updated the post with more photos from that visit. My opinions didn’t change, I loved the show even more the second time!
REVIEW: Zootopia is a Whole New World of Disney Animation
I will admit it, when I first heard about and saw snippets about Zootopia, I wasn’t super excited. “Another movie about animals that can talk,what will make this one any different,” I thought. I then saw the sloth DMV scene at the D23 Expo, laughed, and thought it had some promise. I do love Jason Bateman, and hearing him as the voice of Nick Wilde for over an hour couldn’t be too bad, right? Once home from the D23 Expo over the summer, I kind of forgot about it until recently, when I was able to attend a screening. I had seen a few little promo pieces about it, and saw that they were trying to make the Zootopia universe relatable by changing common things we were used to with “Z” words (zoogle rather than google, zuber rather than uber, etc.) I was then worried that it would be too corny, trying too hard. But really, that’s only in the marketing. In the actual movie, I was relieved to see, the gags and puns are little rewards for keen-eyed observers.
As a side note, I’ve found, in recent years, Disney marketing does tend to go a little overboard on the jokes of site gags found within its animated films, as if trying to ensure these things catch on and “go viral.” While I totally understand this is a necessary evil of marketing on this scale, it’s no less annoying, to me personally, and really makes me wish I could just watch things sight un-seen and make my own judgments from there. But then again, I’m not a typical movie-going Disney fan. I don’t laugh at all the jokes I’m supposed to, and do tend to like more subtle attempts at both humor and any moral-of-the-story lessons. So, maybe it’s just me.
In any event, I was proven wrong in my pre-judgment of Zootopia. Very wrong. I loved it and I think it has the true distinction of being engaging and relatable to everyone and every age. In addition, the universe created for the film and the city of Zootopia is absolutely amazing and so infinitely detailed, I want to live in each of the distinct little areas of their world. The opening scene of the movie tells all the backstory you need to know about both our main character, Judy Hopps, and the world of Zootopia itself. The different neighborhoods are perfect homes for the various types of animals best suited to that environment; Sahara Square for desert animals, the Rain Forest District for those used to jungle environments, Tundratown for polar bears and other cold-weather animals, along with Bunnyburrow, where Judy is from, and Little Rodentia, for the tiniest mammals (the scenes in this area are among my favorite in the movie), while the downtown area Savanna Central, is a bustling city environment where animals from every climate and environment come together to work and live.
Judy Hopps is, at the end of the day, a glass half full kind of bunny. She is an eternal optimist, not only in life, but in her own self-confidence. Despite the motto of Zootopia being “where anyone can be anything,” there is a sort of unwritten rule that in certain situations (when bunnies want to become police officers for example), that isn’t really the case. Judy is determined to prove them wrong, and most importantly, prove to herself that she can be and do anything, and do it well. What follows when Judy does graduate as the first bunny from the police academy, is, at the heart of it all, a buddy comedy. I can actually picture the storyline of Zootopia (minus some animal-specific aspects) translating to a live-action film with humans rather than animals, and that’s perhaps the best compliment for the writing and strength of the plot.
Another major-yet-more-subtle subplot to the movie is the idea of prejudice, profiling of different types of people (or animals in this case). As mentioned above, the animals in Zootopia may claim to be evolved and accepting of all different types of species and allowing them to be anything they want, but there are several lines and situations within the film that directly correlate to our own real-world racial profiling and embarrassingly stereotypical actions – “other bunnies can call each other cute, but other animals can’t call a bunny cute” for example. This may go over the average kid’s head as a funny throw-away line, but adults watching know where it’s coming from, and if it sparks conversation among parents to their kids, all the better. In any event, I love when “kids movies” don’t pander to kids and leave modern and important themes out of the mix. It is possible to have a fun story, animated characters, and important life lessons in one film. Zootopia does that with ease.
I won’t drone on with (much) more analysis of plotlines and characters, but I will say (again) that I loved Zootopia, I loved the message that it tells, and how it tells it. There was not a princess in site, and there was absolutely no feeling of “oh, this is a female empowerment theme” because the whole point of the story is literally, anyone can do anything, and that they should, if they want to. That we shouldn’t judge others based on preconceived notions, and although someone may do something differently than us, it doesn’t mean it’s any less right or valid. And I loved that take-away. I took my 7 year-old son to the screening I saw, and I love that he was exposed to those messages probably without even realizing it. Judy Hopps failed a few times, but kept going, learning all along the way. Nick Wilde lived his life one way because he thought that’s how he had to, and learned that he could and should do more. I hope it sticks in his little sponge-like brain to – as pop sensation Gazelle (played by Shakira) sang in the movie – “Try Everything.”
This was a movie I instantly wanted to see again, and cannot wait till I can do just that. The animation itself is gorgeous, robust and detailed. The character acting is great too, Idris Elba as the Chief of Police is so fun to listen to, as is J.K. Simmons as the mayor, and Nate Torrence as the lovable police station cop, Clawhauser.
I’m excited for Zootopia to be released and have a presence in Disney parks. A meet and greet has already been announced for Disney California Adventure, and Judy and Nick will join the “Move It! Shake It! Dance & Play It!” Street Party at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, both happening this spring. My son has already asked for a Zootopia backpack and lunchbox, so that means the movie has reached Star Wars level approval ratings in our home.
I’d love to hear what you think if you see Zootopia this weekend!
Disclaimer: I attended a free screening of this film in order to write this review. As you can see, my thoughts and opinions are my own.
Free Sushi for Cirque du Soleil Guests at Morimoto Asia!
Morimoto Asia is offering a special deal for guests of Cirque du Soleil’s La Nouba at Disney Springs. Simply bring your Cirque du Soleil ticket, purchase a beverage off the Morimoto Asia menu, and you’ll receive your choice of complimentary four-piece sushi vegetable roll or California roll! (And I highly recommend trying some of their other amazing items and upcoming events as well!) See more info below:
Finding Dory Official Trailer Released
During the D23 Expo over last summer in Anaheim, we were treated to quite a bit of news and info about Finding Dory, including many of the voice actors, and some exclusive clips of the film. Now the first full-length trailer has been officially released today, on the Ellen Show and we can share it here with you too! Check it out below:
I like that we find out where she learned to speak whale, and the whole Monterrey Bay Aquarium-like location where Dory ends up while seeking her family looks really interesting and keeping in the theme of Finding Nemo of seeing things from the fish’s points of view. I’m most looking forward to HOW she lost her family though, and hope we get to learn about that too. (Also secretly hoping for another cameo by the Boston lobstahs too ;).)
Directed by Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo,” “WALL•E”) and produced by Lindsey Collins (co-producer “WALL•E”), the film features the voices of Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Ed O’Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton. “Finding Dory” swims into theaters June 17, 2016.
Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival 2016 Sneak Peek
As much as I enjoy the unique foods offered at the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival each year, it’s no secret that I actually prefer the Flower & Garden Festival by leaves and mounds (see what I did there? horticultural puns!). In all seriousness, it really is my favorite Festival, especially with the addition of the outdoor kitchens. Seeing new topiary creations each year, in addition to the old favorites always makes for great visits to Epcot, and fun photo ops, ensuring you explore and visit even some forgotten areas. Additionally, with the spring season at hand, the food options at the outdoor kitchens (now in their 4th year at the Festival), are lighter, more focused on vegetables and organic and locally sourced ingredients. The menus are fresh (there’s a reason they use #FreshEpcot as the hashtag for the Festival) and not too heavy, just perfect for strolling the park in the springtime.
This year, the Flower & Garden Festival runs from March 2 – May 30, expanding from 75 days last year, to a full 90 this year. Festival Horticultural Manager Eric Darden explained that they are prepared and excited for the challenge of a 90-day festival. With the previous length, they had 2 separate plantings to keep the gardens looking bright and full. This year, they may have to do 3 sets of plantings for some of the displays, ensuring no matter when you visit, the flowers will look as wonderful as day 1. Also new this year, is a new topiary character, Ranger Mickey, who, along with Chip n’ Dale, help celebrate the National Park Service’s 100th Anniversary. I loved these new topiaries and of course, awareness of our amazing National Parks is always a good thing.
We were treated to a preview of some of the menu options as well as some of the areas which were still under construction. Set to open tomorrow, March 2nd, everything will be revealed and ready to go at park opening. Until then, enjoy some photos and further information on 23rd annual Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival!
(Hover over photos to read captions)
Of the samples we tried, I was most in love with the Shrimp and Grits and the Burnt Ends – so, so good and the flavors are ridiculous. I also really liked the Currywurst, which I guess used to be at Sommerfest, but I never tried it there. The Jerk Chicken was also a winner. I thought I had tried gin in my past and not been a fan, but mixed with the Cucumber Watermelon Slush, I really loved it. I would totally get this when I go back to the Festival. Of course the Festival Passport is back, and you can get stamps at every kiosk around the World Showcase. You can view all the menus, topiary checklist, Garden Rocks performers, and all the Festival info online before you go.
Here are some of the topiary and garden photos from our sneak peek. We’ll have more throughout the run of the Festival on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and in future posts here.
Will you be visiting during the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival? What are you most looking forward to seeing and trying? We can’t wait to get back for more!
Details From Universal Orlando’s Skull Island: Reign of Kong Attraction
Locals have been watching the construction with great anticipation, and now Universal Orlando Resort has treated us to a photo and some more info about the upcoming King Kong attraction at Universal’s Islands of Adventure. While I’m not *personally* a fan of giant things screaming in my face, I know many people are, and are excited about this upcoming attraction. (What can I say, I prefer my giant creatures to be magical dragons.)
I do love a good immersive attraction, however, and the Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye attraction in Disneyland is one of my all-time favorites. I also am a mega-fan of the Wizarding World attractions in both Universal theme parks, so I’m willing to give this a try when the gates open this summer. Until then, here’s the official release from Universal with the details they are willing to share today:
Soon, you will be transported to an island shrouded in mystery and legend. It is a lost world where adventure – and the unimaginable – will challenge you in unforgettable ways.
When it opens this summer at Universal Orlando Resort’s Islands of Adventure, Skull Island: Reign of Kong will bring the next generation of the King Kong legend to life. You will be thrust into an exotic world filled with the menacing, the intense – and the wildly entertaining. A powerful storyline, a stunning 3D experience, innovative technology – and the unexpected – will pull you into one of Universal Orlando’s most massive adventures yet. This is a multi-dimensional experience filled with surprise – all wrapped into what will be one of the longest Universal ride experiences ever created.
More first-ever details will be released soon. But today, Universal Orlando unveils details about the incredible journey guests will experience.
The adventure begins as you set out to explore an island rife with prehistoric creatures of unknown origin –and the legend of a beast still undiscovered. You find yourself at a campsite of the 8th Wonder Expedition Company, the research team leading your adventure.
Once beyond camp, the menacing terrain shows signs of a native presence; beating drums draw you toward an ancient temple. Moving deeper into the ruins reveals a lost shrine – and proof you are not alone. You ignore warnings to turn back.
You board a specially designed expedition vehicle that will take you deeper into the island. Mysterious sounds pierce the air and you hear chanting. And then – you confront an enormous temple wall, complete with carvings and images that seem to pay homage to something you cannot quite comprehend. The temple’s massive wooden doors slowly open, revealing a labyrinth of caves.
Inside the caves, you meet your expedition leader – and suddenly find yourself in the midst of a raging struggle between creatures of incomprehensible size and ferocity. Then, as those creatures turn on you, there is an even more enormous, earth-pounding presence – bigger, closer and more overwhelming than you can possibly imagine. It is Kong. But is he friend or foe?
More details about “Skull Island: Reign of Kong” will be revealed soon. To stay up-to-date on all the latest news, visit universalorlando.com/
How does it sound? Mysterious? Menacing? Will you be willing to brave Skull Island this summer? What are you most looking forward to if so? I’ll update more news here as it’s released. Until then, let’s all work on our Fay Wray screams, okay?