Mickey Mouse is Back: New Shorts to Air on TV

Mickey Mouse is back.  Whether this is the reinvention that Disney execs promised years ago remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Disney’s most famous character is going to be a star yet again.  Mickey’s returning to his roots, in a series of animated shorts to debut on the Disney Channel and Disney Online this June.  Entertainment Weekly has the details. Disney Television Animation has been hard at work creating 19 new shorts starring the famous mouse, his girlfriend Minnie, and surely many of his other most popular cohorts, all to reintroduce Mickey to fans young and old.  … Continue reading

Married at Sea: Disney Cruise Weddings

I’ve never written much about a Disney wedding, which is strange because I’m a blogger both for our Disney and our Marriage categories. But if you read my marriage blogs you know that I’m not a fan of big, fancy weddings, and a Disney wedding would certainly be that. Previous Disney bloggers have written a lot on the topic, so I didn’t have anything new to offer. Until now. I just learned that the Disney Cruise line offers wedding and vow renewal packages. I’m always up for writing about a new Disney thing I didn’t know existed, and we’ve never … Continue reading

Fall Disney Cruise Special Offers

The Disney Parks aren’t the only Disney vacation destinations that give discounts from time to time. The Disney Cruise line has its own special offers page, so today we’ll check out the upcoming deals. One special deal was actually just announced on the official Disney Parks blog. Want to have a unique Halloween that you’ve never experienced before? Take a Disney cruise over the holiday. Cruise ships transform for Halloween (and, presumably, allow all of their passengers to wear costumes). If you travel aboard a Disney ship over Halloween, expect to find: Disney characters dressed up in special seasonal duds, … Continue reading

Stomach Virus Spread at Disney’s Wild Africa Trek

The provided snack In the past couple of years the spate of food poisoning cases on cruise ships put a big “health alert” smirch on the often laid-back and envied vacation. This year, however, Disney World might be taking that dubious crown. At least, the Wild Africa Trek at the Animal Kingdom could. NBC News reports that several dozen people became sick at the beginning of June, and the primary link between them was that they’d all gone on the Wild Africa Trek right around the same time. The safari-style tour, that takes guests to parts of the park usually … Continue reading

Disney Cruises in 2012 and 2013

I haven’t reported as much on the Disney Fantasy as I did on the Disney Dream. The latest in the Disney fleet makes its maiden voyage in just a few weeks and yet this is the first that I’m reporting on it. That’s because there hasn’t been a lot to say; the Fantasy is quite similar to the Dream. It’s beefed up a bit, but it’s basically a bigger, fancier version of the Dream. Now the Fantasy is set to make its first trips, however, and the time has come to talk about it. For the first time a christening … Continue reading

Goofy’s Sky School

Remember those silly Goofy shorts? At first glance that sentence seems redundant, but anyone reading a Disney blog knows exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve spoken of them before; even though I’m a handful of generations out from the 1940s and 50s, the years of greatest Goofy short prevalence, even I encountered one or two in my life, and not just for fun. The last Goofy short I remember from growing up was in my high school Driver’s Education class. We watched a grainy film, clearly made decades before, of Goofy learning how to drive and causing several accidents along … Continue reading

New Disney Cruise Destinations

The debut of the Dream seems to have kicked off a wave of Disney cruise news. Last week Disney website Stitch Kingdom announced that three brand new ports of departure have been added to the Disney cruise lineup for 2012: New York, Seattle, and Galveston, TX. Bookings for cruises launching from these new locations started on April 8. This news comes on the heels of the announcement of yet another cruise ship: the Disney Fantasy. Setting off on its maiden voyage in March 2012, the Disney Fantasy is the sister ship to the Dream. I haven’t posted a preview of … Continue reading

Disney PhotoPass

It’s time for another edition of “What Is This Disney Feature?” In February I learned of all the many places money on a Disney gift card might be spent, but two of the names were unfamiliar. I’ve since examined Club Penguin, and today I’ll look at the second title I didn’t recognize: Disney PhotoPass. Disney’s all about creating lasting memories. That’s even the latest theme at the Disney parks. Because a primary way people make and preserve memories on vacations and throughout their lives is through photography, Disney decided to get in on the action. PhotoPass has existed for years … Continue reading

Goofy New Check-In for Disney Cruises

Have you been considering going on a Disney cruise vacation, but aren’t quite sure that the whole experience would be enough fun? Sure, Disney cruises are some of the most luxurious vacations out there, but they’ve also got the potential to become a bit claustrophobic, and there were all those food poisoning incidents on cruise ships last year, even if none of them were on Disney ships. Well, either the execs at the Walt Disney Corp. cruise division thought their marketing scheme needed an extra push, or someone over in the animation/graphic design department was feeling whimsical, because the Disney … Continue reading

Where’s My Water?

Playing computer games and helping others: how can the two possibly intersect? Thanks to the internet they have; several games exist online now that by playing, users can donate funds to various worthy causes. The most famous is freerice.com, a site that offers various educational games in subjects such as vocabulary, geography, literature, math, and chemistry. For every correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to the World Food Program, to help feed the hungry. Now Disney’s getting in on the game. Disney Friends for Change, the company’s arm that tries to get kids involved in volunteer work, has … Continue reading