Author: Nate

Disney And Pixar Join Forces On New Mobile Game Disney Heroes: Battle Mode
Want to create your own fab five and battle them against other Disney and Pixar characters? Well now you can as Disney announced Monday that it has partnered up with PerBlue to create a new mobile role-playing adventure called Disney Heroes: Battle Mode.

Disney Heroes: Battle Mode is a new, action-packed mobile role-playing game that features Disney and Pixar heroes battling together in the same universe in all new ways. Players will experience fun, unexpected 5v5 match-ups with fan-favorite characters from The Incredibles, Wreck-It Ralph, Pirates of the Caribbean and much more. Pre-registration has already started on Google Play, and the game will be available on the App Store and on Google Play later this year.

The came takes place in the digital City where a wicked virus is corrupting every pixel, turning even the heroes’ own friends and family against them! You will pull together the best teams for the job, equip powerful gear, and battle against incredible odds to save your fellow heroes.

“Disney Heroes: Battle Mode brings together Disney and Pixar characters in an all-new, original universe,” said Lisa Anderson, vice president, Games, Disney. “PerBlue has done a great job of bringing our characters to life in authentically Disney ways, and players will be surprised and delighted as they mix and match hero team-ups.”

Only YOU can win the day! No cape required.

Key Features Include:
- Deep Bench of Characters: Collect and transform 30+ Disney and Pixar heroes into battle-ready big shots, including The Incredibles, Frozone, Wreck-It Ralph, Vanellope von Schweetz, Judy Hopps, Nick Wilde and more.
- Missions and Friend Campaigns: Team up unlikely Disney and Pixar characters to battle together in the same universe to earn exclusive bonuses.
- A New Digital World: Lead characters through a corrupted digital world that they’re charged with saving from an evil virus.
- Epic Abilities and Gear: Activate skills, equip gear, and level up characters to take on bigger and badder enemies.“We’re excited to be working with some of the most recognizable characters and brands in the world and to bring them together in the new universe we’ve created,” said Justin Beck, CEO, PerBlue. “Disney and Pixar have been great collaborators that have shared our vision for creating a fun, multiplayer experience that can be enjoyed by all gamers.”Disney Heroes: Battle Mode marks the first game developed between Disney and PerBlue since the deal was announced earlier this year.
You can download and play this game for free. The game also allows you to play using virtual currency, which can be acquired as you progress through the game or by paying with real money. Purchases of virtual currency using real money are performed using a credit card, or other form of payment associated with your account.

Pre-registration for Disney Heroes: Battle Mode begins today on Google Play. Pre-registered players will receive a free hero of their choice at game launch. Heroes to choose from include Mr. Incredible, Fix-It Felix, Jr., Nick Wilde, Jessie and Sulley with Boo.
April 4, 2018
An Inside Look At The Disneyland Railroad at Disneyland Park

The Disneyland Railroad was one of the opening-day attractions at Disneyland park on July 17, 1955. Walt Disney held a lifelong passion for trains, one that was further inspired by the encouragement and collections of fellow railroad enthusiasts and Disney Legends Ward Kimball and Ollie Johnston.

More than 60 years later, the Disneyland Railroad continues to carry passengers on a grand circle tour around Walt’s original Magic Kingdom.

In the early morning, Disneyland Railroad technicians and conductors inspect every vehicle and length of track before a new day’s operation.

The beautiful north bank of the Rivers of America creates a rustic scene as guests travel across the elevated trestle. A steam engine chugs through the jungles of Adventureland, a stretch of line that hasn’t changed much since Walt signed off on the design more than 60 years ago.

For train enthusiasts interested in an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the history of the Disneyland Railroad, “The Grand Circle Tour” offers a unique perspective, including the opportunity to board the lavish parlor car, the Lilly Belle.

On your next visit to the Disneyland Resort, be sure to sit back, relax and soak in the views of Disneyland park aboard the Disneyland Railroad!

April 3, 2018
PANDORA Sparkles at Disneyland Paris With New Multi-Year Deal

PANDORA and Disneyland Paris announced recently that they have signed a multi-year strategic alliance that will introduce new official Disneyland Paris versions of the iconic PANDORA charms and a new retail location for Europe’s number one tourist destination.

The Disney PANDORA collection is a jewellery assortment available at Pandora stores worldwide that also offers a selection of exclusive Disney-themed charms available only in Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. As part of this alliance relationship, PANDORA’s core collection at Disneyland Paris is available at five merchandise locations with each location offering a different experience to highlight the range of charms and bracelets inspired by Disney Characters like Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and the iconic Disney Princesses. The PANDORA collection will also soon be available for sale in its own unique retail location in Walt Disney Studios Park which opens in April.

This new alliance relationship names PANDORA as the official sponsor of Disney Illuminations, an unforgettable nightly show that brings together groundbreaking special effects and impressive fireworks to transform Sleeping Beauty Castle before taking guests on a journey through beloved Disney stories.

“PANDORA’s arrival at our resort is fantastic news for our guests and our fans,” said Francesca Romana Gianesin, Vice President of Corporate Alliances at Disneyland Paris. “We share a common passion for creating special moments and crafting unforgettable memories.”

This strategic alliance is part of a broader agreement with The Walt Disney Company. PANDORA first entered into a strategic Corporate Alliance with Disney in August 2014. Under the terms of the agreement, PANDORA created an original collection of Disney-themed jewellery, which is since sold in the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. and Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Calif., as well as in PANDORA stores throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central America and the Caribbean. The alliance was then extended in November 2015 to include the Asia Pacific region.

“We are excited about this great opportunity to now have one of our store locations in such a beautiful setting as the Walt Disney Studios Park,” said Delphine Medaouri, Pandora France Managing Director. “Our customers will be able to have a new experience in a place that perfectly matches the values of PANDORA.”

April 3, 2018
Disney World Introduces New Digital Key Feature For Keyless Room Entry

Entering your resort room on Walt Disney World property is about to get even easier. Coming soon, Disney will be implementing a new “Digital Key” feature to the My Disney Experience app that will allow guests to quickly unlock their hotel room using a digital key on their mobile devices.

Guests staying at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge will get to test the new technology first, providing them with another seamless room entry option that brings added ease and flexibility to their experience.

Guests can also use their digital key to unlock the hotel entrance gate and common area doors requiring a key, which may include pools, fitness centers, elevators and club level lounges. Arriving travel parties that have checked in online may even use their digital key to bypass the need to visit the front desk, giving them the opportunity to go directly to their room when it is ready and start their vacation even faster.

The feature represents the latest evolution of keyless room entry, which we began offering with the MagicBand, the unique all-in-one device that effortlessly connects the vacation choices guests make in My Disney Experience. Guests may use either or both options to enter their room during their stay.

So how does it work? To use their digital key, guests can opt in and activate the feature on their check-in day through a brief set up process in the app. To enter their room, guests tap the “Unlock Door” button and then simply hold their phone against the door lock. Check out the video below to see a sneak peek of the feature in action.

At Walt Disney World Resort, they are always looking for ways to wow their guests with new technology that enhances the experience. The My Disney Experience app is a perfect example, with recently introduced features like mobile order and online check-in that are providing families and friends with additional choices to make their vacation even more enjoyable and convenient.

Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices with the latest version of the My Disney Experience app are required to take advantage of a digital key for room entry. And don’t forget to wear your MagicBand for all other uses including park entry, FastPass+ redemption, room charges and more.

April 2, 2018
Congressman Darren Soto’s Wife Arrested At Walt Disney World

The wife of U.S. Rep. Darren Soto was arrested at Disney Springs on Sunday on charges of disorderly intoxication according to an arrest report from The Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Cory Heller saw her “holding … her mother by the straps of the backpack she was wearing in an attempt to keep her from walking away,” according report. Amanda Soto, 33, of Celebration, was apparently in an argument with her Mother at the time near the bus loop.

Soto and her mother appeared intoxicated and Heller helped them call an Uber vehicle to take them home. The report states that when the deputy helped Amanda Soto and her mother get into the Uber, Amanda began yelling at her mother, the Uber driver and the law enforcement office.

Heller noted that he attempted to calm her numerous times from her agitated state and she repeatedly said her husband is a congressman, therefore “she could do whatever she wants.”

The deputy escorted them out of the Uber and Soto was handcuffed and placed in a patrol car, where “she began banging [her] head against the window in what appeared to be an attempt to harm herself. Amanda was further restrained for her safety,” Heller stated.

Soto who was elected in 2016 and represents Florida’s ninth district said in a statement said his wife has battled depression and recently stopped using her medications.

“Yesterday, she drank too much and reached an argumentative state with a family member, which led to arrest,’’ the congressman said. “She deeply regrets her actions and takes full responsibility for them. Amanda and her physician will be reviewing her mental health treatment, immediately.’’

According to the jail’s online database she was booked into jail at 10:44 Sunday night. Amanda Soto bonded out of the Orange County Jail early Monday.

This is the second high-profile arrest Walt Disney World made the news for last week. YouTuber Jason Ethier was arrested at the Ticket and Transportation Center outside Magic Kingdom on charges of trespassing and resisting arrest without violence.

April 2, 2018
Alien Pizza Planet Landing Soon at Disneyland Park

Oooooooooh – everyone’s favorite Aliens from Disney•Pixar’s “Toy Story” will be invading Disneyland Resort for Pixar Fest, and we are eternally grateful! For the duration of the festival, Redd Rockett’s Pizza Port in Disneyland park will transform into Alien Pizza Planet – “A Better Place.”

The Aliens have sourced the finest ingredients from across the universe to deliver fresh, hot pizzas that are out of this world. A specialty of their home planet Pepperonia is a special pepperoni pizza topped with green peppers and mushrooms.

They’ll also be cooking up a hearty cheeseburger pizza with ketchup, yellow mustard and pizza sauce on a sesame seed crust and topped with cheese, caramelized onions, diced tomatoes, slider patties, a house-made burger sauce, and pickles.

If you’re excited for this fun-filled re-imagination of Redd Rockett’s Pizza Port, stay tuned for more details on the deliciously cheesy menu.

This exciting transformation is just one of the many offerings coming as part of Pixar Fest at the Disneyland Resort, which will run from April 13 through September 3. The festival will span both Disneyland park and Disney California Adventure park, bringing not only creatively-themed food, but also a new fireworks show, “Together Forever—A Pixar Nighttime Spectacular,” the return of the “Paint the Night” parade and much more!

April 2, 2018
Breaking: Hollywood Studios Getting Marvel Land As Disney Regains East Coast Marvel Rights Iger Revealed at Shareholder Meeting

The largest hurdle Disney World has had to overcome in bringing more Marvel attractions to its parks, other than those based on franchises like “Guardians of the Galaxy“, is the fact that Universal Studios owns the east coast rights to most of the Marvel lineup. Well in a shocking turn of events, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced at the most recent shareholders meeting that Disney has negotiated a deal to bring the rights home to Disney and they will officially be adding a Marvel Land to Hollywood Studios.

“We think this will be a good thing. Marvel belongs home with Disney and we now have the opportunity to tell the stories of these characters in way like only Disney can.” Iger said. The audience laughed as he joked, “It’s always a little odd when you have to rent back your own property from someone who is renting it from you.” The deal is quite intricate he explained and there are no details on how exactly it was worked out. This comes on the heels of a recent announcement that Disneyland Parks around the globe are already getting Marvel themed lands and now Disney World wont be left out on the super hero action!

He was tight-lipped about some of the upcoming changes, but he did drop some bombs on what the future of Hollywood Studios will look like with the addition of Marvel Land. First and what will probably be most up setting for fans is that the area will be located around the Tower of Terror area where just like in California, the attraction will be converted to Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! Iger made the announcement as he unveiled the only piece of concept art that he used during his speech as you can see in the photo below:

The ride is expected to be operational by late 2020, well before construction for Marvel Land is complete. “The new attraction will anchor a broader universe of Super Heroes that will grow over time at Hollywood Studios”, Iger said.

There will be a Marvel themed restaurant, of course multiple retail locations, and other attractions, but the only other attraction change Iger mentioned during the meeting was Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith. The contract with Aerosmith was renewed not too long ago and it’s always a question of if they will continue renewing. Well I guess we have our answer, because in a statement that Iger let Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Bob Chapek deliver, he said, “Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster will be transformed into an Ironman themed coaster that will immerse guests in a fantastic new thrilling adventure like never before.”

Iger said that the project can be expected to be fully completed by 2022 and those rides that will be getting overhauls will remain open for as long as possible to minimize the impact on guests during construction of new addition of Marvel Land. Work will begin on Tower of Terror first and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster will close temporarily while construction on the entire new land begins.

Fans have already been lighting up the internet as they are upset about the changing of more classic rides and it didn’t take long for the petitions to begin either. Change is hard and if you have loved Hollywood Studios since the day it opened in 1989 as Disney-MGM Studios, then this might be a hard one for you, but this is a change that is necessary for “Disney’s vision of the park’s future” Iger said in his final words at the meeting.

Walt Disney himself knew that his parks would continue to change and evolve. “As long as there is imagination left in the world”, said Walt. He also believed in a good laugh and a good joke so we hope you enjoyed this one. Happy April Fools Day… Oh yeah and Happy Easter. If anyone happens to be upset that the news isn’t true, don’t worry, there are Marvel Lands that are going to be popping up at nearly every other Disney Park on the Planet. And if you can’t make it out of Florida, we actually have our own Marvel Land right here… at Universal Studios. 🙂

April 1, 2018
Homeless Disney Worker Who Died Living in Her Car Becomes Center Of Wages Debate

The homeless Disney worker who died alone, living in her car, has recently been put in the center of Disneyland’s wages debate.

Yeweinishet “Weini” Mesfin kept her struggles mostly to herself and it took 20 days of frantic searching by friends and family before her body was found around noon on Dec. 19, 2016. She was found dressed in exercise clothes and clutching her keys, in the driver’s seat of her dark green 1999 sedan parked at the gym where she showered.

Mesfin lived out of her Honda Civic for seven years but all she wanted was privacy and hid her struggles from almost everyone, according to a report by The Orange County Register. Mesfin decided not to tell family and coworkers that she was homeless, outside of one or two people.

The homeless Disney worker who died alone in her car became the face of a public debate, but all she wanted was privacy https://t.co/0mNS7ZT6id pic.twitter.com/tVjY5E56kw

— OC Disney (@ocdisney) March 30, 2018

Now Mesfin’s private struggle is the subject of public debate more than a year after her death. A recent union-commissioned survey of 5,000 Disney employees showed that the vast majority of respondents stated they were being paid less than $15 an hour, and about 3/4 of those surveyed said they run out of money by the end of month, according to the study. Headlines about the about the findings quickly spread and soon she was the subject of social media posts and stories claiming she died because of her paycheck.

Disney officials, however, dispute the surveys findings as “deliberately distorted,” calling them an “inaccurate and unscientific survey … paid for by politically motivated labor unions,” according to a statement from Suzi Brown, the vice president of communications for Disneyland Resort.

However on the issue of Mesfin’s disappearance, Brown said, Disney security also requested a welfare check by Anaheim police. They also made calls to multiple police departments and maintained Mesfin’s status as a cast member until she was found dead.

Employment records show Mesfin began working part-time at the Anaheim theme park in 2007, according to Brown. Mesfin became a full-time cast member in 2009.

Co-worker said, Mesfin was third-shift custodial at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, with typical hours starting at 11 or 11:30 p.m. and ending around 8 a.m. Her pay was most likely was around $13 or $14 an hour at the time of her death, according to the report.

The 61 year-old passed alone almost a week after her birthday.

March 31, 2018
Disney Imagineering and NVIDIA Team Up To Develop New Tech For Millennium Falcon Attraction

Walt Disney Imagineering teamed with NVIDIA and Epic Games to develop new technology to drive the Millennium Falcon attraction that will be part of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland Resort and the Walt Disney World Resort when it opens in 2019.

When it launches, riders will enter a cockpit powered with a single BOXX chassis packed with eight high-end NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs, connected via Quadro SLI.

When the attraction opens next year, park guests will visit the planet of Batuu, a remote outpost that was once a busy crossroads along the old sub-lightspeed trade routes. But you don’t have to wait another year to get a glimpse of it.

An in-progress animated sequence from the Millennium Falcon attraction was unveiled Wednesday. Produced by ILMxLAB and running in real-time, it gives fans the first ever glimpse of the incredible detail and immersion the attraction will offer.

Quadro Sync synchronizes five projectors for the creation of dazzling ultra-high resolution, perfectly timed displays to fully immerse the riders in the world of planet Batuu.

Working with NVIDIA and Epic Games, the Imagineering team created a custom multi-GPU implementation for Unreal Engine. This new code was returned to the Epic Games team and will help influence how multi-GPUs function for their engine.

“We worked with NVIDIA engineers to use Quadro-specific features like Mosaic and cross-GPU reads to develop a renderer that had performance characteristics we needed,” says Bei Yang, technology studio executive at Disney Imagineering. “Using the eight connected GPUs allowed us to achieve performance unlike anything before.”

Yang and Principal Software Developer Eric Smolikowski dove into more details during their GTC talk, “Walt Disney Imagineering Technology Preview: Real-time Rendering of a Galaxy Far, Far Away,” and discussed how Disney Imagineering took advantage of the latest NVIDIA technology and the technical modifications they made for the Unreal Engine, which allows eight GPUs to render at unprecedented quality and speed.

March 31, 2018
What’s Being Demolished At Downtown Disney For New Disneyland Resort Hotel
Construction on the upcoming new Four Diamond Disneyland Resort Hotel is scheduled to start in summer 2018. The new luxury resort edition will add fourth Disney-themed hotel to the area and while that is really exciting several businesses that have been part of Anaheim’s Downtown Disney since it opened in 2001 will be demolished.

Disney is looking to expand lodging at the Disneyland Resort and to make room for a new 700-room hotel they will be tearing down several popular spots.

Here’s a breakdown on what is being demolished:
- Earl of Sandwich
- ESPN Zone
- Rainforest Cafe
- AMC 12 Theatres
- Alamo Rent-a-Car
- (west side) Starbucks
Basically, everything west of the Lego store and Disneyland Drive will be demolished making plenty of room for the resort. The addition of the new hotel shows Disney’s new strategy to try to attract more out-of-town guest as they have historically catered to local Cali residents, according to The Orange Count Register.

Here’s what’s closing at Downtown Disney to make way for a new hotel https://t.co/icJOMKnGTV pic.twitter.com/mSYOiOzCpI

— O.C. Register (@ocregister) March 27, 2018

It is the largest renovation in Downtown Disney District history clearing up 17 acres for the resort. Disney officials announced that the businesses will be closing by June 30 with demolition slated to begin in early July. Talks are ongoing and it is still possible that a few of the closed businesses will reopen inside the new hotel complex.

The new hotel will have a dedicated Monorail platform inside the hotel for direct transport into Disneyland park and a new restaurant that will offer a magical view of the Disneyland fireworks. Disney has yet to receive expected final approvals from the city of Anaheim for the new hotel.
March 30, 2018