MrBeast says he spent $500K to rent out Disneyland for date with fiancée
YouTube's most-subscribed-to content creator has once again made a larger-than-life purchase by paying $500,000 to rent out an entire Disneyland theme park for a "romantic date" with his fiancée.
In a new YouTube video, MrBeast, the social media persona of Jimmy Donaldson, takes his fiancée Thea Booysen on six dates that range from $1 to $500,000, concluding with what he says was an evening at Disneyland all to themselves (in addition to a handful of friends and crew, of course).
The group rode Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Pixar Pal-A-Round (the 150-foot-tall Ferris wheel); played several carnival-style games; and built custom lightsabers at Savi's Workshop in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.
"There are no words to describe how special it is to have Disney all to ourselves," Donaldson said in the little over 17-minute video. "I think we all made memories that are going to last a lifetime."
Birthdays at Disneyland: Duchess Meghan, Prince Harry take Archie and Lilibet to Disneyland for birthday
On Feb. 27, 1992, actress Elizabeth Taylor rented out all of Disneyland to celebrate her 60th birthday. The entire park shut down for the birthday bash, which required extra security. Hundreds of celebrities attended the party, which proved to be a successful marketing promotion for Disney.
Theme parks: New report finds Disneyland, Disney World contribute $67B to US economy
Disney did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment on MrBeast's video or consumers' ability to rent out an entire theme park. However, several Disney-centric blogs like Magic Guides say it is not possible.
"Closing down the resort for a day would be a public relations nightmare and would severely disrupt how guests could plan and book their trips," Magic Guides' author Joshua Powell wrote.
Disneyland does offer some private and after-hours experiences, though, like Disney After Hours, in which customers can purchase tickets for three extended hours after the park's traditional closing time. The theme park also offers Disney's Fair Tale Weddings & Honeymoons, which allows couples and their family to rent various venues, including The Sleeping Beauty Castle Forecourt and Small World Mall.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Disney and Universal sue AI company over use of copyrighted characters: 'Piracy is piracy'
Disney and NBCUniversal have accused AI company Midjourney of copyright infringement. The plaintiffs accuse the company of using its characters, such as Spider-Man, Star Wars' Darth Vader and Yoda, Disney's Princess Elsa from Frozen, the Minions, Homer Simpson, Deadpool and Wolverine, and more via an online service that allows users to create images, according to lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California in Los Angeles. "For more than 100 years, Disney and Universal have delighted audiences around the world by investing in and fostering American creative innovation and producing some of the greatest motion pictures and fictional characters of all time," the lawsuit states. "Midjourney, however, seeks to reap the rewards of Plaintiffs' creative investment by selling an artificial intelligence ("AI") image-generating service ("Image Service") that functions as a virtual vending machine, generating endless unauthorized copies of Disney's and Universal's copyrighted works." The suit continues, "By helping itself to Plaintiffs' copyrighted works, and then distributing images mages (and soon videos) that blatantly incorporate and copy Disney's and Universal's famous characters—without investing a penny in their creation—Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism. Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing." According to the lawsuit, the startup reportedly made $300 million in revenue last year. Its 21 million users, as of September, paid for subscriptions of $10 to $120 monthly in order to, according to the lawsuit, "view and download copies and derivatives of Plaintiffs' valuable copyrighted characters." They called it "textbook copyright infringement." The lawsuit states that the company had almost 21 million users as of September 2024. It launched its image service in 2022 and reportedly made $300 million in revenue last year. Disney and NBCU said they asked the company to stop using their work, but the company has not and has released new versions of its Image Service. In a statement, Horacio Gutierrez, the senior executive vice president, chief legal and compliance officer of the Walt Disney Company, said: "Our world-class IP is built on decades of financial investment, creativity and innovation—investments only made possible by the incentives embodied in copyright law that give creators the exclusive right to profit from their works. We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity. But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it's done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing."Kim Harris, executive vice president and general counsel of NBCUniversal, also provided a statement. "Creativity is the cornerstone of our business," Harris said. "We are bringing this action today to protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us and the significant investment we make in our content. Theft is theft regardless of the technology used, and this action involves blatant infringement of our copyrights." The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and "permanent injunctive relief" to halt the use of the characters. EW has reached out to Midjourney for comment. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
"Piracy Is Piracy": Disney Sues Midjourney for Massive Copyright Violation
Disney and NBCUniversal — a pair of media behemoths behind franchises ranging from "Star Wars" and "Toy Story" to "Minions" and "Shrek" — are suing AI company Midjourney, accusing it of enabling copyright infringement on a massive scale through its AI image generator tech. In the lawsuit, which was filed in a California district court today, the two Hollywood juggernauts accused the firm of ignoring its previous requests to stop violating their intellectual property rights. "Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism," the scathing complaint reads, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. It's a major escalation in the fight between copyright holders and AI firms, a battle that has been brewing for years. Per Axios, it's the "first legal action that major Hollywood studios have taken against a generative AI company." And it's not just the use of image generators; generative AI writ large has triggered a barrage of lawsuits, with media companies accusing the likes of OpenAI and Google of training their large language models on their materials without fair compensation. Those disputes have turned into a major pain point for the AI industry, despite surging enthusiasm for the tech. Considering the sheer size of both Disney and Universal — Disney is the third largest media company by market cap in the world — Midjourney could soon be in a world of hurt. Disney, in particular, has a long track record of closely guarding its enormous cache of intellectual property. "Our world-class IP is built on decades of financial investment, creativity and innovation—investments only made possible by the incentives embodied in copyright law that give creators the exclusive right to profit from their works," said Disney's chief legal compliance officer, Horacio Gutierrez, in a statement. "We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity," he added. "But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it's done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing." The lawsuit explained in an example how Midjourney users could easily request a picture of the Disney-owned "Star Wars" character Darth Vader in a "particular setting or doing a particular action," and the AI "obliges by generating and displaying a high-quality, downloadable image." That kind of loose approach to copyright has been an open secret for quite some time. In January 2024, noted AI critic Gary Marcus and film industry concept artist Reid Southen warned in a piece for IEEE Spectrum that tools like Midjourney and OpenAI's DALL-E3 could land them in a "copyright minefield." The pair found that it was "easy to generate many plagiaristic outputs, with brief prompts related to commercial films," including well-known Marvel superheroes, Nintendo's Super Mario, and Disney's Darth Vader. Disney and Universal are framing their legal action as a way to "protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us," said NBCU executive VP and general of counsel Kim Harris in the statement. Given the lack of a clear legal precedent, it'll be fascinating to watch the lawsuit unfold over what's likely to turn into a years-long courtroom battle. More on Midjourney: Self-Styled "AI Artist" Furious That People Are "Blatantly Stealing My Work"
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Sky Sports News' golden age at an end as rival platforms turn up the volume
A constant in pubs, gyms and hotel breakfast rooms, almost always with the sound down. Perhaps not since cinema's silent age have faces been so familiar without the general public knowing their voices. The vibe is more casual than in previous times, shirt sleeves rather than business suits, but the formula remains the same: a carousel of news, clips, quotes, quips, centred around highlights, all framed within a constant flow of results, fixtures and league tables. Sky Sports News hits 27 years of broadcasting in August, having been launched for the 1998-99 football season by BSkyB. As the domestic football season concluded, news came of changes within the Osterley-based newsroom. Seven members of the broadcast talent team would be leaving, including the long-serving Rob Wotton and the senior football reporter Melissa Reddy, within a process of voluntary redundancies. Advertisement Sky sources – not those Sky sources – are keen to state the changes are not a cost-cutting exercise, instead a redress of SSN's place within a changing media environment. Ronan Kemp, the One Show presenter and Celebrity Goggleboxer, is understood to be in discussions to join Sky and despite Wotton's departure, Ref Watch will still be serving those who get their kicks from re-refereeing matches and VAR calls. Rolling news, which became common currency around the time of the initial Gulf war with Iraq is no longer the go-to information environment. Sky News, SSN's sister organisation, is going through similar changes, including the loss of the veteran anchor Kay Burley. The smartphone, where news alerts supplant even social media, takes the strain of keeping the world informed of Micky van de Ven's latest hamstring injury. Desperate to hear even more from Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville? There are podcasts and YouTube channels available at a swipe. In the US, ESPN's SportsCenter and its accompanying ESPNews channel were the progenitors of a medium copied globally and by Sky in launching SSN. SportsCenter is a flagship in marked decline from a golden 1990s era that made American household names of presenters such as Stuart Scott, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick. ESPN, an organisation in the process of taking itself to digital platforms as cable TV gets mothballed, closed SportsCenter's Los Angeles studio in March. Linear TV's death will be slow, but it is dying nonetheless as streaming, all bundles and consumer choice, takes hold. Meanwhile, YouTube channels, with production values way below industry standard, amass huge audiences for fan-owned, independent media. Advertisement The time of viewers tuning in for 10pm highlights voiced over by presenters' catchphrases – Scott's 'boo yah!' being the prime example – has long passed. Social media and YouTube have killed the demand. Though live sports remain the foundation of broadcasting contracts, highlights and analysis can be watched at the time of the viewers' choice. Digital is where the eyeballs go, and what the advertising dollar is attracted to, despite the ubiquity of Go Compare et al. Viewing figures remain healthy but the game is now about far more than ratings. SSN's imperial period was the early millennium days of Dave Clark and Kirsty Gallacher's toothsome double act, to a time when the yellow ticker of breaking news held great sway, though not always delivering on its promise of earthquake journalism (news of Nicky Shorey's Reading contract extension, anyone?). Millie Clode, Di Stewart, Charlotte Jackson, Kelly Cates: a nation turned its lonely eyes to them. Then there was transfer deadline day, more important than the football itself. Long, frantic hours spent hearing Jim White's Glaswegian whine declare anything could happen on this day of days. In the early years it often did, from Peter Odemwingie's mercy dash to Loftus Road to the brandishing of a sex toy in the earhole of reporter Alan Irwin outside Everton's training ground. Another reporter, Andy 'four phones' Burton, labelled the night the 2008 window closed: 'The best day of my life, apart from when my son was born.' Eventually, though, it became too knowing. Not even White's yellow tie, as garish as his hype, accompanied by Natalie Sawyer's yellow dress, could stop the event from becoming desperate hours chasing diminishing returns. Live television is a challenging environment, especially with nothing to feed off. Advertisement Though many presenters have been lampooned – abused in the more carrion social media age – the difficulty of 'going live' with an earpiece full of instructions and timings should never be underestimated. How does Mike Wedderburn, the channel's first presenter, make it look so easy? When, in a broadcasting-carriage dispute between Virgin and Sky, Setanta Sports News was given brief life in 2007 – 22 months as the Dagmar to Sky's Queen Vic – it was made apparent how hard, and costly, the business can be. Over-exposure to SSN – as happens when someone works in a newspaper sports department, say – can lead to contempt. The joins can be seen, too. Haven't they done that same gag for the past six hours and each time pretended it was an ad lib? Just what is Gary Cotterill up to this time? Why did Bryan Swanson always use such portentous tones? From morning till night, it would be ever-present. On weekend evenings, when you caught the skilled veteran duo of Julian Waters and the late David Bobin running through the day's events, you knew it was time to leave the office, down that late drink, question your life choices, the pair's clipped tones taking on the effect of a lonely late-night cab ride. SSN is forced to move with the times. As is the case across the industry, journalists have often been supplanted by influencers, as the mythical, perhaps unreachable, 'younger audience' is chased. That is not to say the channel is short of decent reporting. In the aftermath of the 2022 Champions League final in Paris, chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol produced a superb account of the ensuing chaos and danger while others floundered for detail. Advertisement SSN, like SportsCenter across the Atlantic, is now more a production factory for content being sent across the internet, published to multiple platforms, than it is a rolling news channel. Within press statements around the redundancies there was the word 'agile', a term repurposed – and overused – in the business world, but meaning doing more with less. Next season, as heavily trailed on SSN right now, Sky will have 215 Premier League live matches to show, including every game played on Sundays. That requires the company's shift in focus, for Sky Sports News in particular. Though look up wherever you are and it will still be on in the corner, almost certainly with the sound down.
