Latest news with #FestivalofFantasyParade
Miami Herald
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Disney sets date for Magic Kingdom's nighttime parade
ORLANDO, Fla. - Walt Disney World has revealed the date that its new nighttime parade will debut at Magic Kingdom. Theme park visitors will be able to watch "Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away" come down Main Street USA as of July 20. "We can't wait to bring this parade to life at the park," David Duffy, vice president of Disney Live Entertainment, told members of the media Tuesday night. Disney also revealed another float design for "Starlight," and it will bring up the rear of the parade. That unit features a locomotive engineered by Goofy, followed by Pluto, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Snow White, Dopey, Rapunzel, Flynn Rider, Aladdin and Jasmine. Bringing up the rear of the rear: Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, who will sport a new set of starry costumes for the occasion. The train's look is inspired by the classic Main Street Electrical Parade, which was last seen at Disney World in 2016. On Wednesday, Disney World revealed a change in park reservations for Magic Kingdom for its annual passholders, starting with the parade's debut date. On July 20 and thereafter, passholders will need a Magic Kingdom reservation at any part of the day, as opposed to the current policy of going reservation-free after 2 p.m. Disney's website says the change is because of an "anticipated high demand" and it will remain in effect for a limited time, though no end date was provided. The change does not pertain to Epcot, Disney's Hollywood Studios or Disney's Animal Kingdom. A step-off time for "Starlight" has not been posted, and the "Festival of Fantasy Parade" remains on Magic Kingdom's daytime schedule. Disney also announced the order of units that were previously announced. The parade will begin with the Blue Fairy and "Peter Pan" characters, followed by floats tied to "Wish," "Encanto" and "Frozen," then assorted Disney royals together plus "Coco" and "Moana" floats and, finally, Goofy's train unit. "What guests are going to be able to get in this parade is a nod to the past but also eyes firmly set on the future," Tara Anderson, show director, said in a video released by Disney. "You're going to hear melodies from older films, newer films, in a very magical, mystical way." Original theme music has been composed for "Starlight." The new parade was announced in August, alongside plans for a new villains land and "Cars" attractions in Magic Kingdom along with a "Monsters, Inc" land at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Debuting this week at Hollywood Studios were two stage shows: "Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After" and "The Little Mermaid - a Musical Adventure." Additional Walt Disney World attractions expected to open this year are GEO-82, an adults-only lounge built inside Epcot's Spaceship Earth and set to open in June; an updated Test Track ride at Epcot; and a "Zootopia" film inside the Tree of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom. _____________ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Japan Today
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
When did Disney villains stop being so villainous? New show suggests they may just be misunderstood
FILE - An actor portraying Captain Hook from Peter Pan performs on a float during the Festival of Fantasy Parade at Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File) By MIKE SCHNEIDER Cruella de Vil wanted to turn Dalmatian puppies into fur coats, Captain Hook tried to bomb Peter Pan and Maleficent issued a curse of early death for Aurora. But wait, maybe these Disney villains were just misunderstood? That's the premise of a new musical show at Walt Disney World that has some people wondering when did Disney's villains stop wanting to be so ... villainous? The live show, 'Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After,' debuts May 27 at the Disney's Hollywood Studios park at the Orlando, Florida resort. In the show, the three baddies of old-school Disney movies plead their cases before an audience that they are the most misunderstand villain of them all. 'We wanted to tell a story that's a little different than what's been told before: which one of them has been treated the most unfairly ever after,' Mark Renfrow, a creative director of the show, said in a promotional video. That hook — the narrative kind, not the captain — is scratching some Disney observers the wrong way. 'I think it's wonderful when you still have stories where villains are purely villainous,' said Benjamin Murphy, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Florida State University's campus in Panama. "When you have villains reveling in their evil, it can be amusing and satisfying.' Disney has some precedent for putting villains in a sympathetic light, or at least explaining how they got to be so evil. The 2021 film, 'Cruella,' for instance, presents a backstory for the dog-hater played by actress Emma Stone that blames her villainy on her mother never wanting her. Other veins of pop culture have rethought villains too, perhaps none more famously than the book, theatrical musical and movie versions of 'Wicked,' the reinterpretation of the Wicked Witch of the West character from 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.' The blockbuster success of 'Wicked," which was based on the 1995 novel 'Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,' sparked the trend of rethinking villains in popular entertainment, Murphy said. 'With trends like that, the formula is repeated and repeated until it's very predictable: take a villain and make them sympathetic,' he said. The centuries-old fairy tales upon which several Disney movies are based historically were meant to teach children a lesson, whether it was not to get close to wolves (Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs) or trust strange, old women in the woods (Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel). But they often made marginalized people into villains — older women, people of color or those on the lower socio-economic scale, said Rebecca Rowe, an assistant professor of children's literature at Texas A&M University-Commerce. The trend toward making villains more sympathetic started in the late 1980s and 1990s as children's media took off. There was a desire to present villains in a manner that was more complicated and less black and white, as there was an overall cultural push toward emphasizing acceptance, she said. 'The problem is everyone has swung so hard into that message, that we have kind of lost the villainous villains,' Rowe said. 'There is value in the villainous villains. There are people who just do evil things. Sometimes there is a reason for it, but sometimes not. Just because there is a reason doesn't mean it negates the harm.' Whether it's good for children to identify with villains is complicated. There is a chance they adopt the villains' traits if it's what they identify with, but then some scholars believe it's not a bad thing for children to empathize with characters who often are part of marginalized communities, Rowe said. The Disney villains also tend to appeal to adults more than children, as well as members of the LGBTQ+ community who have felt marginalized in the past, with some 'Disney princesses' gladly graduating into 'evil queens.' Erik Paul, an Orlando resident who has had a year-round pass to Disney World for the past decade, isn't particularly fond of the villains, but he understands why Disney would want to frame them in a more sympathetic light in a show dedicated just to them. 'I know friends who go to Hollywood Studios mainly to see the villain-related activities,' Paul said. 'Maybe that's why people like the villains because they feel misunderstood as well, and they feel a kinship to the villains.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
