DISNEY NEWS: Monday, March 15th

Bringing you all of the news from the Disney company that you need to know to start your week for Monday March 15th, 2021:

• Disneyland to open in late April
• Remy's Ratatouille Adventure ride in EPCOT at Walt Disney World gets release date
• Disney's special ticketed event in Anaheim, 'A Touch of Disney,' sells out
• Disneyland Paris reopening changed
• Disney Plus subscriber totals have hit a gigantic milestone
• News from the Disney Cruise Line
• Avatar surprises Avengers End Game with a rerelease in China, knocking the giant superhero film from the top of the most prestigious list
• New National Geographic documentary coming to Disney+ 'Saving the Whales'
•  The Disney channel's hit show 'The Descendants' is coming back for a special episode this summer
• And so much more...

 Follow your host Sean Nyberg on his Facebook page, Twitter, or Instagram at @SeanNyberg

Don't forget to follow our The DisInsider Facebook page, or find us on Twitter and Instagram at @theDisInsider and of course, for all the breaking news, at www.TheDisInsider.com 

Transcript

Hello there, this is Sean Nyberg and this podcast is being recorded on the evening of Sunday, March 14th, 2021. Alright, let’s dive into the news.

This has been another big week for the Disney theme parks, as vaccine distribution is hitting record highs and covid-19 numbers are hitting record lows, the restrictions put in place by states are starting to ease quickly, which is allowing Disneyland to reopen sooner than expected.

In fact, Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced that the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim California will be reopening in late April. While the parks would be able to open a bit earlier, as per the state guidelines, Chapek said it would take a bit more time to get cast members rehired and get the park back up and running. In fact, it was reported that Disney will immediately recall over 10,000 laid off cast members, with more expected throughout the end of Spring and into Summer.

The Disneyland Resort is also hosting their newest ticketed event, “A Touch of Disney” over at Disney California Adventure. That event begins Thursday March 18th and allows guests into DCA, with specialty food options, retail opportunities, and character photos. Tickets for this event went quickly as the pent up demand for anything related to Disneyland has reached a fevered pitch. It was also revealed that Avengers Campus, at Disney California Adventure, will open later this year. The land is built and the major attraction within the land, WEBSLINGER: A Spider-Man Adventure, is completed and tested, but the capacity restrictions imposed for the park’s reopening does not bode well for the Grand Reveal of a brand new land. Expect Avengers Campus to open once the parks have increased capacity limits.

At Walt Disney World, it was announced that Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure at the France pavilion in Epcot’s World Showcase will open on October 1st, to coincide with Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary. Like Avengers Camus, the ride is all but completed, but the company is choosing to hold off on opening the ride until October. While no official reasoning was given, there are a number of obvious explanations: first, the negative optics of a grand opening of a hot new attraction while the country is slowly reopening, is not a risk that Disney would likely want to take. The company’s reputation has held strong, and even improved, throughout the pandemic, that a self-imposed mistake in the final minutes would be foolish. Also, when the opening dates of Tron Lightcycle Run and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind were pushed back into 2022, it left a large void for the 50th Anniversary, the opening of Ratatouille on October 1st would fill that void and kick off the celebration. Events surrounding the 50th will continue for 18 months and will include the opening of Tron and Cosmic Rewind, along with the new Epcot nighttime show, Harmonious.

Chapek also revealed that the newest ship within the Disney Cruise Line fleet, “The Disney Wish” is set to begin sailing Summer 2022, with the Disney Cruise Line starting to resume operations in Fall of this year. The Cruise Line, like the theme parks, are huge money makers for Disney and help fund long term projects like Disney Plus and large film franchises, so the reopening of their theme parks, along with the cruise line, will be a huge relief for Disney. 

Among all of this positive news for the Disney parks, there was some frustrating news from across the Atlantic. Disneyland Paris announced that they will not be reopening in early April, as expected. The Covid-19 crisis in Europe has seen a resurgence as new variants collide with a vaccine weary public. This has slowed, and in some cases reversed, the planned reopening of many European countries. There was no reopening date announced for the Paris parks.

Flipping back now to good news, scratch that, make that GREAT news for Disney, it was revealed this last week that Disney’s primary streaming service, Disney plus, has reached over 100 million paid subscribers, an astonishingly high number that no one could have anticipated. To put that into perspective, HBO Max has only 17 million subscribers, and most of those had HBO cable subscriptions and they were rolled into the streaming service and AppleTV+ has only 10 million subscribers. Doing the match, that means Disney+ has nearly SIX TIMES the subscribers that HBO Max has and TEN TIMES the number that AppleTV+ has. These numbers are huge and clearly shows that the streaming wars is truly a two service race between Netflix and Disney Plus, with Peacock, HBOMax, AppleTV+, Paramount+, and Discovery+, all trailing far behind. 

Disney also owns the streaming services Hulu and ESPN+ and this last week customers who had the two services in a bundle saw that ESPN’s content was now available through the Hulu app. Subscriptions to both services, in a bundle, is required. This move helps to streamline viewing for customers, enabling them to flip between Hulu and ESPN without go between apps.

It was also announced that ESPN+ picked up a new five-year contract with the National Hockey League. Disney and the NHL agreed on a contract that is reportedly worth $2 Billion and gives Disney rights to air NHL on both ESPN cable network and ESPN+ streaming app.  

As always, this week saw a number of new cast and crew announcements for upcoming Disney projects, including… 

In an interesting bit of Box Office news, the Disney owned James Cameron smash hit Avatar reclaimed the title of “Highest Grossing Film of All Time” from the Disney owned Marvel film “Avengers: End Game.” Thanks to a rerelease in China, Avatar added an estimated $12.3 million to the total haul in the first two days. That was enough to bump Avatar’s worldwide grosses to $2.802B versus Endgame’s $2.797B. At the end of the day, the big winner is The Walt Disney Company as they own both of these films. The fact that Avatar is in the news again is great for Disney, back in 2010 the film was released and made a huge splash. Overtaking the top spot for highest grossing film from Cameron’s Titanic. But since 2010, the film has faded a bit from the public discourse and the planned sequels have continued to get postponed. The latest announcement from Disney has the first sequel, Avatar 2, coming in December of next year, with a total of four sequels being released over the next seven years.

The news of Avatar’s reclamation of Highest Grossing Film of All-Time is just the sort of buzz Disney needs to put this film back into the mindset of moviegoers. Since the sequel is still 21 months away, let this mark the beginning of a long marketing push. Congratulations to Avatar, now, let’s see if Disney will release End Game to get another round of box office headlines. 

Last week, Disney+ released the trailer for its upcoming original series Secrets of the Whales, which plunges viewers deep within the epicenter of whale culture to reveal the mysterious and beautiful world of five different whale species: orcas, humpbacks, belugas, narwhals and sperm whales.The four-part series, from National Geographic, is executive produced by Academy Award®-winning filmmaker and conservationist James Cameron and narrated by award-winning actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver. All four episodes will be available to stream exclusively on Earth Day, Thursday, April 22, 2021, exclusively on Disney+.

The Descendants trilogy was a major hit for Disney Channel, and fans have always asked if a continuation is possible. Now, we finally have answer that should please those fans.

Today, Disney Channel has announced that Descendants: The Royal Wedding, an animated special that invites viewers to Mal and King Ben’s wedding, will premiere this summer on Disney Channel.

The special will acknowledge the absence of the character Carlos, played by the late Cameron Boyce, in the storyline and Boyce’s memory also will be honored in the telecast. Boyce tragically passed away in July 2019 due to ongoing medical conditions. Check in with The DisInsider, as we will let you know once an actual release date is announced.

Speaking of, I want to you remind you to please visit TheDisInsider.com to see a number of features that were not discussed in this episode, including first impressions of the upcoming Marvel Disney+ series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” a review of the entire WandaVision limited series, and a piece discussing all of the MCU’s best cameos. Go check them all out. 

On behalf of myself and those of us here at the Disney Beat, along with the DisInsider, we wish everyone good health and prosperity.

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You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @SeanNyberg all one word.

I also cohost the Disney podcast Walts Apartment, that comes out every Thursday and the Disney Parks themed podcast Extra Magic Hour which is released every other Friday. So check those out.

Thank you again for listening and I will see you here again next week for another edition of The Disney Beat podcast, my name is Sean Nyberg. Have a fantastic week!