Disney World

Mickey Mouse and his friends could be welcoming visitors to the city’s own Disneyland as early as 2012, a Hong Kong newspaper reported over the weekend.

The theme park, with an estimated cost of 40 billion yuan ($5.8 billion), will be located on the east bank of Shanghai’s Huangpu River, bordering Pudong district’s Chuansha town and Nanhui district, Wen Wei Po quoted an unnamed source close to Shanghai government as saying.

Shanghai Disneyland, 20 minutes’ drive from Pudong International Airport, will be eight times larger than the one in Hong Kong - the first in China.

The source told the paper that 10 sq km of land has been set aside for the park.

The agreement on the location of the park was made after 10 years of tough negotiations, with Beijing and Tianjin also vying to host the park.

The Shanghai government had wanted the theme park to be built on Chongming Island, an area that has failed to keep pace with the city’s rapid economic development.

The cost, excluding the land, was first set at around 30 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) but increased to 40 billion yuan ($5.8 billion) due to inflation.

The source said an official announcement on the decision will be made around the time of the Beijing Olympics.

According to the agreement, Shanghai Disneyland will not adopt Hong Kong’s operation model, in which the government leases the land to the Walt Disney Company.

The Shanghai government will provide the land, cover most of the construction costs and hold a controlling stake. It will pay the Walt Disney Company for using the brand.

Disneyland has gone back to the future, but it’s not an all-plastic world after all.

The place is Tomorrowland, as it was from 1957 to 1967, when Monsanto’s all-plastic “House of the Future” drew more than 20 million visitors, fascinated by microwave ovens, TV speaker phones and “cambrian vinyl corlon.”

This time, Disneyland has brought future living a bit closer to the present to showcase products currently available or expected within the next two years.

The “Innoventions Dream Home,” as the 5,000-square-foot attraction is called, is located inside the Carousel of Progress building, where guests used to watch vignettes of American history revolve past them.

It is designed not as something futuristic for the “Jetsons” but for the fictional Elias family (Walt Disney’s middle name), with early 20th-century art nouveau and art deco flourishes.

Inside, it’s filled with countless flat-screen TVs, digital photo frames and interactive software that brings cookbooks to life and mirrors that might charm Snow White’s wicked stepmother.

It’s all high-tech, no-touch.

There are two features worth pondering.

In the kitchen beneath a C-shaped yellow glass countertop is a flat-screen monitor on which appears menus and recipes that a voice-activated instructor named Lillian (Disney’s wife’s name) can recite to the anxious cook. That feature would make paper cookbooks superfluous and pages spill-free.

The other eye-popper in the house is in the daughter’s room, where a full-length “Magic Mirror 2.01″ incorporates a touch screen that allows you to select outfits and accessories, which are projected onto your image so you can see if they’re right for the occasion. As you turn from side to side, the outfit moves with you.

Other devices in the house are almost as intriguing. The dining room table incorporates “Microsoft Surface” touch screens that allow you to move puzzle pieces into one large image. You can also make virtual ripples appear in a virtual pond. A coffee table, connected wirelessly to the Internet, displays an early edition of “Alice in Wonderland” from the British Library.

And in the boy’s bedroom, it’s possible to activate lights, videos and special effects while reading “Peter Pan” to give the sense of Tinker Bell’s presence and Captain Hook’s diabolical plans (the mock cannon at the foot of the bed can emit a loud explosion).

But the house, built by Taylor Morrison of Arizona, is only a partial replica of a real residence. There’s no master bedroom or bathrooms, no garage and no price list as you might find in a model home in a real subdivision.

Sheryl Palmer, president of Taylor Morrison, said the house was designed to act as a “platform” for hardware and software products from Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Life/Ware, a company whose computer programs operate interactive and wireless controls for lights, heating, communications and entertainment.

“The future is not that far away,” said Life/Ware’s Jason Leonardelli, who demonstrated the interactive “Alice” book during a press preview of the Dream Home earlier this month.

Graham Hughes, sales and marketing vice president of Taylor Morrison, said one advance that makes this house of the future more flexible than a 1997 exhibit in the same space is wireless communication. He said a young family could retrofit a home at relatively low cost without having to install expensive cabling and wiring.

Leonardelli said a 3,000-square-foot home could be retrofitted with basic hardware and systems for about $2,500, or $50,000 with the latest and greatest – from the 100-inch flat-screen TV in the family room to the HP Panoply Gaming Chair, which jiggles and rocks as you play like you’re competing in a high-speed car race.

Phil McKinney, HP’s technology officer, said the homey setting promises to allay computerphobe fears.

“People get it and it makes life easier,” he said.

The company representatives on hand said their goal was to display products available now or in the next two years and to constantly update the items over the five-year period of the Dream Home’s present configuration.

Walt Disney World is shutting down the six nightclubs at Pleasure Island to make its party district at Downtown D

isney more family friendly.

BET SoundStage Club, Mannequins Dance Palace, 8Trax and three other clubs that have for years catered largely to yo

ung, single adults — rather than to Disney’s bread-and-butter family market — will close after Sept. 27.

During the next co

uple of years, Disney will reopen the Pleasure Island venues with a broader mix of restaurants and shops.

Pleasure Island’s change has been the subject of rumors for a while. Now 19 years old, it may have seemed an odd venture for Disney, but it appeared to thrive — so much so that some in the industry have blamed it for acc

elerating the decline of the nightlife district in downtown Orlando during the 1990s.

In announcing what they called “a bold new vision” for all of Downtown Disney on Friday, Disney officials framed the Pleasure Island nightclub closures as a response to customers who say they want more broad-based dining and retail opportunities throughout the 120-acre district.

“Right now we believe we’ve got a shortage of dining capacity and shopping capacity, so we’ll be adding to those areas, and we’ll be looking at some specialized entertainment options also,” said Downtown Disney Vice President Kev

in Lansberry.

Dining, shopping, more

Pleasure Island opened in 1989, designed to look like a revitalized back-alley warehouse district. Today it is the middle section of Disney World’s dining, shopping and entertainment district. Though the two flanking areas, Marketplace and the West Side, also have nightclubs, they operate as parts of restaurants, appealing to broader, family-friendly crowds. Until recently, Pleasure Island has been mostly about music, dancing, drinking and partying — creating an awkward link between Marketplace and West Side.

“The rumor has b

een there that they would transform Pleasure Island into something else, but us regulars always thought at least Mannequins and 8Trax would stay alive,” said Jorge Vazquez, 41, an accountant who said he goes to Pleasure Island two or three times a month.

Pleasure Island and its counterpart at Universal Orlando, CityWalk, which opened in 1999, both offer coordinated clusters

of high-quality, highly themed nightclubs with lots of free parking and security. They offered two carefully conceived alternatives to downtown Orlando’s once-vibrant counterpart, Church Street Station.

Orlando lawyer Mark NeJame, majority investor in the downtown nightclub Tabu as well as an investor in other nightclubs, said he is surprised at Disney’s announcement but that it could be good news for downtown Orlando.

“It’s a real opportunity for downtown to continue its revitalization,” NeJame said. “When Pleasure Island first opened, it devastated a lot of the local entrepreneurs and operators.”

Some businesses remain

Though the six nig

htclubs will close, the other businesses on Pleasure Island — a couple of restaurants, a cigar bar and a couple of clothing shops — will remain open. They already offer the broad appeal that Lansberry said Disney’s patrons want. He did not offer specifics about what might replace the clubs but said Disney was looking worldwide for restaurant and shopping concepts.

“Some of the offerings might feel like a nightclub, but they won’t feel like high-energy clubs like we have today in all

likelihood,” Lansberry said. “Truthfully, our guests have really gotten out of that in the last couple of years. They want things that are a lot more geared toward family entertainment.”

Disney World also is sprucing up Downtown Disney’s other two areas, adding restaurants, expanding and updating a band shell, refurbishing and updating other businesses, and bringing in a giant tethered-balloon attraction that visitors will be able to ride in, going up more than 300 feet above Village Lake.

Bob Snow, who developed Church Street Station in the 1970s and has re-entered the picture this year by reopening one of that district’s centerpiece nightclubs, the Cheyenne Saloon, said he never blamed Pleasure Island for Church Street’s decline. But he, too, said he hopes Pleasure Island’s nightclub closures would create more opportunities in downtown Orlando.

Snow said he always was amazed that Disney got into the nightclub-district business in the first place.

“It really surprised me that they’re just going to throw in the towel,” he said. Then he added: “They got out of their knitting. They got out of their main line, what they do so well.”

An appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit brought by family members of an ABC Sports cameraman who died in 2003 after he fell from a platform at Camp Randall Stadium.

Richard Umansky fell eight feet from a wooden platform where he was installing a camera in the stadium. He was preparing to cover a football game between Wisconsin and Iowa.

Lawyers for his estate say the platform lacked railings required under federal law. They filed a lawsuit against an athletics official who was in charge of complying with safety regulations.

The District 4 Court of Appeals has overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss the case. It says additional proceedings are needed to determine if the employee can be held responsible.

ABC Sports is a unit of The Walt Disney Co.

Wall-E,” the movie about a trash- compacting robot, may end a slide in U.S. box-office sales for Walt Disney Co. and its Pixar animation studio.The film, opening in about 4,000 theaters today, probably will exceed Pixar’s 2007 release “Ratatouille,” which garnered $47 million in its first weekend, according to Steve Mason, an analyst in Los Angeles at FantasyMoguls.com, a box-office Web site. He estimated weekend sales of $55 million.

Disney, which bought Pixar in 2006, needs a hit to climb from last place among the largest studios in 2008 U.S. sales.The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” missed Box Office Mojo LLC’s $86.9 million estimate last month, taking in $55 million in its opening weekend. Through June 22, Disney’s domestic ticket sales dropped 36 percent to $457.4 million, according to the Burbank, California-based film tracker.

Wall-E’ translates well around the world because of the physical comedy and emotional aspects,” Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group, said in an interview. “Nothing binds it to the United States. It’s a creative project that will work in 100 countries around the world.”

The movie from “Finding Nemo” creator Andrew Stanton follows Wall-E, short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth- Class, who clears garbage left by humans who fled the planet to live on space ships. He falls in love with another robot, Eve, the Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator sent to Earth to look for signs of life.

`Love Story’

The film may take in as much as $210 million in ticket sales during its U.S. run, said David Joyce, an analyst at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, who recommends shares of Burbank, California-based Disney and doesn’t own them. That would pass the $206 million of “Ratatouille,” according to Internet Movie Database Inc., a unit of Amazon.com Inc. that provides film data.

Wall-E’ boasts the best love story I’ve seen in 2008,” said Gitesh Pandya, editor of industry newsletter BoxOfficeGuru.com in New York. “Word of mouth will be terrific with all ages and this will last a long time.”

Disney, the second-largest U.S. media company, rose 4 cents to $31.57 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have slipped 2.2 percent this year, compared with a 13 percent drop in the S&P 500 Index.

2003 Peak

Since 2003’s Finding Nemo,” the No. 2 animated film of all time according to Box Office Mojo, each Pixar release has produced lower U.S. box-office sales, a benchmark for subsequent sales of DVDs and television revenue.

U.S. box office is the most important factor in anticipating all the other ancillary revenue streams,” said David Davis, founder of Arpeggio Partners LLC, a Santa Monica, California-based consultant to Hollywood studios. “It’s not the only factor, but it’s the best indicator.”

U.S. box-office sales for Pixar, which Disney bought for $8.06 billion, peaked in 2003 with “Finding Nemo,” which was produced for $94 million and took in $340 million, according to Internet Movie Database.Ratatouille” cost $150 million, while “Wall-E” cost $120 million, IMDB said.

The jury is still out” on the Pixar purchase, said Tuna Amobi, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s in New York who recommends Disney shares and doesn’t own them. “It was a hefty price, no doubt about it. Disney is looking at it as a marathon, not a sprint.”

Fewer Films

Since buying Pixar, Disney has cut film production overall, betting it could boost profit by making fewer, more popular movies. Last year, filmed entertainment generated profit of $1.2 billion, a sixfold increase over two years, on slightly lower sales of $7.49 billion.

The company produced 13 films last year, down from 17 in 2005, and will release 11 in 2008.

This year is proving tougher. Through the first half of fiscal 2008, studio profit rose 6.5 percent to $891 million, while sales gained 6.7 percent to $4.46 billion. For the year ending in September, the unit’s profit is likely to fall 1 percent to $1.19 billion, as sales dip 1.8 percent to $7.36 billion, according to Michael Nathanson, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.

Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive officer, said last month at an investor conference that Hollywood makes too many movies.

It shouldn’t surprise anybody in the business why there is so much failure and why the returns on investment are so modest,” Iger said.

The following table ranks Pixar movies by their worldwide box-office sales. Figures are in millions of dollars.

Movie          Year      Budget      U.S.        Worldwide
Total         Total
Finding Nemo   2003    $94      $340          $865
Incredibles    2004         92        261           631
Ratatouille    2007        150        206           621
Monsters Inc.  2001      115        256           525
Toy Story 2    1999        90        246           485
Cars           2006         120        244           462
Bug’s Life     1998          45        163           363
Toy Story      1995         30        192           362

Join Radio Disney for an evening of “Magic and Music,” a 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular, starring the San Francisco Symphony and presented by Radio Disney AM 1310 KMKY. This magnificent event takes place the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View and will be a fun-filled evening that the whole family can enjoy!

The gates open at 5:00pm with awesome interactive booths, games, and live entertainment in the Family Fun Zone. Inlcluding a performance by pureNRG!

At 8:00pm, the San Francisco Symphony will kick off the start of this fabulous show with a musical presentation of 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular “Salute to Heroes”

Now for the grand-finale, the biggest, most spectacular and breathtaking fireworks display in the Bay Area accompanied by music performed by the San Francisco Symphony.

There will also be a post show raffle where many exciting and exclusive prizes will be given out! Don’t miss this chance to be apart of such an amazing Family Friendly 4th of July event!

Fitch Ratings said Thursday it has upgraded Walt Disney Co.’s ratings to “A” on the media and entertainment company’s leading market positions, strong cash flows and financial flexibility.

Fitch boosted Disney’s investment-grade issuer default rating and senior unsecured debt rating to “A” from “A-.” The ratings service also raised Disney’s commercial paper program rating to “F1″ from “F2.”

The ratings outlook is Stable.

Fitch said Disney has benefited from strength at its cable networks, which has resulted in significant increases in stable carriage fees. Nearly all of Disney’s business segments have improved as the company has successfully leveraged its hit-driven brands across multiple distribution platforms, Fitch said.

The ratings service said Disney’s credit concerns center on the volatility of its theme parks and resorts, studio and broadcast network businesses.

Fitch also noted that share buyback activity, which has been aggressive, could become a concern if it is sustained when there is operational weakness.

Disney shares dropped with the broader market on Thursday, losing 80 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $31.69 in afternoon trading. The stock has traded between $26.30 and $35.69 during the past 52 weeks.

Hannah Gabbard has tapped her way into Dance America National Competition and Dancer of the Year in Orlando, Fla., next week. During the arduous competition, Hannah who is the daughter of the Rev. Mark and Melissa Gabbard of Estherville, will be judged on: n Dance solo. n Interview with panel of judges. n Four-day rehearsal performance. Her solo tap routine is to the tune “Do Your Thing, choreographed by Danie Patin Juhl.” Both Hannah and Kayla Evans, the daughter of Doug and Sue Evans qualified for this coveted contest. Kayla, however, had a schedule conflict.

Both girls were semi-finalists for the National Dancer of the Year 2008. Hannah took first place for her intermediate clog solo and intermediate tap solo while Kayla received a first place for junior clog solo.In all, there are almost 900 dance routines heading into competition.Hannah has taken dance lessons from Denise Patin and Danie since she was 3. In the fall, she will begin her 11th year of study.Patin said Hannah will compete against 26 other dancers in the 13-14-year-old category. “Hannah and the others will learn a routine in nine hours, taking it from scratch to polished perfection in that time.”They will perform the routine at Disney World.

The dance instructor said 80 dancers have been selected for the Dancer of the Year. “They are 76 females and four males.”"I want to thank everyone for supporting me, and especially my brother Daniel because he puts up and makes sacrifices for my dancing,” Hannah said. “My mom and I are actually leaving on his 16th birthday and he hasn’t complained once. I want to thank my parents, grandparents, Denise and Danie for everything.”Hannah’s experience will begin Monday, June 30 with registration, orientation and rehearsal. The following day will be filled with rehearsal, her interview segment, jazz combination segment and competition/convention registration.

Wednesday and Thursday include some rehearsals with the production presentation set for 1 p.m. on Friday, July 4. The following day the dancers will again present the productions and the junior title holder will be announced.An early-morning dress rehearsal is slated at Disney World on Sunday July 6 followed by a convention, classes and the Disney performance. “Hannah will perform at 8 p.m.,” Patin said.

There will be more convention and classes on Monday and Tuesday, with the Cirque De Soleil performance at 9 p.m.”We are proud of our daughter and her accomplishments,” Melissa said. “We are also amazingly grateful to Denise and Danie for guiding her to this level of dance. Who would have thought moving to a small town in Iowa meant Hannah would have this opportunity to dance and compete at the national level?”

Construction crews have begun restoration work on Disneyland’s long-shuttered Sleeping Beauty Castle walk-through attraction, which closed “for refurbishment” on Oct. 7, 2001 amid post-9/11 terrorism fears.

Mouse Planet columnist David Koenig, author of the definitive “Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland,” reported that portions of the site’s interior were demolished to make way for the installation of the nightly castle fireworks displays.

Opened in April 1957, the original A-ticket tour included 10 miniature dioramas with animated figurines that illustrated the Sleeping Beauty story, according to Yesterland. A series of illuminated manuscripts explained how and why Princess Aurora grew up as Briar Rose.

At the time, Disneyland gave no reason — safety, costs, popularity or accessibility — for the closure of the second-story attraction. No official date has been set for the reopening.

Mice Age’s Dateline Disneyland columnist Andy Castro reported that the 50th anniversary “Sleeping Beauty” DVD, due out in October 2008, will include a computer-animated re-creation of the Anaheim theme park’s castle walk-through.

Members of the union representing 2,300 workers at three Disneyland hotels dressed as cartoon characters and protested at the park Tuesday morning.

The pickets are part of an ongoing effort by the union to influence contract talks that are underway between the union, Unite Here Local 681, and Disney management.

“Talks have progressively gotten worse,” said Unite Here 681 President Ada Briceño. “We have been making sure Disney knows we’re serious.”

Briceño complained that Disney’s proposals have included a two-tiered wage system under which new union workers would not make the same wages as veteran union workers in the same positions.

Disney officials said they were frustrated that Unite Here 681 leadership was negotiating the contract in the media. Disney spokeswoman Lisa Haines said Disneyland management has good relations with the other 23 unions organizing workers at the Anaheim park.

Haines said two contracts negotiated with other park workers’ unions in recent months took only two weeks of bargaining.

“Out of respect for our cast members, we want to have a constructive dialog with union leadership at the negotiating table,” Haines said. “And we’re not going to negotiate in public forums. We’re confident we can reach an agreement with this union as long as union leadership is reasonable.”

Briceño said contracts proposed by Disney included provisions that would raise employee contributions to health insurance to $100 or more a month, and that some part-time workers would be ineligible for benefits. She said a strike vote was not out of the question.

“We’re hoping not to go there, but we need to do whatever it takes,” she said.

The talks have been rocky from the start. Unite Here workers have been working without a contract since the end of January and at first refused to even meet with Disney, though the company set up negotiating venues at resort-area hotels. Both sides started negotiations with a federal mediator this spring.

The union wants a deal for workers at the Disneyland Hotel, Grand Californian and Paradise Pier similar to deals it negotiated for its Sheraton and Hilton hotel workers. The deals included wage increases of several dollars for many positions.

Haines also said that Disney has to mete out raises and benefits among union workers in a way that’s fair to the other workers at the park.