Photo Credit: Jess Clawson
This year’s D23 Expo came to a close Sunday night rather quietly, much like the entire, relatively uneventful weekend.
Friday opened with the Disney Legends Ceremony and big cheers from the Disney fans. A big highlight was the voice of the princesses singing songs from their movies.
Friday afternoon was much less well received as there was no large announcements at the Parks and Resorts presentation as many expected. Among the discussed topics were the Fantasyland Expansion, Aulani, Carsland, Tangled coming to Disneyland’s Fantasyland and the Snow White Mine Train coaster being built in Fantasyland. Fans were furious because they expected big news just as was announced two years ago, but due to the economy and number of projects Disney already has under way, this lack of announcements comes as no surprise for some.
Saturday opened to a sold out crowd, first ever for any day at the two D23 Expos. Lines formed very early in the morning for both the D23 members and general admission line. The lines were so long that security forced the D23 members line in a half hour early because the length of the line was becoming a fire hazard. The long lines went immediately to the Studios presentation, which was filled within minutes. The presentation lasted almost three hours and covered everything from the Muppet Movie to Pixar to the Avengers! Pixar showed clips from the movie Brave and announced, with Billy Crystal’s help, a prequel to Monsters, Inc. called Monster University. The presentation closed with almost all of the actors from the Avengers movie appearing on stage, to the delight of the entire audience.
The other large arena items, both filled quickly, were the premiere of The Lion King 3D and the Marvel Presentation on Sunday.
Smaller venue events, but equally popular, included Dick Van Dike, Imagineer Presentations and Kingdom Keepers discussion. These had lines hours before the presentations began, leaving many to complain that some of these more popular events should have had a larger venue – I.E. Dick Van Dyke should not have been in a small venue.
Some of the major booths outside of the Collectors Forum were the Walt Disney Archives exhibit and the Carousel of Projects which housed the Fantasyland Expansion miniature, a Talking Mickey and the Great Destini, a high-tech robotic fortune teller.
Outside of Disney’s underestimations of crowd levels, I think that the Expo was very fun and I would go to the next one in a heartbeat! Thank you as well to all of the friends that I met while there as well as the people in Lou Mongello’s “box”, it was all of you who made this trip so memorable!
Contributed by: Jessica Clawson (NDI#21) Jessica is the News and Current Events Blogger. She is also the creator of The True Disney Fan.