Disney Games, Parks, and movies? Sign me up please? (D23 News Roundup)

     Hey there, friends! I hope you're all having a good week, and boy a lot of news is coming all at once. If you're a big Disney fan, like I am, you probably know that D23 happened two weekends ago, from September 9-11, and they had some pretty interesting things that were announced. There was a video game showcase, which I think is a first for Disney, a very exciting development, of course, a lot of movie news, as well as a decent amount of theme park news, so I'm going to be a little self serving this week and talk about some of my favorite announcements from the event. I hope you all enjoy, and I'll do my best to keep things as concise as possible. Let's begin!

The Games!

    The entire D23 Expo began with the Disney and Marvel Games Showcase, where they had about 30 minutes of announcements from projects across Disney's IP lineup. Tron Identity looks like it will be a smaller, narrative-driven game from Bithell Games, developers of The Solitaire Conspiracy, among many other titles. It sounds like a cool idea, especially since we really haven't gotten much Tron content in quite a while, basically since Tron Legacy came out around 10 years ago. The first update for Disney Dreamlight Valley is coming soon, and it's adding a Toy Story realm to the process. The realm itself looks bigger than the previous ones, though we'll have to see what all is added once Buzz and Woody are added into the valley. I'm certainly really excited for it, as I've been playing since day one and loving it so far! They showed off a new 2D Platformer starring Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Minnie that's called Disney Illusion Island. This one caught my eye because the artstyle reminds me a lot of Rayman Legends, which came out several years ago, and it looks just as dynamic and interesting as that game was. Marvel Midnight Suns had a little gameplay trailer, the game looks cool, especially if you're into RTS games like XCom, and it's coming out on December 2, which I'm not sure was a new announcement, but either way, is a welcome one! Marvel Snap is coming out for mobile devices on October 18, a game based on Aliens was shown, since Disney owns Fox's movie studios now. It looked like a top down action strategy game which will hopefully be pretty good. In that same vein, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora didn't show off very much, but it did make another appearance and still looks like it could be interesting with the open-world elements that Ubisoft is so well known for, though it also makes me nervous for the same reason. While they were at it, they also announced a new First Person Shooter MMO game for mobile devices from the world of Avatar, called Avatar: Reckoning. We finally got the first look at Amy Hennig's new Marvel game, showing a WW2 setting where Captain America and the Black Panther (not T'Challa, his grandfather) teaming up along with a member of the Howling Commandos and a member of the Dora Milaje. Nothing was shown of the game other than a teaser, but the idea sounds super cool. Along with these, they announced a Pokemon Go style game based on Marvel called Marvel World of Heroes, and I'm not sure how they'll do that at all... That was pretty much all that was shown in this portion of the show, so let's talk a bit about the films!

The Movies!

    There are a lot of live action remakes of classic Disney movies, folks. We have Peter Pan and Wendy, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, and a prequel to the Lion King about Mufasa. A lot of folks are already sick and tired of the live action remake craze, but I hope these will be good at least! Of course, a lot of people are upset about Ariel being black in the remake of The Little Mermaid, but honestly I don't care. It sounds like the girl can sing really well, and colorblind casting has been a thing for a while. I'm sure she'll be great, and honestly if you're that concerned about the skin color of a mermaid in a movie, you need to be worrying about much more important stuff I think. Moving along, we have a new Haunted Mansion movie which should be a lot of fun I hope, especially since it was announced that Jamie Lee Curtis is playing Madame Leota in the film (if you don't know, she's the talking head inside the crystal ball in the ride). Disenchanted is a sequel to 2008's Enchanted that is coming to Disney Plus in a few months, and I'm really surprised to see that Amy Adams seems to be taking on an antagonist role in this one after the was the hero of the first, so I'm honestly very interested to see what the deal is with that. Maya Rudolph also is in it, which is always a win in my book. Several Star Wars shows had announcements here, I don't think there was anything new, but they did talk a bit about the Ahsoka show, Bad Batch Season 2, Andor, and a few others. Not exactly involved in Star Wars anymore, Harrison Ford took to the stage to talk about the long rumored Indiana Jones 5, though he wasn't allowed to say much about it other than how excited he was to be back in the fedora. Continuing on with Live-Action movies, Marvel was there in high spirits with announcements about Loki season 2, The Thunderbolts, Ant-Man Quantumania, and many others. Honestly I could probably fill up an entire other post with Marvel announcements (and maybe I will sometime), so I can't cover all of these here. Avatar 2 brought some new footage to the D23 audience, but I don't care about that, and there's not much else to say about it anyways. 

    Animation was a bit more interesting, though it almost always seems to be! Next year is apparently the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Animation Studios, which they're celebrating with a film called Wish, which is all about the origins of the wishing star, and what makes wishes come true. It sounds like an adorable idea, and I'm very excited for it. Zootopia+ is a new Disney Plus show which will take place after the movie of the almost same name, Zootopia. A clip of Disney Animation Studios's next film, Strange World, was shown and it's coming out in November. Pixar talked about a movie coming next year called Elemental, where all of the characters take after one of the four elements of nature, being water, fire, earth, and air. The movie focuses on a fire girl and a water boy, named Ember and Wade respectively. It sounds like a cute idea, and knowing Pixar, you probably want to get your tissues ready. They also talked about a movie coming in Spring 2024, which is called Elio, about a smart boy who gets beamed into space after accidentally making contact with aliens. Right at the end of the Pixar portion, they announced that Inside Out 2 is in the works, and features a teenage Riley dealing with all new emotions. It's slated for release in Summer 2024. Finally, for the moment you've all been waiting for, the parks announcements!

Disney Parks got some love as well!

    I often get pretty excited when it comes to Disney Parks news, and this presentation was no exception to that normal occurrence. The Disneyland Resort was up first, with them announcing the addition of The Mandalorian and Grogu who are coming to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge beginning in mid-November. Kevin Feige took the stage to talk about a new "never-before-seen" third attraction for the Avengers campus at the California Adventure park, joining Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout and Web Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure. This ride is going to be all about traveling through the multiverse and battling foes from across time and space, which sounds like a really cool concept for sure. They're retheming Pacific Wharf in California Adventure to a new San Fransokyo area where you can meet Baymax, which definitely matches the Marvel aesthetic of the Avengers Campus. In Disneyland Park, they're completely redoing Toon Town in preparation for Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway which is opening in early 2023. Tiana's Bayou Adventure was discussed next, being the replacement for Splash Mountain at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom parks. This new ride takes inspiration from 2009's The Princess and the Frog, and as such, many of the original voice cast will be returning to provide their voices for the ride. Along with these new additions to the California resort, Disneyland and California Adventure will be getting new Nighttime shows for the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company next year, with "Wonderous Journeys" at Disneyland and "World of Color- One" at California Adventure.

    Finally they got to Walt Disney World, much closer to home, so I couldn't help but be more interested. EPCOT is still going through an almost entire transformation, and as such, World Celebration is looking to be completed in late 2023, and Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana is slated to open around the same time. We still don't really know a lot about the attraction I don't think, but we did see a model of Tefiti who will be part of the attraction as a giant green woman, who you might remember if you saw the movie. Figment is going to be in the park for meet and greets by the end of 2023 as well, which is a nice little touch. Magic Kingdom is also getting a fair share of new changes, with Tron: Lightcycle Run opening in Spring of 2023, which looks very exciting, though maybe a little too exciting for this writer in particular, we'll have to see. It looks like "Happily Ever After" is returning to the Magic Kingdom next year, which is to be expected after only playing for a few years before being interrupted by Enchantment for the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney World. It looks like it will have a few changes to it, so we'll just have to see. The Hatbox Ghost has been a long awaited feature for the Haunted Mansion after the ride in California got it a few years ago, and it looks like it's finally coming to the WDW version of the ride in 2023. They also discussed some exciting new concepts for possible changes to the park, teasing something new coming to the area that is now Dinoland USA in Animal Kingdom. They talked about potential for a Moana themed area or maybe Zootopia. For Magic Kingdom, they speculated about what could be hiding behind Big Thunder Mountain, if we were to go past it, they hinted at an area inspired by Coco or Encanto, or maybe a land based on Disney Villains.  it sounds like they're pretty early on in plans for anything like that though, so maybe we'll hear more about it at the next D23. It looks like Happily Ever After is returning to the Magic Kingdom next year, which is to be expected after only playing for a few years before being interrupted by Enchantment for the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney World. In addition, Epcot will be getting yet another new show in late 2023 as part of the Disney100 celebration, after getting a new one last year as well as the year before that.

    A new cruise ship, the Disney Treasure, was announced to be setting sail in 2024, with the Grand Lobby being themed after Aladdin, with a statue in the middle of Aladdin and Jasmine on the Magic Carpet. There are new Frozen areas being added to Hong Kong Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and Tokyo DisneySea. There's a new Tangled attraction being added to Disneyland Paris, which makes me jealous, though at least we have some amazing Tangled themed bathrooms at Magic Kingdom. Tokyo DisneySea is getting an expansion called "Fantasy Springs" where they are bringing Tangled and Peter Pan to life in addition to Frozen, and there is also going to be a new hotel integrated into this section of the park, which is a super cool idea, and I'm glad it's being done more now. Shanghai Disneyland is getting a Zootopia area of the park, complete with a family attraction which starts from the police station, as you might expect.

    D23 is always a pretty cool time, it's always nice to find out what the company is going to be doing in the near or distant future, and I'm happy with what was revealed here. Obviously we are still going through a weird time in the world, so these projects may be delayed for various different reasons, but I'm excited to see some progress hopefully made considering these ideas. Unfortunately, we still haven't seen anything about the Mary Poppins attraction in the UK pavilion at EPCOT and they didn't mention it here, so chances are that they cancelled it quietly, but my fingers are still crossed that we'll get whatever this attraction is supposed to be eventually. As always, I just try my best to be hopeful that whatever we're getting in the future will be good, and I hope you're excited for the future as well.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends. I hope you're somewhat interested in something that I wrote about today. While it is a lot, I hope I've written in such a way that you can potentially read and look through bits and pieces that could interest you! I hope you're all having a great week, and thanks so much for your support, as always! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Disney fan, and I'll see ya real soon!