Apparently it was a slow news week on the Disney front because Mrs. CollateralDamage had to resort to interviewing me for her podcast, Those Darn Cats. Mostly I talk about how Disney screwed up the telling of American history in the American Adventure Pavilion at Epcot. Don’t tell anyone but I also say a few nice things about the House of Mouse, too.
Click here to listen or you can find it on iTunes under … wait for it … Those Darn Cats.
Geoff Carter is an excellent and smart writer who, among other things, produces the Disney-centered blog YourSouvenirGuide (but don’t hold that against him). In the post Ten things Disney could have done to geek up without buying Marvel he explains both why Disney buying Spidey was a bad idea and how they could have leveraged the properties they already own.
My favorite suggestion:
9. The Disney Princesses: Teach them kung-fu and arm them with wrist-holstered blades and pistols.
Works for me.
Heaven and Mrs. CollateralDamage know I do not like a lot of Disney stuff – early movies, Pixar and their overall marketing expertise are pretty much the entire list. This display of posters past and present for their "Star Wars Weekends” probably falls into the last category. Even I who avoid The Mouse like it was carrying Aporkalypse Fever was thoroughly bemused by these. (BTW, Mrs. CD and CD Jr. had a total blast at this last year.)
Spirit Airlines forgot to do some basic acronym checking with its latest sales campaign. The Florida-based airline, which specializes in Caribbean trips, inadvertently started offering a “MILF” special. While this likely resulted in an increase in traffic to the airline’s web site, apparently it wasn’t the type of traffic Spirit wanted. The slogan was removed from the site on Tuesday.
Maybe they thought it stood for “Mom, I’d like to fly!”
Maybe it’s something in Florida that makes companies obtuse on this topic. Disney ran into a similar problem with its Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor attraction.
To my mind, the purchase of Marvel is one of the few missteps the Mouse has made under Bob Iger’s reign. Disney isn’t getting a hell of a lot for its money. The theme park rights to the characters will continue to be held by Universal. And the movie properties .. will remain the properties of Sony, Fox and Paramount for the forseeable future. …. Four billion dollars spent to wait out contracts and to see if Avi Arad and Jerry Bruckeheimer will duke it out in Thunderdome.
Collateral Damage 