Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger has just fulfilled the wishes of many a Disney theme park fan by moving Disney Worldwide Parks and Resorts Chair Jay Rasulo out of his position. He will be changing places with Disney CFO Tom Staggs effective in the new year.

Many a finger has been pointed in Rasulo’s direction when it comes to fans unhappiness with the theme park divisions direction. (Of course, some of those same fans are not so quick to give accolades when things go right.) He was often accused of not being interested in the parks to the point of avoiding any travel to them. The focus on DVC over regular resorts, the disasterous run (DCA, Paris Studios, Hong Kong Disneyland) of small theme parks with little themeing over immersive parks favored by the fans, and the general decline of the dining experience at the parks have all be laid at the feet of Rasulo’s policies. I’m not sure how fair any of that is.

As for Staggs, to be honest, I don’t know much about his views on Disney’s theme parks division. But I’ve found his handling of the corporate financial conferences to be masterful. To me this move is roughly the equivalent of Eisner putting Wells in charge of the theme parks, a move which I’m sure would have pleased many fans. So there is hope here.

Quotes from Bob Iger and Tom Staggs at the Orlando Sentinel.

Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger takes the 1980s idea of synergy that was perfected by the early Eisner and Wells administration to the next level with his concept of the Franchise.

I’m not talking Kevin Garnett for you NBA fans. Nor is it like Subway where where you sell the concept to others to develop for you. It’s more about finding a tent pole that’s tall enough and strong enough you can hang a tent big enough to cover nearly every aspect of your company (I don’t think I’ve seen any Princess Tiana tie-ins for ESPN… yet) and increase their sales as well.

Based on what I’m seeing in terms of merchandise and in park tie-ins, I think Iger has identified The Princess and The Frog as the next franchise for Disney. A story in the Orlando Sentinel, (full disclosure, I was interviewed for the piece), discusses how much Disney is counting on the frog princess to make it a few bucks

Mitchelson, the Deutsche Bank analyst, said the ancillary potential of The Princess and the Frog is so large that the best measure of its success won’t be box office results — it will be consumer-product sales.

“To the extent that The Princess and the Frog is only considered modestly successful from a film point of view, that doesn’t  mean it won’t be quite successful from the perspective of broadening the princess franchise,” he said.

A good point. It’s been 12 years since the last Princess was introduced, and that’s only if you include Mulan among the princesses. I personally classify her as a hero, along with Pocahontas.

Disney’s most recent franchise consumer products producer was ‘Cars’. While not a critical box office hit, Cars made somewhere north of $4 billion in merchandise sales for the mouse house. I don’t think we’ll see quite that much with Princess Tiana merchandise alone, but when you add in increased sales of other princess merchandise, you might get close.

As evidence, at the Magic Kingdom last night I again saw little girls already wearing the Princess Tiana dress even before the movie has been released. Princesses of all colors too as is befitting a movie that really is an American story.

An article in the Boston Globe states that Mickey Mouse has gotten a little stale, boring even.

The mischievous sorcerer’s apprentice of “Fantasia’’ has become an empty vessel, devoid of any of the sharp edges that might define his character.

I have to say I don’t agree at all. Going back to Runaway Brain, attempts to reinvigorate Mickey have inevitably ended back at the original Mickey Mouse – an adventurer, a ladies man, and a funny guy. As always, a reflection of his creator. Epic Mickey is going to be more of the same.

What Mickey does need is to be relevant. He’s at his best when he’s doing some sort of commentary on society, usually with a humorous angle. His role as an entrepreneur in the House of Mouse series was a step in the right direction. While not really commentary, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has also done a good job reacquainting a whole new generation of kids with the character.

The direction I would take Mickey in is to put him in situations we’re all dealing with. In today’s economy Mickey should be championing the little people. Give him an electric car, send him to the mall, the unemployment line, make him a doctor, send him back to school. Some of Mickey’s best moments in his early career involved spoofing celebrity. That would fit in today too.

Where would you like to see Mickey Mouse go from here?

In what is likely the final bars of the opera that has been the Slesinger’s families legal battle against the Walt Disney Company over the rights to the Winnie The Pooh characters, the courts have decided that Disney owns the rights, but still owes royalties to the family. Disney now owns the rights to the trademark and copyright for the entire 100-acre woods gang.

This series of lawsuits has been under way since 1991 when the Slesinger’s sued Disney for breach of contract. That suit was eventually tossed due to misconduct on the plaintiff’s part.

With the Pooh franchises either first or second in terms of value for Disney each year, the Slesinger’s should be pretty happy that this is all behind them and Disney is free to continue to develop the characters which means more royalties for them. That’s just what Disney has in mind with a brand new hand-drawn animated Winnie The Pooh feature currently in production at the studios.

(via the LA Times)

If you’ve been looking for the next big thing to be built by the Walt Disney Company, you’ll want to point your satellite to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There on the island of Oahu in the resort area of Ko Olina you’ll find the next Disney resort.

I haven’t been so lucky to make the trip, but Disney Dean did and he’s put up a photobucket account (see gallery below) with some great photos as well as a blog post. Let me know if you see Imagineering’s Joe Rhode in any of those pictures, he’s supposed to be there somewhere; temporarily reassigned from overseeing Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

This is the 5000th post here on The Disney Blog. That’s 18 posts a week or more than two posts a day since I launched the blog in June 2004. A fairly respectable average, if I do say so. According to Technorati there were about 3 million blogs at that time. There are over 250 million blogs today.

I’ve been on the internet in its various forms since 1991. I started writing about Disney on USENET’s Rec.Arts.Disney and Alt.Disney.Disneyland, then later on LaughingPlace.com beginning in August 1999. I also joined and learned a lot from the e-list “FutureCulture.” It was my first online community and I’m proud to say I’m still a member.

I started my personal blog in 1998 before they were called blogs. I called it “You are your URL” or iURL for short. It was obvious to me then that the internet would become the new “permanent record” that parents so often warned their kids about to keep them in line. As so many have found today, an unfortunate photo onFacebook can often mean the difference between getting that job or turning public opinion in a court case. An iURL was my attempt to control that message by putting my information out there first in the manner I wanted others to see.

In 2004 when I started writing The Disney Blog, there were no other Disney blogs. There were a dozen or so Disney travel planning websites and about 500 other Disney fan websites, each with a specific topic, but none used the now common reverse chronological post and the informal voice that comes with a blog. Sadly many of these excellent websites have been lost to the ravages of time, but some survive and even thrive.

The early weeks of The Disney Blog benefited from the three hurricanes that hit Central Florida. Although I was living in the Las Vegas area at the time, I was able to collect and synthesize news and on the ground reports of the preparations and damages for the storms, particularly as they impacted Walt Disney World. This brought a lot of traffic to a young blog and really helped developed the writing style I still use today. I aim for my writing to be about 90% news and information combined with around 10% of my unique perspective on how it all fits together.

Since I started The Disney Blog thousands of blogs have sprung up in the Disney niche and most of the big Disney travel planning websites have sprouted their own blogging platform in some fashion or another. I am overjoyed about this. I believe that a rising tide lifts all ships. I wouldn’t have learned half the fascinating stuff I have these last 5 years without all those other wonderful voices. So if you write a Disney Blog out there, thanks to you. Please keep up the great work.

Another growth area for online Disney fan activity has been Podcasts. The number of talented individuals and the amount of new and interesting material covered each week never ceases to amaze me. There’s so much good stuff out there that you could literally listen all week to just Disney podcasts and still be behind when the next week’s episodes are released.

Related to podcasting has been the explosion of fan created park DVDs. Historical videos, tributes to attractions and cast members, park guides, park tours, and so much more. That the Walt Disney Company hasn’t stomped out this cottage industry is a blessing for us all. By letting fans produce blogs, podcasts, DVDs, Disney keeps the fires stoked in the belly of its most devoted customer base and reaps the benefits of new fans as the word gets spread around by those same passionate customers.

Speaking of the Mouse House. Let’s look at the Walt Disney Company’s involvement when it comes to blogging and social media. I still don’t think the company has recovered from the disaster that was the Infoseek and Go.com purchase. Because of that, there really isn’t one unified theme from the company when it comes to social media.

The Disney parks division got started a few years ago with some video podcasts. Since then the podcast format has been dropped, but the video production quantity has risen steadily. It’s also spread into other divisions. The Cruise Line, Animation, Disney Consumer Products, Disney Channel, and ABC all use the online video format fairly extensively. If your division isn’t on this list (games, movies, archives, etc), why not?

The company has even begun testing the social media waters. Many Disney divisions now have Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and they’re exploring other products. The one area I think Disney is lacking is content creation by subject matter experts, specifically blogs. There is a certain amount of freedom that’s been granted Disney animators (specifically Pixar animators) to blog about what they love and are experts at. I would like to see that model expanded to the rest of the company.

I believe Walt Disney would have been a tremendous user of social media, once he got over his fear of letter go of control of the discussion. He would have been all over it to talk about whatever his next big project was.

The lesson to be learned from Social Media and online Disney fandom in general is that, while Disney still controls the product they produce, the fans now own the brand.

This could not be any clearer than with D23. Billed as The Official Community for Disney Fans, D23 is Disney’s early attempt to harness some of that fan magic. Get the product in front of the fans and let them take it from there. I’ll save my views on D23 for another post some day. But let’s just say some action in this area is better than nothing.

So what does the future hold? We’re still in the youth of blogging, podcasting, social media, and other disintermediation as to what it means to be part of Disney culture. We’re also just a few short years from Augumented Reality having a large impact on our daily lives including leisure travel. The seeds of augmented reality can be seen right now withYelp’s iPhone app, FourSquare, some other iPhone apps. Disney parks are experimenting with it using RFID technology and, if the sudden proliferation of Disney parks themed iPhone apps is any indication, fan use won’t be far behind.

What else would I like to see? Closer cooperation between the Walt Disney Company and its fans. Right now so much of the relationship work is handed off to third parties or has to pass through so many layers of legal dancing that many great projects never get off the ground. There is still very much a parent child relationship between Disney and its fans, as if we’re not mature enough to handle the truth. For instance, don’t tell us you’re not building a DVC hotel when we can see the thing reaching skyward right from the monorail. It’s better to cultivate the mutual interest in the success of the product.

I would also like to see closer cooperation between Disney websites. I know the economy has played havoc with our yearly MouseFest reunion, but I hope it comes back. There should also be more online connections made and synergy found between us.

It’s about time to wrap this up. Obviously this was not the unquestionable and complete account of Disney fandom online. But I think it’s a good look across the breadth of it. Five plus years and 5,000 posts covers a lot of change and that’s the one thing I promise you we’ll see more of when it comes to Disney. Just look at the Marvel acquisition. I haven’t even begun to think about how we’ll integrate with the online Marvel fan community.

Most important, thank you for being part of The Disney Blog. Thanks for reading my look at the State of the Disney Blogosphere. I hope you’ll still look here for your dose of Disney news and information 5,000 posts from now.

So totally unrelated to the previous post we hear that Walt Disney World is restructuring their Transportation management. This actually harkens back to the corporate restructuring Disney implemented early in the year, the one that resulted in all the management layoffs. Since then, Disney has been shuffling their executives as part of a cost saving exercise. Whether it’s a good time to do that to the Transportation Department given the year’s events, remains to be seen.

When Kevin Lansberry was appointed vice president of Disney’s Animal Kingdom it was also noted with some confusion among fans that he was also put in charge of the WDW resort’s transportation. Seemed like a fairly odd pairing for someone whose previous job was executive over Disney’s shopping and entertainment district. Now Kevin can concentrate on giving DAK the attention it deserves.

Disney announced they have appointed Jim Vendur, who had been in charge of transportation maintenance, to oversee both operations and maintenance of WDW’s whole transportation system. Said system includes the monorail, ferryboats, and about 300 buses. Disney will also add more supervision of the Transportation fleets, but that position remains to be filled.

More at The Orlando Sentinel.

Walt Disney Studios chair Richard (Dick) Cook has announced that he will be resigning his post. As chair of the studios cook over saw all live action and animated films released by the Walt Disney Company. Unfortunately there has been a fair amount of pressure for the studios to improve their offerings the last few years and many felt that Cook would eventually resign or be fired if things did not improve.

Cook was liked by most Disney fans, not just because he rose through the company from the bottom ranks of a front line attractions cast member at Disneyland, but also for his involvement in the fan community, such as his participation in the Carolwood Society. I’m sad to see him go and hope he stays involved in the Disney community.

Nikki Finke is reporting that Dick Cook was actually fired. But I guess in the higher levels of Hollywood, they call that a resignation.

(via the LA Times)

Follow below the jump for his official bio:

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