What a waste of a great viral marketing campaign. D23 opened its site yesterday, and disappointing doesn't even completely cover the feeling. All D23 turned out to be is a club for Disney die-hards. You pay $75 a year and you get some Disney trinkets, a quarterly magazine, and a bi-weekly email newsletter. WEAK!
This campaign appealed to people all over the web, but even someone like me who practically lived at Disneyland and loves the legacy isn't gonna pay that much money to read emails. This is for HARDCORE Disney lovers with way too much spare change. What a let down.
D is of course for Disney and the 23 stands for 1923 when Walt moved out to CA and started the studio that would become Disney studio. Many Disney fans think of the year 1955 in reference to Disney since that is the year Disneyland opened, but recently the number 23 has been used more and more often. In Downtown Disney in CA there is a store filled with Disney couture and hard to find clothing and accessories, this store "VAULT 23" is probably the most obvious reference to 1923 in the parks.
The only somewhat interesting news here is that this coming September from the 10th to the 13th the Anaheim convention center will host the D23 Expo. A keynote address will be given by Disney CEO Robert Iger and other Disney company guys including John Lassiter (Pixar and Disney animation). There will be other fun programming that will span the entire Disney gamut including ABC and ESPN. Classic films will be shown: Sleeping Beauty, Darby O'Gill and the Little People and The Shaggy Dog, with panels to discuss the legacy of each one. It's still developing but this could be really cool, and it doesn't look like it is limited to just members. The Anaheim area has played host to many unofficial Disney conventions (we went to one when we we're kids where my little sister met the woman who did the live action reference footage for Tinkerbell, i think she still has an autograph somewhere) so It is actually really smart that Disney host a larger, better one and reap all the financial gains.
In actuality, there is no reason for Disney to have already had this club up and running. I know plenty of lunatics are eager to throw them their hard earned dollars. It's just the way it was launched, the marketing was just too much build for something like this.
SO, the worst part is that now Disney can't even do another viral campaign without everyone online saying its just another tease. They gave up their street cred. Its a shame.
In other news, I watched Pinocchio on Blu-ray. It was super bombastic amazingness. When I opened it, it had a flyer for the NEW CLUB D23 inside... lame.
