You’ve seen the logo and the main key visual, now for the events of the New Generation Festival themselves. Friday saw a whole series of initial images appear on the resort’s publicity visuals website.

Note the wording there — “initial images”. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but a couple of the images you’re about to see are surely — surely — just stand-ins for some final, polished visuals yet to come. In short, they look like the kind of hastily chopped-together visuals we might have found on internal presentations or proposals for the 2010 theme year, not true “advertising visuals” that have been released for use in brochures, in print… in public

The Princess and the Frog in Disney’s Once Upon a Dream Parade

Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen will only be hitting European cinema screens in January and February 2010, but come the April launch of New Generation Festival they’ll both find a new home on the ‘Dreams of Romance: Finale’ unit of Disney’s Once Upon a Dream Parade.

New Generation Festival

Quite where they’ll be slotted in on this huge articulated float — which already boasts Belle, Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora — isn’t exactly answered by the visual above, which shows an assortment of Disney Princess stock images cowering behind a truly gigantic version of the Princess and the Frog couple.

For comparison, remember the artwork that greeted the parade’s launch in 2007?

It’s Party Time… with Mickey and some new Friends!

As confirmed just a month ago, the general concept of this year’s Central Plaza show will continue into 2010. Rather than the classic Mickey’s Magical Party characters of Timon, Baloo, Peter Pan, Donald Duck and co., however, it looks like we might be seeing those four satellite stages hosting Sully, Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Rémy, Emile, Stitch and even Princess Tiana again…

New Generation Festival

…Which all throws up a few questions about what route the re-imagined show will take. The current format is based very much around the music, and interactivity. Whilst Tigger certainly lends himself to bouncing and Baloo to a sing-along of Jungle Book tunes, we’ve never seen that kind of event from these characters above before.

“Note” the musical notes falling from the sky on parachutes, continuing that theme. And, though you can’t see it, we can add the interesting note that this image is labelled “KEY VISUAL SHOWTIME SPECTACULAR”, which certainly hints at a name-change for the annoyingly-titled It’s Party Time… with Mickey and Friends come April 2010. ‘Mickey’s Showtime Spectacular’? ‘New Generation Showtime Spectacular’?

The visual above re-uses a strange image of Mickey Mouse originally created for the Mickey’s Magical Party version of the show, where the stage was viewed from above. Re-used here, the poor Mouse simply seems to have an (even more) abnormally-large head.

‘Enhanced’ Monsters, Inc. meet ‘n’ greet

Now here’s an interesting one. As listed originally, the small Monsters, Inc. “Scream Scene” location near the entrance to Toon Studio is, for some reason, being touted amongst the main New Generation Festival events…

New Generation Festival

There’s certainly nothing new in the visual here that might suggest an “enhancement”, so why is this 2006 addition suddenly becoming an event? A more regular appearance of Sully? The replacement of the Mike figure with a real-life character? Some kind of mini-show or Sword in the Stone-style scream canister event…?

Ratatouille in Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars

Wave goodbye to all hope of Florida’s old Star Wars car joining our Disney’s Stars ‘n’ Cars. This vehicle will be remodelled for Rémy and Emile from April 2010, adding a 12th car to the parade/show event.

New Generation Festival

Given that the Star Wars car is very different to that above, don’t take this as a real concept.

So there you go, the four main events Disneyland Paris Entertainment are cooking up for the New Generation Festival. After their five large-scale launches for 2009, it should be a breeze. There’s also the strong chance that Disney Characters’ Express / Minnie’s Party Train will be remodelled yet again into a New Generation Express, but thankfully it’s looking like such a rehash won’t be quite so widely advertised.

Three more visuals are also floating around for Toy Story Playland and two of its attractions, but we’ve a lot of catching up to do on that subject before getting to those. Stay tuned…

Your thoughts and comments are welcome!

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Images © Disney.


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