This Sunday ABC is presenting a huge special for Disneyland’s 60th Anniversary. It’s supposed to be a huge two hour affair. After I heard about this, two things came to my mind.
The first, why does Disney have to ruin Star Wars? Maybe I am just old and don’t get it, but having Darth Vader and Storm troopers in the Disney parades drives me crazy. It’s an insult to the characters in my opinion. And since Star Tours wasn’t enough, now Disneyland is going to have an entire land for Star Wars! That makes no sense (and is probably the real for this special). Oh and did I mention that Space Mountain was changed to have Star Wars elements in it? Why?????? I DON’T WANT TO GO TO DISNEYLAND FOR STAR WARS CRAP!!!!!
Yeah I know Star Wars was always part of Disney with Star Tours and yeah the movie was good so maybe I’m overreacting. I just don’t get it. By the way Disney World is doing a stage show and a nighttime spectacular which is better but still WHY IS STAR WARS TAKING OVER DISNEY!! At least when Disney went “Frozen” happy that made a kind of sense.
The second thing that came to my mind, what ever happened to the Disney TV specials? When I was a kid in the 80’s and 90’s Disney had tons of specials, celebrating everything from a new park or attraction opening to holidays to some characters anniversary. It seemed like they hit their peak in the 90’s with a really bad special featuring Caroline Rhea. After that they just kind of, vanished. But when they were big especially in the 80’s and 90’s, they were real big! I’ve covered at least two (Mickey’s 50th Birthday and the Opening of Disney/MGM Studios) but that was just a drop in the bucket.
I guess one reason we don’t see these anymore is because Disney doesn’t have a show on these days. It was easier when the special could be an extension of the weekly “Wonderful World of Disney” or whatever the show was being called at the time. But I wanted to take a minute to talk about how cool these were. But rather than bore you with a list of these specials (which would go on forever) I decided to just discuss what it was about these that made them so memorable.
Celebrities-Man I get the feeling anyone who ever had anything to do with Disney were contracted to appear in these specials. Literally name an actor or actress with a Disney connection, and they did at least one. In fact I knew Annette Funicello the best from her appearances in the specials she did (ok and maybe the peanut better ads). Everyone from Angele Lansbury to Regis and Kathie Lee appeared at least once. It’s especially funny to watch an old special featuring a celebrity who sadly never went anywhere past whatever he had done at the time to earn the appearance, like Charlie Korsmo for instance (look him up). And my favorite part was always that Michael Eisner would open each and every program. That guy was a rich jerk but he seemed so nice.
The “Live” Music-These specials were always broken up by live performances from big time entertainers. Sometimes it was just who was popular at the time, and other times it was just a huge name. Of course these were staged and all, but so what? They were still awesome! They would either be just the singer, like we were seeing a concert performance, and other times it was a more elaborately staged production which involved extras and the Disney characters.
Clips and Teasers-These specials always packaged in the clips. Depending on the subject you got vintage clips of classic movies and cartoons or coming attractions. And I don’t mean just to movies either, but previews for their attractions. I know we went to see Disney/MGM after seeing the huge two hour special about it. Yeah I guess at times these felt like clip shows, but we didn’t care it was Disney!
The Characters-I guess this one is a no brainer, what Disney special isn’t going to have Mickey in it? But we also got The Muppets a few times (including the special where they were first officially brought in to the Disney family). And it seems like the only place to see Roger Rabbit is in these old specials, what the heck ever happened to him?
The Bad Stuff-Not everything was always perfect. Some of these specials were kind of, lame. Like the 4th of July Special they had around 1990. It was two hours long and was just all over the place with no real focus. Regis & Kathie Lee was in it..for a few seconds anyway! And the Dick Tracy stuff was, annoying. Especially considering how bad that movie turned out. This particular special needs a thorough discussion. Sometimes the promotions got annoying, how many times I sat through someone singing “A Whole New World” I couldn’t begin to guess. And when NBC ran the specials they were often more concerned with promoting their own shows than Disney, but I already discussed that. And sometimes the celebrities just felt out of place, and didn’t always work. Some celebrities didn’t even make sense. One special had Bea Arthur and Betty White as their Golden Girls characters talking about the parks, who was this supposed to appeal to exactly? And I loved John Ritter but why did he host the Disney/MGM special anyway? Tony Danza hosted one, yeah figure that one out! I already mentioned the one Caroline Rhea did which was pretty bad. And why is Harrison Ford in Sunday’s….oh yeah, right.
Bottom line, these specials were always “must see” TV and we never missed them. I am glad that we are getting one on Sunday and I will watch it and enjoy it just like I did twenty-five years ago.
I may try to review some of these over the next few months, though I’m limited by what I have on VHS (or can find on YouTube). And I know I went on about the Star Wars stuff that just bugs me. I guess things change, hopefully the Star Wars craze will fade and Disney will stop letting it consume them. Until that happens, I can still count on the old Disney Specials to remind of when things were a little bit simpler.
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