So anyway...the Animation Panel.
I'm going to include pictures here. Our phones were all safely in their crinkle bags so these are all pictures I've found on the internet and then stolen.
So we get our seats and Alan Horn comes out. He's not very charismatic and was pretty boring and unmemorable. Then Lasseter comes out, and do you think he's going to be boring? Nope he has some assistants and a freaking t-shirt cannon. Everyone stands up and starts losing their minds. He's firing off t-shirts and all of a sudden my section extra freaks. I figure there has got to be a t-shirt coming our way but hell if I can see anything (I'm short). Brian actually ended up catching one! He is a good boyfriend so he promptly handed it over to me.
This was the picture I took out in the hall after the panel was over:
And a picture of what was on the shirt:
While I was unrolling the shirt I had a crazy hope that maybe Lasseter had signed the shirt since he only shot out about 6, but no such luck. Still very neat though.
Back to the panel.
We started out with images to a previously unannounced Disneytoon Studios' movie:
The crowd reaction seemed pretty impressed by the animation, and I was too. It looked very real. The movie is going to be about the future of aviation. At the end of footage we see the plane going into the edge of space. At that point we see that the plane has eyes (like the vehicles in the Cars and Planes franchises). I swear you can hear the excitement go out of the crowd. Now, not me because I really loved the first Cars. But yeah, the audience was really into this until they showed that the planes have eyes. I'm still excited about it, the animation was gorgeous. This one should be in theaters April 2019.
Aside: my stupid fit bit kept flashing the screen on whenever I clapped. I was freaking out that the roving guards with night vision goggles roaming up and down the aisles were going to think it was a phone so I quickly took it off and stuffed it into my bag.
Next up it's time for Frozen 2! Lasseter did a very funny bit about all the names that Frozen 2 will not be using. Such as Melted and lots of other funny names. He said they don't have a name yet and then he introduced Kristen Bell to talk about the new Christmas short Olaf's Frozen Adventure.
Kristen came out and said she was just going to show us one of the songs. The clip started to play and then all the sound promptly cut out. They had me going for a little while, but after a few seconds Kristen was like well, we don't seem to have sound so why don't we just bring out Josh Gad to sing Olaf's part.
This was very exciting for me, I've loved Josh Gad since Book of Mormon. He was sooo good live and the song was hilarious. It made me excited for the short, which I was not before.
After the song there was a bit of riffing back and forth between Gad and Bell about how Gad was a little confused about Bell because her name made it sound like she should have been in the Beauty and the Beast live action with him but he doesn't really remember her being there...
Gad was getting all the good ribs in, he also pointed out that the new short is called 'Olaf's Frozen Adventure', not 'Anna's Frozen Adventure'.
The songs for this 21 minute short are not written by the same song writing team as the movie, Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson wrote them. I think the songs will be good because I really enjoyed the song we got to hear from Gad. There were tons of little snide/innocent remarks from Olaf. Like when he was singing about hanging socks by the fireplace he says oooh, that sounds safe.
They announced that Frozen 2 will be released in November 2019. Little aside, I still remember watching the original Frozen on it's release weekend. It was snowing (how ironic) and there were only a few of us in the theater. That changed.
I believe the show stopping Wreck It Ralph 2 was next up. I'm pretty sure it has a great title 'Ralph breaks the internet', because the clip they showed kind of already broke the internet. Directors Moore and Johnston came out and introduced Sarah Silverman, who voices Vanellope. I'm kind of shocked Sarah Silverman did a Disney event like this, let's just say she usually does not have the most appropriate mouth but she kept it clean here.
She introduced a clip that shows her and Ralph traveling through the internet. They meet up with a character called Yeeees (yes) who I already know is going to majorly annoy me). They traveled to the 'Oh My Disney' hub (head, meet hammer). Then the most incredible clip happens where Vanellope sees Disney princesses parading by and she wants to go 'mess with them'. She sneaks away from Yeees and Ralph and breaks in. She quickly realizes that she doesn't want to mess with them, she wants to be included.
Chaos ensued in the audience.
If anyone was outraged, I couldn't tell over the gales and snorts of laughter. People could not keep it together. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some bladder accidents.
There were so many jokes in here, I could not believe this was a Disney sponsored thing. So self aware and hilarious. This was one of the highlights of the panel.
After the panel, they said they had a fun fact for us and said that all of the princesses' original voices had returned (which obviously isn't true as I don't think the voices of Snow, Cinder and Aurora are alive, but they didn't mention that. Would have been a downer).
They announced Elsa would be voiced be Idina Menzel, Mulan by Ming Na Wen, then Anna as Kristen, so she came out to wave at us again. She took over and said Paige O'Hara will be voicing Belle again, so surprise surprise, Paige walks out. She then introduces Jodie Benson as Ariel and it went on and on while the audience lost it.
(Here, I stole the names from a different blog and am copying and pasting them here:
Auli‘i Cravalho (“Moana”), Kristen Bell (Anna in “Frozen”), Kelly MacDonald (Merida in “Brave”), Mandy Moore (Rapunzel in “Tangled”), Anika Noni Rose (Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog”), Irene Bedard (“Pocahontas”), Linda Larkin (Jasmine in “Aladdin”), Paige O’Hara (Belle in “Beauty and the Beast”) and Jodi Benson (Ariel in “The Little Mermaid”))
I'm kind of thinking they should have ended with this presentation, the audience was at such a fever pitch. Maybe a good thing they didn't though, the audience was at such a fevered pitch we probably would have all stormed out of there and burned some couches on the expo floor (I lived in a big college town, burning couches is just what excited people do, right? It's normal).
That's one lucky snowman.
Aside: during all the clapping and cheering I was still tightly clutching my Lasseter t-shirt. No way was I letting go of that for a few hours.
Next we talked about Toy Story 4, which I'm really not all that excited about. I felt Toy Story 3 was just the perfect ending to the story. I trust Lasseter, but, I mean, Pixar did give us Cars 2. Let's not mess up the Toy Story movies, ok?
Josh Cooley, who directed the short Riley's First Date took the stage. Lasseter let us know that he was no longer going to co-direct with Cooley, Cooley was taking the director reins completely. This announcement was met with some lackluster clapping so as not to hurt Cooley's feelings. I mean, come on Lasseter, no one is going to cheer the fact that you're having less involvement with anything.
We were then showed a pretty funny behind the scenes look of what goes in day to day life at the Pixar studios. Sigh, why can't I work there?
Toy Story 4 will be released on June 21, 2019.
Next up was the Incredibles 2. If audience reaction was any indication, this is the upcoming movie people are most excited for.
We got to see a short (which I believe is on the internet now) about Edna Mode and her contributions to the fashion scene. Lots of famous people were filmed for the short like Heidi Klum, Kendall Jenner, Zac Posen and Rachel Zoe. It reminded me of Zoolander. But most things do.
Then the voice of Edna, Brad Bird (he also happens to be directing Incredibles 2) came out on stage. He then introduced Mr. and Mrs. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter), Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dash (newcomer Huck Milner) and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson). Once again, Samuel L is another one I'm shocked came out to a live Disney event. Good thing no snakes showed up. Dash did get a voice change since they wanted a young boy to continue to voice him.
Brad Bird revealed that this movie would focus on Elastigirl. With that being said, we were treated to a clip of Bob staying home with baby Jack Jack. It was a pretty funny clip where Jack Jack fights off a thieving raccoon. I enjoyed the clip, but I also don't know where they are going with Jack Jack since they revealed that he has pretty much every super power in the book. He'll never be able to grow up on screen because he'll be unstoppable.
Next up was something I was excited to hear about, a brand new original Pixar film! Dan Scanlon came on stage, he directed Monster's University.
Scanlon told a touching story about him and his brother. They lost their father at a very young age and they never even knew what his voice sounded like until an aunt found a recording with their father saying hi and bye. This inspired him to create this new film.
The untitled film is set in a suburban fantasy environment. So basically, characters like you would see in Lord of the Rings or any true fantasy movie like trolls, orcs, elves and even unicorns! We saw some concept art of unicorns eating out of trash cans. They are this society's rats/scavengers and are everywhere and a nuisance. These creatures used to practice magic a very long time ago. But magic was hard. Slowly magic started to die out as technological advances replaced them. So their world is kind of likes ours in that they have cars and washing machines. They just live in giant mushrooms instead of our boring houses. So our 2 main characters are brothers, they also lost their father at a young age and they begin to rediscover magic as they set out to spend one day with him.
Now, afterwards I was shocked to hear a lot of people on the internet laughing about this concept and making fun of it. I think it sounds tremendous and you know what, you guys weren't there so I don't value your opinion, you didn't see/hear the pitch. I am very excited for this movie. The best Pixar movies are the ones who have a lot of heart and emotion behind this. I don't think this one will disappoint.
Now it's time for our show stopper: Coco.
This movie seems to be getting lackluster enthusiasm (hence the inclusion of the Frozen Christmas short to be played before it), but I am very excited.
Director Lee Unkrich introduced a lengthy clip from the movie. We were then treated to a great performance. Anthony Gonzalez, who voices Miguel, the little boy in the movie came out to sing 'Remember Me' which was written by the Frozen song writing team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. After he sang a few lines Benjamin Bratt, the voice of Ernesto de la Cruz, joined him on stage to continue the song.
Then dancers came out on stage.
Then they started coming up all the aisles and orange confetti (made to look like the bridge to the underworld in the movie) started to fall.
I thought it was pretty epic. Once the song ended we all started to file out and were treated to a Coco poster on our way out the door.
If anyone is interested in this poster, we have 2 and we will never put up 2. So let me know. You'd have to pay shipping, of course. I love the poster.
So anyway...that wraps up the Animation panel. I'll go ahead and say here that it was my favorite of the large panels (Legends, Live Action, Parks and Resorts). I loved a lot of the smaller panels I saw but they were epic in different ways. This panel just had so much energy and I'm so glad we got in.
Next up I'm going to do a short post to wrap up Day 1. We still had one more panel and another shopping experience to get through! I will say now, there was no recording allowed in our next panel so you probably haven't heard much about it!