Disneyfied
Disneyfied
Disneyfied#0
Posted: 6/15/04 at 2:08pm
Does anyone else despise Disney?...I love the musical version of beauty and the beast and i love disney movies...but when they start disneyfying things, it REALLY boters me.
the old B&tB poster was pretty and classic...now...its DISNEYFIED
the new one...EEEWWWWWW.
re: Disneyfied#1
Posted: 6/15/04 at 2:17pm
Actually B/B was my first Broadway Musical, back in 1995. I absolutely loved it to pieces. It was extravagent and I was 11, so thats what I thought was so fantastic about it, and the music was so full and vibrant. Even though it was a Disney show, it felt like a real Broadway Musical.
I went to see it recently, my first time since it moved theaters and I was really disappointed. The whole thing seemed like it was watered down and Disneyified if you will. I was with my friend and my father. My friend had never seen it before and thought it was enjoyable. My father had taken me originally so when I told him this wasn't like how I'd remembered it at all and I was highly disappointed in how cartoonish it had gotten, he told me that he was disappointed too and that I was right, it had be Disneyified.
re: Disneyfied#3
Posted: 6/15/04 at 2:28pm
Disney doesnt bother me too much but i totally agree with you on the poster.
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/28/04
re: Disneyfied#4
Posted: 6/15/04 at 2:34pmYou guys think ya'll are getting Disneyfied, try living in Orlando for 14 years! THERE'S NO ESCAPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
re: Disneyfied#5
Posted: 6/15/04 at 2:36pmOh I like Disney, I'd live in disney world if I could (okay maybe only for the summers lol) but still, I didn't like how they changed the musical down like that.
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/28/04
re: Disneyfied#6
Posted: 6/15/04 at 2:41pm
BTS84: Trust me, Disney in the summer is as hot as hell.
But seriously, I really do like Disney, just not Disney The Business
re: Disneyfied#7
Posted: 6/15/04 at 3:47pmBeauty and the Beast was my first show, too. I recently saw it again and I did not find it as enjoyable, but it wasn't bad.
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/18/03
re: Disneyfied#9
Posted: 6/15/04 at 3:50pm
I saw it at the Palace with Kerry Butler as Belle (I LOVE her). I saw it again at the Lunt-Fontanne with Sarah Litzsinger and Chris Sieber as Gaston (LOVE him).
I enjoyed it at the Palace. I HATED the show at the Lunt. the way that they downsized was AWFUL in every way. They could have done a much better job. And the latter part of the tour, which I took my youngest sister to see, was a disgrace.
re: Disneyfied#10
Posted: 6/15/04 at 3:51pmI, for one, loathe the "disnification" of New York. Before, NYC had character, grit and personality. Now it's just one big theme park. what a shame.
re: Disneyfied#11
Posted: 6/15/04 at 4:19pm
I remember NYC before the Disneyfication and found Times Square to be a much more dangerous and unpleasant place to be. And Disney wasn't solely responsible, so it can't be blamed entirely on them. NYC is still NYC and Disney didn't change that. If you want the drug addicts and whores, just go a block or two east. There's plenty to be found on 8th ave. Times Square has always had its bright lights and themed restaurants and plenty of kitsch. Disney was just a brand name that was applied to some of that. At least now you feel a little safer leaving the theatre after an evening show.
I know there are those die-hard New Yorkers who romanticize about the old Times Square, but when kids are being approached by drug dealers in the most touristy part of the city in the middle of an afternoon, something needs to be done. It was getting really bad really fast.
re: Disneyfied#12
Posted: 6/15/04 at 4:26pmThen call me a Die Hard. and Romanticize is not the word I would use. It was just so much more Interesting a place to be when there was character in Time's Square.
re: Disneyfied#13
Posted: 6/15/04 at 5:31pm
I'm with you redhot. I went to dozens of shows in Times Square when I was a kid in the 70's and I don't remember ever it ever feeling dangerous or ever being scared of the various denizens who frequented the area -- they never bothered me or my parents or anyone else I was with and I found them absolutely fascinating.... as much of a show as nearly anything playing inside the theatres. I don't know, perhaps we were a street savvy bunch, but even as a kid it was always very obvious to me which ones were dangerous or potentially trouble and which ones were minding their own business and just hanging out.
I don't know. While I certainly prefer seeing the New Victory and the Ford Center and the Duke on that block rather than the porno theatres, the McDonald's, Madame Tussauds and the multiplexes make me want to gag -- I'd rather have the hookers. Cleaning up the area some was a fine idea, but it's turned into a Disney-theme park version of its earlier self -- "Times Square Land." New York has always been known for its "realness" and the entire area has become so plastic and corporate and "family-friendly" that it's lost its soul and its identity and its history. There must be a middle ground somewhere between urban blight and the Country Bears Jamboree -- but I guess it's too late for that now.
It used to be the most electric and exciting place on the face of the earth that I used to look forward to visiting every few months from the age of 4 or 5 through my teens. Now it looks like a fake promenade from any mall anywhere in suburbia USA. That's progress?
re: Disneyfied#14
Posted: 6/15/04 at 5:37pmhmmm... I'm a big fan of Disney in general, but I definitely agree about the posters. I liked the black one so much better.
re: Disneyfied#15
Posted: 6/15/04 at 6:02pm
I never visited Times Square in the 70s, but in the 80s, it was definitely getting scary. I watched a girl pull out a knife on her "ex-boyfriend", had several men try to sell me various drugs, and skanky prostitutes follow me down the street insisting I needed their services when I was 17 on Times Square. The three-card monty guys were gleefully stealing cash from tourists (I watched one poor young girl get caught up in it and lose about $120, who ended up sobbing). It was pretty depressing. I prefer the theme park stuff to ANY of that if I was going to bring my son or daughter to NYC the first time.
There are a few of the theme park places, but not as many as there were initially when The Lion King premiered. Many of them actually closed and many of them probably would have occurred anyway. I think the main difference is really in appearance more than anything else. There are still plenty of undesirables to be found as well as many of the older restaurants, theatres, and shops. Times Square has always been the cutting-edge top tourist spot of the US and will continue to be. It has evolved over time and will evolve again when the trends change.
The problem is, the US in general is a LOT more dangerous now than it was in the 70s or 80s or any other time in the past. Broadway has ALWAYS presented shows for audiences of all ages (how many people here saw their first musical under the age of 18?) and Broadway is trying to keep it that way however they can. I applaud the effort.
re: Disneyfied#16
Posted: 6/15/04 at 6:07pmDisney is a cruel, cruel cmpany that comes out with musicals and makes them even worse by putting them on Broadway, where they DON'T belong.
re: Disneyfied#17
Posted: 6/15/04 at 7:23pm
The US is generally is A LOT LESS dangerous than it has been in a generation. Crime rates have been falling dramatically for more than a decade after all-time high levels were reached in the 80's and early 90's -- crime experts credit several factors including the waning of the crack epidemic that lead to an explosion in violent crime in the 80's, longer sentences for repeat offenders, the aging of the baby boomer generation of criminals, and increased spending on street policing efforts. New York City ranks 49th out of top 50 most populous US cities in crime, with lowest levels of homicide and violent crime seen since the late 1950's and early 60's. The crime numbers began falling under Giuliani (thanks in part to Mayor Dinkins "Safe City, Safe Streets" program which put a thousand additional cops on the beat in the mid-90's) and have continued to decrease every year since, making New York the safest big city in America -- by FAR.
I don't know, I never worried about drug dealers or prostitutes, even when I was 8 years old. To me they weren't much different from the pretzel vendor on the corner (except they wore more interesting clothes) -- if you wanted what they were selling, they're happy to do business with you; if you didn't, they never bothered you. And in all my years they never have (even when I lived next to one of the biggest crack markets in the city that had guys with walkie talkies hanging out in the streets at all hours and I regularly came home by myself at 4am -- you don't bother them, they don't bother you).
As for the monte players and the dice hustlers, I was probably 6 or 7 years old when my folks explained to me how it was a total scam that only suckers or clueless tourists ever fell for. I used to watch people get taken all the time, amazed at their gullibility. They're still very much around -- separating fools from their money to this day.
I don't know, I guess I sound unsympathetic, but it's amazing to me how generations of people, millions and millions of adults and children managed to come to NY and Times Square in the century before Disney got here, go to shows, go to restaurants, go shopping, go sightseeing and how probably 99% percent of them were never mugged, were never robbed, were never hustled and were able to walk the streets and enjoy themselves and emerge from the experience unharmed and unscathed.
All this stuff about how they needed to make Times Square more family-friendly struck me as a bunch of hooey -- I remember being in audiences packed with kids when I saw "Pippin" and "The Wiz" and "Fiddler on the Roof" and "A Chorus Line" and "Annie" before I was a teenager. As a kid and as a teenager, I remember Broadway being a fun and exciting place and don't ever remember being afraid of anything about it for one second -- and I'm sure most of the millions of other families that were there in the 70's and 80's felt the same way.
Heck, Damon Runyan wrote about pickpockets, hustlers, prostitutes and ne'er-do-wells hanging around Times Square over 80 years ago, back when Broadway was REALLY thriving with 200 - 300 new shows every year as opposed to the few dozen we get each season nowadays -- and his stories weren't cautionary tales, they were a celebration of a vibrant world that's now lost forever. Yeah, getting rid of some of the sleaze wasn't a bad thing and having a couple of real theatres full of audiences (rather than abandoned buildings) is a great thing, but the rampant overcommercialization, to my mind, has some troubling ramifications.
Broadway Star Joined: 5/22/04
re: Disneyfied#18
Posted: 6/15/04 at 9:58pm
I actually didn't think B&theB was "Disneyfied" when I saw it... Toni Braxton was Belle and in the infamous blue & white dress she wears early on and the yellow ball gowns-- I swear her t*ts were about to fall out...
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/28/04
re: Disneyfied#19
Posted: 6/15/04 at 10:01pm
hehehehehe
If you guys only knew about what happened at MGM a few years ago...
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/28/04
re: Disneyfied#21
Posted: 6/15/04 at 10:14pm
Why sure, I'd be glad to! 
As you may or may not know, the MGM theme park in Orlando, Fl, has a Beauty and the Beast show. A few years ago, there was a minor, to paraphase Janet Jackson, "wardrobe malfuntion". Belle came down the grand staircase in that infamous golden gown and she turned....but the dress didn't. The costume has a built-in-bra so...
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/18/03
re: Disneyfied#22
Posted: 6/16/04 at 12:35pm
HA HA HA HA HA.
I HATED The theme park versionof BATB.SOOOOOO stupid.
re: Disneyfied#23
Posted: 6/16/04 at 12:44pmLOL that must have givin those kids an eyeful. I kinda like how time square is in the present (wasnt around in the 70's). But, i have to admit the "new 42nd street" is very cheesy. The lowes theatre and the wax museum don't help at all.
re: Disneyfied#24
Posted: 6/16/04 at 12:54pm
I don't know much about the actual crime rates of NY, which is why I stated that the country itself is more dangerous now than it was, but I do remember being quite frightened by my experiences of Times Square in the mid-80s to early 90s. I do think it's interesting that the drop in crime rate coincides not only with Dinks' efforts, but also the beginning of the Disney invasion.
I also think there is a HUGE difference in perception of Times Square between a tourist and a native New Yorker. If you lived in crack neighborhoods, then I'm sure Times Squares seems like Romper Room in comparison. I recently witnessed a thre--card monte scam on the train in Chicago. I still hate it.
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