D23 - Day 1

Day 1 was special to Jonathan.  They were doing the Disney Legends ceremony open to to the public for the first time ever.  To be named a “Disney Legend” is a huge deal.  They started the award in 1987, and there are only about 200 people who have won.  Basically it’s awarded to anybody who is a pretty big deal in Disney history.  Jonathan has read many books about Disney Legends, and he was super excited to see the presentation.

People who have won in the past are:  animators who worked with Walt Disney on all those old movies, the 2 “kids” who always seemed to play brothers in all those ‘60s movies (Swiss Family Robinson, Shaggy Dog, Old Yeller), Tim Allen, Steve Martin, Imagineers who designed and built Disneyland, etc.  This year we saw about 10 people win the award including:  the current voices of Donald and Goofy (their acceptance speeches were HILARIOUS!), all the Golden Girls (only Betty White attended, and her speech was hilarious as well), the Imagineer who’s head is Madame Leotta inside the Haunted Mansion ride (her real name is Leotta) and Robin Williams.  He’s a wild guy!

 After the ceremony, while the thousands of people were trying to get their cameras and cell phones back (b/c they confiscated them), we hung around inside the theater.  There we ran into X. Atencio (he worked with Walt Disney and he wrote the theme songs for both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion).  He’s a Disney Legend!

We also ran into Kathryn Beaumont - the original voice for Alice (Alice in Wonderland) AND Wendy (Peter Pan).  We also got autographs from Mary Costa, who was the voice of Sleeping Beauty.

What an awesome presentation and we got 3 autographs!

Oh, and before the presentation we got to see 30 minutes of the new Princess and the Frog movie and Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls and the voice of the main character in the movie) sang a song.  She was great and the movie looks hilarious!  During the entire D23 expo we kept seeing pieces of Princess and the Frog, I think I’ve seen pretty much the entire movie.  I guess I’ll have to wait until December to see the entire movie in the correct order.