January 7 - Voyage of the Little Mermaid

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1992, Voyage of the Little Mermaid first invited guests to travel under the sea at the Disney-MGM Studios. When the studios first opened in 1989, the Backlot Tour was half of the available attractions. When the park proved to be more popular than anticipated, pieces of the Backlot Tour were slowly taken off the tour and made into their own stand alone things. One of those pieces was a theater at the end of the tour.

At that time, Disney was in negotiations with Jim Henson to acquire the Muppets. In anticipation of that deal, two attractions opened at the Studios featuring Jim's characters. One of those attractions, Muppet*Vision 3D is still running. The other was a live stage show with life size Muppet characters that opened in that little theater located just off Animation Courtyard. That show was called Here Come the Muppets and ran for just over 15 months. The show that replaced it is one of my favorite shows in all of Walt Disney World.

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Now is a good time for full disclosure. I'm more than a little biased when it comes to VoLM. I performed in it more than 7,700 times over a three year period. That number sounds impressive when I say it but it's really not. There are performers still there who have been with the show since the beginning and have logged well over 25,000 performances. Compared to them, I'd barely started. I am immensely proud of the not only the work I did while part of the cast but of everyone I worked with, most of whom put me to shame with their talent. So even though VoLM is getting shiny patches on the knees of its pants and looking a little haggard when it crawls out of bed each morning, I think the world of it.

And, for the most part, so do guests. They might not all appreciate the fact that Ariel is singing live rather than lipsynching to a track. They might not care that being able to watch nine puppeteers ply their craft at one time doesn't really happen much anymore, or anywhere. They don't even notice that the show doesn't make much sense if you've never seen the movie (let's be real, though, who hasn't seen The Little Mermaid?)  But I do think they enjoy the show completely and wholeheartedly. After all, audiences have been consistently showing up, day in and day out, for 27 years now. In fact about a third of all guests who come to the Studios each day find their way through the little theater near the back of the park. To put that in perspective, about half of all guests will find a seat in the much (much) larger space that houses the park's premiere show Fantasmic. VoLm does more than all right for itself.

There are constantly rumors afoot that Voyage of the Little Mermaid is on the brink of closing. The reasons are always varied: it's so old, so tired, it would cost too much to properly refurbish it, Disney is getting rid of all puppeteers, etc. etc. etc. A couple of years ago, more than one blog even reported as "fact" that it was done that Labor Day. As the Studios are in a constant state of flux these days, those rumors get more rampant the closer Star Wars Land gets to opening but so far they remain rumors. Will there be a place for VoLM in the new Disney's Hollywood Studios? I'm sure at some point it will go the way of Legend of the Lion King and Here Come the Muppets, but don't count this little slice of undersea adventure out just yet. And when you do go to see it, if you run into Max, tell him an old friend says hello.

October 10 - Jodi Benson

On this day, in 1961, Jodi Marie Marzorati was born in Rockford, Illinois. In 1984, she married actor/singer Ray Benson to become Jodi Benson (no she isn't related to the voice of the Beast, Robbie Benson; that's not his real name). In 1989, she dove under the sea and became a Disney legend.

Like many great talents, Jodi's career began on Broadway. She played Virginia in Marilyn: An American Musical, supposedly the only authorized musical about Marilyn Monroe. Jodi then originated the role of Doria Hudson in 1986's Smile, a musical that takes a look behind the scenes of a fictional beauty pageant. Smile's book and lyrics were written by Howard Ashman, who would go on to write the lyrics for a certain mermaid as well. Another funny thing about Smile, at least for Jodi, is that Doria's big number is called "Disneyland." Of course that wouldn't be funny for a few more years, but you get it.

In 1989, Jodi was part of the cast of Welcome to the Club, a musical about guys in jail for being delinquent on their alimony payments and the wives who wanted their money. You heard that right. And, as you might have guessed, it was a colossal flop. The significance to our story is that Samuel E. Wright was also in that cast and he played Sebastian the Crab in The Little Mermaid. And Jodi was in that movie, too.

In an interview I saw once, Jodi remembered that after she got the part of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, most of her friends kind of ridiculed her for doing a Disney movie. You have to remember that Disney's animation department had been in a dark, dark period for a couple of decades. It hit bottom with The Black Cauldron and, even though it was on the upswing, wasn't yet in a position of being a desirable gig. But Jodi was excited. Reports were coming in from the little studio Howard Ashman and Alan Menken were writing songs in that every time the door opened and their fantastic music would spill out into the hall, doors to other studios would start opening and people were asking "Where is that music coming from?" She probably didn't know that she was involved in her life defining role, but she knew that something special was happening.

When Mermaid premiered in 1989, the world went bonkers for its redheaded heroine. The film won Academy Awards, Golden Globes and Grammys and ushered in a Renaissance for Disney animation. No longer would anyone be ridiculed for wanting to do it. Jodi would work almost exclusively for Disney for years, making appearances at trade shows, theme park attraction openings, basically anywhere the company could get mileage out of having Ariel there. She would continue to voice Ariel in two sequels to Mermaid, a television series, video games, episodes of various other shows (like House of Mouse), and the attraction Mickey's PhilharMagic at the Magic Kingdom. You will be able to hear her as Ariel once again later this year in Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Ariel is the role you probably knew Jodi did. What you may not know is that she is also the voice of Barbie in the Toy Story films. Barbie wasn't in the first Toy Story because Mattel wasn't willing to give Pixar the rights to her. By the second film, Mattel was falling all over themselves to get her in. Jodi provided her perky voice for Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, various shorts and will be doing it again next year in Toy Story 4. She's also been Lady in Lady and the Tramp II , Anita in 101 Dalmations II and Weebo, the robot in Flubber. Jodi made a rare live action appearance in the 2007 movie Enchanted as Sam, the assistant to Patrick Dempsey's character (she was actually one of three actresses who played Disney princesses to appear in that film).

As if all that work for Disney wasn't enough, Jodi has done all sorts of other roles over the years as well. On Broadway, she earned a Tony nomination in 1992 for Crazy For You and was the narrator in a 1998 production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Jodi has performed as a soloist all over the world with orchestras including the Boston Pops and the Tokyo Symphony. Her voice has been heard in Don Bluth's Thumbelina, Dreamworks Joseph: King of Dreams and Universal's Balto series.

In 2011, Jodi, who was already legendary in the Disney universe, was named an official Disney Legend. What will we see from her in the future? I'm sure it will include more Ariel and more Barbie, but hopefully it will also include new and exciting roles we can't even dream of at the moment.

Also on this day, in American history: Earle Dickson