Guest Column: A Brazilian Disney Fan
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Revisiting Disney

Hello, my name is Celbi Pegoraro. I think is better to do a little introduction of myself before my comments on Disney. I live in São Paulo - one of the bigest cities in the world and industrial heartland of Brazil, and I think most of you probably know me from my website Animation Animagic (dedicated to promote traditional animation) and the discussion boards as maniac_disney . My first contact with Disney was in comics and the Disneyland TV show (I still remember and have the tape with excerpts of "Sleeping Beauty" showing the fight between Prince Philip and Maleficent as dragon). I was five years old at time of my first experience with animated features was in 1986 when "The Black Cauldron" was released in my country. I know... it is not a perfect film, but the chance to see for the first time a Disney animated feature in a big screen in CinemaScope with great sound and cool scenes make this film very special to me. The irony is that I only saw it again thirteen years later.

Later in 1986 I saw my first animated features on video - "The Aristocats", "The Fox and the Hound" and "Fantasia". How I saw "Fantasia" in 86? I think the ‘video club’ at time had a copy (not official) from a Brazilian release of "Fantasia" dubbed in portuguese. Don’t forget the VCR mania was only beginning. Sometime later I got a copy (with low quality) from this "Fantasia" and waited until the official release in 1990. I loved seeing this film again with bright colors and great sound but something was different. Only a few years ago I did learn this low quality copy is the rare 1982 version of "Fantasia" A little backstory should help: in 1981 the sound track recorded in 1938 had steadily deteriorated. For the 1982 rerelease, Disney decided to give "Fantasia" the first digitally recorded score, making it state-of-art once more. The conductor who rerecorded the score was Irwin Kostal (who won Oscars for "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music") based on Stokowski’s original one. Probably the most important change is in the last segment. Quoting from the book Walt Disney’s Fantasia by John Culhane: "For the Night on Bald Mountain sequence, Kostal used Moussorgsky’s own, wild orchestration rather than the tamer Rimsky-Korsakov scoring that Stokowski thought 1940 audiences would be more likely to accept."

Well, I must say I am a big fan of this orchestration - the last segment has a more powerful and darker sound than the original restaured later for the 1990 rerelase and the DVD. I think is a shame Disney doesn't included at least this segment with the 82 sound track on the DVD.

I’m not only a fan of animation but a big fan of Disney theme parks. I did a trip to Walt Disney World in 87, 89 and 97. In the 80’s I think Epcot was my favorite theme park with it’s old rides full of inspiration like "Spaceship Earth", "World of Motion", "Journey into Imagination" and my favorite, "Horizons" (which I’m glad I got a last look at in July 97 before it closed for good). My 1989 trip was more magical because of the opening of Disney-MGM Studios. I had watched the grand opening ceremony on TV two months earlier and couldn't wait to look for myself at the new park. In 89 Disney was full of new attractions being worked: "Typhon Lagoon’ water park would be open later that year, Epcot would open "Wonders of Life" and had the new Norway pavilion on World Showcase. Once inside the newly Disney-MGM Studios, the park didn’t have many rides. I remember our tour guide wanted to go first on Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular... only to discover the show would be open only two hours later. In the meantime we did a tour around the lagoon to visit the restaurants and went to The Great Movie Ride. After the journey through the movies we finally saw the Indiana Jones show and my mom got the camera to film some of the exterior building of the upcoming Star Tours. Next... Animation Courtyard - unfortunatly we didn't visit the Animation Tour, but expended a lot of time in line to enter the largest attraction of the park: Backstage Studio Tour - a two hour ride where the tram did almost the same track of the current "Backlot Tour" passing the "fake" houses, Catastrophe Canyon, the empty New York Street and many props from the last success "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". Once out of the tram the next step in the same attraction (in 89) was the "Looney Bin" - a place full of props and gadgets inspired by Maroon Cartoons studio from the Roger Rabbit film. I got a great photo of the animated Roger Rabbit, Benny the Cab and me on "FotoToons". After a few minutes we went to the Special Effects section and the first soundstage. We saw the set for the Mickey Mouse Club and watched in the monitors a great short film - "The Lottery" starring Bette Midler - and ended the tour visiting the last soundstage full of props from this short film. After lunch I saw the fun "The Monster Sound Show" and came back to the hotel at 5 pm. Hey, I saw only four attractions in the new park and was very happy. I think the park only had six attractions: the others were "Superstar Television" and "The Magic of Disney Animation".