Like We Needed MORE Reasons To Love Disney

It’s no secret I’m a pretty big Disney fan (obviously!) – but there are times when I see the company doing things that just melt my heart even more than before.  Disney’s response during Covid-19 has been one of those times.

Here are some of the ways that Disney has given me reason to smile.

SHOP FROM OUR TEE PUBLIC STORE!

Pixie Dust Fan’s Tee Public Store

They donated ponchos to hospitals

Hospitals were making requests for additional protective garments and Disney donated 150,000 rain ponchos as well as more than 100,000 N95 masks.  

The “top” dogs cut their salaries

Yes, in order to reduce the expenses for the company, Disney executives have taken a pay cut.  Disney’s executive chairman Bob Iger is forgoing his full salary while the new CEO Bob Chapek is reducing his salary by 50%.  Other executives are taking pay cuts too:

• Vice president salaries will be reduced by 20%
• Senior vice president salaries by 25%
• Executive vice president salaries by 30%

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see that happening at a lot of other companies.

They addressed Cast Member concerns immediately

Disney announced the closures of Disneyland and Walt Disney World “in an abundance of caution”, that’s when I knew things were seriousl with the virus.  Do you know what else they did when they announced the closures?  They communicated at the same time that they would pay their cast members during that time.  This was out of the gate – right in the releases.  It set an example, a tone that hopefully other large companies would follow, even if only to save face.  Disney took a stand showing compassion for their cast members – even at what I am sure is a great expense.

One of the many updates Disney posted on their websites

Disney Donated All Of The Excess Food

All of the food that was on hand for the parks and resorts that would not be used was donated to help the communities.

In Orlando the food was donated to Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, enough for over 18,000 meals!

In California the food was donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County and Disneyland Paris donated to local and national associations in France. 

Disney has art lessons online

Now we have #BetterTogether:  Draw Mickey Mouse at Home with a Disney Parks Artist

Fun right?  Who doesn’t want to learn to draw Mickey?  This was a fan favorite at the D23 Expo a couple of years ago and now it’s all online to entertain us all while we’re at home during the ‘social distancing’ exercise to stop the spread of the Corona virus.

If you don’t want to draw Mickey there are a whole ton of other characters you can learn to draw!

• Sally from Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’
• Celebrate Spring With Daisy Duck
• Aladdin’s Pal, Genie
• Tinker Bell
• Buzz Lightyear from ‘Toy Story’
• ‘Frozen’ Voice Actor Josh Gad Tests His Skills at Drawing Olaf
• Hiro from ‘Big Hero 6′
• Mickey’s Pal Pluto
• Baymax From ‘Big Hero 6’
• Rapunzel’s Buddy, Pascal
• Stitch
• Winnie the Pooh
• Jack Skellington
• Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
•  ‘Frozen’s’ Anna
• Do You Want to Draw a Snowman?

You can find all of the links to the tutorials on the DISNEY PARKS BLOG.  

If you want a little peek – check out the Winnie The Pooh One!

Imagineering in a Box

According to the Disney parks Blog:

“Imagineering in a Box is a series of interactive lessons in theme park design and engineering, designed to give a behind-the-scenes peek into Imagineering’s development process. It combines 32 videos of actual Imagineers, real-world case studies, and lots of interactive activities to give you the opportunity to dream and design your very own theme park experience!

With so many families at home together right now, we thought this would be an especially useful time to share this program with you. It’s available to all and completely free.”

Check out the courses here 

I will warn you – when you watch the “Welcome to Imagineering In A Box” video – if you’re a Disney fan it’s all the feels and yes, my eyes were a little misty!

They released Frozen 2 on Disney+ 3 months early

Given that most of us are at home flipping channels AND the kids are out of school while most schools are closed for a very extended March break, it was a welcome surprise that Frozen 2 would be available on Disney+.  We are all looking for stuff to keep us entertained, Carrie and I talked about what we were doing on the podcast, but I am sure there are a whole whack of parents who were happy this was released early…. and then after it played for the 12th time – maybe they weren’t so happy!  

They were generous with changes and refunds.

Disney was VERY accomodating with changes, refunds and fees during this time.  They extended the due dates for final payments, waived all change fees and offered some very generous credits to re-book for cancelled Disney Cruise Line sailings.  On select sailings the credit for a future cruise was 150% of what they paid for the cancelled one.

Disney does what it does best… gives us hope and positivity!

I don’t know about you, but I always have a smile on my face when I see Mickey’s posts on Instagram!

Aside from ALL of that – there are so many Disney stars who are doing their part to bring smiles to our faces.  I think my favorite so far has been Josh Gad (Olaf) reading bed time stories on Twitter!

How cute is this??  Have you watched any?