The awards season is here and already Disney movies are getting some amazing recognition! While the buzz about Avatar and movies like The Blindside continue to fill up the papers, here in Orlando we’re all rooting for our favorite Disney films to be recognized for how great they really are. It was great to see both The Princess and the Frog and Up nominated alongside other animated movies as great as Coraline. The Disney theme parks all have plenty of merchandise available from both The Princess and the Frog and Up. Last year, the Magic Kingdom had a special parade for Princess Tiana called Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee, which made use of the beautiful steamboat near Tom Sawyer’s island. Over at Downtown Disney, you can take a hot air balloon ride and experience your own balloon adventure much like in Up!

The heartfelt story of a journey to fulfill a promise captivated audiences and brought in plenty of money at the box office for Up, making it yet another huge success to add to Pixar’s list of huge movies. Let’s not forget, Toy Story 3 is coming up soon along with Rapunzel; which will continue to make the Pixar/Disney team up almost unstoppable. They were certainly unstoppable at the Golden Globes and already people are looking towards the Oscars!

At the Golden Globes, where the decisions are made by the Hollywood Foreign Press, Up won in two categories. The most important award of all was the Best Animated Feature, where it defeated Coraline and its own company with The Princess and the Frog! The other category Up! won in was for Best Original Score. In a way, this win was also tied to Disney! Michael Giacchino, the hottest new composer in Hollywood, created the score for Up along with the blockbuster Star Trek and ABC’s LOST—and Disney owns ABC! So far the House of Mouse is scoring big with all of these awards shows. Will some Oscars be next for Up? What about The Princess and the Frog? Sure it got some nominations, but Disney’s return to hand-drawn animation definitely deserves an award of its own! We’ll just have to wait and see.

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Going to the Disney theme parks is always fun no matter what time of year you go. There are so many great activities, parades, fireworks shows and special attractions during holidays like Christmas and Halloween. The Magic Kingdom is one of the most popular parks in the Walt Disney World Resort and there are always changes being made to improve the park for guests year after year.

You might have heard about the enormous Fantasyland expansion coming in 2011 and 2012 over at the Magic Kingdom. Fans of the Disney princesses will love all of the new features. You’ll be able to help plan Sleeping Beauty’s birthday party, learn to ballroom dance with Cinderella, read a story with Belle and even enjoy a ride through the journey of Ariel. For fans of Pixie Hollow, a giant sized replica of the fairy land will be built to make you feel like you’re Tinkerbell’s size yourself.

For fans of Dumbo there will be a new circus-themed area that will do away with the concept of lines. Yes, that’s right. Instead of waiting in line you will be able to play various games to keep yourself entertained in the meantime. It’s all part of Disney’s plan to make your experience at the parks better for you, and they’ve already begun to test it out!

Over at Disney’s Hollywood Studios you can enjoy a musical roller coaster adventure like no other with Aerosmith’s Rock N Roller Coaster ride. Recently, the coaster has begun to test a “deli style” waiting system, where you are given a ticket and made part of a group. For example, if you’re group A, you’ll be told to return in 5 minutes and other groups at other times. Disney has set up games like Guitar Hero, benches, even DJ’s and other forms of entertainment outside of the ride for the various groups waiting to come back for their turn on the ride to enjoy (much like Dumbo will be doing). This “queue-less” system is receiving mixed reviews but it’s still in its very early testing stages. Once Disney fine tunes it, a queue-less ride seems like a great addition to the parks and much more fun than standing in a long line for hours and hours! We can’t wait to see what the parks work out.

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The Orlando theme parks are popular with kids and teens, but the Disney theme parks have one major draw that other parks don’t when it comes to teens and tweens: the Disney pop machine! Just think, there’s Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and much more. You can find the faces of these stars right next to merchandise of High School Musical which launched the careers of Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. The Jonas Brothers were recently in town to tape their performance for the Disney Christmas Parade and just this weekend another teen sensation was in Disney world to take part in the fun at the Magic Kingdom along with some recent radio contest winners.

Justin Bieber, who was first discovered on YouTube after his mother would upload Justin’s performances for his scattered family to see, came to Orlando to hang out at the Magic Kingdom with a young girl that won a local radio contest to meet Bieber. If you aren’t familiar with the now 15 year old Bieber’s music, you soon will be. He began his career covering popular hip hop, pop, and r&b songs. He was able to generate enough buzz to catch the attention of Justin Timberlake, Usher and more. The Ontario, Canada native has quickly climbed the Billboard charts, becoming the first artist in Billboard history to have four singles from a debut album in the Top 40 before the album came out! His singles like “One Time”, “One Less Lonely Girl”, and “Favorite Girl” quickly captured the hearts of teenage girls across the US and Canada. When it came time to sign to a record label, Justin Bieber chose to sign with Usher’s label over Timberlake’s, which has been a great success for him.

Bieber was photographed riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and with the Genie from Aladdin. Though he was the biggest teen star in Orlando over the weekend, he wasn’t the only star. Over at Epcot, the very popular Candlelight Processional continues to delight guests from around the world. Whoopi Goldberg was photographed with Minnie Mouse after her reading at the Candlelight Processional. Teen actress Abigail Breslin was also one of the readers at the processional and coming up next we have veteran actor and star of Battlestar Galactica Edward James Olmos. Whether you like the teen scene or talent of all kinds, you can find it all at the Walt Disney World!

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You might be wondering what in the world an Omaka Rocka is. Well next year you’ll be able to find out when you head to SeaWorld’s water-themed sister park Aquatica. All of the Orlando theme parks are planning massive expansions to keep things new and exciting for returning and new guests, so we’ll have a lot to talk about next year!

While Universal Orlando Resort and the Walt Disney World Resort’s plans have overshadowed some of the other parks’ new attractions, that doesn’t mean DWTickets.com will leave it out of the picture. If you love water slides and enjoy a day in the sun at the beautiful Aquatica water park, you’ll be happy to know they will be expanding the park with a brand new slide called Omaka Rocka, meaning “rocky river.”

This new water slide will allow people of all ages to ride as long as they follow the rules—no height restrictions here! What you will find with Omaka Rocka is 2 slides with 3 funnels each. These funnels will feature 2-seater tubes that will send riders zooming through colorful fiberglass tubes. Some will be translucent and others will keep riders in the dark for an exciting experience! Even those who are waiting in line will be able to see Omaka Rocka riders zooming overhead in the colorful tubes.

“They’re going to slide up one side and get a sensation of near weightlessness. They’ll come down that side and back up the other. They’ll probably be going backwards, but most definitely going to be screaming,” Aquatice VP Rick Beddow told the Orlando Sentinel. “It’s going to be a taste of a half-pipe — near vertical thrills experienced only by skateboarders or snowboarders.”

The Omaka Rocka will share a tower with Whanau Way and be similar in ride style to both Whanau Way and the Tassie’s Twisters. This will be Aquatica’s first new attraction since it first opened two years ago. While the Omaka Rocka is scheduled to open in 2010 we don’t have a specific date yet. Considering it’s a bit chilly in Orlando right now, springtime seems perfect, and March is the rumored month of completion.

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This week the Disney world lost Roy E. Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney and the only son of Roy O. Disney. He was a shy man who mostly kept away from the public eye while he kept an iron grasp on the inner workings of the Walt Disney Company. Born into one of the most legendary families in the world, Roy grew up visiting the Disney studios and screening featurettes and cartoons before other people did. The animators would use him as a “test subject” to see if, as a young boy, he found the animations funny. At night, many newspapers that wrote about Disney’s passing mentioned how Walt would always tell him amazing bed time stories, never shying away from the creativity all of the Disneys seemed to have in their blood.

As an adult he oversaw many of the executive aspects of the Walt Disney Company and willingly put his shyness aside when he saw company ideals and beliefs at risk of being compromised. During the mid-to late 80’s, Roy didn’t hesitate to fire the head honchos of the time, namely Ron Miller, who was then replaced by Michael Eisner. Eisner would fall out of Roy’s good graces later on in his career after Roy felt Eisner was thinking only of money and sacrificing the quality of the Disney parks and product. See, despite being involved in the financial aspects of Disney, Roy was all about the creativity. He was much more like his Uncle Walt, who dealt with the creative aspects, than his father Roy, who was all about the business side.

“I really credit Roy Disney completely with the renaissance of Disney animation, beginning with ‘Little Mermaid’ and all the way through that great amazing series of classic Disney films,” said John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios.

One could argue that without Roy, Disney animation would have never survived the 80’s. The so-called “Disney Renaissance,” which began with The Little Mermaid and ended with The Lion King, can be credited to Roy’s drive to keep with the ideals of his uncle. We’re sure the Disney theme parks will be honoring Roy, who bore a striking resemblance to his uncle, in some way. There is a statue of Walt at the Magic Kingdom and you can see other tributes to the man that started it all in Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Like his uncle, Roy Disney died due to cancer. He was 79 years old, and died the day after the anniversary of Walt Disney’s death, on December 16th, 2009. Roy E. Disney will be missed, but his contribution to the salvation of the animated feature will never be forgotten.

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