“Disney’s PhotoMovie” puts the snap back in your snapshots

cbarry

18 years ago

Once again, I returned home from a trip to WDW this past August. Not paying for the food plan was great. We loved the addition of Captain Jack to “Pirates.” I like the slightly different parade at the Magic Kingdom. We were a little bummed out by the huge line for “Turtle Talk with Crush.” I think my 4 year-old twin boys would’ve really gotten a kick out of that. We ate at some different restaurants, saw some things we never saw before and as usual returned home exhausted but happy.

Something we took advantage of this year for the first time was Disney’s PhotoPass. This is truly a great service. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the concept. You’re given a credit card-like PhotoPass card. Each time a Disney photographer takes your picture, they scan your card and you can then view your photos later on in the park, or even better, you can view them for up to 30 days after you get home online. To me, this takes away a little bit of the pressure you might feel when you are viewing the photos in the park and it cancels out one more line to wait on. It was great to come home and sort through the pictures I took myself and then log onto DisneyPhotoPass.com and see if they got something that I missed. Then I purchased a few and ordered some copies for Grandma and Grandpa.

A few days after I logged on to PhotoPass for the first time, I received an interesting email. PhotoPass was offering a different service in addition to the online photos. Something called Disney’s PhotoMovie was being offered to me. I’m in the TV business, so I was intrigued. It seemed that Disney would allow me to load my personal trip photos online, sort through my PhotoPass photos, mix them with some stock photos of WDW (the Partners statue, Mickey on the grass with Cinderella Castle behind him, a nice aerial view of World Showcase, that sort of thing) and then separate them into chapters according to location.

Here’s the aerial view of World Showcase.

Then Disney would take all of these photos, mix them together with some appropriate magical music, some background video clips, add some Disney magic special effects and create a video montage of my trip for me. The price seemed a little high at first glance, $49.95 for a DVD copy, $19.95 for any additional copies, but I thought it would be a nice surprise for the kids and a great keepsake of our trip. After all, this was the first trip to the World for my twin boys, and, believe it or not, it was my parents’ first visit as well.

Loading all the photos took some time. Sorting through my best and most favorite choices wasn’t easy. The stock footage of WDW was a real plus. Sometimes, you just don’t get the right shot and the pros that photograph this place for a living certainly have the right touch. They allowed 68 photos to be used in any configuration you chose. Some shots I could never get, like the aforementioned Mickey on a grassy knoll in the hub with the castle in the background …

…or a nice steady shot of a Kilimanjaro Safari truck rolling through the savannah flanked by giraffes.

There were lots of great choices. Once I picked all of the pictures I wanted, it was time to group them into chapters. Each still was placed into a chapter appropriate frame and surrounded by background video specific to the location. There were 5 different chapters made available, one for each park and one called “Beyond the Parks.”

with background video of your chosen resort. Here’s a still capture of the background video for Port Orleans Riverside.

The menus, music and special effects on the finished product were quite impressive really. Here’s the opening menu page …

…and here’s the beginning, a photo album which opened to reveal our video.

Copyright 2006 Disney Enterprises, Inc.

The background video and choices of music were fantastic. They mixed different video aspects from all over WDW in each respective chapter and added some special appearances from Disney characters. Sometimes the characters would do something to wipe the still image off or on the screen.

For instance, here’s Donald and Goofy pulling a still picture of Mickey down from the ceiling …

…which Donald then proceeds to tear through …

…revealing the photo I took of my daughter Samantha and Piglet.

Other stills were pushed onto the screen by Mickey and Minnie or painted on by cast members holding paintbrushes.

All of these character appearances really impressed my 7 year-old daughter and her 4 year-old brothers. As usual with most Disney extras, the looks on their faces made it all worthwhile. Technically it was very impressive and a lot of effort went into the production of the DVD. Personally, I thought it was well worth the money. The added option of viewing all of my chosen stills full screen as a simple slide show, with a great medley of Disney instrumentals (Spectromagic, Once Upon a Dream, Part of Your World, etc.) as accompaniment, was certainly a bonus. It really is a great keepsake.

As I finally got around to writing this article, I logged back onto DisneyPhotoMovie.com to check a few details and was surprised to see the following message.

So, I wonder, was PhotoMovie just a pilot test? If it comes back will it be the same? I thought it was pretty impressive as it was. I wonder if it was too complex an offering for the price. Maybe it will never come back. Maybe it will come back and be more expensive.

Perhaps I have more of a special keepsake than I thought.

What do you all think? Does a service like PhotoMovie interest you readers out there? If you used it did you have the same reaction we did, or were any of you disappointed? Do you think 50 clams is justifiable for a customized vacation video? Or is it just another way of separating you from your money, even after you’ve arrived home?