Disney has started an online community, World of Cars Online, for fans of the hit 2006 Disney-Pixar animated movie “Cars,” reported the Los Angeles Times.
The reason for launching the site seems obvious. But in case you’re out of the loop:
The Burbank entertainment giant plans to begin revving its marketing engine for the virtual world this month, with promotions appearing on Disney Channel and elsewhere. World of Cars is Disney’s fifth online community — one that’s designed to keep children interacting with Lightning McQueen, Mater and other characters from the movie until “Cars 2” is released in 2011.
Also, Disney is scheduled to debut its Cars Land complex at its resort in Anaheim, Calif., in 2012.
The article includes an interview with Rachel DiPaola, who is overseeing the World of Cars site and has developed dozens of games.
Above is a screen shot of the main page. The site contains a lot of cool stuff, including games, image downloads of “Cars” characters, a lot of interactive stuff, and site management tools for parents. You could spend an hour or two just exploring the site.
(Hat tip: Kevin Hansel)
what a movie it is! Great work by Disney- Pixer.
It was an honor to have Kathy Mangum and other Imagineers pay us a visit Tuesday. They brought us some great gifts (gifts we will always treasure) and also a DVD of the Blue Sky Cellar video (can be viewed on youtube) which tells about the projects and construction going on at Disney`s California Adventure Park. We all had a wonderful time together. Their plans included going to the Clinton Museum the next day.
When I read things like this I’m reminded of the bit from the end of of Casino, where they compare Vegas to something like Disneyland and talk about how it had changed. I get that feeling here, that soon enough 66 is going to be real, long and tame family attraction. With very few if any unscripted events.
The story about turning old businesses in New Mexico into mini travel/tourist stops had the same effect. On my last drive through Oklahoma, and after passing duplicate Route 66 museums, not to mention all of those other ‘official stops’ like so many Will Rogers places I was starting to feel like I was on a weird version of Skyline Drive here in Virginia.
I guess the current version of Route 66 is all about commerce, funding, grants and such in order to sell a road to tourists. I don’t think that’s should be the fate of this great road. Yet, in the past 10 years that’s the direction it’s been heading.
Interesting thoughts, but ones that I don’t agree with totally.
You see, Route 66 needs to find a balance to appeal to a broader range of people and not just a small and dwindling number of purists. If Route 66 tailors itself to a cult and subsequently isn’t viable, then it will disappear all that much faster. Frankly, I’m not willing to take a purist route, which would virtually be a scorched-earth policy.
The death of Bob Waldmire served to remind us that we have to continually find new generations to be caretakers of the Mother Road. Museums, movies, the Internet are methods to allure them (the latter of which has led to the website that you’re reading). If not, we soon enough will be looking wistfully at relatively young Route 66 stalwarts such as Alan Affeldt, Aubrey McClendon and Dawn Welch if we can’t find others to carry the torch.
My daughter (11) already jumped out there and joined the “World of Cars Online” site. 🙂
She and her brother (13), living here in Michigan, would likely have no knowledge of the Route or why it was important. Since this movie, we have made a deliberate effort to slow down and take a short stretch of the Route on a family trip….something we’ll do again soon. We’ve stopped at several business along the way. This year we even managed to stretch out and take a few miles of the old Lincoln Highway as well.
If it were not for modern media like this blog, I would not know a Route 66 art show was going on only a few miles from my home, on the famous Woodward Avenue (during the week of the Dream Cruise no less)!
So as far as internet tools like these that promote awareness, knowledge and appreciation of Route 66, I’m all for it.