Sweet Nothings

Mirror, mirror on the wall/ Who needs media training most of all? So, it looks like Disney's Snow White remake will be the anticipated box office disaster. I'm going to stay neutral on the whole wokeness debate, except 'may they never know peace' is a totally cringe thing to say, whatever side you're on. More interesting to me, as a shameless Disney fan, is their manic obsession with remaking all their old IP in the first place. By choice, I've only seen one of these rehashes. Last year's Little Mermaid added half an hour to the original's running time and subtracted at least two-thirds of the fun. The songs don't land like they should, the visuals are murky and muted and the whole thing exists in that uncanny-ish valley of modern photorealistic animation that delivers on a technical level yet leaves you emotionally cold. I remember exactly one of the new songs, which was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and doesn't bear any stylistic resemblance ...

Any old mug can come to Orlando and do the theme parks. Staying in the Disney bubble for eight nights without setting foot in any of 'em? Now that's the hipster's choice.  For the first time, we tried  renting DVC points . DVC is Disney's fiendishly complicated timeshare scheme. Though keen not to refer to it as such, the small print will be like ' Fine, this is a timeshare scheme but keep it quiet, yeah? ' The idea is, DVC owners can rent out some or all of their annual points if they're not going to use them, giving buyers access to some deluxe resort rooms for reduced fees. (There are fewer refund protections, but let's not be Debbie Downers.) DVC rooms are billed as 'villas' - you can shell out for larger units with extra beds, but the cheap ones are just standard hotel rooms with a tiny kitchenette. Still, it gave us the chance to return to one of our favourite resorts -  Animal Kingdom Lodge . This time we were in the DVC-only Kidani Villa...