Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's USA Debut!

He made his Disney Parks debut back in April at Tokyo DisneySea, and I ended my post with the request for him to arrive at the States.

Now, the Disney Park’s Blog has announced that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit will be making his USA debut at Disneyland California Adventure starting September 14!

He is so pumped!
Image from Disney Digital Files.

Oswald’s appearance has long been desired by Disney fans, especially in Disneyland, as he has his own "gas station" there already!

Image from WDWMagic forums.

The video below shows the energetic and excited Oswald meeting guests in Tokyo.



Who’s excited to start meeting him in September?

ttfn!

***UPDATE***

Inside the Magic has reported that Oswald has already made his debut: however, it was at a special event only for Disneyland's annual passholders.

The event, called "Fall Back to Fun," required registration in advance to attend (and again, only for annual passholders). The event featured rare characters mingling with guests.

And Oswald appeared!

Image and video from Inside the Magic.

He'll be appearing for regular meet-and-greets starting September 14.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Arrives at Tokyo DisneySea!

So at first I thought this was an April Fools day prank, based on when it was posted, but apparently it's actually true!

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit has finally come to Disney Parks -- specifically (for now?) Tokyo DisneySea!

Both images from Disney Parks Blog

He has previously shown up in Tokyo, Florida and California but never has a costume character, only on parade floats or posters.

For those of you who are unsure who Oswald is, here's a snippet from his Wikipedia article:

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (also known as Oswald the Rabbit or Oswald Rabbit) is an anthropomorphic rabbit and animated cartoon character created by Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney for funny animal films distributed by Universal Pictures in the 1920s and 1930s. Walt Disney was eventually separated from the project and went on to create Mickey Mouse. Charles Mintz, and later Walter Lantz, took over production, creating new Oswald cartoons until 1943.

In 2003 Buena Vista Games pitched a concept for an Oswald-themed video game to Disney President and COO Bob Iger, who then became committed to bringing Oswald back to Disney. In 2006, nearly 80 years after Disney left Universal, The Walt Disney Company managed to acquire the intellectual property of Oswald and the catalog of Disney-produced Oswald films (with NBC/Universal effectively trading Oswald for the services of Al Michaels as play by play announcer on NBCSunday Night Football).

Ever since I started playing Epic Mickey, I have fallen in love with Oswald and his history.  I've waited years for him to come permanently to the Parks, and I believe this means he has!

Now I just need to go to Tokyo DisneySea and meet him!

Or, Disney, hurry up and bring him to the States!

ttfn!

Epic Mickey 2 Trailer!

Any of you heard of Epic Mickey?  It's a Disney video game for Wii where Mickey is pulled (literally) into a world of forgotten characters (a world that he *SPOILER* ruined) to fix what he (*SPOILER*) messed up (didn't I just say that?).

Well the video game was/is spectacular.  My Disney Family owns it (because I saw it was on sale and organized the saving-up for it).

Sorry, I just like to take credit where it's owed.

The game is actually lots of fun and keeps you on your toes trying to overcome the obstacles Mickey faces.  My family and I haven't finished it quite yet, but we're loving it so far!

The game has done so well that Disney has developed a sequel, and the trailer just got released!

This time, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit has paired up with Mickey ("The Power of Two" part) where before in the first game he started out as a jealous enemy.

The sequel's cover.
Looks exciting!
Photo from The Disney Diner (where I found the trailer).

I was disappointed (but not surprised) that the sequel's trailer avoids any dialogue other than the narrator's.  Why am I not surprised but disappointed?

In the original game, the characters only spoke in grunts and other sounds while their "lines" were shown on the screen.  However, Disney revealed that in this game, the characters will be speaking full dialogue.  So I wasn't expecting them to give us a preview of that, but it would have been kind of fun.

Oh well.

A good thing to note about the full dialogue is that this means Oswald's voice will be heard...for the first time!

I couldn't remember the source where I first heard about this, but on Wikipedia's article on Oswald, it states that "will feature full voiced cut scenes introducing Frank Welker as Oswald's first voice actor."

It's funny how my brother keeps mentioning that "they'll ruin Oswald's voice."  How can one ruin a character's voice when it hasn't even been done before?  This will be Oswald's debut voice.

Interestingly enough, the Disney Wiki mentions that Welker did Oswald's sound effects in the first game, so it's not like they're bringing in a whole new voice actor.

Pre-ordering information can be found here.