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If you stay in a Walt Disney World resort, you won’t have to do anything for yourself. Well, that isn’t exactly true, but Disney prides itself on offering special luxuries and letting you just sit back and relax for your vacations. They’re constantly adding new amenities to their resorts, and the latest is certainly unique.
Every night from 6 p.m.-10 p.m. channel 38 on the televisions in Disney World resort hotels play a read-along clip from the new children’s book “Duffy the Disney Bear: Mickey’s New Friend.” That’s right: Disney World resorts are now offering to read your children their bedtime story.
I doubt very much that the video, of which there’s a clip on the official Disney Parks blog, actually lasts four hours. It’s probably five-to-ten-minutes long, either reading the whole story or just a part of it. The read-along reminds me of the classic Walt Disney Sing-Along video tapes I had as a child.
The screen shows the still images from the book’s illustrations, and the text to go along with the pictures appears at the bottom of the screen. As the narrator speaks each word it’s highlighted (though how cool would it have been if they used a bouncing Mickey-head ball instead?).
Duffy the Disney Bear is a recent Disney World addition. I see posts about him a lot on the official Parks blog, but it’s always in relation to merchandise; buy this Duffy Bear in a new costume here, find a new set of pins with Duffy’s image on them there.
But now Disney’s found my other weakness: books. I might not be racing out to buy this new Duffy book (even if I had children I don’t know that it would be high on my priority list), but writing a new story featuring the bear and broadcasting a read-along to each hotel room is enough for a blog post.
“Duffy the Disney Bear: Mickey’s New Friend” tells of Duffy’s origin story. Mickey has a job sailing around the world, and he often gets lonely spending so much time away from his family. Minnie, who runs a craft shop alongside the harbor, wants to do something nice for Mickey. She makes him Duffy, pouring all of her love into the task. Then she sends the stuffed bear to Mickey.
When Mickey receives Duffy, he feels all of the love Minnie put into him. He and Duffy become instant friends. They send pictures back to Minnie of Duffy posing with all of the other friends Mickey makes as they travel around the world.
It’s a sweet story, and it’s a neat idea Disney World has to play it over their televisions in the resorts. But I can’t help but wonder: isn’t one of the main purposes behind a bedtime story to be that special bonding time between parent and child? Both of my parents read to me before bed throughout my childhood, and those are really special memories of mine. Now Disney World is offering to let a television take over the job instead.
Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic. Parents could read other stories to their kids in addition to the television’s Duffy one. Just put it down as another thing on the list of the many amenities at Disney resorts.
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*(This image by Robynlou8 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
