New Walt Disney World Special

Disney has just released a special for early fall. The special is for stays between Sept 3-8, 2018. Here is the lowdown.

For example, starting at $149 per person, per night, a family of four—2 adults, 1 junior (ages 10 to 17) and 1 child (ages 3 to 9)—can stay in a standard room at Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort and delight in the enchantment of this offer for a total package price of $2,980.*

Here's a peek at what their incredible itinerary includes:

Tuesday, September 4, 2018: an exclusive "Welcome to Fall" dinner at Epcot inspired by the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival
Wednesday, September 5, 2018: a nighttime Kilimanjaro Safaris tour followed by an exclusive showing of Rivers of Light at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park after park closing
Thursday, September 6, 2018: two hours of exclusive evening access to Toy Story Land at Disney's Hollywood Studios
Friday, September 7, 2018: tickets to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Magic Kingdom park.

Email me brian.herndon@mousemadesimple.com and I can help you book a magical vacation.

Disney Box Office Update Jun 15-17 (An Incredible Weekend)

Good afternoon Disney friends,

To all the dads out there, Happy Fathers' Day. I hope you have had (and will continue to have) a wonderful day.

Disney definitely recovered this weekend from the disappointment of Solo: A Star Wars Story with an incredible opening for Incredibles 2. The film is looking at an opening of around $180 mil (estimates going into the weekend were between $120 and $140 mil.) This is the highest opening weekend for an animated film which broke the previous record of $135 mil for Finding Dory, which opened 2 years ago this weekend. To put the opening into perspective, the first Incredibles film only grossed over $261 mil during its entire run when it opened in 2004. This film has broken many records for animated films and opening weekends. Here is the list (the numbers in parenthesis compares the film to all pictures.)

Highest opening weekend-$180 mil (8th)

Highest opening previews-$18.5 mil

Highest opening day-$71.5 mil (14th)

Highest Saturday-$58.8 mil (10th)

Highest Sunday-$49.6 mil (8th)

The good run for Disney did not end here because the House of Mouse had 2 other films in the top 10. Solo ($9 mil) may not be having the best run for a Star Wars film, but it did cross $190 mil and will probably make it to $200 mil. Also, Avengers: Infinity War ($5.3 mil) crossed the $660 mil mark and now has $670 mil easily in sight. Infinity War also crossed the $2 bil worldwide mark earlier this week (only the 4th film to do so.) With this weekend's receipts, the film also passed Titanic for number 4 on the all time domestic ranking. Lastly, Black Panther is within $400k of hitting $700 mil. 

In terms of looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how the Incredible family is able to stand up to a bunch of dinosaurs next weekend. Then it will be a little bit slow until Ant-Man and The Wasp opens following the July 4th holiday.

I hope you have a magical week.

Weekend Box Office Roundup for Jan 8-10, 2018

Good afternoon Disney friends,

The second weekend of the month is about in the books and Disney still has 2 films in the top 5. 

Even though it is underwhelming at the box office, Solo: A Star Wars Story was still able to maintain its place at number 2 for the weekend. With an estimated take of $15 mil, the film has crossed the $175 mil mark (actually $176 mil.) It currently is the fifth highest grossing film for the domestic market this year. It has also moved up to number 12 for the global market (current gross of $312 mil and still has Japan to go.)

Avengers: Infinity War was number 5 and brought in over $6.8 mil which helped it cross the $650 mil mark (currently $654.7 mil.) The film also stands at $1.998 bil for the worldwide market. By Tuesday (probably sometime on Monday,) the film will become just the 4th film to cross the $2 bil mark. It also got an extra month in China (normally films only get about 1 month in China, but sometimes they will allow films an extra month.)

Black Panther is still inching its way to $700 mil with the addition of $137k bringing it to $699,388,067 in 17 weeks of release.

Next weekend sees the release of the long awaited Incredibles 2, which is looking to be Disney/Pixar's next hit. There are 2 numbers that will be interesting to keep up with (I am being careful with predictions after Solo's predictions.) First, Finding Dory has the highest grossing opening weekend ($135 mil) for the domestic market for an animated film. Secondly, Frozen, which is the highest grossing animated film for the global market, brought in $1.276 bil during its release. 

I hope you have a magical week.

Weekend Box Office Round Up for Jun 1-3 (a look at why Solo is so low)

Good afternoon Disney friends,Dismiss 

The weekend after Memorial Day lived up to its normal weekend numbers and was off quite a bit from last weekend. Part of that is probably due to the fact that so many high school graduations are occurring. Even with the low weekend, Disney still held on to spots 1 and 4 with Solo: A Star Wars Story and Avengers: Infinity War respectively. Both films are expected to bring in double digit receipts from the weekend box office.

First to Solo. Estimates are for the film to bring in about $29 mil this weekend from the domestic markets. This film is doing poorly for one of the biggest franchises in movie history. There are probably 3 major reasons why this film is coming in so low (see what I did there.) 1. It was just to soon after Star Wars: The Last Jedi. When the original trilogy came out, films were released every 3 years (1977, 1980, and 1983.) That allowed for a build up of anticipation which just did not happen with this film since it has only 5 months since the last film in the franchise. 2. Deadpool 2 and Avengers are cutting into the market share. This weekend those 2 films combined ($33.6 mil) grossed more the Solo. Some of that money could possibly have gone to the Star Wars film. 3. Bad publicity about the film may have scared off some casual viewers. After the original filming had finished, there were concerns about the direction of the film which led to the firing of the original director and bringing in Opie (Ron Howard) to try to save the film. He did a fairly good job based upon the fact that the film is getting good reviews from critics and movie goers, but it just was not enough.

Next, Avengers is slowly moving in on the $2 bil worldwide mark. The film currently stands at $1,964,869,932. This weekend the film was able to pull in over $10 mil stateside for running domestic total of just shy of $643 mil. Even with schools getting out for the summer, with movies like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Ant-Man and the Wasp hitting markets over the next month, it will be hard for Avengers to make to $700 mil (of course I could be horribly wrong on that prediction.)

Lastly, Black Panther crossed the $699 mil mark and has less than $900k to go to make it to the $700 mil mark. Again, this will depend on how well it can hold facing stiff competition to come.

I hope your upcoming week is magical.

Box Office Update for May 25-27(28) (Solo is weak) and a little bit of weather

Good afternoon Disney friends,

I hope you are having a great Memorial Day weekend. Walt Disney Pictures will have 2 of the top 3 films of the weekend: Solo: A Star Wars Story and Avengers: Infinity War. (If the sale of Fox to Disney had already occurred then Deadpool 2 would have given Disney the top 3 films.) 

Unless things turn around, Solo is coming in way under the projections heading into the weekend. The film is looking at around $83 mil for the 3 day weekend and about $101 mil for the 4 day holiday. That is under the the projections of somewhere between $130 mil and $170 mil. There are going to be a lot of speculation as to why this happened, but in the end, the people still thought the film was good, but we will have to see how it plays over the next few weeks to see if Disney just had a bad weekend or was this film just not what people wanted.

Avengers had a pretty good weekend with an estimated $16.5 mil, which was down 44% from last weekend. If this holds true, the film will probably cross the $625 mil mark tomorrow. It has also grossed a total of over $1.9 bil worldwide. 

Black Panther is still inching to the $700 mil marks and is about $1.5 mil short.

These films have helped Disney cross the $4 bil mark for the year at the worldwide box office. The next two weekends have smaller opening films in all categories. So until Incredibles 2 opens on Jun 15 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom enters theaters on Jun 22, Disney films might be able to have some pretty strong holds if they are going to leg it out to higher levels.

On a weather note, Subtropical Storm Alberto is bringing copious amounts of rain to the southeast. Walt Disney World is getting bands of rain. Vero Beach resort (on the east coast of Florida) will be getting the same. Cruises sailing out of Port Canaveral will also have to deal with rain off and on. Disney's Hilton Head resort will get quite a bit of rain today and tomorrow. 

I hope you have a great 1st unofficial week of summer.

Good afternoon Disney friends,

Well it is the last weekend before the unofficial start of summer vacation series and Deadpool 2 knocked Avengers: Infinity War out of first place. Infinity War will end the weekend just shy $600 million for its domestic take. The film will cross the $600 mil mark either tomorrow or Tuesday assuming weekend estimates are correct. The film was still the second highest grossing film ($28.6 mil) of the weekend by almost double of the third place film. Deadpool will probably come under the Disney banner in about a year if the purchase of Fox films from 20th Century Fox goes through. The film has grossed a total of $1.2 bil from the international market for a worldwide total of over $1.8 bil. It is still going to be interesting to see if the film can make it to the $2 billion mark which would make it only the fourth film to do so. 

Next weekend sees more competition when Solo: A Star Wars Story enters the marketplace. Right now it is looking like solo is going to open up to a total of $160-$170 mil for the 4-day weekend based on current pre ticket sales and industry projections. Disney is still looking to have a great summer based on the fact that it still has two more blockbusters, Incredibles 2 and Ant-Man and the Wasp, that are building expectations. Black Panther is still moving slowly to the $700 mil domestic mark coming in just $2.2 mil shy of the mark.

Thank you for sharing your time with me and I look forward to speaking to you next week with numbers for Solo and see if Avengers: Infinity War still being in the top five.  hopefully by then Black Panther will cross the $700 bil mark.

Box Office Round Up (May 11-13)--The Avengers Make it to China

Good afternoon Disney friends,

First off, Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms. I hope you have had a wonderful day. 

Another weekend at the movies is about in the books and Disney is still placing 2 films in the top 10. Avengers: Infinity War is still leading the box office with an estimated $61.8 mil, which is the 4th highest third weekend of all time. The film will also be the second fastest film to $500 million (only behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens.)  The film's current domestic box office take is  $547.8 mil, which places it at number 8 on the all time domestic list. Next weekend will see it knocked off of its perch when Deadpool 2 opens. Then the following weekend will see more competition when Solo: A Star Wars Story opens. It will be interesting to see how deep these 2 films cut into Avengers' box office take. 

The big news for Infinity War comes from China. The film opened there this weekend with a total take of $200 mil. This is the 1st or 2nd largest opening in that market (depending if you use local currency (2nd) or converted to US$ (1st) and has pushed the international gross to in excess of $1 bil and the global numbers to $1.6 bil. The film now stands at number 5 for the worldwide market and will bypass Jurassic World later this week. 

There are now 2 questions for this film. First, how much further will it go domestically considering the competition coming up? Secondly, will it be able to get to $2 bil worldwide?

The House of Mouse's other top 10 film was Black Panther, which was number 9.  The film now stands about $3.8 mil short of $700 mil.

Thank you for spending your time allowing me to share my enjoyment of Disney movies with you. i hope you have a magical week and if you need any help booking a magical vacation, please let me know how I can help you book your next vacation.  Just email me at brian.herndon@mousemadesimple.com.