Join Eric as he Counts down the connections between Times Square in New York City and the Walt Disney Company Like Dick Clark’s Rocking New Year's Eve!. From The Company’s involvement in the Times Square revitalization project to Iconic moments from Disney Films, like Captain America and Enchanted, a touch of Disney magic lives throughout Times Square for tourists visiting New York City. Discover how you can discover the Disney Magic hidden away in this Tourist Destination!.
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00:59 --> 27:47 Hey, this is Synergy Loves Company, where we explore how Disney connects to everything. I'm Eric, and I want to thank you. Thank you so much for listening and keeping me company on these episodes where it's just me talking to you about Disney. It's summer, and I'm in a summery kind of warm weather mood. I've been doing a lot of summer activities. I actually one kind of new summer activity that I kind of started dabbling in is learning more about Tiki. Now, I say it's a summer activity, but for some people, it's an all year round kind of thing like that. And I talked to Kevin Quigley from the 30 28 podcast. He's the author of New England Tiki. That's the last episode we just did. So go take a look at that and learn more about what I talked to him about with Tiki. But I've got more summer activities going on in my life right now. And one of those things that I like to do in the summer is go on road trips with my family. We love to just get in the car, go on vacation, drive places. I know it's fun to go on a plane and that kind of stuff, but there's something just special about taking a trip in the car, stopping at places along the way, and we love to do that. Last year, we took a long road trip. We went to Walt Disney World. That seems pretty on brand for what I'm doing here. But this year, we kind of took some other road trips. We took one big epic road trip from here in the Midwest out to the East Coast. And that's part of what I want to talk about today. So one of our stops on our big epic road trip was to go to New York City. Actually, no one in my family had been to New York City before. Not me, not my wife. Of course. The kids haven't if we haven't gone. So we wanted to kind of get a little taste of New York City and see what it was all about. When we arrived in New York City, one of the first things that we wanted to do was experience Times Square. Times Square is such an iconic experience of New York. It's that big touristy thing that you have to do. It's so many lights, so many people all around. All those electronic billboard, signs, light up screens, that everything going on there. All the stores, all the shopping, all the restaurants. So much to do. You see it in TV, you see it in movies and on TV and you want to be part of it. So we had to go there as part of our trip to New York. So when we got to New York, it was actually one of the first things we did, was found our way over to Times Square. And I was kind of impressed at how much Disney was in Times Square, how many Disney things I could see all around me when I was in Times Square. So I wanted to go into a little bit about taking a look at that connection between Disney and Times Square in New York. So no, this isn't going to really be a trip report about me going to New York City and exploring Times Square, but it is going to be a little bit of a history and some of the connections between Disney and Times Square. Let's get into the history of Times Square first. So Times Square got its start because in the early 19 hundreds, there was a clearing between the buildings at Broadway 7th Avenue and 42nd street. And it seemed like a great place for public transportation to converge. Public transportation, of course, meant that there would be a lot of foot traffic and then a lot of people. So different businesses and The New York Times decided to take advantage of this. And the New York Times actually built their building in this space. And that's really where the name comes from, Times Square. Now, the New York Times isn't in Times Square anymore. But that's where that name originates from. There were all sorts of theaters that popped up around the area on Broadway and 42nd street. Advertisers took advantage of all the people here and of the electricity that was coming to the city at this point. And they lit up Times Square to attract all the passers by and all the foot traffic in this area. Because of the public transportation from inside and outside of the city, times Square became kind of a welcoming hub for visitors coming to New York City. This was also the time when they started doing the big midnight ball drop celebration for New Year's Eve in Times Square, the early 19 hundreds. And it's been taking place in that location pretty much ever since. During the Great Depression, though, and for about 40 years after, Times Square and sections of 42nd street had been on a decline with less reputable forms of entertainment kind of taking over the space. I'm going to leave it at that for right now. In the 1980s, though, New York City wanted to again return Times Square to the bright, shining jewel and kind of that tourist welcoming center for the city that it had been when it originally started. Disney actually had a lot to do with this. They had some big moves that helped this along. There is a great documentary if you want to take a look at the transformation of 42nd street and Times Square that goes into detail on all of this transformation and how it came to be, I'll put a link in the episode description. It's called Against All ODS. The Transformation of 42nd street. It's a short one. Take a look at that if you want more on the transformation of 42nd street and Times Square. So here's what I want to do. I want to start with this list of the actual Times Square, the one that I visited, so many other tourists visit in New York, and how it connects to Disney. One thing I mentioned already was the New Year's Eve celebration that happens there. So every year, people come to see that ball drop from the top of one Times Square, what had been the Times Building at one point, and they count down the New Year's celebration. But many of us don't actually go to Times Square to see that. But it's super iconic and something that everyone knows because of Dick Clark's Rock in New Year's Eve with Ryan Seacrest now. So Dick Clark's Rock in New Year's Eve has been airing on ABC since 1974. That's actually the same year that Bob Iger started at ABC. So it goes back to ABC. As long as Bob Iger has been at ABC, the basic format of that show is a host, Ryan Seacrest now. We'll kind of introduce different musical acts and different festivities from Times Square. And then at midnight, the countdown starts, the ball drops, and Times Square lights up in celebration. Everyone cheers. And then millions of people at home probably turn off their TVs and go to bed. Well, New Year's Eve revelers continue to party into the night in Times Square. One thing that's pretty cool about this being on ABC, of course, we'll get to the Disney connection is that this is broadcast through ABC, which is Disney's TV network. And so they've been able to kind of use this as a synergistic opportunity. In fact, last year on New Year's Eve, disney used the Rock and New Year's Eve celebration on TV to kick off its 100 Years of Wonder celebration at the beginning of the year. So it was like 2023 is starting. This is our 100 year celebration. We're going to kick it off right at midnight, really before midnight, and show everyone what's coming up for the next year. So they were able to push that into with the Times Square celebration, push the Disney celebration into our homes through our TV. That brings us to the second thing on my list. One of the reasons that ABC and Disney can broadcast that New Year's celebration is because right there in Times Square is the Good Morning America Times Square studio. In this studio, ABC has a lot easier of a time to show things like the New Year's Eve celebration and broadcast Good Morning America to thousands of people walking through Times Square each day and to millions of people at home, we could see Times Square through that window, through that studio all the time. ABC didn't always have its studio right there in Times Square. It moved the studio to Times Square in 1999, which allowed them to be on the ground floor and show what was happening on the street behind them. This is something that they kind of got from the Today show over on NBC, which had been leading them in the morning news. They kind of did something similar in Rockefeller Center and then Good Morning America kind of took Times Square as their main place to showcase all those people walking by to be on the show. One cool thing about this studio, though, that really stuck out to me is that it was designed by Imagineering. Imagineering came together with Michael Eisner, the CEO at the time, and some ABC execs like Roger Goodman and Bob Iger, and they came together to design this studio that would be both approachable and innovative for people to enjoy in Times Square. It would fit into Times Square, but also bring the people in Times Square into kind of the ABC Good Morning America news making process. The building itself has a massive wave of a marquee made from like screens and news tickers, and it's really something to see. It fits in with Times Square in that there's a lot of screens everywhere, but these ones have kind of a different fun, wavy texture to them that's a little different than some of the other stuff you see. It's very layered too. In a New York Times article from when the studio opened, Imagineer, Eddie Soto described a building as it's like a mirror, a looking glass. The metaphor is media as architecture, and you can see that in how the building looks like. It's made up of those tickers and screens that are constantly giving us information from ABC News and ESPN, and also advertisements for things that are happening in the world of Disney, ESPN, ABC and other Disney media brands. Most of the national news shows like Good Morning America, Nightline and Primetime are actually broadcast from this studio. Some space there is also used for ESPN coverage and shows like the halftime reports during basketball games and other things like that. The GMA studio is one of those things that's really special and kind of sticks out as a Disney connection in Times Square. But it wasn't necessarily the one that I was the most interested in going to. That's just down the street, and that's the Disney Store. Of course, a big part of Times Square is all about the shopping, the restaurants, the shops, the stores, everything around there. And the Disney store is there, right in Times Square. And you know what the most exciting part is? That it is still there. I think it might be the only Disney store left. I really miss the ones in Chicago. Being someone from the Chicago area, I really loved having those Downtown Disney Stores, not just the ones in the mall, but we kind of had those flagship ones in the city, and it was nice. We had two pretty big ones. And I can remember doing things at that Disney Store, like in 2018 for Mickey's 90th birthday. We were some of the first customers in. We didn't get to open the store. That was always kind of a fun privilege that you could do with the Disney Stores, of course, be the first to open the store. But we were just behind there and we got there early. We got our special Mickey buttons, and I kind of miss having those big flagship ones in Chicago. So it was really nice to visit the New York City Times Square Disney Store and kind of feel like I was back in those spaces. It had been a while since I'd been in a Disney Store. The one that is there in Times Square opened in 2010, and it actually replaced a big flagship world of Disney Store on Fifth Avenue and 55th street. So it kind of moved over to Times Square from its previous location. This is where I'll get kind of like a trip report. I loved being there and going to the Disney Store in Times Square. We did a ton of shopping. The thing that I really got to do was we've been ordering a lot on Shop Disney because you can't go to the Disney Store anymore. But Shop Disney sometimes runs out of the sizes or the item that you were looking for. And it was kind of cool that when we went to the Disney Store in Times Square, they had actually some items that I had been looking for, some shirts that they couldn't get in my size anymore on Shop Disney, but they had them there in store, so I was able to pick up some of those items. The other really cool thing that the Disney Store in Times Square offered is they had a lot of New York City branded merch, so they had different T shirts for the Times Square Disney Store. My daughter got a Statue of Liberty themed Minnie Mouse plush. So they had some things. I really kind of wish they would have had more New York City branded Disney stuff, but they did have a pretty decent section of some of those. So I really did love shopping the Disney Store in Times Square. Shopping at a Disney Store is really rare these days. So that was really a cool experience to kind of relive. It's weird to say that shopping at a Disney store is an experience that I could relive, but that's what happened in Times Square. Now, next on my list of Disney connections to Times Square is something a little off. There were tons of performers, street performers, all trying to get your attention, trying to get your money trying to give you a photograph all throughout Times Square. There are these guys that had these cameras that would do a 360 shot of you in Times Square while you danced around or something. There are all sorts of things people sell so many different vendors and things that you could participate in in Times Square. But one of the things that kind of shocked me is the fake knockoff, Mickeys and Minis. There were tons of these performers that had different movie characters. We saw an Optimus Prime, but by far they were the most Mickey and Mini knockoff performers. And the worst part about it is they had their heads of their costumes would be up above their foreheads like a hat until you were willing to pay to get your picture with fake Minnie or fake Mickey. And they would pop them down over their faces to take the picture. And then, of course, charge you way more than you should be charged to take a picture with what was basically the wish.com version of Minnie and Mickey. We tried not to engage the fake Minnie and Mickeys. We told the kids, don't make eye contact with the fake Mickeys because we didn't want to have to engage with that. But they were tons of them. They were probably the most popular character of the knockoff characters in Times Square. Finally, I got one last thing on this first list of the most Disney things to do in Times Square, and that was the New Amsterdam Theater. That one's a little bit off of the main part of Times Square, down 42nd street. But the New Amsterdam Theater is another piece of Disney property in the Times Square area. The New Amsterdam Theater has a story kind of like Times Square itself. It started off strong and opened up in 1903, and it was a beautiful, grandly built theater, and it hosted the famous Zigfield Follies. But then when the Great Depression hit, just like with Times Square itself, it began to decline. And by the 1980s, when New York City wanted to revitalize the area, this was one of those things that was definitely in disrepair and needed to be revitalized with 42nd street and Times Square. So in the York City started the 42nd street development project. And in 1994, the 42nd Street Development Project in Disney worked out a plan that would see Disney renovate and use the New Amsterdam Theater. During the Disney decade. Disney started moving into that realm of making Broadway musicals. In 1989, The Little Mermaid was seen as a musical. It was written as a musical by Howard Ashman and Alan Manken. And then that continued on and led to Beauty and the Beast also being written as a musical for animation. And then the Beauty and the Beast film would be adapted into a musical for Broadway. So one thing Disney learned about musicals is that it's a lot less expensive if you're in control of the theater where your musical is going to be playing. So they kind of wanted to buy their own theater, and that's how they got involved with the 42nd street development project. 42nd street wanted their theaters renovated so that they would be more usable, more friendly for shows, and for families and people to come and see productions. And Disney wanted their own home for their musicals. In this deal with the 42nd street development project, disney signed a 99 year lease and promised the 42nd street development project that they would renovate it. The renovation, though, was tough. I'm not going to lie. The New Amsterdam was in pretty bad shape. On the New Amsterdam's website, it describes some of the renovations that had to be done. And let me tell you about that. So they said that the boxes, kind of those fancy box seats up in the balcony on either side of the stage up there had to be completely torn out and rebuilt. The ceiling over time had collapsed due to years of rain and snow and had deposited over 2ft of water in the basement. They found mushrooms inside the theater that were the size of dinner plates all throughout. And the once spectacular art all over the theater was all just pretty much destroyed. It took a team of about 400 engineers and plasters painters and technicians to restore theater back to its original or kind of its new glory. So after years of renovating the New Amsterdam Theater, it finally opened in 1997 with The Lion King. The Lion King would become the most successful Disney Broadway musical of all time so far. So it would be kind of a great experience for Disney to own this theater, even though it was tough to renovate it. It became a really successful theater with their show, The Lion King. Then in 2014, Aladdin the Musical took over the space, and it remains there today. So if you wanted to visit the New Amsterdam, you could go see Aladdin there right now. The New Amsterdam theater was a very important part in Disney on Broadway and a very important part of Michael Eisner CEO Michael Eisner's contributions to Disney and kind of diversifying its entertainment assets. And it's still a jewel in the New York Disney crown. So there's a lot of Disney and Times Square, just those things that I mentioned there, not to mention things that have come and gone. For instance, Times Square once had its own ESPN Zone restaurant, and that's, of course, gone. All of those have closed. I think the last one left was in Walt Disney World until just a while ago when it closed at the Boardwalk. So I decided that after visiting Times Square, really, my family and I, all of us, we decided that Times Square, though, it's really cool. It's not really for us. It's not the place that we were the most comfortable in New York. We much more enjoyed walking up and down Fifth Avenue and shopping there. Compared to the crowds in Times Square, it was almost too much stimulation all around. It was a sensory overload to be in Times Square shopping. Walking up and down Fifth Avenue was a lot more on speed with shopping. Chicago's, Magnificent Mile, Michigan Avenue, so that it felt a little bit more like being in the city at home for us. But that doesn't mean that I dislike Times Square. No, times Square is a great visual. It's also kind of a great metaphor in some ways for that kind of visitor center of New York, for all the tourists visiting all tourists like us. So I really loved seeing Times Square. And one of the places where I had seen Times Square before I even visited New York was in movies. And so I have a second list that I want to talk about, and that's, of course, my short list of Times Square in Disney movies. The first one I want to start out with was Oliver and Company from 1988. The opening credits uses Times Square to welcome us, the viewer, into the setting of New York City. It shows some other iconic locations around New York City. But one thing that happens is we see Times Square right when the big title card shows up, oliver and Company on the screen. And the song being played in the background of over those opening credits is Once Upon a Time in New York City, sung by Huey Lewis from Huey Lewis in the News. Now, I do love me some Huey Lewis and Huey Lewis in the News, but that's not why I wanted to talk about this song. This song in this opening sequence where we're introduced to the setting of New York City through Times Square, it was the first thing that Howard Ashman and Alan Manken had done for Disney. They wrote this song as kind of a way to pull together the soundtrack. Oliver and Company is not a true musical. It's got a lot of great music in it, but the music's a little disjointed coming from different artists from 80s pop music. But that's kind of what they wanted out of it. They wanted to kind of focus on making those connections with different pop artists of the time. But Ashman and Manken's song does a good job of kind of pulling that together. And then by having Huey Lewis sing it, it ties it back into those 80s pop artists making the music for the soundtrack. This is the song, though, that's going to lead them to be able to make Little Mermaid and then those Beauty and the Beast, all those other movies that are going to become the basis for Disney on Broadway. Which brings us right back to Times Square. So it's like they were the perfect ones to kind of bridge it all together. And that's what they did with Oliver and Company. The second use of Times Square in a Disney movie that I want to shout out is Enchanted from 2007. Times Square is the location where the portal to Andalasia is. So this is where Giselle first arrives in the real world. I wanted to say human world, but the people of Andalasia are human also. I guess they're storybook humans, but they're human. So this is where Giselle comes to the real world, which is very different from what she's used to in Andalasia. So Times Square is this like concentrated version of pretty much the American experience. We've got lots of different people. There's consumerism all around. There's lots of screens, all those things that we love in America, but it's super concentrated. And so when she comes into our world, this is what she experiences. And of course, it's totally different than what she's used to. But in a way, Times Square would be overstimulating for anyone to be kind of launched right into. So it does give that kind of jarring juxtaposition from where she arrived from. Similarly, I get my third movie. Captain America, the first avenger in 2011. Timesquare is used to show Steve Rogers the future that he's woken up in. It's very similar to Giselle's arrival in some ways. So because even though Times Square existed during his time, it's very different from what it was back in the 40s when he would have probably last seen it to what it is now. And so it marks a change in setting like it did with Giselle. But for Steve Rogers, the change in setting is more of the development over time and the future he's entered into. So being a New Yorker familiar with Times Square, this place is now, though, completely foreign to him due to all these technological changes over time. All the ads, all the different ways that the building, even the architecture, looks different than it would have when he first started. So this gives a very different picture of New York, even though it's his hometown that he's arriving back into after all these years. There you have it. Two short countdowns of my favorite Disney Times Square connections. I counted it down like New Year's Eve. But I want to know what are some of your favorite Disney Times Square connections? Maybe I missed something. Maybe there's something else that I didn't talk about that you're going to be like, oh, no, why didn't you talk about this? Let me know. You can reach out to me and let me know what your favorite ones are. I'm on Instagram and Threads now. Yeah, woohoo. Threads and both of those. You can find me at Synergy. Loves company. And I'm still on Twitter there, though. You can find me at eric Hsnergy. Thank you so much for spending this time to explore the connections of Disney and Times Square with me. And if you're enjoying Synergy Loves Company, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend who loves Disney just as much as you do. Just tell them to visit synergylovescompany.com. Sharing the show is the number one way you can support the show, and your support means the world to me. Thanks for exploring Disney's connections with me. And until next time, keep discovering the magic in everything.