New Minnie & Mickey Mouse Surprise Celebration in Magic Kingdom

In honor of Minnie and Mickey Mouse’s 90th anniversary, Walt Disney World is celebrating with new costumes for the iconic duo and Move It! Shake It! MousekeDance It! Street Party in Magic Kingdom. In this post, we’ll share photos and thoughts from the debut of Surprise Celebration.

Let’s start with the new costumes. In addition to these “fancy fashions” being sported by Mickey and Minnie at Walt Disney World, they’re also being introduced for the global celebration at Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland, Shanghai Disneyland, and Disney Cruise Line. Basically, just Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disneyland are doing their own things.

Mickey Mouse’s crisp white suit features a shower of colorful confetti with fashion icon Minnie Mouse modeling a puff-sleeve dress adorned with pompons and a buoyant bubble skirt. One of our friends cheekily called these outfits Minnie & Mickey’s Wonder Bread Wardrobe, and now I’ll never not associate the styles with that.

According to Senior Costume Designer Joe Kucharski, Minnie & Mickey Mouse’s new looks represent “the colorful exuberance of a party and birthday party decorations, complete with confetti, balloons, pompons, streamers and more…playful playful bursts of color and texture are set against crisp white, meant to evoke the nostalgic feeling of frosting, crisp linens and tissue paper.”

In addition to sporting their Frosting & Tissue Paper…or Wonder Bread (depending upon your perspective) attire in the new Move It! Shake It! MousekeDance It! Street Party, the couple is now meeting together at Town Square Theater. Prior to this, Minnie and Mickey Mouse did not meet together here–it was just Mickey, who met here by himself since he was previously a talking character.

Lines for this duo on opening day hovered around 60 minutes, but that’s likely far higher than the norm, as anything new is quite popular, and there are a lot of Disney character fans, bloggers, etc. who all make a point of meeting them on day one. However, we would expect a modest spike in the Town Square meet & greet for the foreseeable future.

Minnie Magnifique had been greeting guests at Pete’s Silly Sideshow, the Storybook Circus-themed area of Fantasyland. That’s arguably Walt Disney World’s most clever meet & greet, and with Minnie moving to Town Square Theater to join Mickey Mouse, Pluto will be taking her place in Pete’s Silly Sideshow.

We didn’t head back to Storybook Circus for photos, but per signage outside, Pluto is meeting as the “Wonder-Pup” and is sporting a top hat.

There are also a variety of new food and drink options around Magic Kingdom for Minnie and Mickey’s Surprise Celebration.

Above is a look at the Mickey sipper cup, available at Casey’s Corner. While taking this photo, I accidentally knocked the top of Mickey’s head off, in a scene straight out of Hannibal. Hopefully any onlooking children were not too traumatized by the whole ordeal.

As for Move It! Shake It! MousekeDance It! Street Party, this is described by Walt Disney World as a limited time street party that will pull out all of the stops to pay tribute to the true original Mickey Mouse and his beloved Minnie Mouse with a surprise celebration that includes this street party.

The excitement gets underway with a colorful musical procession parading up Main Street, U.S.A. led, for the first time, by energetic, live-singing hosts! As the singing hosts keep things hopping along, you’re invited to boogie to the new, original song “It’s a Good Time” and modern remixes of classic tunes.

Mickey and Minnie are on hand, along with 5 colorful present floats featuring popular Disney characters such as Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. There are also several more rare characters, including Clarabelle Cow, Horace Horsecollar, Clarice the Chipmunk, and others.

To be clear, the above is mostly official copy from Walt Disney World. I don’t share the same exuberance for this new street party, to put it mildly. I’ve routinely referred to the various incarnations of this as the “Move It! Shake It! Whatever It! Roaming Noise Festival” on the blog. Given that things haven’t changed too much with this version, I’m happy that this name still makes sense, allowing me to carry forward this great tradition.

Well…happy is probably the wrong word there. I was hoping for something much more thematically appropriate to Main Street, music more in keeping with the atmosphere in the area, and at a decibel level that cannot be heard from the Polynesian. The new incarnation didn’t deliver fully on any of those things, but it made steps in the right direction.

Rather than featuring totally out of place pop music, live singers perform modernized renditions of classic Mickey Mouse Club songs. The street party’s main track, titled “It’s a Good Time” by The DeeKompressors, was created just for the celebration.

The character choices (including a few throwback favorites) plus live singers are definite pluses, as is the decision to use Mickey Mouse Club music. It definitely feels like more of an effort was made with this version of the street party.

That’s about it as far as my positivity goes with this. With regard to the rest, you might want to discount my opinion. I’m a crotchety old man who isn’t particularly fond of most contemporary music, and my most charitable take on the new music is that it’s better than before, which is a very low bar.

Now, before the angry comments come in defending the roaming noise festival because your “kids love it!” I want to note that I don’t hate the very premise of such a street party.

These Magic Kingdom street parties seem popular with guests, and you could say they liven up Main Street with an interactive character offering that’s relatively low budget.

On a conceptual level, I think they’re a good thing to offer. Kids do love these street parties, and even though old fogies like me may not, I do recognize their appeal. It’s nice to finally have music that isn’t entirely terrible being blasted throughout the park, but the switch to Mickey Mouse Club remixes still feels a bit like a half-measure.

Then again, perhaps kids wouldn’t love it if the music were totally on theme. I’m not really sure, so I’m willing to give that part of the street party a pass at this point because it only runs 3 times per day and is relatively short in duration.

What bothers me is that the floats are still basically just oversized boxes without any actual theme or detail. This started as a low budget, temporary offering and has continued for a full decade long run…as a low budget, temporary offering. Walt Disney World touts the importance of attention to detail and thematic excellence while a bunch of boxes on wheels roam down Main Street.

It’s unclear when this version of the street party ends. It’s entirely possible that this incarnation celebrating Mickey & Minnie will stick around until Late 2019, before taking another holiday hiatus and popping up again in January 2020 so it can be marketed as something new again in the next off-season.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it run beyond that, until 2021. That will mark Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary, and many rumors point to a massive slate of new entertainment for that celebration.

These aren’t necessarily credible rumors (at least in my estimation), but they pass the smell test. Other Disney parks around the world have been embracing an entertainment-heavy approach for milestone anniversaries the last several years, so there’s certainly precedent.

As for Minnie and Mickey’s Surprise Celebration in Magic Kingdom, it’s fine. We don’t think it’s as big of a deal as Walt Disney World’s marketing is making it out to be, and it’s definitely not something around which you should plan a visit to the park. Walt Disney World is trying to hype up whatever they can to draw guests during the first half of the year as numbers are lagging ahead of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, but we have a hard time believing that this is enough to even remotely move the needle after the opening weekend surge of internet people and off-duty Cast Members subsides.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of Surprise Celebration in Magic Kingdom? What about Move It! Shake It! MousekeDance It! Street Party? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!

19 Responses to “New Minnie & Mickey Mouse Surprise Celebration in Magic Kingdom”
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