disney princessification

Yesterday I took the girls to see Disney on Ice, Princess Dreams. It was a bunch of hoo-haa about "if you wish it, it can come true". Truly don't think they caught onto the silly storyline about wishing and dreams, etc...they just wanted to see Ariel and the gang spin and jump on the ice -- and they ate it up. It was a pretty great show, especially the portions with The Little Mermaid...none of those pictures turned out though.

Belle, Lumiere and the cutlery.

Ilsa and her uber-expensive Tinkerbell spinner.

Ingrid is A LOT happier than she looks. She just hates having her picture taken.

Ditto the comment above.

it pains me to say ...

After much soul searching, I've finally decided that the girls will not be seeing Disney's "The Princess and the Frog". My concern all along has been the presence of voodoo, and wondering how the story would resolve itself... in other words, how was the spell broken? Well unfortunately, Disney decided to use a "good" voodoo practitioner to break the spell, calling upon the hero and heroine to "dig a little deeper" and find the solution from within. (Not my quote...it is from the insightful review by Dr. Russell Moore.)

I'm bummed. I wanted the girls to see a "princess" unlike others. A strong, confident, beautiful girl.

i'm not imagining things!

Okay, I thought I was going crazy, or that at least that the cable company was messing with my mind. Playhouse Disney has disappeared. Well, yes, I'm partially right. Apparently the powers that be over at the Big Ears have downsized the Playhouse Disney lineup. For those of you beyond preschool parenting years, Playhouse Disney is simply the block of programming aimed at preschoolers from early morning until about noon on The Disney Channel. It was commercial free (save a few surprisingly subtle "sponsored by" spots) and offered sweet, innocent, fun and age-appropriate shows for the little ones.

While there are a few of the programs that have been on PD still showing, the PD branding, lack of commercials and preschooler friendly bump and segue spots have disappeared. Between shows the airtime is NOW packed with ads for Hannah Montana, Zack and Cody, High School Musical and all things Tweener. Blah.

As my loyal readers know, we aren't a huge kids TV household, but I do allow them to watch a little bit in the morning and afternoons during "strategic" times for Mommy -- my coffee time and dinner prep time. I don't cloister my girls, but I do want to control, as much as I can, the flow of what commercial crud is forced into their line of sight. We are in the process of de-commercializing their wardrobe (sorry girls, no more Princess clothing...books or movies only), trying to de-"plastic" their toys and basically turn them into little Luddites (just kidding). Seriously, I don't see any reasonable need for them to even know who in the world Hannah Montana is...she would not contribute anything positive to their childhoods.

I'm hoping that the reason for this programming change is a preschool-dedicated channel similar to Noggin and Sprout in the offing, considering the switch to Digital is coming in a few weeks.

Tell me what you think.