According to someone who heard something on some blog somewhere, Pixar’s The Bear and the Bow (the touching story of a princess who wants to stop training with her Bowflex and just sit around watching Brother Bear) may instead be released with the title Brave. Scandalous as this may seem, there are actually some reasonable reasons for making such a change. For example, shorter titles are easier to remember and to spell, and don’t take up as much room on the Internet. The title also has some historical precedent — those of us who are Americans of a certain age can remember the days before the 28th amendment when we used to stand with our hands over our hearts at baseball games while someone sang about “the land of the free and the home of the bear and the bow.”

But the important thing to remember here is that Disney often creates films under working titles that were changed before final release. A few examples:

• During Beauty and the Beast’s “Gaston” song, one of the heads on the wall is Bambi’s mom.
• In The Rescuers, while the heroes are rushing past an apartment building, for a few frames you can see an adult Ariel, formerly the little mermaid, standing at a window.
• Snow White’s seven dwarfs are named for the seven types of theme-park guests.

Worst

• In Oliver & Company when Oliver says, “Yes,” that’s a direct quote from The Absent Minded Professor.
• The third guy from the left in the background in frame 217,143 of Chicken Little is the head of Disney animation’s gardener’s cousin.
• If you play Toy Story backwards, Buzz Lightyear is the embodiment of Michael Eisner’s career.

According to virtual Disney cyberfan and FPS LAN party aficionado BuZZedLiteYear, the transformation will include the following:

• A new paint job and neon lights for all Main Street vehicles (including horses).
• A transformation of the Main Street Cinema from a turn-of-the-20th-century movie house that sells Disney art into a turn-of-the-22nd-century hyper-5D “sensua-immersion” theater that sells Disney art.
• Occasional impromptu performances by a group of cast members who will hop off the “Tron Trolly” and sing “The Light Cycle Song.”
• Hula-hoop playtime for children will be replaced with “flying disk battles” in which young guests can try to “de-rez” each other with special glowing Frisbees.
• The Dapper Dans will be replaced by The Space Paranoids.
• Because Tron: Legacy is a holiday release, Main Street, MCP’s holiday decorations will have a futuristic tone, with a gigantic procedurally rendered fractal tree as it centerpiece. There will also be visits from Tron Santa (as portrayed by Jay Maynard).

“Kalogridis spent last Thanksgiving in Disneyland, working as one of the park’s many irreplaceable but oft-forgotten balloon polishers,” says the article if you listen closely enough. “He ended the day with tired fingers, a face bruised by exploding vinyl, and a big smile. It is Kalogridis’s goal to try every job in the park, from ticket seller to Imagineer. ‘I’d like to design a roller coaster,’ said Kalogridis, ‘and then be one of the guys who builds it, and then a cast member who runs it, and then an EMT who helps guests who rode on it, and finally an inspector who chastises me for not building it to code. That would be quite an adventure! Too bad that, as a manager, I’d never hire someone as inexperienced as me to design a Disneyland attraction, and even if I did, acting as a member of HR I’d have to fire myself for incompetence.’ As part of his quest for job experience, guests in Disneyland next week will be able to find Kalogridis playing Mary Poppins in the noon parade.”

According to an official Disney press release that was channeled to us from a local astrologer, “Tangled will be the story of Rapunzel, a woman who took a nazarite vow at birth that has made her an amazing warrior. After an incident in her youth when she burned down an enemy’s field by setting local animals on fire, she was locked in a tower for fear that she would destroy the town if let free.

“As a teenager, Rapunzel is visited by a young man, Delilo, who speaks to her while standing at the base of the tower. Delilo is from Philistia, a town that is the historical enemy of Rapunzel’s town. Even so, they fall in love. But the inhabitants of Philistia are enraged when, at Delilo and Rapunzel’s wedding, she beats thirty of them to death for guessing the answer to her favorite riddle. They tie her up, intent on taking her back to her tower, but she breaks free and kills a thousand more, using the jawbone of her funny talking animal pall ‘Donkey’ as a weapon.

“Things go downhill from there. Delilo is upset by all the violence, and uses his manly wiles to get Rapunzel to tell him that the secret of her strength is in her hair. In the night, Delilo cuts Rapunzel’s hair and then lets in her enemies, who poke out her eyes with swords. Rapunzel, blind and powerless, is bound between two pillars on the steps of the capital of Philistia. Gathering her will, Rapunzel miraculously grows her hair out to its full length in an instant, pulls down the pillars of the capital (causing it to collapse and crush the elders of the town), and beats the living daylights out of everyone within reach.

“In the end, Delilo sees the horror brought by his treachery. He sings a happy love song to Rapunzel, who responds in kind. They renew their wedding vows in a lovely ceremony at the base of her tower, attended by all the creatures of the forest. Rapunzel opens a blacksmith shop, and they live happily ever after.”

To accommodate the new, larger restaurant, the Mexico Pavilion’s pyramid will also be expanded, receiving a second peak. Said someone near the construction site who was holding a hammer, “This is exactly how the Mexican natives would have done it, if they had thought of it, which they didn’t.”

The Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros attraction will also be doubled in length, becoming the Gran Fiesta Tour^2 Starring the Six Caballeros (of which four of the caballeros will be Donald, because there was so much excitement the last time he was added to the attraction). The decision to rename the attraction is already a bit controversial, particularly amongst mathematicians who point out that three caballeros squared is nine caballeros, not six, and the caballeros should also be squared if you want to keep your units consistent.

Their window reads, “Sherman Brothers Trepanation. You Can’t Get Us Out of Your Head.”

For example:

• In the 1950s, little boys all across the country, in imitation of their TV hero Davy Crockett, donned raccoon-skin caps and ran for Congress.
• The popular Frisbee toy was invented to sate children yearning to imitate the disc-battling antics of their movie hero Tron.
• After the release of Beauty and the Beast, little girls followed the movie heroine’s lead and began to read books for entertainment (much to the annoyance of film-based corporations, causing Disney to focus its next animated film, Aladdin, on a more commercial female role model — a marriage-obsessed princess in scanty clothes who hangs out with big, fluffy animals).
• Many children who saw Toy Story subsequently wanted toys.

This is not to say that The Princess and the Frog has had no impact on children. Quit the contrary — although there are no reliable reports of children doing anything so ridiculous as kissing frogs, a number of youths in the southern U.S. have been devoured (whole or in part) while trying to teach alligators to play jazz music.

• Mickey Mouse: After a little problem with musical animal abuse in his early years, he grew up to be a real nice guy.
• Buzz Lightyear: He can kick any other Disney character’s backside (as vividly demonstrated in the Disney Channel’s Toon Wars).
• Any princess: Sure they can get annoying after a while, but they are merchandising gold.

Worst

• Little Red: From the educational film for young ladies, “Make Mine Menstruation.”
• Tommy the Terrible Toilet: You’ll have been traumatized by him in the classic short “Practically Perfect Plumbing.”
• Hitler: Sure, it’s only a cameo in Fantasia, but it’s Hitler.