Princess Tiana is boosting her presence in Anaheim’s Disneyland park this week, reports our sister newspaper the Los Angeles Times. As in Orlando’s Magic Kingdom, “Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee” ended in early January.

Beginning today, though, Tiana will be available for meet-and-greets at Disneyland’s Princess Fantasy Faire area, at the back corner of Fantasyland near “it’s a small world.”  The Fantasy Faire has been home to big shows (“Snow White: An Enchanting Musical”) and small shows (the “Royal Coronation Ceremony”) but is currently being used only for meet-and-greets.

Even more exciting for fans of the Princess and the Frog music (like me), starting Friday, Tiana will appear in “Princess Tiana’s Mardi Gras Celebration,” several times a day in Disneyland’s New Orleans Square. She’ll sing songs from the film, backed by the Jambalaya Jazz Band. This sounds similar in set-up to the former Mardi Gras show there, which featured an African-American female singer named Queenie.

Meanwhile, over at Disneyland Paris,  starting in April Tiana will appear with her fellow princesses in the park’s daily “Once Upon a Dream” parade. And she and Prince  Naveen will meet guests at the Town Square gazebo, while a live Dixieland band plays music inspired by the film. That information comes from our friends at dlrptoday.com.

Although Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen continue to appear at our own Walt Disney World behind the Christmas shop in Liberty Square, they have only recorded music. (This post’s photo is of the royal couple at Disney World.) Sad to say, that puts Disney World at the back of the pack. Can I start begging (again) for the Magic Kingdom to bring back the “Showboat Jubilee”?

Disney’s The Princess and the Frog is an instant classic and one of the year’s best films. An enchanting story told with a healthy helping of heart, it marks a return to the style of animation that made Walt Disney’s studio famous. And it’s a return to form for a studio that milked 2D animated fairytales to death in the ‘90s.

Disney’s first African American “princess” tale is set in Roaring ‘20s New Orleans, with the classic frog prince story translated to hard-working waitress Tiana (voiced by Dreamgirl Anika Noni Rose) who tries to help a suave frog (Bruno Campos, very Antonio Banderas) become a prince again with a kiss. But she’s not a real princess, and the ne’er-do-well prince, Naveen, who is visiting “N’awlins” to soak up the jazz and marry a rich girl, needs to learn the value of hard work and true love. So Tiana is transformed into a frog, too, and each of them learns a better way to live and love as they’re dodging gators and the minions of The Shadow Man (Keith David, perfect) who has set up a fake prince with designs on finally having the money to rule the city.

Disney summoned its Little Mermaid team to direct this, and John Musker and Ron Clements zero in on the emotional center of the story even as they and their co-writers find jokes and jokey characters to juice this thing up. So we see Tiana grasp that achieving her dream — her own restaurant — without love would be empty, and Naveen learn to think of someone other than himself.

There are story elements borrowed from many a Disney ‘toon, even The Jungle Book, as and a trumpet-playing gator wants to be human so he can blow that jazz. Musker and Clements even name a blue tick hound “Stella” just so Big Daddy La Bouff can summon his dog Tennessee Williams style.

“STEL-laaaaa!”

Big Daddy spoils his daughter Lottie (Jennifer Cody, an adorably daft voice to match her character), but never thinks of lending his daughter’s lifelong pal Tiana the money to open her own restaurant. That’s just as well, as this movie’s “hard work” ethos suggests that she wouldn’t take anyway.

Randy Newman, a songwriter with deep New Orleans roots, conjures up a dazzling collection of tunes, with a couple of gospel-inspired call-and-response show-stoppers — “I’m Almost There” and “Dig a Little Deeper” (a bayou chorus of roseate spoonbills!). And if this lyric doesn’t give the city a new theme song — “Rich people, poor people, all got dreams. And dreams do come true in New Orleans” — somebody’s missing the riverboat.

Musker and Clements invent a great new Disney villain in The Shadow Man, and, like Walt and the Brothers Grimm, don’t shy away from letting death show its face, lending urgency and poignancy to the tale.

It’s been 20 years since The Little Mermaid, but with this classic story classically told, The Princess and the Frog can proudly take its place among Disney’s great princess pictures. Yes, “EVERY little girl is a princess” is true. And if the spirited Tiana inspires more African American princesses to don tiaras, their daddies will just have to live with it.

See for Yourself

The Princess and the Frog

Four stars out of four

Cast: The voices of Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, John Goodman, Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard

Directors: Ron Clements, John Musker

Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes

Industry rating:. G.

I don’t know about y’all but I can’t wait to get down the bayou with “The Princess and the Frog.”

To be honest, the television spots aren’t what has me hopping with excitement: It’s the fun-filled “Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee” at the Magic Kingdom that has my toes a-tapping.

If you have not seen this song-and-dance extravaganza yet, get yourself there. It’s really two events in one: a parade through Liberty Square and then a rollicking show aboard the riverboat as it passes through Frontierland.

The parade is a hip-swiveling, umbrella-twirling, soul-filled stroll through the Square. Maybe his frog-legs experience helps him, but Prince Naveen proves to be a smooth operator on the dance floor.

Best spot to watch? The parade comes out of the back of the Diamond Horseshoe, right past the covered area with restrooms that leads to Adventureland. Position yourself kitty-corner to the Horseshoe, with the Disney Vacation Club at your back. This way, you’ll see the parade approach toward you and then turn toward the riverboat landing.

Once the parade moves away from you so the cast can embark on their cruise, make your way down to the boardwalk that runs along the riverbank through Frontierland. You’ll want to move a ways down … to the Country Bears area. That way, you’ll see the boat come toward you and then be in good viewing location to watch the show when the boat stops.

The show features more singin’, dancin’, tambourine playing, gospel-choir robes, a nasty card trick by the movie’s villain, all set to that New Orleans groove. At my last viewing, people were trying to sing along even though they didn’t know the songs — just because the rhythm is so infectious.

The movie opens Friday, and I can’t wait. But do NOT wait to see the show. It’s running on a limited engagement through Jan. 3 only. Showtimes are generally early afternoon. This week, catch it at 12:15, 2 and 3:45.

One hopeful sign: I heard several guests telling Disney survey takers after the show how much they enjoyed it. (Frankly, I think it’s better than the 3:00 parade.) Let’s hope Disney listens, and keeps Tiana’s music flowing. You too will be singing, “Dig a little deeper…”

"The Princess and the Frog" opens nationally Dec. 11.

Fans of the Jubilee won’t be disappointed with the soundtrack, which is now available in stores. The music heard in the theme park is in many cases spot-on with the soundtrack provided. But if you listen to the CD’s lyrics, you can become aware of some plot points not addressed during the jam session on the Rivers of America. (I’ll save any borderline spoilers for after the jump of this post. The movie opens nationally Dec.11.)

But that’s easily explained. The Magic Kingdom show is set after the time of the movie, essentially a sequel, show director Tara Anderson told me. All that peril, strife and further plot complications of the film are behind us now and we’re rolling down the bayou with tambourines. Even the boat’s pilot is singing along.

“Down in New Orleans,” “Almost There” and “Dig a Little Deeper” are especially true to the soundtrack, if not identical. Also on the soundtrack is an R&B song by Ne-Yo (“Never Knew I Needed”) and instrumental numbers. If you start getting a bit of a Toy Story vibe, thank composer Randy Newman, who worked on both Toy and Frog.

Songs with alterations address some of the transforming in the plot, therefore, there’s no frog aboard the Magic Kingdom vessel except on signage.

“When We’re Human” from the film is more about Louis the trumpet-playing alligator alone in the theme park rendition. In the soundtrack, Tiana and Prince Naveen appear amphibious and warbling about the day they’re human again.

More of Naveen’s background is covered in “Friends on the Other Side.” Was he disowned? Does he make bad choices? In Jubilee, those troubles are non-existant. He’s just unlucky in cards.

And therefore lucky in love, we’ll assume as he and Tiana chug off into the sunset three times a day.

Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee is scheduled to complete its limited run on Jan. 3, 2010.

The Princess and the Frog

“The Princess and the Frog,” Disney’s first hand-drawn animated feature in five years, isn’t only a throwback in style.

When it opened today, it also will be the first Disney animated film since 2003’s “Brother Bear” to start in limited release in New York and Los Angeles (Read the review below). Like that movie and many other of its traditional cartoons, including “The Lion King” and “Hercules,” the studio is pairing the two initial runs of “Princess” with an “experience” that includes games, actresses dressed as Disney princesses, props, costumes and other activities that give kids fun time beyond the film.

John Lasseter and 'Princess Tiana' at the New York film opening

Check out images from the film

Check out images of character Princess Tiana’s debut at Walt Disney World

All those extras mean ticket prices will be substantially higher than for a normal picture. Disney is charging $30 for general admission tickets, $50 for the best seats and $20 per person for groups at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City and on the studio lot in Burbank. (Disney’s El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, its traditional spot for high-profile L.A. runs, is currently using its 3-D projection system to play “A Christmas Carol.”)

The “ultimate Disney event,” as the studio’s Web site calls it, will play until Sunday, Dec. 13, the first weekend that “The Princess and the Frog” plays nationwide. Disney already has racked up more than $3.2 million in pre-sales. In Burbank, all but one show from Wednesday through Sunday is sold out, while the larger Ziegfeld in New York has fully booked half of its screenings over the holiday weekend.

In the meantime, high demand and inflated ticket prices — more than six times the U.S. average at the top end — means “Princess” should see huge grosses for a two-theater run. It’s no accident that the top seven per-theater averages of all time on Box Office Mojo are all Disney animated runs, and it’s very likely that “The Princess and the Frog” will join them this weekend, particularly with Friday being a holiday.

– Ben Fritz, Los Angeles Times

‘The Princess and the Frog’ grants us a return to Disney’s song-filled fantasy

By Betsy Sharkey
Lost Angeles Times Film Critic

Go ahead and pucker up. Because long before “The Princess and the Frog” is over you’ll want to smooch the charming couple, air kiss a romantic firefly and hug a voodoo queen in this foot-stomping, smile-inducing, heart-warming animated twist on the old Brothers Grimm frog-prince fairy tale.

The filmmakers have brewed up a delicious roots story in every sense of the word. “The Princess and the Frog” is set in the 1920s jazz age in the New Orleans heart of it all. It’s the studio’s return to the lush, fluid beauty of hand-drawn animation. It’s an old-fashioned fairy tale, even though they’ve had some fun with the story. And it’s set to music in the grand tradition of “Beauty and the Beast,” which is to say the neoclassic ‘90s brand of Disney animation.

That might make “The Princess and the Frog” seem like a creature of ancient times, particularly since kids these days are raised on 3-D flash. The effect, though, is the opposite. After being bombarded by so much computer-generated, motion-captured high-and-higher jinks, the film feels fresh — a discovery, or a rediscovery, depending on your age.

At the keyboards, we have the always flavorful Mr. Randy Newman creating a spicy gumbo of blues, gospel, jazz, Dixieland and, because we are in the Big Easy, a dash or two of zydeco along with the Tobasco (nothing says “now” like product placement).

There’s plenty of razzle-dazzle, starting with Anika Noni Rose, the perky third of the “Dreamgirls,” who’s lending her fabulous pipes to Tiana, the hardworking lovely with big plans at the center of this story. Yes, a prince on the side might be nice, but this career girl from humble beginnings has her eye on an empty warehouse that will make a fine restaurant where the flappers will be hot, the jazz will be cool and the food oh so divine.

Though there are all sorts of barriers to be broken and despite a day job as a maid that has her forever pinching pennies, Tiana is not one to give up. That shouldn’t come as a complete surprise since she has the ultimate overachiever in Oprah as her mama, though for some reason directors John Musker and Ron Clements, who wrote the script with Rob Edwards, call her Eudora. No matter.

This being New Orleans, the dark arts are a major factor in the story with Keith David’s Dr. Facilier making so many deals with so many devils it will make your head spin and possibly frighten some little ones when those voodoo masks start multiplying and moving.

In keeping with the ethnic blend, the song and dance man with the Hugh Jackman good looks, only darker, is Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos), from the mythical kingdom of Maldonia. Whether it’s a worry about offending African Americans with “cartoonish” exaggeration, or a desire to make the film palatable for white audiences, or both, the animators have been very careful with their pens when it comes to drawing black characters on the page. Just about everyone here has “good hair,” and Tiana could be Halle Berry’s kissing cousin. So while it’s not Disney’s first time at dipping a toe in multicultural waters — “Aladdin,” “Mulan” and “Pocahontas” were there first — “The Princess and the Frog” still feels like baby steps.

With all of Dr. Facilier’s scheming, Naveen is about to be green anyway, which makes him very jumpy, especially since there are gun-toting moonshiners who fancy frying up his legs. He was supposed to be kissed by Charlotte (Jennifer Cody), a rich Southern belle, but in a mistake of monumental proportions, he smooches Tiana instead and we have two frogs, not one, and no happily ever after in sight.

The rest of the film trots out many of the swampy tropes of childhood — always be good, be careful who you trust, follow your dreams, it’s what’s inside that counts. But what could be tried as well as true is not, because the filmmakers have done to the bayou what Mardi Gras does to the French Quarter — put music, magic, light and laughter everywhere.

There are the big Broadway-style numbers we’ve come to expect from Disney musicals of that only slightly bygone era, the kind that let the animation team go wild. One of “The Princess and the Frog’s” best comes when a swarm of fireflies seeks a blind voodoo queen named Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis), who might be the only one powerful enough to break Dr. Facilier’s curse. Led by a hopeless romantic named Ray (Jim Cummings), a bit of a dim bulb, the bayou turns into a high-kicking extravaganza with singing and dancing swamp critters pulling off complicated choreography while Louis (Michael-Leon Wooley), a gator with a jazz obsession, blows a really mean trumpet.

Clements and Musker are pretty much Disney born and raised with two of the studio’s best musical showstoppers, “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin,” heading their resumes. With “The Princess and the Frog” they’ve gotten just about everything right. The dialogue is fresh-prince clever, the themes are ageless, the rhythms are riotous and the return to a primal animation style is beautifully executed.

So shake a stick at those Grimm Brothers, when it comes to princesses and frogs we now have a beautiful, boisterous sister in charge.

betsy.sharkey@latimes.com

Talk show host Tyra Banks visits Walt Disney World to meet Princess Tiana in a segement for "The Tyra Banks Show."

Talk show host Tyra Banks gives some love to Disney’s newest princess, Tiana, on her show today.

According to Entertainment Tonight, Banks surprised three girls (and their parents) by sending them to Walt Disney World to meet Princess Tiana. Banks then surprised the families by showing up herself to take part in a tea party with the princess and the girls.

The lucky girls who went to Disney World to meet Tiana are Kimani Smith, 6, from Fredericksburg, Va.; McKenna Pope, 10, from Lodi, N.J.; and Shadeh Belgrave, 8, from Jamaica, N.Y.

In Orlando, you can watch the Disney meetup on The Tyra Banks Show at 4 p.m. today on WKCF-CW 18. Or check out a preview from Entertainment Tonight below …

A Princess Tiana doll/AP

The Walt Disney Co. says its newest princess is already flexing some retail muscle.

Disney’s consumer-products division said this week that merchandise featuring Princess Tiana and other characters from The Princess and the Frog are outselling other Disney princess merchandise by “double digit percentages.”

Disney says more than 45,000 dolls have been sold, including 17,000 last week. At Disney Store outlets across the country and online, Princess Tiana role-play dresses are selling above any other princess dresses. And Disney says one major, though unidentified, retailer reported that The Princess and the Frog bedding has sold almost triple the amount of regular Disney princess bedding.

Of course, it is not unusual to see an initial merchandise burst when a major new character is introduced. The test will be whether Tiana and The Princess and the Frog have any staying power. The movie will be released Dec. 11.

More on how important Tiana and the film are to Disney — particularly its theme parks — here.

Princess Tiana talks with guests during a meet-and-greet at the Magic Kingdom. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

The Walt Disney Co.’s newest princess doesn’t arrive in movie theaters for another month, but she is already easy to find at Walt Disney World.

Theme-park guests can meet Princess Tiana and watch her perform in a musical riverboat show. They can buy Tiana dolls, undergo Tiana makeovers, and eat Tiana’s Magical Kisses — bite-sized, white-chocolate-covered graham crackers. They can even get vouchers for a child’s ticket to Tiana’s movie.

The in-park promotional blitz, extensive even by Disney standards, is part of a company-wide push to pump up The Princess and the Frog, the animated film that is one of Disney’s most important movies in years.

>> See pictures of Princess Tiana at Walt Disney World

Set for nationwide release on Dec. 11, The Princess and the Frog is Disney’s first attempt in more than a decade to add a new heroine to its stable of fairy-tale princess — a wildly lucrative franchise that now generates an estimated $4 billion in sales across Disney’s entertainment empire.

The Disney princesses are particularly important to the company’s theme parks. They are, for example, the focal point of the sweeping expansion that Disney World plans to begin work on next year in the Fantasyland section of its Magic Kingdom park.

The possibility of expanding that franchise has Disney pulling every lever it can to ensure The Princess and the Frog is a hit.

“They certainly want to take a hard swing at the plate on something like a new princess,” said Doug Mitchelson, an analyst who covers Disney for Deutsche Bank Securities. “The financial performance of this film could be vastly outweighed longer-term if the appeal to kids is strong enough to sustain it in the parks and with consumer products.”

Tiana's Showboat Jubilee makes its way down the Rivers of America at the Magic Kingdom (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Disney has a long history of using its theme parks — which drew an estimated 118 million people worldwide last year — to gin up interest in upcoming film releases. Characters from Pixar’s 2009 release, Up, began greeting guests at Disney’s Hollywood Studios two weeks before the film was released.

But the marketing push for The Princess and the Frog is both larger and longer. The most obvious example is “Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee,” a lavish parade and musical revue now performed three times a day in the Magic Kingdom. The show, in which characters from the movie march through the Liberty Square section of the park and onto a waiting riverboat, where they perform several songs, began more than six weeks before The Princess and the Frog’s scheduled national release.

There are scores of smaller examples. Tiana merchandise, from cookbooks to school kits, is stocked in gift shops alongside similar items featuring Snow White, Ariel and other princesses. At Disney’s Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutqiues, which peddle princess makeovers that cost as much as $240 a child, girls can now choose to be outfitted with Tiana dresses, tiaras and wands.

Elements from The Princess and the Frog, which is set in New Orleans, have been added to the holiday overlay at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort. Disney plans to have the characters appear during Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. And various giveaways will launch in the parks through November and December featuring The Princess and the Frog fortune cards, bookmarks and more.

Many of the same elements, including Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee, have also been added at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.

A Princess Tiana doll (AP)

Dara Trujillo, manager of merchandise synergy and franchises for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said The Princess and the Frog has been rolled out in the parks about three weeks earlier than is typical for a new Disney movie.

“The most beautiful thing about The Princess and The Frog is the fact that the word ‘princess’ is” in the title, Trujillo said. “When you say the word ‘princess,’ our guests automatically get it. They can’t wait to see what the princess looks like, what her personality traits are.”

John Frost, a veteran observer of Disney World and publisher of The Disney Blog, said the in-park marketing blitz is the biggest he could recall since The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which was released in 1996.

“It has been done before, but not at this level,” Frost said. The early reaction, he added, appears upbeat. “I see lots of little girls running around in Tiana dresses, and the comments on my [message] boards are all uniformly positive.”

Disney is going to extra lengths to promote the movie beyond the parks, as well. At a fan convention earlier this year, Disney screened the first 30 minutes of the film, which has been made in a conventional, hand-drawn animation style. And it has scheduled an advance screening at its studio lot in Burbank, Calif., which is not typically open to the public.

The company is anxious to make Tiana a star. Under Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger, Disney Co. has focused on developing signature franchises that can be exploited across its various platforms, from television shows to theme-park rides to video games.

The approach, which emphasizes properties such as the princess and fairy lines and Pixar’s Toy Story and Cars films, has helped to reduce Disney’s dependence on some of its oldest characters. Five years ago, more than 60 percent of the company’s licensing revenue was generated by Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh; this year, they are expected to account for less than 40 percent.

But while the princesses have emerged as one of Disney’s most profitable brands, they lack fresh faces. Disney hasn’t introduced a major animated princess since the 1998 film Mulan, and none has emerged as a true star since Jasmine, of 1992’s Aladdin.

Making Tiana especially important: She is Disney’s first African-American princess. If the character catches on, it will help Disney diversify the princess fan base.

“The princess line of properties has over the last five years been one of our best-growing line of properties, and I think this is fresh content and a natural means of invigorating that even further,” Disney Co. Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs said during an investor conference earlier this fall.

Mitchelson, the Deutsche Bank analyst, said the ancillary potential of The Princess and the Frog is so large that the best measure of its success won’t be box office results — it will be consumer-product sales.

“To the extent that The Princess and the Frog is only considered modestly successful from a film point of view, that doesn’t  mean it won’t be quite successful from the perspective of broadening the princess franchise,” he said.

Jason Garcia can be reached at jrgarcia@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5414.

Poinsettias are front and center at Magic Kingdom entrance.

Sunday we walked through Magic Kingdom park, admiring the first round of holiday decorations, but we also got an eyefull of (still-closed) Space Mountain, Princess Tiana in action, perhaps a pinch of tomorrow’s Fantasyland and a couple of other little touches we hadn’t noticed before.

Main Street has the usual wreath treatment. No tree up as of Sunday.

Most of the decor is up where there Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party is most active.

The old SuperSonic stage appears to be regeared for the Totally Tomorrowland Christmas show, part of Very Merry this year (as seen from Tomorrowland Transit Authority).

Again from TTA, behind the construction walls of Space Mountain (which I hear went down today).

Inside Space Mountain, Take 1.

Inside Space Mountain, Take 2

After the jump: non-holiday, non-Space Mountain pictures.

Let's peer into the woods near good ol' Fantasyland. Blue machinery? New Fantasyland?

Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen encourage a shy guest at their autograph station behind the Christmas shoppe.

Meanwhile at Tiana's Showboat Jubilee, Dr. Facilier is up to no good, Naveen must pick three cards and it all goes bad. (Facilier is later pronounced a "phoney baloney.")

Back on Main Street, I had not noticed a new structure that replaces the hat-heavy cart. This helps traffic, and the style mirrors the info stand on the other side of the street.

Finally, folks can peak into Pirates League from the gift shop at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean. It was a shame for the great room to be hidden from most eyes. Our thumbs arrrrrrrrrrr up.

Click above to see more Princess Tiana photos (Joe Burbank, Orlando Sentinel)

Disney’s first new African-American princess – and its first official royal since Mulan hit the scene in 1997 — was officially welcomed to the Magic Kingdom Monday morning.

Princess Tiana, the lead character of the upcoming “The Princess and the Frog” animated film, was greeted at the base of Cinderella Castle by assorted theme park characters and royalty. She was escorted in with jazz music from the film and a New Orleans-style procession.

Next she participated in a new theme park show called “Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee!”, which uses Liberty Belle riverboat as its stage. The 10-minute show includes active performers from the crowd (cue the ribbons, tambourines and choir robes) and music from the film, which opens Dec. 11. Disneyland’s Tiana show is set to debut Nov. 6.

The show has an unusual format. Tiana, Prince Naveen and other characters and dancers appear from next to Frontierland’s Diamond Horseshoe, hang a right and parade up to the Liberty Square Riverboat dock. One might say they promenade.

They then get onto the boat, take position alongside predetermined guest/performers, switch to a new song (music by Randy Newman) and head back up the river the direction they just came from. Louis the trumpet-playing gator is at the base while Disney’s newest supercouple is at the very top. The Liberty Belle — decked out in purple, gold and green bunting — floats in its usual cycle, and there’s more singing and ribbon work.

The boat stops near the corner where Frontierland bends toward Splash Mountain, and Tiana and Naveen move to the center of the port side, facing the audience, therefore now centerstage. Liberty Belle becomes a three-tiered stage – at one point four – with action on each level.

The music, of course, is jazzy. I’d call it toe-tapping. The visual presentation is fun, lots of props that involve the guests aboard. It’s a short show, but Disney manages to work in a villain production number and an inspirational finale song (“Dig a Little Deeper”)

Other songs from the film include “Down in New Orleans,” “Almost There,” “When We’re Human” and “Gonna Take You There.”

The finale includes a flash of fireworks and the whistle blowing. The boat then circles around on its normal path back to the dock, and the procession reverses itself.

“Jubilee” will run three times daily for 10 weeks. Showtimes will be 12:15, 2 and 3:45 p.m. A meet and greet area for Tiana and Naveen has been set up behind the Liberty Square Christmas shop, near the bride/walkway to Adventureland.