Pomp & Circumstance - Alternate Disney Princess Version Story Reel - Fantasia 2000

Fantasia Continues was a pet project of Roy Disney, Jr; the nephew of Walt and son of brother Roy. Walt had always intended Fantasia to be an ongoing project that would go on in different venues and versions indefinitely. With the VHS sales of Walt's original film, Roy was given the go ahead to produce the segments between the roster of animated features for a long delayed follow up.

As the music selections were made, everyone was contributing suggestions and Michael Eisner's suggestion was the piece Pomp & Circumstance by Sir Edward Elgar. The piece is synonymous with graduations but Elgar had intended its use for a variety of venues. Eisner had recently attended a graduation that inspired the idea to create a sequence of all the Disney characters gathered together in a processional. He intended to invite back as many of the surviving nine old men to return to the studio to animate their characters again from Walt's time.

The first version featured a party of the characters with the uninvited villains crashing the party and chasing Donald until he sends them away with Mickey's sorcerer's apprentice hat.

This is the second version where the Disney characters are gathered together for a christening. (Note that the Song of the South characters are prominently featured with the rest of the Walt Disney stable of stars.)

This version was ultimately rejected as well. The reason most cited was studio execs objecting to the Disney princesses having babies (and where is Mr Story from Dumbo/Lambert the Sheepish Lion in this sequence...) but this could also be viewed as the anti traditional family mindset that began permeating the Walt Disney Company after 1993/94. (In Walt's time, several of his characters were married and had children in print material -- including the Princesses...)

It's a shame this concept couldn't have been developed further as it respects Walt's legacy while demonstrating the animation renaissance is a continuation of that. What if the characters were gathering to honor Walt and Roy?

Pomp & Circumstance was then adapted to be about Noah's short tempered Dove helping him load the animals onto the ark. It was then suggested to replace the Dove with Donald and that's the sequence that appears in the final film.

We present the Christening version with all the Disney characters in memory of Roy Disney Jr who did his best to protect the company his father and uncle founded from being destroyed.

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.