It's official: The Lion King Coming To Vegas

Mike Weatherford had this scoop last week, but MGM Mirage announced for real today in this press release that Disney's Lion King is setting down paws at Mandalay Bay in May 2009 instead of replacing Mamma Mia! with yet another Cirque show.

You're going to read a lot of yammering about how this is part of a swerve back towards family-friendly Vegas which allegedly flamed out in the mid-1990s. And yet there's been more than enough geared to families -- four of the existing Cirque shows, all those magic shows, almost all those Broadway shows, all those roller coasters, all those animal attractions -- for some time. It's simplistic media shorthand to view Vegas offerings as one thing or another; there's no way for this city to be successful by catering to one sort of customer.

I suspect this will be a pretty smart fit for all the reasons that Phantom works: Everyone knows and loves the music and story. And Lion King has one more thing going for it; while there have been tours of the show, for sure, it doesn't feel done to death. There's no place other than New York in North America to see it, either.

The release says: "Mandalay Bay's production of THE LION KING will be virtually identical to the other companies seen around the globe and will be staged with all of the same spectacular music, sets, and costumes that have made it a worldwide phenomenon."

It's not clear whether there's any wiggle room in that statement to cut the show down from its nearly 3-hour original running time, intermission included.

Is "Meet The Robinsons" Offensive?

My USA Today piece on the fact that adoption-advocate groups are upset by certain parts of Disney's "Meet The Robinsons" is online now. I'm interested in your reaction to the controversy.

A long day

A very busy Monday that started at 7 am with an editor from the Christian Science Monitor needing me at said ungodly hour to look over the final version of my piece on the Grand Canyon Skywalk. Then I caught wind that national adoption advocates are protesting the animated flick "Meet The Robinsons" and I convinced one of my editors at a major newspaper to let me do a piece on that that's now due by noon Tuesday.

So...that meant making an unscheduled battery of phone calls on that before updating my Las Vegas entries on USA Today's Vegas travel microsite, a once-a-month gig I have, and then running all over town taking a few more pictures for my forthcoming gay guidebook of Vegas. Then it was off to my publisher's office by 3:30 pm to go over the 100+ images I've collected or shot in the past week for the book before catching the 4:40 pm showing of "Meet The Robinsons" at Neonopolis and then racing to Applebee's (Las Vegas' Best Meal For Under $10, according to the LVRJ Readers Poll even though there's nothing on the menu so cheap) for dinner with Miles and "The Strip" podcast engineer Mark. Mark, the ass, is deserting us for a couple months to Bloomington, Ill., for a new job that requires him to move there for a little while.

Got home, edited and posted the latest ep of "The Petcast" in which we explain the pet food recall saga and watched the brilliant new FX show "The Riches." Oh! And I read the paper, though the only thing worth noting there is that the Las Vegas Sun had a piece on a program that puts homing devices on alcoholics and reporter Abigail Goldman wrote this brilliant sentence you'll never read in the news columns of a conventional daily newspaper: "Fry practically pickled himself last summer."

All in a day's work. Will have more time tomorrow to blog. All I have to do is write that "Robinsons" story and then start on a project that requires me to write profiles of all eight architects involved with Project City Center.

Get Married With Goofy?

Miles and I managed to avoid the tacky Vegas wedding by holding ours last month in a sensationally gorgeous suite in the Palms Fantasy Tower. But, of course, the cliched Vegas wedding is a hetero affliction to begin with.

Now comes word that Disney will officially host same-sex wedding ceremonies in its theme parks as well. So get ready for the advent of the cliched gay wedding. For some reason, the gays love Disneyland and Disney World, as seen by those huge Gay Day events each year. It'll start at $8,000 with upgrades for Cinderella's coach and Mickey and Minnie in formal attire. (What, can't get two Mickeys?)

Naturally, the right-wingers will have conniption fits similar to this bizarro fax that the "Rev." Fred Phelps of Topeka of GodHatesFags.Com sent in 2001 when something else Disney offended him. I was once the target of similar faxes and pickets during a summer internship in 1993 at the Topeka Capital-Journal when I wrote an award-winning piece on gay youth in the Kansas capital. It's fun!

Too bad Miles and I didn't know about this before. Maybe the very grumpy improv comic Wayne Brady, who was awful prickly with me on "The Strip" podcast last night, would've reprised his role as Tigger from way back when. Hear him explain how he, uh, got in character.

Congrats, by the way, to AfterElton.Com for pointing out Disney's discrimination and shaming them into changing their policy.