In this new Disney short Once Upon a Studio, we see all Disney characters from all movies for the celebration of 100 years of Disney!

By Gianna Liantonio

Disney’s Once Upon a Studio came out on October 16, 2023, on both Disney Channel and on Disney+!

This was made to celebrate 100 years of Disney and it definitely is worth celebrating. To think it all started with Walt Disney creating Mickey Mouse, and now we have hundreds of characters of all kinds, shapes and sizes.

The short starts with people leaving Disney’s Animation Studio, where a man and woman are leaving talking about how they can’t believe it’s been 100 years. The man was actually an animator named Burny Mattinson who sadly died before this was.
released. He was the longest serving employee of 70 years and worked on many beloved works such as, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Jungle Book.

Before he leaves, he says, “If these walls could talk…”, and a picture of Mickey and Minnie comes to life. Mickey asks Tinkerbell if everyone is gone and when she affirms that everyone is indeed gone, they gather everyone to take a picture. All the pictures come to life and we see all our favorite characters from the princesses to our favorite animal characters.

Not only do we get to see all the characters in one place for the first time, but we also had the privilege of having all the original voice actors come together for it! Everyone was thrilled to be asked to come back to do this project.

They even had the genie voiced by Robin Williams, using unused footage from Aladdin, paying tribute to a legend! I really loved that they still included him and brought him back to life in this short.

When everyone is heading down to the lobby, we see Mickey go up to a picture of Walt Disney. He takes his hat off admiring it with a sad yet reflective look as the song, “Free the Birds” starts playing, which is known as Walt’s favorite song. Minnie calls him, breaking him out of his thoughts to come down to the lobby. Before he goes, he looks at Walt and says, “Gotta go, but thanks. On with the show.” This was a very touching moment in the short as we see how grateful Mickey is for Walt making him who he is.

When everyone gets down to the lobby, we see Goofy has the ladder and camera. Naturally, as he climbs up, he falls breaking the camera and everyone thinks the picture day is ruined. However, we see one of the characters start playing the melody of “When You Wish Upon A Star”, and everyone starts singing it. We hear the beloved voices of Belle, who is voiced by Paige O’Harra, Ariel, who is voiced by Jodi Benson, and even Winnie the Pooh, who is voiced by Jim Cummings!

We hear Snow White and Mulan singing, and we see Snow white reach out her hand to the new addition to Disney, Asha from the upcoming film Wish. It was nice to see the Disney Princess welcoming the newest one. This shows the acceptance of new things to come and how the old and newer Disney films have come together; showing that change isn’t always a bad thing.

As they are singing, everyone assists in making sure they are able to take this picture. We see Fix It Felix from Wreck It Ralph fixes the camera, Hercules lifts the ladder and Fairy Godmother lifts Goofy up to place the camera on top of the ladder, still letting him help.

As they are getting ready, we see Mickey tell the character Oswald that he can go after him, showing respect for the first official Disney character that was made by Walt. The attention to detail in this short was amazing and you can really feel the nostalgia whenever you saw each character and heard each voice. They take the picture as you hear every character sing in harmony and the short ends, seeing the final photo.

This truly made me emotional and overjoyed, growing up a Disney kid and still loving Disney to this day. They didn’t miss one character and made sure to not leave anyone out. They catered to old and newer fans, making sure to include characters from each era.

It definitely felt nostalgic. I think this was a perfect tribute and celebration to it being 100 years and was done right.