23 stands for 1923, the year the Walt Disney Company was founded.

The convention is $30/day or $90 for all 4 days… not hundreds of dollars, lol. :P

What a shameless ploy from Disney to try to “appeal” to the customer that it basically turned its back on years ago. I still love Disney, and collect many items … but I hate giving The Walt Disney Company more of my money. Iger got tens of millions of dollars in “bonus” last year, while my stock is worth less than HALF of what it was three years ago.

D23 is insulting and a terrible, terrible idea.

Based on the discription and that it seems more like a coffee table type publication, it sounds very similar to Communication Arts Magazine. It’s a quarterly graphic design magazine with a hefty $24 price tag, but makes for a great coffee table book.

I’ll give the first issue a shot. If I’m not impressed, I’ll wait a few issues to give them a chance to find the right mix & if it’s still not worth it, I’ll move on.

I’m a very paranoid person and I’m afraid that once Disney established an “official” community through forums and other media (maybe a podcast that they don’t neglect is in the future), that the blind eye they have turned to the “unofficial”.

Back when Disney helped WDWCelebrations with the EPCOT 25 celebration I was thinking and postulating with my friends who were wondering why they were so helpful that they may have been testing the waters on the marketability of reentering pay-for-play fan events.

If Disney has an official presence their attorneys may have teeth to try and either blatantly shut unofficial conduits of information down, or absorb them and make them official. It would be good news for those webmasters who get absorbed because I’m sure it would happen with some kind of compensation and CM position to continue to run it.

But, there is a loss of some openness when a site is “official” compared to “unofficial”.

Time will only tell what is up Disney Corporate’s sleeve. Whether they want to be just another offering among many or be the preferred and predominate (or only) offering.

I just get flashbacks to when Warner Brothers tried to shut down all the Harry Potter fan sites about 10 years ago and hope “the man” has learned it’s lession

If you’re talking about something financially motivated then you could have a good point. But even still, some of these fan driven things that have been going on “unofficially” have such a devoted following that this would probably just be an extra, official thing they would add to what they already do.

Just my two cents anyway.

Myself, I’m no so enthusiastic about this now. I love Disney but don’t really want to pay for a glorified fan club in which most information that is pertinent to anything will be easily found online. I’m not much of a collector so discounts on merchandise or exclusive items won’t motivate me to join either. I was hoping for something grander….then again, there could be something we still don’t know about this.