published:December 7, 2010

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MouseVent: Counting Down to Christmas, Disney Style

Hear your favorite Disney podcasters share holiday songs and stories

by Bob McLain

I laugh when people tell me it's impossible to do anything new because it's all been done before. Alan Hooper, the mind behind the MouseVent, doesn't just laugh: he does something new.

The something new is MouseVent, an on-line Advent calendar featuring a different short (5-10 minute) message or performance from a different Disney personality each day until Christmas. The personalities are podcasters and bloggers, mostly, but Alan also has a few 'on-site' stars like Bob Jackson, the piano performer ('player' just doesn't cover it) at Port Orleans - Riverside. You can lisen to the clips on MouseVent itself or on iTunes.

Today, for instance, we got an audio clip from Chef BigFatPanda, John Saccheri, famous for blogging step-by-step Disney recipes with so many photos you'll break your diet just by looking at them.

Each audio clip is prefaced with an a cappella introduction from Joseph Carter. Some of the clips, naturally, are better than others, and not everyone - at least among the seven clips 'revealed' so far - tries equally hard to entertain (as opposed to just talking about themselves) but overall the quality is quite high and part of the fun is that you never know what (or who) you're going to get.

MouseVent delivers Disney holiday cheer. You'd think it would have been done before!

I caught up briefly with Alan Hooper for a few questions about MouseVent and his other Disney projects.

I don't recall hearing about MouseVent last year. Is it a new project?

MouseVent is a new project for this year. As far as I'm aware this type of project hasn't been tackled before. Or I can at least say it hasn't been tried in the Disney fan community before.

What gave you the idea to do it? And will it become an annual event?

I do a Disney fan podcast with a couple of friends and as Christmas was approaching I thought about doing something different for our listeners. So I started to plan out creating MouseVent, but only for our podcast. It soon became apparent that to create 24 different tracks was going to be quite difficult. Before I made the public announcements, I contacted as many Disney pod people as possible to see if it was a project that would be adopted as a group activity. After an initial pause of no response, I managed to 'sign up' over half of the current contributors.

It eventually got to the point of being able to assign 24 contributors (and then some). The initial concept was the 24 days of MouseVent, but in reality it could easily have been 31 days.

This year is a test piece to see whether MouseVent could become an annual event. We'll see what worked and what could be improved upon. If everything goes well. MouseVent will be back in 2011.

How did you choose the participants and once you chose them what was your 'pitch' to secure their help?

From past experience I know that if somebody asks you for a hand or a favour, generally the response is "yeah, no problem". Converting that from the hypothetical agreement is always a harder step.

Initially, I contacted around 40 different people to see if they were interested. The 'hit list' was made up of mainly podcasters, as they already did this sort of thing on a weekly basis, though I felt it was important to also include contributors from outside the podcasting circle. I contacted Jim Korkis, Bob Jackson and Carol Steinin the initial mail shot and they were some of the first to respond with an agreement.

The concept I outlined was that everyone should submit a 5-10 minute audio clip. This could be about anything they felt relevant. It didn't have to be about Christmas but being associated with Disney was important.

After I had the agreements, I asked everyone to submit logos for the site. It was only when a logo was in hand that I felt the day had been allocated.

The whole concept for MouseVent was to provide a free fun event that all Disney fans could follow. By being free it also meant that there was no financial rewards for anyone partaking. After the line up had been announced, there were a few people that offered sponsorship. I declined their offers as I'd brought together a group of people by telling them the project would have no commercial benefit. Had I agreed to tag some sponsorship on the top of the website, I would have felt like I'd cheated 23 other contributors.

Folks are invited to call MouseVent to leave a message. Is that simply another method of feedback, or will those messages be played on the site?

I've opened up two phone lines for listeners to call with feedback and/or their own contributions. If we get enough voicemails, we'll release an extra audio clip on the 25th of December. We are looking for feedback and listener shout-outs. So if you want to ring in and wish your great aunt a "very merry MouseVent", please do.

By getting our audience to interact with the show, we can gauge how the event has gone. If we don't get any feedback, it'll be hard to know what we should do next year.

To keep costs down for people we have set up two lines, one for UK callers, the other for US callers.

UK callers dial 0208 1234069

US callers dial 407 792-4123

These are voicemail lines and you will not be talking to a person.

Tell me more about you. I know you also run Disney-Links. What other Disney stuff do you do, and when you're not doing Disney stuff, what do you do then?

In my spare time I love building and creating websites. I've tried to do this as a business but find that interacting with 'customers' is too much hassle. I also have a full-time job.

I run a website called Disney-Links which is a links directory site. I ran a website called HiddenDLRP which highlighted the hidden details of Disneyland Paris. I say "ran" because I decided to remove the site about four weeks ago, as it had been hacked and could have caused problems for my other projects. It should return next year.

On top of this, I do a podcast called Your MouseCast, which is a bi-weekly podcast about Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney World.

To answer the last part about what do I do when not doing Disney stuff...

I'm a full-time sign writer which keeps me busy from about 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM. When I get home I have about two hours to spend with my daughter before it is her bedtime. As a rule, spending time with my daughter is more important than anything else. After she has gone to bed, I have a few hours to do 'Disney stuff', then it's my bed time, too.

Luckily, I have a very supporting wife who allows/tolerates my fanaticism.

Thanks, Alan, and a merry MouseVent to you!

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