Pluto Region1 wrote:But I do have a question, everyone keeps saying they really HOPE this or they really HOPE that, so I guess we can't trust the current official release schedules? I mean, is Disney prone to changing the release dates over the history of the Platinum series or is this just a recent phenomenon?
Well, they change their release "policy" every so often:
The
Limited Issues were originally only in print 8 weeks, but soon after all 9 were released, a boxset showed up with all the titles (I'm sure that also was only available for 8 weeks). Then when they had excess copies, they repackaged three of them as
Gold Classic Collection discs (
Pinocchio,
Hercules, and
Mulan). Then the other 6 titles were offered as a free DVD for people who pre-ordered
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Platinum Edition in 2001. I remember even reading on the boards that some people pre-ordered
Snow White six times just to get the other titles.
Also, the
Gold Classic Collection titles were originally supposed to stay in print indefinitely, regardless if a title was re-visited later in a special edition set. The first titles to go out of print were
Pinocchio and
Mulan in January 2003 (and I'm sure the GCC disc for
A Bug's Life went out of print sooner than that). Then the
Alice in Wonderland,
Pocahontas, and
Mary Poppins GCC discs went out of print a short while before their two-disc editions were released. Following those three titles,
The Aristocats,
Robin Hood, and
The Fox and the Hound went OOP in Janjary 2006 to make way for their respective re-releases (though
The Aristocats was pushed back from March 2007 to Spring 2008). And this year we saw the OOP'ing of
Saludos Amigos and
The Three Caballeros. It's also interesting to note that the GCC disc for
Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas is a seasonal title (like many other holiday discs from Disney) and only available in the winter.
The
Platinums as we all know were originally supposed to be one a year (every October), but in May 2003, they added four more titles to the line:
Pinocchio,
Fantasia,
Peter Pan, and
Sleeping Beauty. They also changed the order of the original ten titles, and added the February/March slot as well. Then in March 2006, we first got the news that
Peter Pan was being moved from its Platinum Schedule to a Spring 2007 release, and at the time, many of us believed it meant it was removed from the Platinum line, in order to tie-in to the
Tinker Bell movie. Of course, come October, the insert in
The Little Mermaid: Platinum Edition announces that
Peter Pan was the new March 2007 Platinum, thus bumping
101 Dalmatians to 2008, while
The Jungle Book remained intact in its October 2007 slot.
And the
Treasures have had only a couple "changes" to their releases. The third wave of Treasures were delayed from December 2003 to May 2004, in order to manufacture more discs and to remove Roy E. Disney's signature from the sets. In lieu of a wave three Treasures, December 2003 instead saw
The Ultimate Treasure Chest, a Costco-exclusive boxset that repackaged the first two waves (without tins, certificate of authenticities, or reproduction posters).
Escapay
sorry if it sounded like that.