Disney Singalongs on DVD

If your kids are into karaoke, or just like reading and/or music, Disney has some cute DVD’s they may like.

They’re Sing Along Songs, two of which showed up on our doorstep recently as representative samples of the beast.

And beasts they feature in abundance. The first title features all “Pooh-related” numbers, with such animal acts as Edward Bear himself, along with Piglet, Tigger and the gang. The songs include:

Winnie the Pooh’s theme song
Rumbly in my Tumbly
The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers
Kanga Roo Hop

And many more.

The other disc appealed to us more (though being “mumble mumble” years of age we’re obviously not the target market here!). It’s The Lion King, the Circle of Life, and features songs not only from that Disney masterpiece but from other classics such as the Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and others.

Each disc is about 35-40 minutes long, sans extras, and you can either play the whole shebang at once or jump to a particular favorite as a starting point. The menus are interminable and spoken, the latter of which is probably helpful for the toddlers at which these titles are aimed.

The songs are basically just the clips from the movie (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), with karaoke-like lyrics appearing on screen for the kids’ reference. There are some new songs, with new animation, too.

Audio quality is okay. We noticed that on “Mermaid’s” “Part of Your World” the sound was muddier than on the DVD of the movie, but this is a home theater snob’s reaction to a kiddie title he’d never watch ordinarily anyway.

Ditto for the video. Whereas such DVD’s as “Beauty and the Beast” are released in anamorphic widescreen, these discs are full frame/Pan&Scan, so owners of 16x9 TV’s will want to stretch/zoom them to fill their screens. To be fair, not all the titles from which the songs are drawn are widescreen, so Disney may have been trying to walk a fine line here. That said, however, we'd have rather seen them offer anamorphic where possible and put black bars beside the 4x3 screen ("Keyholing") where not possible.

Still, as mentioned at nauseam, these aren’t audio/videophile titles. But it’s too bad the overall result is one of cut corners, because Disney is generally one of the best studios when it comes to overall DVD disc quality, even with its recent made for video releases.

Extras on both titles include “Word Time Vocabulary Activities”, which help kids learn reading of simple words, and “Songs of Note,” a simple musical game where they’re prompted to repeat musical sequences presented to them.

Not classic discs by any means, but probably a terrific activity for the youngsters.

Tell us at TechnoFile what YOU think