ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Walt Disney Co.'s newest princess doesn't arrive in movie theaters until next month, but she is already easy to find at Walt Disney World.
Theme-park guests can meet Princess Tiana and watch her perform in a musical riverboat show. They can buy Tiana dolls, undergo Tiana makeovers, and eat Tiana's Magical Kisses - bite-size, white-chocolate-covered graham crackers. They can even get vouchers for a child's ticket to Tiana's movie.
The in-park promotional blitz, extensive even by Disney standards, is part of a companywide push to pump up "The Princess and the Frog," the animated film that is one of Disney's most important movies in years.
Set for nationwide release Dec. 11, "The Princess and the Frog" is Disney's first attempt in more than a decade to add a new heroine to its stable of fairy-tale princesses - a wildly lucrative franchise that now generates an estimated $4 billion in sales across Disney's entertainment empire.
The Disney princesses are particularly important to the company's theme parks. They are, for example, the focal point of the sweeping expansion that Disney World plans to begin work on next year in the Fantasyland section of its Magic Kingdom park.
The possibility of expanding that franchise has Disney pulling every lever it can to ensure that "The Princess and the Frog" is a hit.
"They certainly want to take a hard swing at the plate on something like a new princess," said Doug Mitchelson, an analyst who covers Disney for Deutsche Bank Securities. "The financial performance of this film could be vastly outweighed longer-term if the appeal to kids is strong enough to sustain it in the parks and with consumer products."
Disney has a long history of using its theme parks - which drew an estimated 118 million people worldwide last year - to gin up interest in coming film releases. But the marketing push for "The Princess and the Frog" is both larger and longer. The most obvious example is "Tiana's Showboat Jubilee," a lavish parade and musical revue now performed three times a day in the Magic Kingdom. The show began more than six weeks before the movie's scheduled national release.
There are scores of smaller examples. Tiana merchandise, from cookbooks to school kits, is stocked in gift shops alongside similar items featuring Snow White, Ariel and other princesses. At Disney's Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutiques, which peddle princess makeovers that cost as much as $240 a child, girls can now choose to be outfitted with Tiana dresses, tiaras and wands.
Dara Trujillo, manager of merchandise synergy and franchises for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said "The Princess and the Frog" has been rolled out in the parks three weeks earlier than is typical for a new Disney movie.
The company is anxious to make Tiana a star.
The princesses are one of Disney's most profitable brands, but they lack fresh faces. Disney hasn't introduced a major animated princess since the 1998 film "Mulan," and none has emerged as a true star since Jasmine, of 1992's "Aladdin."
Making Tiana especially important: She is Disney's first black princess. If the character catches on, it will help Disney diversify the princess fan base.
"The princess line of properties has over the last five years been one of our best-growing line of properties, and I think this is fresh content and a natural means of invigorating that even further," Disney Co. Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs said at an investor conference this fall.
Mitchelson, the Deutsche Bank analyst, said the ancillary potential of "The Princess and the Frog" is so large that the best measure of its success won't be box office results.
"To the extent that 'The Princess and the Frog' is only considered modestly successful from a film point of view, that doesn't mean it won't be quite successful from the perspective of broadening the princess franchise," he said.
