The Walt Disney Company has announced they will be building Disney’s Art of Animation Resort, which will be their first non-DVC hotel in seven years. The hotel will feature 2,000 rooms with construction starting this summer and a planned opening in 2012. The resort will be built across the lake from Disney’s Pop Century and will use the land previously cleared for the second phase of Pop Century.

The building will feature 1,120 suites and 864 traditional hotel rooms with themes based on the companies most popular animated movies: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Finding Nemo and Cars. It will be priced as a value resort as Disney is betting travelers will continue to be frugal with their money for years to come even after we pass through this recession.

According to a jury, Walt Disney World’s Tower of Terror ride did not cause a stroke for Marvin Cohen from Philadelphia in 1998. The man claims he suffered a stroke weeks after riding the attraction and the sudden drop tore an artery leading towards his brain. Jurors took only three hours to find that Disney was not responsible for the mans stroke.

The Register Guard is reporting that the Walt Disney Company has concluded the University of Oregon’s costumed Duck is no longer subject to Disney’s trademark on Donald Duck.

Oregon has had a deal with Disney dating back to a handshake between Walt and the university allowing the university to use images similar to Donald Duck as their mascot. Oregon would have to get permission from Disney to use the Duck in any situation not outlined in the original agreement. Now, Disney is saying, the Duck only has to report to the University. The original agreement had also been set so that Disney maintained ownership of the image and the costume itself and Disney could have the costume be destroyed if the contract was canceled.

The licensing agreement will remain in effect for any printed logos for which the university gets 12 percent cut on all sales with Disney getting half of that.

Disney’s Wide World of Sports has now become ESPN Wide World of Sports on Thursday, February 25, 2010. According to Mouse Planet, this change will bring about some new dynamics to games played at the arena including 42 high-definition remote video cameras that will tape games played at the resort. The taping will be broadcast on 40 high-def televisions around the resort, 3 jumbo screens, and a dedicated television channel in every Disney hotel room giving youth players the feeling of being in the big leagues.

The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft and Disney have had ‘in-depth talks’ about streaming ESPN content to the Xbox 360. Sources have indicated that ESPN could provide live streams of events, like what is available on ESPN 360, to Xbox users including interactive games about the event.

Last night a computer issue on the express monorail track left a monorail stuck between the Transportation and Ticket Center and the Contemporary Resort and took about 30 minutes to repair. The train had to be towed to the next stop along the beamway. This comes just three days after a major power outage knocked out the monorails and stranded 300 guests on the trains.

The Walt Disney World monorail system stranded passengers for hours early this morning due to a power failure according to the Orlando Sentinel that started at 1 a.m. Riders had to be rescued by Reedy Creek emergency crews via fire truck laders or through the roof of the monorail. No injuries were reported.

Walt Disney World has combined the undamaged parts of the Purple and Pink monorails to form a new monorail which will be designated Teal. The monorail is expected to be put into service later this year. Disney said the colors pink and purple would be retired after they were involved in a fatal accident earlier this year. This will bring the total monorails at Walt Disney World to 11 and the Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the resort expects to add a 12th train next year.

The Walt Disney Company has won the dismissal of the Segway lawsuit and had the original settlement voided according to Bloomberg.com. In 2007, two Illinois residents and one from Iowa sued the Walt Disney Company because the park refused them from using their Segways in the park. Disney had agreed to settle the case by purchasing 15 stand-up vehicles to settle the case.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell in Orlando, Florida voided the decision saying that the guests are able to use wheelchairs or scooters and failed to show that the Segways were needed to access the resorts. “Although some individuals may, with good reason, not want to use those devices and instead prefer to use a Segway, that preference — standing alone — is not essential to accessing Disney’s Parks,” Presnell wrote in the opinion.

An unknown device was found attached to a Walt Disney World bus Thursday leaving thousands of guests stranded as all Disney buses were recalled to the bus maintenance facility near Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Disney had all the buses inspected at the facility to find any additional devices on their 300 other buses. A device was found on one of the buses by a maintenance worker around 3 p.m.

The device was inspected by the Orange County Sheriff’s Bomb Squad for 3.5 hours before being declared harmless. It is still not known what exactly was attached to the bus.