After every Super Bowl, it’s customary for the winner to yell “I’m going to Disney World!” as a commercial for the most magical place on Earth. Disney briefly once tried to get other sports involved with the tradition. There as a commercial featuring Patrick Roy, then of the 1993 Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens, saying he’s going to it’s California counterpart Disneyland. The tradition keeps going on every year in the NFL.
Well, the Stanley Cup was the one going to Disney World this past weekend. More specifically, the Cup was headed to the EPCOT theme park of the Walt Disney World resort. Evan Rodrigues of the Florida Panthers was seen with the Cup and park guests were told that a commercial was being filmed. A post on X from the Panthers showed the Cup on Disney's Skyliner, a transportation system that goes between parks and hotels at the resort, as well.
The Cup was near the France Pavilion area of the theme park which famously features countries of the world themed areas. Why was the cup in France? Well, judging by the pictures we’ve seen, the cup was surrounded and filled with stuffed version of the cartoon character Remy from Pixar’s “Ratatouille”. The film follows Remy, a rat, as he follows his dream of becoming a French chef despite being, like we just said, a rat. The France Pavilion features a ride based on the movie “Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure”.
No word on if the Cup made a detour to the Canada Pavilion. It would be the closest the cup has been to Canada since Montreal won and Roy filmed that Disney commercial we were talking about in 1993. Better luck next year, Canada, maybe.
You probably figured where this is going. The Panthers famously have a connection with rats following Scott Mellanby’s infamous locker room encounter during the 1996 playoffs that lead to the team’s first Stanley Cup final appearance. A rat has become one of their mascots. Fans throw plastic rats on the ice to celebrate victory. Current Panther Brad Marchand has been compared to a rat by opposing fans and has fully embraced it with his Panthers teammates who pelt him with the plastic rats thrown on the ice after playoff victories. The only thing that would have made the Cup's trip to Epcot funnier is if Marchand was in attendance. Maybe he was still at Dairy Queen.
The cup and Disney have had several run in’s over the years. Disney is the parent company of ESPN, who is a major NHL media rights holder in the United States. Disney used to own the Anaheim Ducks team and maintains a strong relationship with them to this day. After Southern California’s NHL teams have won the Stanley Cup (Ducks and the Los Angeles Kings) the cup visited Disneyland. After the Tampa Bay Lightning won back to back cup championships in 2020 and 2021 the cup went to Florida’s Magic Kingdom just as they did in 2004.
Walt Disney World is in Central Florida which is decidedly Lightning territory. The Orlando area does not have an NHL team but they do have the minor league Orlando Solar Bears. They’re the Lightning’s ECHL affiliate.