The Collection Chamber: DISNEY'S ACTIVITY CENTRE: BEAUTY & THE BEAST (aka MAGICAL BALLROOM)

Return to the magical world of the Beast's castle. Join all of your favourite characters as they throw Beast a magnificent surprise party and dance the night away!

Mrs. Pott's Teatime Table
Get the party ready before time runs out! Arrange the dishes and the food as fast as you can to help Mrs. Potts get things prepared for the party.

Be the Belle of the Ball
You must get everything ready for the Beast's surprise party. Choose the dance steps, the musical instruments, the decorations and Belle's dress. You'll have a ball!

Cogsworth's Library Mystery
Using Cogsworth's Clue Book, search through the books to find the hidden key to the secret passages to get to the West Wing!

Belle's Writing Desk
Make your own artwork, invitations, greeting cards and stained glass creations using dozens of characters and props. You can print them out in colour or black and white to colour them in by hand!
Create magical dances for Belle and the Beast.
Solve the mysteries and find your way through the castle's hidden passages to get to other activities.
Help Mrs. Potts and Chip prepare tea.
Be creative and produce a whole range of your own art work.

~ from the back of the box

As the time of its release Beauty and the Beast got more video game tie-ins than you might expect, but it would take a while for Disney's seminal animated classic of the renaissance era to come to an educational CD-ROM. Disney's Beauty and the Beast: Activity Centre was released in the UK in 2001, thought our American friends may know it as Magical Ballroom from the year prior.

It continues the trend of having less content than earlier entires, with only half an hour's worth of content at best. There are two mini-games and two activities to keep the sprogs occupied, and there's an admiral attempt at tying them all together; Belle wants to surprise Beast by planning a party.

Food and drink needs to be organised, thanks Mrs. Potts' stacking mini-game in the kitchen and decorations, dress-wear and dances can be chosen in th ballroom. You can't expect Beast to turn up without an invitation, so put your creative hat on and head to Belle's writing desk in the garden of all places. A version of this simplified art tool can be found in most of Disney's Activity Centres, but the addition of stained glass windows which can be lit up adds something new, if not exactly revolutionary.

You'll also need to find your way into the forbidden west wing to deliver that invitation. This is done by scouring the library for a key. And by scouring, I mean by playing a game of Guess Who. There's sadly nothing in the tantalisingly locked-off West Wing, which I was looking to. As a boy, the spooky west wing was always more interesting than the fancy ballroom. Then again, this game is primarily aimed at girls.

Once the key has been found, the refreshments served, the party prepped and the invitations sent (by selecting 'print' on one of your creations), you can head to the ballroom to witness the culmination of all your work. That's pretty much it. No one mini-game stands out as anything particularly good, though I did get the most enjoyment with Cogsworth and Lumiere's game of deduction in the library. The animation is also pretty stunning, but overall, Beauty and the Beast's belated entry in the Activity Centre cannon is a little sparse. Disappointing.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber QRes to run on modern systems. The game must run with an actual desktop resolution of 800x600. Read the ChamberNotes.txt if your current desktop resolution is anything other than 1920x1080. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 257 Mb. Install Size: 352 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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