Cirque du Soleil – Complaints and Suggestions Revisited

In my blog post and video from January about some issues with Cirque du Soleil, I was complaining about three things. 1.) about the hard to impossible to find Wintuk show soundtrack 2.) the unavailability of merchandize, especially the media content (DVDs, CDs etc.) outside the United States and 3.) about the missing tracks on many of the so called official soundtracks of Cirque du Soleil shows.

It is two months later now and I decided to check once more to see if anything changed this my last “rant”.

If you rather watch and listen than reading my blog post, watch my 9 minutes video below, which covers pretty much the same content as I do in my writing below.

Backup URL to Video on vimeo (https://vimeo.com/92755509).

Issue 1 Reviewed – Where to Buy the Official Wintuk Soundtrack CD

Okay, first to the positive things (bitter sweet actually, because it is not all positive, only partially).

cds-boutique-cd-section_for_usa-page1-03012009

When I checked the CD section of the Cirque online shop (Cirque Boutique), I couldn’t believe my eyes at first.

There it was (see screen shot image to your right), the?? official soundtrack CD for the show “Wintuk” is now finally also available in the general Cirque du Soleil merchandise online store and not only in that special micro online shop on another web site that they created, just for that one lonely show.

You have to have “United States” selected as ship-to country to get that listing.

You can still buy the official Wintuk soundtrack CD at that special store. Regarding the listing. Also note that the United States version has even a second listing page for music cd releases (see second image on the left). I will get back to that one in a moment.

Okay, so far so good. But Icds-boutique-cd-section_for_usa-page2-03012009 also tried Google again, to see, if I would be able now to find the sound track cd, if I would still be looking for it, like I was last year.

So I typed “buy official Wintuk soundtrack cd” into the Google search box and checked the results that I got back on my screen. You can look at the screen shot of the Google.com search results page with my comments below.

The number one results is still a torrent with the pirated version of the soundtrack CD. mmmh.

The number two result is an eBay auction listing for the CD. Also not so great, because folks are sometimes abusing the lack of availability or easy access to things to make a quick buck by purchasing the stuff for the original price from the original source that nobody can find and then turn around to sell the same product with hefty profit margins added to it at a place that people are actually able to find.

The number three listing is finally the official special mini store for the Wintuk show, where you can buy the CD without any problems or artificial mark-ups etc. Hallelujah.

google search buy wintuk

This is funny. The number four listing is my blog post from January where I complained about the inability to find the soundtrack hehe. Well, that post has also (just like this one) a link to the CD at the official store. I wonder if my nice and descriptive text links from my Cirque du Soleil 101 primer article and my other blog post had enough “Google Juice” to push the product listing of the CD out of the supplemental search index hell of Google and up into the top of the SERP’s for the terms where it actually should rank number one?

Possible. My blog is getting older and older, more and more traffic and more and more authority and Google PageRank as a consequence of it.

The Cirque Boutique is nowhere to be found at all, but that does not surprise me a bit. I couldn’t even help them with a link to the item there, because last time I checked, deep linking into the Cirque Boutique eShop did not work at all (unless you had a cookie set from a previous visit to the same online shop already, where you selected the correct shipping destination (country), which makes no sense whatsoever). Why would I want to refer people who visited the store already back to the same place again. If they wanted to buy something, then they probably did so already.

Well, until now, the few okay to good listings are surrounded by junk or unrelated?? stuff, like promo videos on YouTube, Torrents, Torrents, Torrents, a Wikipedia article, the old out of stock Amazon.com marketplace listing of the CD, some forum posts and more Torrents to download the pirated version of the CD in MP3 format.

Issue 2 Reviewed – Cirque du Soleil Merchandise outside the U.S.

If you read the first segment of this post, then you already saw the CD listings for customers from the United States at the Cirque Boutique online store.

cds-boutique-dvd-section_for_usa-03012009

The listing shows 20 Music CD releases on two pages, available for purchase.

To your left is a screen shot of the DVD section of the store, also for customers in the United States only. Not too bad, 16 DVDs listed in total, 2 of them unfortunately out of stock, which makes it 14 DVDs available for purchase.

Now I went back, erased my cookie for the store that set the U.S. location and selected India as shipping destination instead.

The prices of the store are still shown in U.S. dollars, but the look and feel of the store changed (different site) and most importantly, the listings of available products changed as well. I did not embed the screen shots. I only linked to them via plain text link. Here they are:

The results were bad, really bad.

The DVD selection is worse that it was last year in September, when I checked the last time. Instead of 5 DVDs available back then, only 4 DVDs were available 7 months later. Nothing compared to the 16 (or 14) DVD releases available for U.S. customers.

The Music CD selection is almost as bad, but just not as bad as the DVD section. It lists 11 CDs, but shows 4 of them as being out of stock = 7 CDs actually available. Not convincing, if you consider that for U.S. customers are 20 CDs available to choose from at the same category.

Cirque du Soleil – Fix This!

Oddities in Cirque Boutique U.S. Listings

1. Myst??re CD or Myst??re Live CD or Myst??re What?

504452_3 506776_3

Have a look at the product detail pages screen shots for the two CDs.

I will keep this one short. Look at the screen shots and tell me, if you notice something?

Okay, I am just kidding. They are the same, except for the Image and the Catalog numbers. The real product pages even link to the same music sample files. The CDs are virtually identical, except for the cover and booklet.

So don’t waste your money on both of them.. buy only one of them, unless you are a collector.

2. No Thrilling Ride to Kooza Show DVD

The Cirque Boutique lists the latest show DVD release for “Kooza”, but unfortunately it is out of stock. The release contains two DVDs and the item is sold exclusively through the Cirque du Soleil Boutique. It is not made (officially) available anywhere else.

I purchased the DVD (2 discs) already a while ago and even blogged about it, when I got it. Before the show DVD was released, a “making of” documentary about Kooza was released earlier. The DVD release called “A Thrilling Ride Through Kooza”?? is only 47 minutes in length.

See screen shot of product detail page for the documentary DVD “A Thrilling Ride Through Kooza”.

509941_3 509122_3

The documentary DVD is available for $19 for, which is a not so good price for a rather short making of documentary feature. Like KA Extreme, about the show KA, which is also short like this. They did a better job with “Flow” about the show “O” and “The Mystery of Myst??re”, which are each 80 minutes in length or “Lovesick” about the show “Zumanity”, which is 99 minutes in length.

Anyhow, the thing is that the whole 47 minutes documentary that they sell for $19 dollars is included on the second DVD discs with bonus features of the show DVD release for only $10 more. That CD, where you get a lot more bang for your buck is out of stock. Not very good for their own latest DVD show release, which they did not make available for purchase at other large retailers like Amazon.com etc.

If you do not happen to walk by a physical Cirque Store location (in Vegas, Orlando, Tokyo or Macao) where they might have a copy of it left (if you are lucky), your options to get the DVD legally are thinning out quickly.

Guess what, the whole disc set is available for download in ISO format via warez torrents or on Usenet. It will probably not for long that pirated versions will be the only versions that can be found in Google, unless I write a few more blog posts about the DVD release to out-rank them.

Not good. FIX THAT!

Kooza_DVD_prod_detail

That Cirque cannot do much that quickly about missing tracks on soundtrack CD releases is clear.

However, I hope that the OST CD releases for the shows that launched last year in Asia and Las Vegas will become available for purchase soon. The music for the show “Criss Angel – Believe”, which premiered in October in Las Vegas, Nevada, the show “Zaia”, which premiered in Macao, China last August and the show “Zed”, which launched also last October at the Disneyland Tokyo in its custom build theatre.

I hope that Cirque will not show the same attitude that it shows to U.S. content for non-U.S. customers in reverse. I mean that the merchandise for the Asian shows will not become available for purchase to customers outside of Asia (e.G. the United States). It would not surprise me too much, if this happens, but I try to remain optimistic and hope that Cirque will get their act together and fix this problem.

I also hope that the sound tracks will be complete. I will get them, one way or another, if not via purchase from a store officially, then via MP3 download from the Internet, where they will become available with absolute certainty.

Oh Boy, this post became longer than I originally intended. It also contains more stuff than my 10 minutes video. So if you read this post instead of just watching the video, them you got rewarded for hanging in with me :).

But now it is enough! Seriously!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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Categories: Cirque Du Soleil Cirque-Videos
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Published on: March 2, 2009

 Comments (5) 

  1. Anonymous says:

    When and what are you going to do about that disaster show of yours, Believe? I saw the show. It is horrible and very expensive, not to mention that it’s so-called star yells and screams profanity at journalists. He has never apologized so I hear you people did it for him. I would like to know how you are going to deal with this embarressment?

  2. My show? How did you get that idea?

    I have not seen Believe yet. It seems to avoiding me. I am not living in Las Vegas, so I am not there all the time. During my last two visits I was supposed to see the show. The 1st time did not work out, because the premiere was delayed. The second time around, the whole show had vacation (not just weekend), so getting a day earlier to Vegas or leaving a day later couldn’t do the trick. I think I will be in Vegas again at the end of the Summer and hope that I then finally will be able to see it.

    I heard mixed responses to the show, but also unusual many negative ones, not typical for a Cirque show. I wrote a post about that as a response to the feedback that I got from viewers of my YouTube Channel.

    http://www.roysac.com/blog/2008/11/negative-feedback-for-criss-angel-and.html

    I don’t know about the screaming of profanities at journalists. Do you happen to have a link to a video recording of it? I am sure that this floats around on the Internet somewhere.

    I have not heard much in general from him since the premiere of the show.

    last but not least.. I heard feedback from people who saw the show, who absolutely loved it. Until I have seen the show myself, I will stick to my assumption that I made at the blog post of mine (see link above). I think that there are many people who have the wrong expectations about the show and then get disappointed.

    p.s. How in the world did you end up at this blog post of mine for your comment? I have 2-3 blog posts that are entirely or at least half of it about Criss Angel’s Believe. This post only mentions the soundtrack in one sentence. I am just curious. Thanks.

  3. Oops.. Here is the link to the mentioned post once more, but this time hyper-linked.

    Negative Feedback for Criss Angel and His Show Believe.

    Cheers!

  4. Anonymous says:

    Dear Sir: With all due respect, I must wonder if you did not hear the hoopla about gossip blogger Perez Hilton being present at Believe this past week? Mr. Angel swore at him for sitting in the audience. I cannot write the dirty words here, but you can see that if you visit a Norm Clarke article about the tantrum he through and the apology Mr. Hilton got from Cirque.
    Also, I read your other blog. It seems I am not in the minority if most of the people feel the show is less than adequate. I am glad you are optimistic and hope you do enjoy the show when you see it.

    However, I did not call it your show. Please forgive me. I just assumed you were Cirque and had ownership of this production..It is not my intention to give an idea to you that you are responsible nor is it to blame you. I was surfing and found your site. I myself saw the show and with much respect, I can honestly say it does not live up to its tv counterpart. Magicians on itricks and IMS are complaining about it so I see I am not alone and in layman’s terms, it is not very good. Especially when one person goes and spends over $164 a ticket for front row seats and is refused an autograph because they look like a journalist. This happened to me and I was merely a fan. Or I should say “ex fan” of his. Realizing he his a fraud has been disappointing to my children.

  5. No, I did not hear about this hoopla. I also have to admit that I am not following any gossip publication be it print, TV or online. They make big deals out of nothing and feed on lower human instincts and emotions. Basically the scum on earth you cannot live with, but also cannot live without.

    I looked up some stuff after your comment and noticed that most of the “dramatic” stuff was posted by Perez Hilton himself… at different publications, cross-referenced to make it look bigger than it probably was.

    The columns were written in part by Perez and others by one of his buddies.. not very reliable sources and certainly having a huge conflict of interest (I do some Wikipedia editing for a couple years already.. there you learn to look at those things :) )

    I could not find out what the words or sentences were that Criss shouted at Perez. That would be interesting to know. If you know and do not want to post them here, send me an email or submit them via the contact form at RoySAC.com/contact.asp.

    What Perez tweeted was not very nice. I don’t know if that what Perez put out is less offensive than a straight forward “You Suck” to justify a blunt response like “F*ck you” or “F*ck off”. The choices of words might be different depending on language skills and level of education, but I would not dare to decide, which of them does hurt another person more.

    Criss should not have yelled at Perez at all, but then he is also just human after all. Different people have different temper and for some is it harder to control it than for others. That Criss was provoked… on purpose, that is obvious.

    I need to watch the show to do my own personal judgement of it, but I know that it won’t help improve the show, if people give the performer(s) a hard time instead of trying to help and encourage them to improve on stuff or fix what you can see broken. Constructive criticism is never bad, even if it is hard or even devastating, because it has at least substance, can often be addressed and is most importantly truly honest.

    I would say the same in any case. I am not a big Criss Angel fan and never was. I watched some episodes of Mindfreak and thought that they are entertaining and became curious how the mix of street magic and Cirque du Soleil would be like. Different for sure. Beautiful? Well, beauty is still in the eye of the beholder, which is good.

    And yes, I never worked for Cirque du Soleil, not even as a Janitor :)

    Cheers!
    Carsten

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