Prep and Landing

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Prep and Landing is a 2009 computer animated half hour Christmas Special produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios.

It is a story of two holiday elves, part of an elite unit known as Prep and Landing, which arrives at each house ahead of time and prepares for Santa's arrival.

Wayne is an old pro who's been working on Prep and Landing for over 200 years and is finally hoping to receive a promotion. After being turned down, he is teamed up with a new recruit, Lanny. The two head off to Timmy's house to prepare for Santa's arrival. But with Lanny's inexperience and Wayne's new defeatist attitude, things go wrong real quickly, and the house is not prepped in time. And with the threat of a terrible snow storm, it appears that Santa has no choice but to skip Timmy's house that year. Realizing the error of his ways, Wayne only has a limited amount of time to make things right.

It has been followed by a seven minute short for the 2010 holiday season titled "Operation: Secret Santa" featuring Betty White as Mrs. Claus and in 2011, "Prep and Landing: Naughty vs Nice" about the lists being tampered with by a child who got a hold of elven technology. It was also the first Disney property to cross over with Marvel in the comic book "Mansion: Impossible" in which Wayne and Lanny must prepare the Avengers Mansion for Santa's arrival.

Tropes used in Prep and Landing include:
  • All There in the Manual: ABC.com's official website contains information and backstory about the characters not revealed in the special itself.
  • Better as Friends: Wayne and Maggee according to the website.
  • Blackmail: Wayne threatens Magee by saying that if she doesn't patch his call through to Santa, he's going to tell everyone "about you and Tiny!" It works.
  • Brick Joke: A somewhat literal one, involving a heavy brick-shaped fruitcake. It gets forgotten early in the show only to resurface for the finale.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: Lanny's a clumsy rookie, but when the situation gets critical, he proves just why he was his class' top student.
  • Cameo: The labrador that gets sedated at the beginning is a recolor of Bolt.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The Christmas decorations Lanny points out after landing on the house.
    • All of the elves' gadgets demonstrated in the first sequence.
  • Circling Birdies: Substitute 'birdies' with 'Christmas lights'.
  • Crazy Prepared: The entire Prep And Landing elite force. They have a device and protocol for every problem that might arise. Except for disgruntled elves who fall behind schedule. But even then...
  • Does This Remind You of Anything??: Tiny's hat suddenly shoots straight up when Wayne threatens Magee about "telling everyone about you and Tiny."
  • The Faceless: Santa is only ever seen from the shoulders down. Tiny, on the other hand, is so short (even by elf standards) that only the top of his hat gets seen on-camera.
  • The Grinch: Wayne considers his Prep and Landing duty as his "job" and nothing more. But after getting passed over for a promotion (his only motivation for continuing to do good work for 200 years), his ego has become deflated, his enthusiasm for the job is gone, and he becomes lazy and goofs off (during a mission) instead of fulfilling his duties. He even acknowledges it with an aside: "Yeah, I'm being naughty."
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Wayne is Flik and Magee is Dr. Elliot Reed!
  • Hold Your Holiday Horses: The elves have an extensive vocabulary of Christmas-themed jargon, codenames, and (yes), euphemisms.
  • Hot-Blooded: At least two of Santa's team of eight reindeer seem to tackle every emotion they express to its extreme.
  • How Can Santa Deliver All Those Toys?
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: Non-alcoholic version. Magee drinks egg nog lattes whenever she's stressed out.
  • Instant Sedation: The elves carry around ornaments that explode into magic dust that causes anyone affected to instantly fall asleep.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Thrasher, Dasher's cousin, who threatens Lanny on their first meeting. The "heart of gold" part is that he's a good friend of Wayne according to the website.
  • Mission Control
  • Naive Newcomer: Lanny
  • Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Timmy does this to Wayne when he's talking in his sleep.
  • Passed Over Promotion
  • Saving Christmas: Wayne and Lanny must do this for one little boy.
  • Shout-Out: To almost every Christmas carol in the English language -- the Prep and Landing force uses dozens of easily-recognized Christmas phrases as slang terms AND code names, such as "figgy pudding" for a house that must be skipped because it wasn't prepped for Santa to land there.
    • Also: the codename for the sleigh itself is Rosebud.
    • In the french dub, it's instead "The Red Line", in a clear reference to the famous Red Telephone.
    • The scrawny little tree from A Charlie Brown Christmas is on a shelf behind Magee's desk.
    • When Wayne is goofing off, the first thing that pops on the TV is Mickey's Christmas Carol.
  • True Meaning of Christmas: Wayne (re)learns this eventually.

Operation: Secret Santa provides examples of:

Magee: Good luck. And if something happens to you I just wanted to say... I’m claiming your snowmobile.
Wayne: I cancelled the insurance.
Magee: Okay, bye!

Mansion: Impossible provides examples of:

Naughty vs Nice provides examples of:

Wayne: "Oh frostbite."

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