Powered by Tim Burton's quirky, visionary imagination, this updated take on Lewis Carroll's fantasy favorite ALICE IN WONDERLAND certainly had audiences tumbling into theaters earlier this year.  Get ready for an equally wild ride as Alice, the Mad Hatter, Red Queen and Cheshire Cat magically appear in your living rooms for all to enjoy again.

The film's elaborately detailed environments of Wonderland get shown off handsomely in the Blu-ray's 1080p high definition video format.  If you already enjoyed the story in theaters, be sure to make liberal use of your remote's pause button to examine the undergrowth between the giant mushrooms, and the regal splendor of the Queens' castles.  Likewise the fantastic characters from the White Rabbit's fine fur to the scaly terror of the Jabberwocky add a crisp realism to Burton's otherworld.

The 5.1 Dolby Digital HD surround channels make good if not overly dynamic use of the sound effects design and Danny Elfman's 12th score for Burton.  ALICE's audio isn't a strenuous test for your home theater system but portray the silly and spooky aural atmospheres effectively.

In addition to the typical menu options for setup and chapter indexes, Disney's Blu-ray disc presentation offers twelve making-of featurettes evenly divided into two themes: Wonderland Characters and Making Wonderland.  Not the most imaginative phraseology, is it?  A lack of such out-of-the-box thinking embodied by the film short changes this high-def translation to home theaters, barely making a dent in Blu-ray's true potential for bonus features: no directory commentary, interactive picture-in-picture integration of making-of featurettes . . . nothing that allows the Blu experience to mirror Burton's far out flair for the grandiose.

Instead, six rather typical HD featurettes examine only four of the Wonderland Characters: Finding Alice briefly documents Mia Wasikowska's casting and internal journey to advance Alice to age 19 for her return to Wonderland; Johnny Depp details the subtle psychological layers he invested in The Mad Hatter; meet Depp's dancing double in a short primer on The Futterwacken Dance (not much to tell here beyond the dancer's YouTube-fame skills); Helena Bonham Carter creates her big-headed version of The Red Queen inspired by Burton's early character sketches; a quickly paced featurette shows Carter's makeup process in Time-Lapse: Sculpting the Red Queen; and Anne Hathaway reveals that a flighty Norma Desmond was one of her inspirations in realizing The White Queen.  Enjoyable mini-documentaries to be sure, but in no way do they take viewers in-depth above and beyond the call of the usual bonus features and EPK video clips.

Likewise the Making Wonderland featurettes meet bonus feature expectations but surprisingly do not exceed them: Danny Elfman earns the first spotlight for Scoring Wonderland, which is a nice victory for score artists who almost always take a back seat to more flashy featurette topics; Effecting Wonderland is a study of the technical magic employed to realize the fantastic looks of Stayne, Tweedledee and Tweedledum and the Red Queen; Stunts of Wonderland highlight Burton's injection of action and finale combat of Alice's heroics; the visual effects wizards return with their shrinking and growing spells for Alice in Making the Proper Size; and treats abound in duplicates ready to get chomped and stomped as Tea Party Props.

As noted, these twelve featurettes give viewers on-set glimpses of making ALICE with the cast and crew, but their presentation is anything but inventive and fall well short of exploiting the ever-advancing tricks and technology of the Blu-ray format.  Families and fans gathering to enjoy another trip down the rabbit hole with Alice and the Mad Hatter may not seek or want anything more, and that's fine.  But BD aficionados may be disappointed that Disney and Tim Burton don't offer more 21st-century style goodies on this Blu release, especially after the studio's fine track record going all out on the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Blu-ray editions.

The value of the Blu-ray Combo Pack increases with the inclusion of the standard-definition DVD edition of ALICE IN WONDERLAND which shares three of the same bonus features: Finding Alice, The Mad Hatter and Effecting Wonderland.  These span the range of character, story and effects featurettes typifying the ALICE experience. With the third disc of the Combo Pack, viewers can import the feature film to their computer or mobile device for on-the-go entertainment — Disney's popular and prominent incentive for purchasers to upgrade to the Blu-ray Combo Pack value even if they don't yet own a BD player.  It's Alice everywhere you look and the best value of the three available editions, eclipsing the stand-alone 1-disc Blu-ray and DVD releases.

This Blu-ray release could have taken audiences deeper into the myriad maze of creative inspirations and visions Tim Burton had when reinventing ALICE IN WONDERLAND for the 21st Century, and maybe some future Diamond Edition will fully exploit the HD format and dig deeper into this mind-bending adventure.  Disney's Blu-ray Combo Pack is a satisfying afternoon of tea and fantasy, but it's not the lavish, satisfying feast to satisfy BD fans' appetites.