It actually bothers me a little that they keep going on and on about how this is "A return to classic Disney 2-D" when Lilo and Stitch was 2002 and Brother Bear came out in 2003 and HotR came out in 2004. I know CGI has been dominant for this decade, and I know how important this performing well is towards continued creation of 2-D, but they've been working on this movie for at LEAST 2 years, if not 3.
It hasn't been THAT long since they did an animated film, and before the annual rush in the 90's, it was incredibly common for it to be 3-5 years between animated Disney flicks. Thats why they were big, special, important events. In the 50 years between 1937 and 1987 they only produced like 26 films. then in the 15 years between 1988 and 2004 they produced 19! (PLUS Goofy Movie, Duck Tales, and the many Pooh movies, and the awesome television stuff and dozens of straight to dvd things, and of course all the Pixar stuff, but thats not 2-D so we're not counting it)
That decade was an unparalleled ammount of quantity coming out, and yeah the last couple years have been slow compared to that… but compared to the overall history of Disney, thats completley within the norm. Very strange.
But then, the early trailers also focused on just Mermaid-Lion King, so it sort of feels like they're trying to pretend this is the first major 2-D Disney animated film since 1994. I know they're sort of trying to pretend Fantasia 2000, Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and HotR didn't happen, but... still.