I'm going to be using a sub-domain approach and a stand alone direct domain driven campaign as well. So, it'll be interesting to see which one works better and which one will need more tweaks to get to where I want to go.
I started getting serious with the idea based on my own
Glam Rock Talk site where I have 56 bands from the 70's and 80's each with their own "band site" for fans of that band. If you click on the "home" page, you'll see that I set up a directory with links to each of the sites. I also have links on the forum homepage where all of the bands are listed in a customized forum towards the bottom of the forum homepage. So, I'm going to try and link to the 'sub-domains' throughout my Disney site and try and generate some traffic that way as well as try and add enough content to get some nice Google placement. So, we'll see how it goes.