goofy4tink said:
You seem to have had the exact same experience I did!! I was there for the Friday morning, 7-12, taping last year. We got to the turnstyle at about 7, got in at 7:45, herded to the Castle. I ended up in the third row from the front. I have said it before, but it bears repeating...I have never seen such pushing, shoving, jostling for front row position. Those with young children seem to feel 'entitled' to the front row. The comments were like..."Well, my kids won't be able to see back here, just let us move closer." or "But, my kids are so cute in their special clothes, they should be able to be seen by the camera's." I kid you not. I stood there, in the same spot for 3 hours, only to have about 20 seconds of audience tape actually shown!! My knees, lower back are waaaay too old for that. They did pick one or two folks from the audience to interview, but nothing more than that. I finally left at about 11:00. As far as bathroom breaks go...I do know that there were several people around me that tried to head to the bathrooms about 2 hrs into the taping. Others in the crowd made it pretty uncomfortable for them to get back towards the front. There seemed to be people that were trying to move up to the front row by just saying excuse me, trying to get to my wife (husband, kids whatever), but no one had seen them leave in the first place!!!
It was crowded on Main St., but the rest of MK wasn't too bad, at least not on Friday. Sat was a bit chaotic mid-afternoon. Not sure about the evening crowds. Would I do the taping again? I doubt it. I've done 'extra' work on several films before but this was the worst. The numbers of 'entitled' people really turned me off. There was way too much of the 'you first, right after me' mentality.....all so you could maybe catch yourself on TV on Christmas day. Nope, not doing it again.
Yep, this is pretty much how it was. We were early, among the very first in line and did get to stand in the first two rows, and there were a lot of people who wanted to be where we were and were pretty pushy and rude about it. We made room for the dressed-up little kids behind us to go to the front, because the director said that's what he wanted. There were some unhappy parents who weren't allowed to go up with their kids, but there simply wasn't room; even if I had said ok, it wouldn't have been ok with the people standing next to me.
The crowd was moved up past the ropes closer to the stage at one point, then later instructed to move back. The back of the crowd refused to move, and only grudgingly made room after repeated exhortations from the film crew. At that point, it was very, very crowded and it was in the mid '80s, hot, uncomfortable, and Michael Bolton really wasn't much fun to watch. We left after that part of the taping, went back to the hotel for food, showers and quiet time. We all fell asleep. The bathroom break proved to be a non-issue for us, which is fortunate, because the crowd would never have allowed us back to our initial spot. I wished that I'd had Michael Bolton's umbrella (that someone else held over him during breaks in the taping - honestly, which arm was broken?), but shade would have been welcome.
It was very interesting to see how they film in "layers", filming the people on the stage first, then adding the people in the forecourt later, and adding additional effects with each take. I am very interested to see the final product. Would I do it again? Probably not, but I'm glad I did it the once.
We caught some of the taping on Saturday from VMK central, staying way behind the scenes, enjoying the music, but we couldn't see anything. I logged on to the game briefly, and the kids traded pins with the cast members when another cast member approached us, asked us where we were from and how many we were. He said that the reason he was asking was because he was looking for a family of four to be Grand Marshalls for the evening parade, and did that sound like something we would be interested in doing?? Like, so, YEAH!
At 4:30 we met him at the parade start, and he told us they would be running the
MVMCP parade, and presented us with Mickey ears with our names embroidered on them.
We stepped into the old-fashioned fire truck along with Bob and Pam from Ohio, the other couple selected as Grand Marshalls for this parade. He took pictures with our camera (sadly, there was no professional photographer at either end) and the parade cast members gave us lessons for doing the princess wave.
Not so easy, and rather painful 14 minutes into it! But the little kids (and grownups too) waving back and cheering was really awesome and fun! They announced our two family names and hometowns, and we were off! It was over much too soon!
Magic does happen!
) to the airport! 
