Well, KuyaJeff seems to have seen it, but it is not on the printed handout and Main Street still had risers from earlier in the day, so it must have been interesting. KuyaJeff, do you have any pictures? I would love to see how they got the parade down Main Street with the risers I saw still sitting there later in the evening.
Thanks!
- Dreams
Well I had originally heard on Facebook via 1iota, a company known for arranging audiences television show tapings, that there were about 300 "tickets" available for the taping. Those that were lucky enough to People were encouraged to dress up in Christmas clothing to make it seem like it was December 25th in early November. Those who signed up via 1iota were told that they'd get a one-park complimentary ticket to get in for the taping. All that we had to do was check-in at 11:00 am.
So I did check in, a little early, and was given a ticket to enter Disneyland. Got there a little early and people were already lined up along Main Street. It looked like many more than 300 people were there, so I assumed all guests were allowed to take part in it. For what seemed like 45 minutes leading up to the official 11:00, maybe even a little 10 minutes after...they were taping reaction shots of the crowd.
I was right by Coke corner for the entire thing, people were kind of left guessing as to what was going to happen. The Christmas floats were brought in first, with Children holding Duffy, Mickey and Minnie toys leading the start. From our vantage point, it seemed that they were doing a musical number that could only be seen from Town Square (where the cameras were). Couldn't hear any audio whatsoever, but the warm-up guy gave us cuses as when to applaud and do a countdown. They had a really catchy/corny hip-hopesque song that had us spelling T-O-Y-S!
It took a few takes, but they got it done. Like I said in a previous post, it was interesting seeing the character on the floats interact with the crowds and each other between takes. For a moment, we thought Pinochio was getting restless but they all stayed in character.
After the musical number was when it got a little confusing. The floats started heading south on Main Street. But as it was going down, the music pumped through the entire Main Street sound system only played whatever parade unit was down by the Emporium instead of the way that the music usually "follows each unit individually" along the route. From our vantage point it made the music seem delayed, playing music for a float we had already seen pass by.
A neat surprise was how they let about half of the Christmas Fantasy Parade floats come by, then let the Soundsational parade floats come by, and then some more Christmas floats. Once that first musical number completed, they ran the rest of the two parades without any stops. It was definitely a treat to see both parades all at once...semi-jumbled up. With running both parades practically all at once over about an hour and a half, the entertainment department must have been running an army of dancers and characters. Kudos to them.
I do have pictures, but nothing really explaining the whole process, if anything I was there taking advantage of the oppurtunity to take pictures of the characters. Definitely a fun oppurtunity.
The One Republic taping was said to start at 6:30. Didn't really come at that time thinking that it would be Christmas songs and not their more commonly known songs. I headed over to the Plaza Inn to grab some Chicken for dinner. I did get a nice seat and found out that it was in fact for the New Years Eve special. They played two of their songs, and like the rest of the day there were many takes. I had ridden the DLRR before dinner and saw some fireworks being shot off around the castle area. Assuming that was for the taping as well.