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Tales From The College Program: The Christmas Parade (Part 2)

Day 2:

There was one thing I did not mention in my previous post, the first day of Christmas Parade taping was hot. The funny thing about day two was the temperature dropped significantly.  I went from jeans and a t-shirt to a coat and hat, so did the rest of the crowd.

Day two started off with Clay Aiken singing at the Main Street train station with a bunch of the characters.  He started at the top of the stairs then walked down towards Main Street.  After the first take the director picked up his bullhorn.  "I'm going to have to ask you guys to take your coats off, you see, when we filmed yesterday everyone was in shorts, it's going to look weird if the people at the train station are in coats and everyone on Main Street is in shorts."  No one listened, it was too cold to stand there and pretend you weren't freezing.  Clay finished his song and my roommates and I decided it was too cold to stand around so we headed back to Vista Way.

Day 3:

Another early/warm morning at the Magic Kingdom.  My friends and I decided to walk behind Main Street and see what was going on backstage.  There were a few trailers set up in the parking lot so we approached one of the Disney VIP guides to see what was going on.  He told us that Raven Symone was inside getting ready to film a segment in Fantasyland.  He talked to us for a few minutes before asking if we were Cast Members.  When he found out we were his attitude totally changed, he was borderline furious.  Why else would we have been backstage?  He warned us not to speak, wave, or look at Raven when she came out of her trailer.  A few seconds later she emerged, naturally we waved.  She waved back and said hello.  VIP guy was pissed.

They loaded her into and SUV and drove off, we headed over to FantasyLand to see what she was going to do.  We beat her there and when she arrived saw us and asked "Hey, how did you guys beat me?"  I probably don't need to tell you that VIP guy did not like this either.  I'm pretty sure he tried to have us removed, but we weren't doing anything wrong.  He just scowled at us the whole time.

After Raven was done we headed back to Main Street to watch Regis and Kelly record their commentary.  They were stationed at the end of Main Street just past Casey's Corner.  We ended up standing right behind their podium, so if you have eagle eyes you could see me at 3 different parts of Main Street at the same time wearing 3 different outfits.  By the time Regis and Kelly were taping their part all the parade floats had been filmed.  Main Street was still lined with people though because they needed to see a crowd behind Regis and Kelly.  Since there were no floats on the street everyone just started up at Regis.  The director didn't like this.  He jumped back on his bullhorn "When this airs on TV we are going to put the parade floats behind Regis and Kelly digitally, so I need you guys to pretend a parade is going down the street, wave to each other."  The crowd followed these instructions for a few minutes but then focused all their attention back on Regis and Kelly, except when we all had to stare up at the sky and pretend to be waving at the Santa float.

This concluded my life long dream of attending a Disney World Christmas Parade, it wasn't quite what I expected but it was worth it.  There were obviously performances and floats I skipped because of the cold or lack of interest.  One of those was Jump 5 (whoever they are), I also missed a second appearance by my baby girl Christy Romano, but I had my picture so I wasn't worried.

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