ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A PARADE CALLED 'ALADDIN'S ROYAL CARAVAN'

Way back when, the powers that be used to have big, grand unveilings when a new movie came out. And we always knew we'd have a new show to open soon or a new parade to dress. When Beauty and the Beast hit theaters, we openned the Beauty and the Beast show. Which as of March 2009, it's still going strong. Since then, there's been Ninja Turtle shows, Muppet shows, Pocahontas shows and the much loved Hunchback of Notre Dame show. In between the stage shows we had a Dino parade, Mulan Parade, Toy Story parade and . . . either you loved it or you hated it, The Aladdin Royal Caravan parade.

The costume designers got real creative with this one. 'I know, let's put character performers in huge blow up cotumes and make them walk down the street while doing a dance routine'. And POOF . . . Inflatable Costumes came into being. Dressing performers in the inflatables was like building an erector set. There was alot of insert tab A into slot B and hope you don't whack someone in the head while doing it. Once the frame work was assembled we had to attach the batteries, zip the performer inside and watch it blow up. You'd think with fans blowing inside the costume to inflate them they wouldn't be as hot in the 100 degree August summers. Wrong, at the end of the parade route costuming was half dressers, half health coach. We had an arsenal of gatorade, water and wet towels set up at step down (end of parade) everyday.

THe Acrobat costumes were large and heavy two piece contraptions that we had to climb on a four foot high platform in order to put it together. Once together they looked like two or three cartoon clown acrobats on each other's shoulders. A good friend of mine fell off the platform one day. No, I take that back, she fell Under the platform. We were running late and the parade was leaving the park so my friend "S" ran to the Acrobat dressing area, missed the step and ended up underneath the thing. She survived.

THe Jewlery attendants were just kind of wierd and creepy. They were over sized shirtless men with baskets of fake gold and jewlery on their heads. They were simpler to assemble, but still really heavy. If you remember the movie, at one point Genie splits himself in half and the legs run around on their own. We had an inflatable for that too.

Because of the complicated costumes, cotuming had to walk the parade wearing a kaftan (sorry if i spelled it wrong) and a hat along with carrying a radio, so we could let people know when a unit went down and where we were. For me, the kaftan was always too big, the hat always fell off and the radio was always hard to understand what anybody was saying. By "a unit going down", I mean anything could happen with the inflatables. Batteries died or melted down (sometimes literally melting). The metal frame work would sometimes break. A performer would get over heated and have to be quickly removed from the Hefty Bag. . . . I mean costume. You name it. It happened. There were certian points in the parade route were we could exit a performer safely. Sometimes they made it there. . . .and sometimes they didn't.

Beleive it or not, the Aladdin parade orginally had concubines as well. They always cast the real butch guys to do it. The costume was a dress and coconut shells for breasts. Needless to say, they didn't last.

THe next time you go to Magic Kingdom, next to Tiki birds is the Aladdin Magic carpet ride. The two gold camels that are by the ride, used to be floats in our parade. I'm not sure if the still spit, but in our parade they did.

We also had an Elephant float that Aladdin and Jasmine rode on. The only way on and off the float was by fork lift. Aladdin's Prince Ali's costume is a cream almost pale yellow shirt, pants, cape and turban. The turban is supposed to have a big purple fluffy feather. One day, with a thunder storm fast approaching, Aladdin and Jasmine settled on thier elephant float. The fork lift was no where around and mother nature decided pour down the rain. We ran for cover and watched as Aladdin and Jasmine became completely drenched. Aladdin's feather wilted and rivers of purple dye ran all over his costume. Needless to say, we soon had a white feather for the possible rain days and the purple one for sunny days.

Speaking of rain days. One day the parade didn't go out because of bad weather. We were bored. The performers were bored. Being the mischievious children that they are,
a couple of performers talked us into letting them 'ride in the dryer'. By the second time around, they were ready to get out.

SSHhhh just don't tell the managers that someone went for a spin in the industrial dryer.