The March of the Artimals was one bizzar parade. Filled with neon colored characters and very odd floats, it pushed the limits of what a parade could do. One float that was paticularly wierd had large honeycomb and a queen bee that was laughing hysterically. I was told that the story behind it was that she had drank so much honey that she was drunk. If that's true or not, i'd love to hear from anyone who knows for sure. They had some very cool stilt walkers in this parade. and even after the parade was closed the Bird Stiltwalkers appeared around property for a while. The costume looked like it was person riding a tall bird. The puppeteer/stiltwalkers were so skilled at manipulating it, that you truly believed it was alive.
After the Artimals danced of into the sunset in June of 1999, It was replaced with Mickey's Jammin' Jungle Parade in October of 2001. This one gets spruced up for the holidays and they change the name to Mickey's Jingle Jungle Parade. Both are pretty much the same thing, just with christmas decorations on the floats and Christmassy costumes. Still heavy on the artsy side, this one centers on the core Disney characters, so I'm sure this version will be around for a while.
Epcot has had only one parade over all these years. Tapestry of Nations was created for the new millenium celebrations which ran from 1999 to 2001. It was later tweeked a bit, given a new name 'Tapestry of Dreams' and was extended until 2003. It too was very artistic with giant puppets and huge drum floats. In the millenium version, the parade lead off with a Sage of Time stiltwalking character. For the Tapestry of Dreams the Dreamseekers started the parade and the wishes of children where heard through out the soundtrack . Epcot is a hard place to have a parade. Making it around the the world showcase means there's a lot of ground to cover. Instead, they broke it up into multiple units entering the park at the same time.
The studios has had the widest variety of parades, motorcades and other moving shows. Way back in the beginning there was the Dinosaurs parade (1992) based on the Television show. (You may remember that the baby dinosaur's catch phrase was "not the mama!" ) It was the only time that I've heard of the float driver wrecking the the float. In the driver's defense, he did have to take a very tight corner, but this time he missed and hit a chain link fence. Fortunately no body was seriously hurt, but there were a few people who where on the float that got knocked a around a bit. Most of the Studio's parades have a scantily clad dance troupe . . . the Dino parade had the Dino-girls. Short shorts. Tenee tiny feather and leather tops. Nothing in the middle. I guess you have to have something for the dirty ole' men :)
Running from December 1992 until August 1995, Aladdin's Royal Caravan followed the short ran Dino parade complete with their Dirty Ole' Men unit. . . I mean Harem Girls. I find it amusing to see how things are recycled and 'repurposed' over the years. The double decker float from the Dino parade later became a moving street market float for the Aladdin Parade. The spitting camels in the Aladdin parade lived outside of the Soundstage Restaurant for a while, but are now set pieces beside the Aladdin flying carpet ride at Magic Kingdom. The Genie balloon float, swordmen's costumes and the harem girls would live on in Magic Kingdom's ' Remember the Magic' parade long after the Royal Caravan had left the Studios.
The Aladdin parade was a bear to work. There were inflatable costumes that we had to load and unload from a 16' box truck, batteries that liked to 'meltdown' in the middle of the parade, large troupes of street dancers AND we had to walk the parade. Two to three costumers had to walk with the inflatables . . . juuust in case they deflated we could help the performer off stage and out of costume. We even had to wear costumes and Fez's that cosmotology had to bobby pin in place. To dress and undress the inflatable acrobats, we had to climb on a 4 foot +or- platform in order to reach them. A good friend of mine was running late one day and ran to climb on the dressing platform and missed it. She said she ended up underneath it. She was okay. Just a bit dazed.
Management will always, always , always try to get as much of the show out as possible. Whether it be short staffed, weather or technical diffuculties. . . The Show Must Go On. During Aladdin parade Jasmine and Aladdin rode on top of a huge elephant float which required the use of a fork lift for them to get up there. This is Florida. Mother nature loves thunderstorms. Aladdin and Jasmine were in place. The fork lift was put up. . . Let's just say, they did not beat the incoming thunderstorm and the two characters where absolutely soaked by the time they were rescued from the float. Aladdin's costume includes a purple feather in his turban. After the storm, his entire costume had streaks of purple from where the colors had ran. Soon there after, we had a white, in case of rain, feather.
Disney had gotten a lot of mileage from the Toy Story characters. After the original movie was released, there was a Toy Story parade at the studios which ran from 1995 to 1997. Buzz, Woody and the gang have been all over the place ever since. Buzz even went to the International Space Station for a while as part of a children's educational program. After Hercules replaced Toy Story as THE day parade, they started sending out a mini unit with a troop of green army men, Buzz and Woody in a converted micro van. I believe, in a previous life, it was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles van.
Speaking of special events and mini parades, the Studios has had motorcades for everything imaginable. Star Wars weekends motorcade was a mini parade of cars, movie stars and Star Wars characters, except fan club weekend. When the 501 legion was in the house with thier costumes, we had one Huge parade with a sea of Storm Troopers leading it off.
Super Soap Weekends, and it's testoserone cousin ESPN weekends, each have motorcades with thier idols riding in covertibles. For a true fish out of water type experience look no further than the Home Improvement Father's day parade on june 15,1997. Tim Allen's Home Improvement show was a huge success, so Disney capitolized on it. They pulled every type of machine they had at thier disposal out of the wood work and put them in this parade. Horticulture and Engineering folks, who have never been on stage before, were now the STARS. Forklifts, Bush hog mowers, industrial mowers, backhoes, earth movers, a monster truck or two. . . the list goes on. All of the Disney owned items were washed up and a Binford label was put on it some where. Even today, you may see an item or two here and there that still has the Binford name on it if you look for them.
When Hercules movie came out, so did a new parade. The Hercules Zero to Hero parade, however, it had a farely short run (1997-1998) because the Mulan parade was hot on it's heels. With Mulan, it was back to the forklifts again. This time it was costuming that had to ride the fork lift we could reach the extremely tall Elder's floats. The mulan parade had a chinese dragon that was in a shape of the Great Wall of China. EVERY body who ever worked the parade haaated that thing. If the people infront of you didn't do thier job right, extra weight was thrown onto the people behind them, and yes people did hurt thier backs because of it. When the parade closed, the parade maintenance people allowed the cast to 'tear up' Great Wall. Needless to say, there are many little souvenier pieces created that day.
What I missed the most about the Mulan parade was the beautiful Perchuran Horses. Every day we had four horses pulling the Mulan and Shang float. The day we closed the parade, Shang asked the horse handlers if he could sit on one of the horses. They let him. They used to live at Fort Wilderness Campground, but I'm not sure if the company even has the Perchurans any more or not. I also missed seeing the Chinese acrobats from the China pavillion from Epcot every day as well. For some of our cast, it was thier daily Chinese lesson. When the parade ended, I guess it was 'class dismissed'.
As of 2010, the longest running parade at the studios is the Disney Stars and Motorcars. From Oct of 2001 to March of 2008, it debuted as park of Walt's 100 years celebration. With the stars and cars parade, Disney broke the long time tradition. . . habit. . . custom of opening a new show and or parade with ever new movie release. Cars and stars parade was an 'evergreen' parade. Just swap out cars and you cover the new movie which is what they did when Monster's Inc came out. Hercules car was replaced with Mike and Sully. During the holidays one year, the parks were packed and they wanted to make the parade route longer to allow more people to see it. So they started at the end of New York Street. The christmas lights were up for Spectical of Lights, or at least they WERE, until the Mary Poppins car (the one with bert and mary riding the carousel horses) caught a string of lights with the top of the carousel pole and ripped an entire section down. I don't remember them taking the parade down New York street again after that.
A Note From The Rumor Mill: Durning the run of Stars and Cars Parade, it has been said that Aladdin wanted to give his significant other something extra special for the holidays. So he went to the parade barn late one night to take pictures with the Aladdin car. Let's just say if the rumor holds true it was him, the car and a turban in the pictures. . . . .
When the modified convertibles for the stars and cars parade arrived, our parade maintenance people were also taking delivery of the Animal Kingdom's Mickey's Jammin' Jungle parade vehicles as well. Behind Star tours there is a dip between perimeter road and the little parking area. Maintenance decided to use this dip to gently back one of the DAK float vehicles off of the flat delivery truck. Long story short. . . they miscalculated. When I was coming back from running errands i saw a large flatbed truck, ramp down, bed tilted up and parade float vehicle sitting with it's back bumper on the asphalt and the front bumper on the truck bed. THe wheels where barely touching anything. Basically, it was stuck.
AHH the good ole'days.
p.s. after some further research, i'll blog about MK's parade history.
