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.

FANTASMIC!. . . enough said.

Being apart of the opening crew for Fantasmic! meant being apart of one of the biggest shows on property, having no fear of heights or of the water and enduring nearly four months of sleepless nights. Our rehearsals were from sun down to sun up and from what I was told, the guests in the Swan and Dolphin hotel were getting pretty miffed at hearing Maleficent (I never could remember how to spell her name) dieing evey night around two in the morning.

One of the first things the character performers had to learn was how to paddle a canoe for the Pocahantas scene. From our stand point, it was rather amusing watching them go round and round in circles. It became clear that none of these people had every been a Boy (or Girl)scout. The canoes were actualy gas powered, they just had to steer. Once thier trainers got them going in one direction, then came the fun of seeing bumper boats as they tried to pass each other in the begining of thier scene. What was even more fun was watching the Princess Barge's collide with each other or the wall and that was the entertainment techs driving them. Speaking of the barges, we had one sink due to a maintance error. . . . as in a maintainence men siphened water into the barge by accident. If I remember the story right, There was some work that had to be done to one section of the moat, so the mechanics siphened the water into the other sections. Except the huge siphen hose crept up the side of the barge and manage to completely fill it with water.

Have people fallen in the moat? Yes. At least one time, that I know of, it was intentional. In order to give the Rescue Boat training time and to answer the question "what would happen if a character falls in ?", Mickey took a walk one day. . . off the front of the stage. What we didn't know was that his shoes are made of an extremely bouyant material. He went in, his feet went up and his head went down. It became known at the 'Day we almost drowned Mickey'. But Never Fear, The Rescue Boat Was Near! I'm sure there has been more incidents of unintentional swimming since I have left the show, but one of the first times was when a tech took a dive. The canoe people are, when approaching the docks, supposed to put out thier oar and the tech pulls them into the dock. One night the character was a little impatient and tried to hurry it along. However, instead of the tech pulling the canoe in, they pulled the tech into the water. During the show the canoes stop on the sides of the stage and let thier passanger out. Whether or not the pocahontas indian makes it to the stage is based on how good the canoe driver is. Some times they fall in when they stop too far away from the platform.

A windy day at Fanstasmic! is always fun. For those who have seen the show, there is a huge purple and orange snake that comes out on stage. Each snake section looks like and inflatable pup tent. On more than one occasion, i have seen the wind blow a section into the moat. Then the techs have to go fishing for it. At one time costuming used a huge cloth bin to move costumes from point A to point B. This bin was later preset for the characters to throw their costumes in as they ran passed. The bin was set. We went to lunch. We came back to stage. It was gone. I looked over the edge and there it was, on the bottom of the moat. THe tech guys stood around and discussed how to get it out. One the tech girls came up with a grappling hook and helped us retreive it. (Score one for the girls!!). During a show, the wind can be brutal. The water screens soak everything and everyone. It may be my imagination, but I always felt like I was covered in a oily film after one of those nights. Heaven only knows what's in that water. Every so often a pair of ducks would find the moat. We'd always try to scare them off. I'm not really interested in seeking a three headed duck.

Fantasmic! is not a show for those afraid of heights. 66 steps to the top, and when you are carrying Mickey's Sorcerer costume to the top, it feels like 666. (no pun intended) In the middle of the mountian is a fairly good size deck, but it's all metal slat floors. You look down and see people running around below you. At the very top it's a pretty cool view of the park. . . and with more metal slat flooring, it's a good view of every one else two floors down.

Lighting in Florida summers is pretty much a given. We are the lighting capital of the Americas (I think one place in asia, Japan maybe, has more). Take my advice, If it's lighting and thunder immediately follows, don't remain in the Fantasmic! theater. You are surrounded my high voltage power lines for the stage lights. You are sitting on metal bleachers. Can we say "TOASTED" ? Not long after the show opened, we had one of those wonderful Florida thunderstorms and the show had to be cancelled. We alomst had a riot. The audience was yelling profanities and BOooing. I actually heard some brainiac scream "F*** Mickey". Except he used the uncensored version. Now, I understand that these people have been waiting for a long time . . . However, IT'S LIGHTING PEOPLE.

One last tip. FANTASMIC! is supposed to be spelled with the exclaimation mark. As the show was opening, we got word of some merchandise that was printed with out the exclaimations mark. Several of us stocked up on the misprint items. So if you see something written with out the '!' grab it, it could be worth something. . . in a hundred years or so.