YOU DID WHAT?

The fondest memories are those where you should have gotten into big trouble, but didn't. I was at Epic one day and my coordinator said, "Do you want some ice cream?" Normally that would sound innocent enough, but this was during a show. We walked over to the dinosaur ice cream stand outside Epic and ate ice cream, then strolled back to the stage in time to finish the show.

During the run of Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of my cast was a Michael Jackson impersonator. To look at him out of make up, you would never know it. I am a photographer on the side and had started making a name for my self as such at several of the stages that I worked at. He wanted pictures of him as MJ, so one day, he dressed up and did the hair and make up. Let me say he looked exactly like MJ. We went out on stage and shot some pretty good pictures. The techs saw what we were doing and turned on the fog machines and fans. It was pretty darn cool.

HOWEVER, it didn't stop there. Back in the day, before lights motors action stunt show, there was residential street and a backstage studio tour that ran right next to our stage. MJ impersonator walked off the Hunchback stage and into view of the tour tram. People started to talk. He walked next to the tour tram. The tour guide lost her train of thought and started stumbling over her lines. We, meaning MJ impersonator, myself and half dozen members of the hunckback cast walked into the park. Now, mind you, the cast was wearing shorts and t-shirts with 'Hunchback' written in sharpie on the front. They were playing the body guards. . . . God help us. Seeing how the crowds mobbed MJ, this as not a smart idea.

We heard a few guests say "Hey MJ!" "Is that. . .no it couldn't-" "Look who it is." You could feel the electricity start to build in a matter of moments. Seeing a stir start to build, we ducked out the back gate as soon as we could. End of story ? Not quiet. Later our stage manager came up to us and said,"Please tell me that you did not walk through the park like that." We said, "Of course not." WE knew, that he knew, that we knew.

Speaking of being in place you probably shouldn't, as a photographer for several of the Indy Stunt doubles, I have been in places on that stage that I KNOW I should have neve been in. Like the Mayan temple set in the ball(rolling boulder) track. In a prop rock during the show so I could get pictures of the Plane scene. At the top of the market place buildings, so I could get shots of high falls. At least I never went up in th rafters like the boys did one day. THey were bored and moved the high fall pad to under one of the beams in the rafters and decided to take flying leaps from the roof of the stage.

If you have ever seen the Indy stunt show, then you'll know that scene two is the cairo marketplace. In that set above the awing is a little niche. They use this niche for DJ's at times during convention shows. One day two of our Epic/Fantasmic! cast got bored between Fantasmic shows and decided to climb into the set and pretend they were eating dinner. . . during the Epic show. One was wearing one of Marion's shirts as a diguse. At the end of the scene, he knelt down to the other and pretended to propose. (By the way, both guys were married with kids.)

THe cast and crew about died laughing. The stage manager, thank goodness was awesome. She came up to them and said(paraphased) "That was the funniest thing i have ever seen. Don't you ever do it again."

Fantasmic! stunt perfomers meet at Epic, use Epic's pargo to ride over to the stage. Every so often they'll give ride to a character or two as well. One day the driver took a short cut through the creative costuming tunnel (part of the backstage tour) and turned a lliiitttle to soon. Because setting outside of the tunnel are prop planes from the movie Pearl Harbor. On this particular day, the Epic driver plowed into the wing of the plane an crumpled the top of the pargo. No one was hurt, from what I can remember, but they did have to use the jaws of life to get one of the character girls out of the front seat. And wouldn't you know, the driver still works at Disney.

I had my own personal "You did what ?" moment one day at Fantasmic!. I was not in a good mood that day. I had one precious darling cast mamber get all over my case one day because she said "This is not my costume. My costume does not have this piece in it" (it was a snap in, snap out removable piece)
I said,"you're the only one doing this role today. Not one else has worn it. It's identical to the other costumes in the trailer."
She still said, "This is not my costume, I don't use this piece."
Now, mind you, we are on the steamboat. The cross bridge is pulled back and the boat is about to start moving. I snatched the costume from her hands, ripped out the unwanted item and handed it back to her. "Here it's doesn't have that strap anymore."
She went out and did her part, but ran to the stage manager afterwards and said "costuming was being mean to me."
And 'bless his soul', he stood up for us and said,"Did you check your preset ?"
She started to cry.
I went to my manager and told her what happened. All she said was, "Yeah, you probably shouldn't have done that."

Ah, those were the days.

The Fans, The Fanatics, and The Fanatic Fans

You hear about rock stars and boys bands dealing with crazed fans, but what you may not realize is that Disney is a magnet for the odd and sometimes extreme fans. We've had families up and move to the area, just so they could get closer to a performer. This happened when we had a show called Doug. It originally was a Nickelodeon show that Disney bought. They made a movie out of it that did poorly and created a show at The Studios that was short lived. Basically, Disney almost killed the franchise. Nickelodeon bought it back after a couple of years though. For those who are not familiar with Doug, it was a show about a pre-teen boy with a huge imagination. The cast wore various colors of make up like Skeeter was Green, Rodger was blue, Patty was orange. A young girl had a huge crush on Rodger and convinced her mom to move to Orlando so they could get closer to Disney. In fact, the cast member had to start leaving through different doors each day on his way home because she'd wait for him at the stage door. We never knew if she wanted Rodger 'the person', 'the person' who played Rodger, or if she just had a thing for blue people.

Hunchback of Notre Dame seemed to have the freaky fans coming out of the wood work. We had one fan, a young lady, we refered to as cape girl. During the show, she'd spin around with her jacket and pretend to do the gypsie cape routine. But Wait, there's more. She later got hired as a costuming cast member. Let's just say she scared the cast. One day she was in the green room and showed someone the secret compartment in her ring. I kid you not, she said, "This is where I keep my poison to kill people." Needless to say, managment moved her very quickly.

One of our Quasimodo cast members got a fan letter one day. It started out normal. "I love your show. I think you're a great singer. . . " . Then it got odd. She said that 'she was new to the area and we were the closest thing to family that she had and that she was coming back on her birthday to spend all day at the show,' and she gave us the date. THEN it got weird. she asked our Quasimodo cast member, 'are you into paganism ? If you're not, that's okay.' Needless to say, we were a bit alarmed and intrigued. In the greenroom there was a dry erase board that listed who where the equity cast members and who were the gypsies for the day. In the middle of those two lists someone wrote COUNTDOWN TO W##F3N DAY (I don't want to use her name, but let's just say it was not a normal name.) Sure enough, on that day, half way through the day, one of the operations people came to the green room and told us she was there. I have never seen that green room clear so fast in my life. Everyone ran out to the stage to see who this girl was. It scared her and she never came back.

We have a gentleman who insists on putting disney performers on his body. Across his back is a tatoo of one of our Streetmosphere performers. The face of one of the Indy Stuntmen (the German Giant) is tatooed on his knee. During the Star wars Weekends we have a lady fan who has legally changed her last name to Skywalker Quigon Kenobi. She'd come every day to the event and stay all day dressed in her Jedi garb.

The Studios is known for it's special events. StarWars Weekends has seventy to eighty Star Wars characters from various Jedi's to three different type of troopers (storm, sand and clone). Storm troopers wear spandex and plastic armour. Guests tend to get a little frisky with some one in spandex. . . I wonder why? Not all Storm troopers are guys. One of the female storm troopers got pinched by a couple of flirty girls. The Storm Trooper informed them she was a girl and embarassed the snot out of these girls. Supersoap Weekends is a time I was glad to be behind the wall. When the park opens, they do a little rope drop ceremony. During Super Soap, it is like the running of the bulls, or as one of our stage managers put it, the running of the house wives. They open the gates and literally thousands of normally sane individuals turn into steam rollers and book it to the back of the park so them can get numbers for the autograph sessions. While I was working as a runner at a resort, I had to drive a guest to the Studios during Super Soap. The whole way over there she kept saying, " I'm not one of those crazed fans." Then she'd turn to her daughter and say, "As soon as we get out you have to run." Not a crazed fan . . . rriiight. ESPN The Weekend is a testostrone version of Super Soap. It's very amusing to see all these guys try to act calm, cool and collected, but as soon as one of the sports stars walk past, they turn into a twelve year old. That's okay, Mr Armchair Quarterback, no one saw you get all giddy when the cheerleaders came out.

Then we have the Dead Dog Lady. Yes, that's right I said the Dead dog Lady. When she and her daughter come to the park, her husband stays in the car all day. He thinks Disney is evil or something. The mother and daughter go to Beauty and the Beast and sit down front center for all five shows. In her lap is a plastic grocery bag. In the bag is a freeze dried / taxidermied little black poodle. Needless to the say the cast gets a bit un-nerved knowing that there is a dead dog in the front row.

Hunchback of Notre Dame: A Musical Adventure !

Way back when each new movie was welcomed by fan fare and a new show or parade being added to the park, there was a show based on Disney's bastardized version of Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame Classic. The animated film was 'ehh' and was kind of out of step with most of Disney's animated movies. The show however took on a life of it's own as a thirty minute retelling of the film and had a huge fan base.

Located in the back of the park, it seemed to always be under threat of closing. We were amazed when we lasted one year, much less seven. This show was and always will be one of my favorites. It was a show about outcasts, and being an entertainer you never quiet fit the social norms of society, anyway. We had a little bit of everything in that show: seven Equity performers (anyone who has special skills, talks or sings is Equity), nine character performers (pupeteers who in another life worked with Mickey, Pluto, Chip, Dale etc.), pyro techs (they burnt down Paris five times a day), six costuming dressers (who were always ducking out of the way of props, and dodging cast members who were late for enterances), two cosmetologists (it is amazing all the uses there are for doublesided hair and makeup tape) and one preshow juggler act (who had his own fan club following after a while).

It's petty sad when you'd rather be at Work on a holiday that with your family, but the cast and crew at Hunchback was my family. . . sort of. On our first Easter sunday, we turned the court yard between the stage and the greenroom into a little outdoor French Bistro. The techs had two hot plates in the back corner making omletes. We had electric skillets and waffle irons with pitchers of batter to make pancakes and waffles. Breads and pasteries of every size and discription was on another table. You name it we had it. Costuming put together an Easter Egg hunt. I found the quickest way to turn grown adults into children again is to hide something and tell them to go find it.

Costumes were alway an issue at that show. One of our gypsies (characters) hated his hat. He called it the "Herbie the Misfit Elf" hat. In one show it fell off, as it usually did, but this time he never got it back because his precious cast members kept kicking it around the stage like a hacky-sack. After that the stage managers made the hat go away. Costuming's claim to fame was a seven second complete Esmeralda costume change. It didn't have to be seven seconds, but we wanted to prove we could do it. Esmerelda would sneeze on stage and disappear behind a curtian and a poof of smoke. One of us would unzip her red dress, drop it to the floor. The second dresser would drop the blue dress over her head. The first dresser would zip it while the second dresser would snap the sash into place. Meanwhile, cosmetology straightened her hair and she was off.

The characters took being a gypsy to heart and were the mischievous bunch of people I have ever worked with. They had themed shows like the 'Riverdance Show' where everyone moved around on stage like they were in Riverdance. In one scene the gypsies where thrown in jail. The top of the jail was a stair way where the Gargoyles stood. We had certian gypsies that loved to torment the Gargoyles by untying thier shoe laces or pulling on thier tights.

As with most theater shows, Broadway and other wise, we had understudies. Everyone knows that. One particular day, we ran out of Quasimodos and the managers had to call in the under study. . . We'll call Quasi J. The only problem was, Quasi J, being his day off, was at the Epcot WINE and Food festival. (note the emphasis on Wine) Quasi J told them he was at the WINE and Food festival, but Stage Managers said "We'll deal with that when you get here, just come in and save the shows." I happened to be dressing that track that day and had to deal with the tipsy Quasi. . . lucky me. Quasi T wanted the lead in the show so bad, but there was one minor issue, a rope swing stunt from one side of the stage to the other that he was petrified of. He almost never landed right, in fact we refered to his rope swing as 'Bowling for Guards' since he usually took out several guards each show.

Props were a big part of that show. Let me emphasize BIG. We had a life size horse puppet we lovingly refered to as Snowball. Frollo would ride out on this thing being pushed by a puppeteer. I was always amazed the Frollo never took a header off the front of the stage. After his scene, we used Snowball to preset costumes on. His right ear became The Official Spot for the stiltwalking gypsy's dew rag. Since the show went away five, six years ago, Snowball turned into a convention prop. Just the other day I actually ran into him at some holiday promotion thing. I ignored the people working the event and told Snowball how much I missed him. The people thought I was nuts.

Back stage at Hunchback was 'all about no where to stand'. In our seven year run, we only had one costuming manager who wasn't afraid to be back stage during a show. In fact we had one manager (blonde . . .enough said) that came to see us right before the show. The music started. People started running. This manager was like a deer in headlights. When the 'burning buildings' were rolled back stage (real flames), she was gone and never came back to the show again. Between flaming set pieces, Snowball the life size horse, a Madonna and child statue, various size puppet racks, stiltwalkers and just the general wierd costume/props, we were always moving out of the way of something, not the least of which was running cast members.

Disney shows are live microphoned singers, so let me end with our blooper reel and Hunchback had some real doosy's.

One of the gargoyle parishoners was supposed to "ask for fame."
Instead he asked for "pain" one day.

In a touching scene, Quasi is supposed to tell Esmerelda that "I don't think I'm your type." Esmerelda replys "Nonsense, your sweet, intellegent (yada yada yada)"
However, Quasi T said one day "I don't think you're my type." Esmerelda had no response for him. Although it was interesting to watch her dig herself out of the hole.

Clopin in the opening of the show was supposed to say something about Paris "...and the cities awake."
What he said was yada yada Paris. ". . . and the titis awake." Hmmm wander who he was looking at in the audience.

Clopin in the Feast of Fools scene, he was supposed to say, "Tospy Turvy is when you shock the Prig and mock the Priest."
One day he said, no lie, "Tospy turvy is when you shock to prig and f##k the priest."

And the stories continue, but at another time.
I found a pretty good version of the old show on youtube. check it out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZrYogrA2Ao