Basically the Disney Parks Blog had a special event after park closing.. You needed to RSVP with your name and AP barcode number and they picked a couple thousand people.. You could invite like 5 other valid AP holders to come along.. so there was potential to be around 9,000 folks. I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. I got picked, as did SeanYoda, as well our friend Barry. I know Barry was going to ask some folks to join him.. but Sean & I came in on our own RSVP.
This event was amazing and wonderful and fun for me. It reminded me a lot of the D23 events that I get to tag along with SeanYoda for when he's able to get tickets. The major thing about this was it was free and the quality of the event was really up there. The key thing is that we got wristbands when we checked in, so we were checked several times coming and going around the park near closing time.
Only certain parts of the park were open, so there was better crowd control than a lot of the regular holiday events open to the general public. There were "special" food items only available from 4 to 10pm.. A special item at specific eateries. At Redd Rocket's Pizza Port, for example, there was a yummy buffalo chicken pizza (anyone could get it but you had to be there from 4pm on.. park closed at 7pm I think)
The parade started up around 930pm:
There was a panel with Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily at Tomorrowland Terrace where they talked about the design experience and SoundSational specifically, as well took Q&A afterwards:
This is about where the fun for SeanYoda ended as he had to take a work call and went to the Grand Cal (Hearthstone) to log on to his work and take care of a call that came in (OK, so he was on call at Disneyland.. you got to have fun when you can squeeze it in, right?) Unfortunately it ended up being a false alarm, but he couldn't get back into the park, so he missed the last of the Q&A and the flot viewing.
Yes, float viewing. Another treat was that they rolled out a few of the SoundSational floats so you could take a closer look at them. Several of the cast and characters from the parade were also there for photo ops, (they, like the floats were behind a rope).
Princess Tiana and some of the Second Line dancers.
fans of The Rescuers will recognize Evinrude (who is placed on Tiana's float)
Jody Daily and Kevin Kidney made an appearance with a couple of the paper sculpture models of their designs for the floats.
This is where Kevin explains (again) to a guest about his shirt being a very limited special run that he and Jody made in honor of their work on the parade.
We have about 200 images from the parade, panel and post-parade float images (I culled them down from over 500) They can be seen HERE on my flickr. It was truely a lot of fun and I"m really glad I got to attend. If you read Disney Parks Blog and you happen to see they have an AP event or event of any kind that you can try for, do it. They are totally worth it.
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