Christmas Parade Taping 2012

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

The 2012 Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade Taping will take place Friday, November 30 and Saturday December 1 at the Magic Kingdom.

Cast Member registration to take part in the taping has begun. I haven't seen any word yet of tickets for anyone else. In years past there have been offers for Passholders. Tickets for the general public have been handled a few different ways. No word yet on how it will be handled this year.

The taping will be for the parade that is shown on ABC on Christmas Day. It is not the same parade as the one that takes place in the Magic Kingdom daily or during the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.

The parade taping generally involves watching segments of the televised repeated a few times while the footage is shot. In the past some of the celebrity performances have been filmed at the Magic Kingdom, however parts of the parade and some performances are also filmed at Disneyland. No news yet as to who will be performing at the Magic Kingdom this year.

The Main Street and Hub areas of the Magic Kingdom will be affected by the parade taping, and regular park guests not participating in the taping are typically routed backstage to bypass the Main Street area coming and going from the park.

The other parts of the Magic Kingdom park are typically not effected by excess crowds during the parade taping, however once they release the crowds in the afternoon, expect that those crowds will expand out into the rest of the park.

If anyone has experience attending the taping, or being in the park as a regular guest on a taping day, please share!

[devores 382]

We attended a few years ago when they allowed general public to get special tickets to attend this. It was hectic and a huge cluster.

People would get a one day ticket to MK in exchange for a few hours of their time to participate in the parade taping.

Can anyone guess what happened?

You guessed it, those folks used the ticket to get in then disappeared. This forced the directors to beg anyone walking by to participate. So regular paying guests sacrificed part of their vacation to help film the production.

Disney caught on and the next year, they only offered it to AP holders and Voluntears (those who volunteer for Disney sporting events such as the marathon.)

Word got out that simply by registering to be a voluntear you could get a free day ticket to MK to be in the parade taping. The tickets were gone before any voluntears could get them.

And guess what......again the producers had to beg for participants because no one who got those free tickets stuck around.

So now, its opened to CMs and rarely opened to public.

If youre in the park that day, and they need some extras, you may get an invite to be a part of it.

You should expect to stand around and act excited, even though you just saw the same float for the 20th time. Wait 30 or even 40 minutes between floats. And take direction from 20 different people telling to do 20 different things.

You may also get to see the acts at the castle stage and may get invited into the crowd if they need to fill holes.

but again, you will hear the same song 20 times. The music will stop and start, its not continuous.

The whole idea behind this is a good production, not a show for guests.

You will also be in the back ground and chances of seeing yourself on TV on x-mas morn is slim to none.

It was a good experience and we had fun doing a choreographed dance with 1000 other people to the Jonas Brothers. But I would not waste my vacation day to do it and I will probably not do it again.

As for the rest of the park or the impact on a vacation, Main Street will be closed during taping and even when not taping, there will be camera equipment around restricting access to some areas. The closure of Main Street causes congestion in the other areas.

If Im not mistaken, the regular parades will be cancelled as well those days.

They also do not put up the MK x-mas tree until after the taping is done. Instead, there will be a camera crane in its place.

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

There are two threads going on this subject, but I am posting on this one, because I was at the same taping as Devores, back in 2009.

The funny thing is that I had not met Dave yet at this point, but he later told me that he is in one of my photos.

Here's an edited version of a report that I posted on another site back in 2009:

The TCD gang attended the Sunday, December 6, 2009 taping of the Disney Parks Christmas Parade at the Magic Kingdom with the Jonas Brothers.

We had tickets for the Friday, December 4 taping, but taping that day was canceled because of rain. The taping was rescheduled for Sunday at 7 am. We did not know what to expect in terms of crowds, because we thought that a lot of folks would not be able to change their schedules to be at the MK at 7 am on a Sunday morning.

We guessed that attendance would be light.

We guessed wrong.

We arrived at the MK gates at about 6:40, to find a large group waiting to be admitted. We took our place in line.

Here is what we saw in front of us:

And, this was a photo taken just a little after we arrived showing how many folks were behind us:

I will say that the crowd control for this event was very good. There were plenty of castmembers and announcements, and things went very smoothly.

We were slowly walked into the park, and stopped just before we got to Main Street:

We were then walked slowly down Main St., stopping at Casey's Corner:

Here is where we were when we stopped. Looking forward:

And, looking back:

Once we came to a stop, they announced that they would be letting guests in by groups, and that you would be handed a colored handkerchief as you were admitted. The color of your handkerchief would be used to identify where you would be placed for the taping.

Here is a photo of the bins of handkerchiefs:

We all got the same color handkerchief, but we ended up getting separated from them at this point. The girls had different opinions about where the best viewing area would be, so we intentionally allowed ourselves to be separated, thinking that maybe we could text each other and move to the best spot later on.

We were not sure exactly what was going to happen, but it was obvious that there would be a performance on the castle stage, and there was also a round stage set up in the middle of the hub with lights and cameras, so something was obviously going to be taped there, too. I was placed in a section near the hub stage, between the castle and the hub stage. On of my DD's got placed in front of the hub stage, with her back to Main St., and another daughter was in between those two locations.

After we texted back and forth, everyone was happy with their location, as we would see different things, so we stayed put.

For the first hour and a half, a choreographer worked with the group to teach the entire audience a dance routine. We were going to be a flash mob, which was a fad there for a couple of weeks in 2009, if you remember that far back.

As we were waiting, some girls in the audience pointed out that there was a nun gazing down on the crowd from the castle. I looked up and saw the "nun," too (look in the middle of the three small turret to the right top center of this photo):

I took a closer shot, too:

Looking at the photos, it looks like this is a young man in a hooded sweatshirt. I don't know what he was doing up there.

Around 9 am, it was time to tape, and the Jonas Brothers' body guard, Big Rob, came out to check on things:

And, then the boys came out, and the taping began!:

The boys walked from the castle stage to a smaller stage set up in the middle of the hub. They shot them walking back and forth a couple of times, so I was able to get several close photos of them:

This is a photo of Nick, who was a pretty BFD at the time:

This one shows Joe on the left, and Kevin on the right. Again, this was a BFD at the time:

They filmed the sequence a number of times, so it became easier to predict where to stand to get some good photos. As you can see, a lot of the fans got a high five from the brothers.

This element of the taping finished up at around 11 am.

Then, they were going to tape some of the actual parade performances.

We had a great time.

And, when we watched the actual show on Christmas morning, Twin #1 was right there next to the stage for the song. That was pretty cool.

We got our tickets in 2009 from an offer made to Passholders.

I haven't seen another offer since.

Last year, they had Justin Beiber there for the parade taping.

That was a surprise to us, because he really doesn't have strong Disney ties.

So we missed it.

We may try to go this year with our regular passes just to see.

If anyone hears anything about who might be performing, I'd love to know.

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Here's a PS to that last post.

Twin #1 still has a poor quality photo on her Facebook showing her TV appearance.

Here you go:

That's her at the bottom of the screen right above the word parade.

Bragging Rights to her.

That's another reason to go to the taping- you can be a TV star!

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

And one more thing-

The Disneyland portion of the parade was already taped, according to the Disney Parks Blog:

http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2012/11/first-look-mario-lopez-backstreet-boys-and-more-at-disneyland-park-for-shooting-of-the-2012-disney-parks-christmas-day-parade-on-abc/

They didn't have any huge names out there in California.

So, I wonder who they will dig up for Florida.

Some years, it's obvious.

This year, not so much.

TCD

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

I see her! :)

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

According to the Disney Parks Blog, the Disneyland portions of the 2012 Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade were taped this past weekend and featured Mario Lopez and the Backstreet Boys...

http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2012/11/first-look-mario-lopez-backstreet-boys-and-more-at-disneyland-park-for-shooting-of-the-2012-disney-parks-christmas-day-parade-on-abc/

Still no word on who is expected for the Walt Disney World taping.

[mouseketab.....Carol 1,261]

I have plans to hang at the Fort that weekend!

[devores 382]

There are two threads going on this subject, but I am posting on this one, because I was at the same taping as Devores, back in 2009.

The funny thing is that I had not met Dave yet at this point, but he later told me that he is in one of my photos.

TCD

Its true. Andrew and I had not met at this point, but we were practically standing next to each other in the this crowd.

That's me on the bottom left of the picture. Red shirt with Santa hat with mickey ears. Behind the reindeer ears. Small world sometimes. So next time you're at the World, remember, you could have a fiend encounter and not even know it.