Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Journalist's Life For Me

First published July 1, 2003

By C. W. Oberleitner

It's Tuesday so it must be time for our man on the West Coast, C. W. Oberleitner to check in. Chuck returns with the conclusion to the saga of the Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl world premiere event held at Disneyland Saturday June 28. And, he has pictures!

Four AM Saturday June 28, and the alarm clock goes off. What on earth am I doing getting up at this ungodly hour of the morning? Oh, right. I'm going to Disneyland.

Early last April JimHillMedia.com learned that not only would Disneyland play host to the world Premiere of the Jerry Bruckheimer, Walt Disney Studios production of Pirates of The Caribbean: Curse of The Black Pearl but for the first time in the nearly forty eight year history of the park it would be closed to the public for the event. On Saturday June 28 Disneyland would open at 6:30 AM and close at 6 PM.

Shortly after first publishing this information I began receiving a steady stream of information from both inside and out of the Disneyland Resort. My e-mails along, with some first hand accounts, fell into two basic groups. The first group insisted that the park would soft close allowing guests already in the park at six o'clock to stay until midnight. The second group believed that there was going to be a hard close. This meant that some time around five o'clock the rides and attractions would shut down and everyone would be asked to exit the park.

Earlier this month when it became clear that with just three weeks to go before premiere day cast members were still divided as to how the park would close I wrote another story, Whose Disneyland Is It Anyway. In that story I wrote about the different and often difficult emotions being experienced by DLR cast members. Regardless of the type of closing that TDA might use they had an almost universal dread of the negative impact the effects an early closing would have on the quality of guest experience. And the e-mail floodgates opened.

Please allow me to stop for a moment and acknowledge and thank all of you who took the time to write to me regarding my last column here at JimHillMedia.com. For the first time since writing for this site there were more e-mails than I was capable of personally responding too. I'm flattered by your thoughtfulness and truly regret not being able to thank you all personally.

I Was WRONG

If you've ever read the little blurb at the end of each of my columns you know that I'm not a full time writer by trade. EDITOR'S NOTE, SHAMELESS PLOY FOR WORK FOLLOWS: Although if you're a publisher or editor of any kind and you like my stuff I'm certainly open to a career change. That having been said I have to admit to being caught up, to a certain extent, in the emotion of this story.

While magical to all its visitors and guests the Disneyland Resort is still a workplace. And, like any workplace it's subject to a lot of drama, some of it real and necessary and some of it just a slightly foolish natural by product of human nature. I have always marveled at the contribution to the quality of atmosphere and overall guest experience made by the cast members of the Disneyland Resort. So that when they began to react apprehensively and with trepidation to the idea of closing Disneyland I began to identify with them. As a writer this was perhaps not the most professional thing to do.

I came to believe that closing Disneyland at six on a summer Saturday had the makings for at the very least a public relations disaster or at worst a nightmare of crowd control. There were two things I failed to take into account before sharing those thoughts with JHM.com readers.

I should have recalled Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's words from 1998's Academy Award winning film Shakespeare In Love. Geoffrey Rush, who stars along with Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley in Pirates of The Caribbean, as Philip Henslowe has the following exchange with Tom Wilkinson as Hugh Fennyman:

Philip Henslowe : Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Hugh Fennyman : So what do we do?

Philip Henslowe : Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman : How?

Philip Henslowe : I don't know. It's a mystery.

The part of the Disneyland Resort you and I get to see, the rides, attractions, shops, etc., is referred to as "on stage" and with good reason. While technically a theme park Disneyland is actually one gigantic theatre of fun, fantasy and whimsy. It is the latest stop on the natural evolution of the outdoor theatre and spectacle begun by the Greeks thousands of years ago.

The other thing I neglected to take into consideration while giving into thoughts of aimless crowds chanting for a fireworks show on the Esplanade between Disneyland and DCA was the fact that TDA (Team Disney Anaheim) would actually take action to discourage visitors to the park. Since the events of 9/11 attendance at both the Disneyland and Walt Disney World resorts has been down. While it is true that attendance at the Disneyland Resort has been improving it still remains below its pre 9/11 levels.

It never occurred to me that TDA would send out press releases to Southern California newspapers, radio and TV alerting everyone to the effects of a six PM closing. By so doing deliberately discouraging thousands of paying guests from coming to the park. But that is exactly what they did the week before the premiere.

So how did things turn out at the DLR last Saturday? Was it a hard or soft close? Did guests riot on the Esplanade? With bleary eyes I made my way down I-5 to the Disneyland Resort and arrived just in time to see as much as I could from Disneyland's opening at 6:30 to DCA's closing at midnight.

And The Winner Is

On the tram ride from the Pinocchio parking lot to the park I finally got the definitive word as to how Disneyland's closing would be handled. It was to be a semi-soft closing. At four sales of passports to Disneyland would be halted. By six the closure of the west side of the park would be completed. ToonTown, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland would remain open until nine o'clock. If you were already in the park you could stay until then.

The big surprise -- that contradicted several e-mails I had received -- was that guests would be allowed to line the red carpet and watch the arrival of stars, celebrities and invited guests to the premiere.

Upon entering the park the reason for allowing guests to stay and watch arrivals soon became clear. Main Street from Town Square to The Hub was completely cordoned off and was covered with a red carpet. The west side of the street was lined with powerful spotlights and risers for the media. Only the sidewalks on either side of the street were open.

The park may have been open but it soon became evident that some of its star attractions weren't exactly thrilled with the idea of going to work so early in the morning. In the photo below you can see that even an hour after the park opened Indiana Jones' Adventure, Haunted Mansion and Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin weren't quite ready for guests.

Even with sparse early morning attendance and given the circumstances the cast at Disneyland went all out to provide as "normal" a day at Disneyland as possible. Billy Hill and The Hillbillies performed their first show of the day at the Golden Horseshoe at 9:45. A couple of the Billys looked as bleary eyed as I was but that didn't stop them from putting on a great show. Likewise the Disneyland Band gave two rousing concerts to sparse crowds in front of the Main Street Disneyland Railroad Station.

The odd part about building a theatre on The Rivers of America in order to be able to conduct the premiere in front of Disneyland's Pirates of The Caribbean ride is that the theatre itself completely obscured the ride.

While Disneyland's attendance was far below that of a normal June Saturday -- early estimates were that by noon fewer than 19,000 guests had clocked through the turn styles -- there were folks who went out of their way to get to the park early that day. A movie premiere attracts fans. Fans of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and company began to plant themselves on the east side of Main Street at eight in the morning and they staid there in the blazing sun for the remainder of the day. Fans quickly made friends with one another and began a day long ritual of place saving during restroom breaks.

There were periodic out breaks of confusion. One official looking fellow from TDA told me that the Laughing Stock Company, the comedy troupe that performs several shows a day in front of the Golden Horseshoe, "definitely would not be performing," that day. Later that afternoon I caught a glimpse of the guys in Laughing Stock as they made their way backstage after finishing a performance.

There were some traffic routing problems like the rerouting of the east side of Main Street to one-way inbound traffic only. This forced guests with lockers to cross Main Street and make their way down to Town Square only to be told that the east side of Town Square was closed thus making it impossible to get up the street to their lockers. Around noon for a brief period of time guests were being told that both the sidewalks and all the shops on the east side of the street were being closed. That mistake was quickly corrected.

All in all as Mr. Henslowe said, strangely enough it all worked out. And then it was time for the arrival of guests for the premiere.

I'm not the best photographer in the world and the following probably aren't the best celebrity photos you'll ever see. I was standing near a TV crew and caught these folks in mid interview.

Up to this point I had been doing a pretty good job in my new role as photojournalist. Then it came time to get the "money shot." Johnny Depp had arrived and the crowd went wild. He was surrounded by an entourage and photographers from all along Main Street who had jumped the barricades and were now following him down the length of the street.

The arrival of the celebrity guests was exciting. What I'm really looking forward to, however, is seeing the movie. I spent a good bit of time with the press in the media relations holding area while waiting to go out on the red carpet to take pictures. One of the things that impressed me most was the very favorable buzz the picture was getting from this somewhat hard-bitten group. None of whom had as of yet seen the picture.

I would love to be able to do a review of Pirates of The Caribbean: Curse of The Black Pearl for JimHillMedia.com before it opens on July 9. Hi Elizabeth. If not we'll all just have to wait and see.

With Johnny Depp's arrival at the entrance to Frontierland the premiere party was off and running. The TV spotlights went out and Disneyland was now officially closed. It was nine PM in the evening.

I headed over to Disney's California Adventure. The park was very busy, however, like Disneyland earlier in the day the park had dozens of extra cast members on duty to care for the extra guests.

Was it worth it? Well that's up to the folks at The Walt Disney Company to say. It certainly was exciting and as I've said the movie looks like it will more than live up to expectations. It just wasn't what you'd expect a day at Disneyland to be like.

As one of my Disneyland Resort media relation's hosts -- I had a total of four -- told me.

"This is something we've never done before. Hopefully when people see and read all the stories about the premiere it will make then want to visit the park all the more."

I hope she's right. I know I'm going back.

Arggh matey!

C'ya real soon!