Backstage

I worked recently at the happiest place in Anaheim. It was a commercial for an iconic park. It was a lot of fun. We were there after the park closed. Any other time I had been there it was crowded. So to have the space to ourselves, just the cast and crew was glorious.

Getting backstage was interesting. The place probably has better security than the TSA. We rode in a shuttle van to an innocuous gate that took us backstage. It looked a lot like many other backlots for studios. Large non-descript blocky warehouses. We passed by the metal skeleton of some float recently retired. The fiberglass shape of it in pieces laying on the ground next to it. Someone recognized it as a certain float, but we passed it so quickly I couldn't figure out what it had once been.

Base camp was a stage near Big Thunder Mountain. We hung out until later when the park had almost closed. Rides were winding down and patrons were headed to the exit. A large illuminated helium balloon lit up the area in a diffused white light. We went to work. They had us, the "atmosphere", do crosses and walk away from the camera. When they got what they wanted we walked back to base camp and got our stuff together to move locations.

I learned from talking to the cast members which were assigned to hang out with us that they were there to keep us from taking pictures of the backstage stuff. Pictures of things that could end up on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, or in a blog like this one. I asked could I take a picture of this? and I pointed to something. Yes, you can take a picture of the castle, but not the balloon. It would ruin the magic of the place.

The van took us along a road backstage that your regular park visitor never sees. Then there was a traffic jam. On a private road. How could that happen? The large balloon from earlier had been tied down, still inflated, to the back of a pick up which would take it to the other location. The truck with the 12' diameter balloon got stuck between the wall of the road and the pillar holding up the monorail. Oops. 3 guys were pushing on the balloon to try and get it thru the narrow space. When the driver figured out this wasn't going to happen anytime soon, we crossed into the oncoming traffic lane and continued on. The balloon eventually made it but had been partially deflated.

We went to the next location in the other park. There is a show which started a year or 2 ago I've only seen once from the side. It takes 30 minutes. I'd seen it before, but didn't get the full effect. I never had waited in line to get a prime spot in front to see the World of Color from the front. But now we got to see about 5 minutes of it repeatedly from the front. 10 of us extras placed in specific spots so the show could be seen beyond us. This is not how it works in the real world. Where we were 10, there are hundreds who see the show in the evenings. It was cool, but I missed the pyro.

So the question is, will the people who work for this company, whose job it is to scour the internet looking for things and taking them down because they ruin the magic, find this and take it down? Hmmm...