Disneyland General
Topic: Candlelight

#	Author	Message
1	dlandlvr Sat 12/1/2007 9:39a	Anyone know who is the guest narrator is this year?
2	dzy76 Sat 12/1/2007 2:49p	I heard somewhere it is Jane Seymour(hope that is spelled right).
3	JeffG Sun 12/2/2007 12:05a	We were able to see tonight's performances pretty well via stand-by. Since we have a 4-year-old that wasn't likely to sit patiently for the show (not to mention the fairly long wait to get a good viewing spot), my wife and I decided to each go to a separate performance while the other took our son on attractions. Right after the second parade got past Main Street, my wife headed off to find a spot for the 5:30 performance. She ended up staking out a spot opposite the Opera House, pretty much right by the rope into the reserved seating area. As soon as the processional started to make its way into the theater, she joined the crowds in that area that were allowed to move in to fill the unused seats in the reserved seating area. As a result, she ended up with a really good seat for the show. While waiting for the show to start, my wife asked some of the castmembers in the area what they knew about how stand-by for the 8pm show was going to work. She learned that they would be setting up a stand-by queue and called me on my cell phone with that information. I headed back to Main Street shortly after the earlier show started and found that they had roped off two queue areas, one on either side of the center of the street. My son and I went ahead and entered the queue on the east side and ended up pretty close to the front of the line. At Disneyland, they have long had a way of being oddly coy about the processes and procedures for the show and I ran into that yet again tonight. Upon arriving at the stand-by queue, I asked the castmember manning the interest whether it was the stand-by line. His very odd reply was to tell me that I was welcome to enter that queue area in order to listen to the earlier show and that it "might be" the stand-by line for the second show. The phrasing made it sound very much like he wasn't allowed to tell me that it was the stand-by line, so he was trying to tell me without telling me. During the next 20 minutes or so, I did see a number of people exiting the queue, apparently thinking they were just in a far back viewing area for the 5:30 show. Eventually, they did have a CM walking up and down the queue area specifically telling us that we were in the stand-by line for the 8pm show. Towards the end of the first show, I sent my wife a text message letting her know where I was so that she could stop by on the way out and pick up our son. That worked out pretty well as she was very easily able to find us and get to us for the hand-off after the show. I doubt it was something they had intentionally set up, but the positioning of the queues and overall traffic control was really very well set up for doing a parent switch like that. After the first show, it took them about 30 minutes to get the Town Square area fully cleared out. They then started letting guests from the stand-by lines into the viewing area in groups of about 25 people at a time. I was close enough to the front to be in the second group that was let in. On each side of Town Square, they had set up a number of regular Disneyland park benches that were the only seated viewing specifically intended for stand-by guests. I would estimate that there was enough seating space for around 100 guests on each side and I was fortunate enough to be far enough up in line to be able to get one of those seats. The rest of the standby viewing was standing-room only, pretty much filling in most of the rest of the area surrounding Town Square, keeping small walkways opened on either side. They also did have the backstage corridor open to guests from the Fire Station to Coke Corner in order to take up some of the additional pedestrian traffic that normally would be going down the center of Main Street. It wasn't a completely unobstructed view due to some of the trees in the Town Square area being a little bit in the way (ironically, the main thing that the trees blocked was the tree choir...) I did still get a pretty good overall view of the show, though. From where I was seated, I had pretty much a straight on view of the conductor and orchestra. I was also able to see Jane Seymour pretty easily, although I did have to lean forward a bit to do so. It definitely was very nice being able to sit down for the show and I'm glad I managed to queue up early enough to do so. The show itself was, as usual, absolutely wonderful. Seymour did a good job with the narration, delivering it very clearly and effectively. She didn't quite have the passionate delivery of some of the best previous narrators that I've heard (such as Dick Van Dyke or David Ogden Stiers), but she didn't embarrass herself like Olympia Dukakas (who read the same page twice, at one point) did a few years ago either... As always, simply hearing all this great, traditional Christmas music performed by such a large choir and accompanied by a professional orchestra is an incredible and moving experience. Hearing it on Main Street at Disneyland brings a certain extra magic to it that really can't be beat. Seeing the show each year does require a fair amount of effort, and sometimes seems to be a bigger ordeal than it should be, but every year I also end up feeling that it was worth it. -Jeff
4	davewasbaloo Sun 12/2/2007 12:12a	Thanks for the great write up Jeff, it sounded great.
5	DlandDug Sun 12/2/2007 2:11a	Thanks for the great information. We will be stand-bying on Sunday.
6	ABBY Sun 12/2/2007 4:46p	We watched the parade part of the 5:30 perfomance from the sidewalk, just in front of the magic shop. After the parade went by a cast member opened up the rope right in front of us and told us we could enter and wait there for viewing of the 8pm perfomance. Not being people who want to wait for that long we chose not to. We decided to walk around towards City Hall where we found a place to sit in front of the guided tour building. We could see the side of the choir and the back of Jane Seymour's head...But we were close and could hear everything clearly and had a nice place to sit. We really enjoyed our spot "back stage".
7	Daveland Mon 12/3/2007 7:18a	I have posted my photos from last night's Candlelight Processional: http://davelandweb.com/candlel ight
8	oneyepete Mon 12/3/2007 12:05p	They say 2006. So, is that last years?
9	Daveland Mon 12/3/2007 12:12p	I re-did the page so that the 2007 pics are at the top now and the 2006 are below.
10	LuLu Mon 12/3/2007 12:35p	We got a spot near the fire station about 5pm, for he 5:30 show Saturday. There was still room to get under the ropes at that time. I personally had a great view, tho for shorter people it mightn't have been so good. I could see Jane Seymour as well as the performers very clearly. I was quite pleased. The only disappointment is that you can't see the processional (just bits of it thru the crowds). I don't know if there's a "walkup" spot where you can see the processional and still have a good view of the show? It's a great performance and I was more than happy to be able to see it at no extra charge!!

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