If you’ve been reading this column for a while, or namely since it started nearly a year ago, you may have read my self-introduction article I did near the beginning of my “career” here at Mickey News.

It’s not really important that you re-read it now, but if you’d like you can find the article here. No, the reason I bring it up is that I want to remind folks that I grew up in a small city called Winter Garden, which just so happens to be about 20 minutes due north of the Walt Disney World Resort.

Well, back in 1996, I was actually in high school there in Winter Garden, as a junior I believe. More importantly to myself, however, I was a member of our school’s Drum Line.

Yes, I was, and I guess still am, a percussionist. I’d say I was pretty good at it, and boy that really was my entire world back then. Of course, that’s what happens in high school.

Well our band, the West Orange Warrior Band, was a large band to say the least, given the communities the high school served. We were also a pretty good band at that, even given our size. How big were we back then? Let’s just say that when we lined up all of our band members on the football field from end to end, we went past both end zones...and that was without the Drum Line section! All in all, I think we hovered around a band of 350+ people back then (more schools have been built since, bringing our band size down).

What does our size have to do with Walt Disney World? Actually, everything!

You see, when the Walt Disney World Resort needed a large marching band for anything they were doing, they would give our band directors a call and see if we would be available to help out. In essence, the Walt Disney World event staff had a very large marching band on call whenever they needed it. Not only were we large, but we were also pretty good, and more importantly, close by.

So, in the four years I was in the band there, I know I’ve marched in every televised parade done there at the Magic Kingdom, which is probably eight (Christmas and Thanksgiving Day Parades).

However, this understanding between the band and WDW was mutually beneficial; since we were students and not professional musicians, they could not pay us for our service. Instead, WDW would issue every student two complementary tickets. In addition, WDW constantly donated money to our band for on seemingly never-ending need for funding, as well as donated almost-new musical equipment that was used at the Resort. Let me tell you, some of that equipment was very nice as well, and was used maybe three months in some cases due to a show being cancelled in the Parks.

Well, going back to 1996, we were informed by our band directors that the 25th anniversary of the Walt Disney World Resort was coming up, and that we had been asked to participate in a live televised event in the Magic Kingdom. Of course, we were also warned: this is not our typical televised event out there. This time it was a very big deal.

We were to find out the story of the opening celebration at the Magic Kingdom back in 1971, and what had to do with our new event:

Back in 1971 during the opening celebration, they apparently had a 76-member band march down Main Street paying, what else, but “76 Trombones”. We were to re-create that event for this celebration, but on a slightly larger scale: we were to have a 1076 member band!

Of course, we were a large band, but not THAT large. The solution was to create a band from others, which if my memory serves me correctly included:

• West Orange High School Marching Band
• University High School Marching Band
• University of Central Florida Marching Knights
• Florida A&M University Marching 100

While I’m not sure if all of us together made up 1076, I’m sure it was pretty close.

Well, most if not all of our bands had uniforms that had a removable “shield” on the front, which enabled us to change the look of our uniforms by attaching a new one on with buttons. Disney used this to their advantage, and distributed shields to all of the bands so our uniforms would look the same from the front.

In addition, Disney had flown out the then-director of the University of Southern California Band to come and coordinate this entire effort. While I can’t remember his name, I remember how much our own directors talked up his experience.

Once we had understood the makeup of the band and the “head” director, we received the music we would be playing, which had to be perfected and memorized (like most marching music is).

It was a little after that that we found out what exactly our event would be like...

We had a couple of practices at our own school with the USC band director, mostly regarding the music we were to be playing. He was so busy we were only able to have him come out twice to hear us.

Of course, then we had the real practice.

We were informed a week or two ahead of time that we would be having a practice for this event on Disney property, but there was a catch. The practice would be stating around 11:00 PM and would not be done until 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM.

We arrived after a day of school to our band room as required, and found a slew of Walt Disney World Transportation busses out back, waiting to take us to the Resort. That wasn’t really anything new; they always provided their own transportation for us.

However, we arrived not at the Magic Kingdom, but the service area to the north of it. You know, it’s the area where the Railroad trains and Monorails get repaired and such.

Well, the large parking lot they had there was empty of course (given the time), but we unloaded to find a slew of small orange cones all over the parking lot there, with orange safety tape connecting each one like a “connect the dots” puzzle.

We would find out very shortly that what we were looking at, although hard to see from the ground, was an (supposedly) exact replica of the measurements of Main Street, U.S.A., from the square all the way to the hub.

This replica in this parking lot was for practicing purposes, so that we could practice our route here before trying it on the actual Main Street in the Park. Of course, the sad part is that we were never able to use the cones and lines that night, since w had a lot of troble getting the line-ups correct.

We were waiting a long time until we were told we could take a break, to which they had refreshments waiting for us as well as restroom facilities. Once we were done, we were loaded onto a bunch of Parking Trams that took us to the front area of the Magic Kingdom for a real practice in the park!

Of course, it was then that our plans for the event had become apparent, once we got going back and forth, back and forth along our parade route inside an eerily-quiet Magic Kingdom.

What was our plans and how did the actual event turn out? Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until next week when I finish my story of my part in the WDW 25th Anniversary Celebration. In the meantime...

Thanks for stopping on by, and I’ll see you next week!