Backstage

[WDWTEXAS]

Anyone have any good behind the scenes stories?

My sophomore year in high school, I went with my choir for Magical Music Days. We got to go through the backstage area behind Splash Mountain and then rode our bus all the way to the stage in Tomorrowland, on the road that travels around park. We entered through the back of the stage, in the employee parking lot. Pretty cool to see all the behind the scenes areas, but our guide asked us not to take any pictures.

[SBETigg]

I went to a private party in the Living Seas pavilion at Epcot. We arrived on buses that were driven around the backstage areas of World Showcase. I was so excited to see it from behind the scenes. We still had to have our bags searched by a security guard who boarded our bus before we were led in through a door that came out right at the Living Seas. Guests were still in the park, and it felt strange to suddenly enter there, all of us in cocktail attire.

We got some looks and comments as we walked by and in through a door near the Coral Reef. Later, we were led to a roped-off viewing area with desserts and cordials for Illuminations, and then led out on the other side of World Showcase to our bus, which was then waiting on the other side of doors at the Odyssey building near Mexico. It was an awesome evening.

[Cara121078]

One year, when I was 12 or 13, my parents, brother and I were in the MK for the 4th of July fireworks. After the show was over, there was a traffic jam of people, so they opened up the area behind the buildings on Main Street, so that people could get out. My father still brings it up, whenever we talk about past WDW trips he says, "remember when we got to see Employeeland?"

[alliekat]

Once when I was on dinosaur the ride broke down.The cm's turned on the lights it was interesting because some of the dinosaurs don't even have rubber skin on all sides so you could see the machine part. It was cool the cm that guided us out asked us not to take pics sadly.

[JasonH]

The year was 1988, right before New Years, just 4 years after my first visit to WDW. I was 11 years old and it was my 3rd trip altogether to that wonderful place. My parents had a surprise for both me and my brother. They decided to let us "go out on our own" and booked us a tour, one of a few at the time, that only young teens could go on (ages 11-15 or 16 if I remember right, something Disney doesn't do anymore seeing that you have to have a parent if under a certain age for any of the tours now).

The tour series was called Wonders Of Walt Disney World and our particular tour that we took was called The Walt Disney World Of Entertainment, sponsored by Kodak. With this tour we took a behind the scenes look at some of the aspects of the shows that went on at WDW and what it took to help keep it running smoothly.

We had a short workshop session in which we were given 2 books. One was a hard cover book that was informational, kinda similar to the old WDW souvenir books but was moreso telling of the history of entertainment and how it is today (1988) and is used in WDW. The other a soft cover book that was actually a workbook to be gone through at our leisure when the tour was done. Both books were given to us in a double ply plastic bag with hard plastic handles that snapped closed and was emblazoned on both sides with a big Kodak logo and using the Kodak yellow for the coloration of the entire bag. And b/c it was sponsored by them, they also gave us a roll of film and a camera, both Kodak (of course), to use for the duration of the tour.

After the workshop was over, we were taken to a backstage facility at MK. As we walked to the building, we got to see the floats that were used for the Electrical Water Pageant. They stacked them pretty good considering how small of an amount of space of the waterway they had for them. Inside the building, we got to meet a choreographer and explained some of how they get ready for a show and even taught us a simple dance move they used in one of their routines (still remember it too).

From there, we went on towards the Diamond Horseshoe Jamboree. Now just a bit of history here, at the time, you still had to make a reservation for the show b/c they had served food there and they wanted to make sure if you were eating or not and to have the food prepared and ready to go when you got to the show. When we got there it was inbetween shows and we got to meet one of the performers, who come to find out, she was from St. Louis, MO (talk about your coincidences). She talked to us a little about how they prepare for the show and we were able to ask questions as well. After that, we went to our tables they set aside for us, had regular guests come in since it was almost time for the next show, and served us our lunch as well.

Afterwards, we still had one thing to do before we went back to the workshop room.....we were going to be shown the famous utilidors!! I know on the Keys to the Kingdom tour you go down there as well, but ours was a little more extensive. We took our time down there. We were shown the barber shop they had set up there for CM's who needed a hair cut or even a shave before they went to work. We were also shown the costuming dept. And it wasn't just looking at it/passing by it, we were allowed to go INTO it and explained the process of how someone checked out costumes by showing us what they literally had to do, from checking out to checking back in.

Once back to the room, we handed in our cameras, made sure our info was correct on where they would send the pictures to (they did the processing for us as part of the tour package and was going to mail it to us as well) and met back up with our parents. When we got back home after the trip, we had our pictures waiting AND a picture memory book that we could place our pictures from the tour into AND a framed completion certificate of the tour with our name and date of the tour on it. To this day, I still have all that was given to us, including the Kodak bag, although some of the paint has come off from being handled so much through the years.

[HackLaSalle]

I signed up to check out DVC while at AK out by Dinoland we were able to be picked up outside the park behind I think Chester and Hester's. We took a quick drive through backstage where they grow all the trees and foilage for the park. It was pretty interesting. We also saw one of the many vet. stations they have for helping the animals. Kind of boring compared to the others but I wanted to share.