Christmas Day Parade

If you had your TV on during your Christmas day festivities, you may have seen Miley and Billy Ray playing the Disney parade. If you squinted, you may have also seen us.

The day of the show, I woke up in Disney's Animal Kingdom hotel, which was...odd:



We took a shuttle from Animal Kingdom to the Magic Kingdom for the big show, where it was bonkers-hot outside. Frying. But the set was huge and impressive:


We soundchecked and rehearsed for a bit, while the thousands of fans were still barricaded behind ropes.



And I took a moment to grab a couple shots with my new friends:


I pretended not to notice these signs, sprinkled throughout the set:

After awhile, they let the fans pour in.

We played "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" with Miley:



In between songs, Jamie flirted with Stich (not sure if he/she/it flirted back) and I was entertained by Donald Duck:

Note how Kay's eye-rolling actually hurt Donald's feelings. Joy destroyer.

Then we played with Sir Billy Ray Cyrus (the out-of-syncness due to YouTube):



After that, I went back to the resort to watch the lonely animals pace.

DC Games

After another luxurious day relaxing at the Hyatt, we jumped in the van to make our wonderfully late 4pm call time. We showed up to an empty stadium.

After a quick reunion with our buddies the Jonas Brothers and band, we popped up on stage for the most disastrous sound check we've ever had.

The setup went well. How hard can it be to plug stuff in?


But once we started getting levels, it was your basic 72-car freeway pileup. Nobody could hear anything. I, for example, was missing the left side of one of my keboards, my vocal, the click, and Miley's vocal. Not good.

And Vish, our regular dependable sound guy, was at the mercy of the Master of Incompentence - otherwise known as "the guy Disney supplied." The Master had confused the mixing console with Whack-A-Mole, as he randomly slapped buttons and knobs hoping for some sort of accidental miracle.

Halfway through this total catastrophe, in poured the Miley fans. Tons of 'em.

Perfect.

Full of enthusiasm, they didn't seem to notice our perplexed faces, as we struggled through one roughly-mixed song after another. Eventually we got our mixes to a place that wasn't awful, which seemed about the best we could hope for.

So it was off to dinner in the food tent. While we were eating, the weather did an about-face.

The sky began pelting the crowd with the largest raindrops I've seen in ages. Grape-like droplets. I could feel them explode as they hit me. I was fully soaked in ten seconds.

But the crowd was loyal. They weren't about to go home just because of some soggy clothes. Not when they were waiting to see Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers, and the Cheetah Girls, and...whoever else was playing.

In typical fashion for these sorts of things, we were then shepherded to a room far away, where we then filled out our paperwork and sat around for several hours.

Then we got the word. We were going on early. After all that waiting, now we had to rush. We threw on our costumes and jumped on golf carts, which whisked us over to the stage. We grabbed our gear and hurried up to the wings. One of the show runners saw us and said, "What are you guys doing here? You're not on for a while. The Cheetah Girls are on before you."

But we didn't have enough time to go back. So we just hung out in everybody's way, in the wings.

Miley sauntered up about fifteen minutes later, and we had an impromptu singing jam session on the side of the stage.

We all took our places. The dancers came out in their big long tailcoats. We rocked the place out with "See You Again," and two new songs: "Fly on the Wall" and "Breakout." The crowd totally ate up the new stuff. And of course, everybody loved "See You Again," which has become quite a huge crossover hit with Disney fans and on mainstream rock radio.

That was it. Funny how these things are 98% waiting and 2%playing.

WOOHOOOOOO!

Our little 3D movie grossed approximately $29 million over the weekend, in only 683 theatres! This is insane. We were the #1 movie in America. It is already reported to be the highest-grossing 3D film ever released!

Disney is now rolling the movie out into even more theatres.

The Great Big Stomach Churner

I feel like I'm gonna throw up.

Tonight was the wrap party at Disney Quest on the lot in Downtown Disney. It's basically five floors of video games, none of which could be called state-of-the-art, but most of which could be called fun.

After a few speeches, we were given gift bags, which included a Hannah Montana sweatshirt and a beautiful plaque, plus a little spending money. Very cool. Then I hung out with Josh Plotnick (The Great Tour Elf). We played a bunch of old school games like DigDug and Frogger. Eventually I was yanked away to check out some rides with Iggy.

So far so good.

The trouble came when we decided to design our own rollercoaster on the virtual Space Mountain ride. We designed one with tons of loops, barrel rolls, jumps and speed boosts. Somehow it still only got a 3 out of 5 Thrill Rating. Then we got to actually ride what we designed in a car that rotated, flipped upside down and jolted side to side. This made me feel a little queasy.

Honestly, I can't quite explain why we did what we did next.

We decided that we wanted to make a ride with a Thrill Rating of 5. So we threw in some nasty loops, a waterfall jump and even made the car break through a wall at one point. Somehow this still only garnered a Thrill Rating of 4. Whatever. Good enough. Iggy and I jumped into the car.

I want to re-stress that I have the flu and shouldn't have even left my hotel room.

Well. There was a discernible difference between a 3 and a 4. This time around was a relentless, stomach-churning nausea-thon.

We disembarked, and I nearly disembarfed. I held it together, but felt totally "off" for the rest of the night.

The whole bus ride home was like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride through Seafood Queaseville.

Progress Report

Thank you, dear readers, for inquiring about our health.

Miley definitely had a rough time last night. She was feeling very sick and actually left the stage at one point. We weren't sure what to do, cause this show runs like clockwork, but that's why we have a Musical Director. Stacy was on the ball and told us to go into "Right Here," so we vamped and goofed around for about three minutes till Miley came back. Candice busted out some genius phrases along the lines of "let's make some noise for Miley to come back out!" A stagehand pulled out a bench for Miley and she performed "Right Here" sitting down. It ended up being quite poignant, and we all had fun being spontaneous for a change.

I hear Miley's doing quite a bit better today. She went with a bunch of the dancers to Disney World and had a little adventure. Sounded cool. They got to go in the back entrances of the rides, and were allowed to ride them twice in a row if they wanted. And they had a van drive them to each ride. That is the way to do Disney World.

Kay is much improved today. She looks like herself again. Stacy seems fully recovered. Me, not so much. I feel like I got hit by a truck with spikes on its wheels. But I still had a great time at Candice's barbecue. I'll tell you more about that later.

But for now, I must sleep.