When you have a ticket for seating at Candlelight, you enter a roped-off area just inside the turnstiles and go to the right or the left, depending on your ticket color. We finally decided to split up and see which of us got the best answer. Our tickets had a color on them that wasn’t among the colors for that night, and every cast member we talked to gave us a different answer (classic Disney). Of course, when we actually got to Disneyland that night, NOBODY had any idea what to do with us. When we asked to have our tickets moved to that date, the tour guide wrote our names on a list and told us to present our original tickets. We picked December 13, the second of two nights that Dick Van Dyke was scheduled to narrate Candlelight. I was the only person in the crowd who was ecstatic-this meant we could reschedule for one of the nights we’d really wanted to see, a night that Dick Van Dyke was narrating! I grabbed Patrick and we dashed over to the Tour Garden to change our tickets. (One good thing about the charmless America Gardens Theater, where Candlelight is performed at Epcot, is that the performers are covered so the show can go on rain or shine… not that it’s any fun to watch in the rain.) Finally, every last person was onstage and ready to perform.īut three sentences into the Christmas story, narrator Dennis Haysbert was cut off and the show was canceled due to the threat of a drizzle. We caught only fleeting glimpses of the actual candlelight processional down Main Street-maybe we should go back just to get a spot along the route and watch that part. On the night of our tour, we found our Candlelight seats in the Town Square equivalent of the nosebleed section (and right next to some D23 staffers!) and settled in. (I did a separate review of the tour, but suffice it to say there is no way I’d ever have taken it if not for the Candlelight seats). 1 and 2 that included seats for Candlelight Processional, we almost didn’t flinch as we plunked down $150 each for the privilege. So when we found out that Disney was doing a special version of its Holiday Time at Disneyland tour on Dec. Even with 2 performances per night, our chances of actually winning a lottery with 900,000+ potential entrants were not high. This year Disney expanded Candlelight Processional to 20 nights and opened up space for Annual Passholders to win seats via a lottery. (I should note that there also used to be pricey dinner packages that would guarantee you a seat at Candlelight, but I suspect the online-ticketing fiascos of the past few years are what caused them to dump those entirely this year.) This, plus the crowds attracted to Main Street by the show, has always sounded like a nightmare to me, so I assiduously avoided Candlelight weekend at Disneyland. Historically, only community leaders, Club 33 members, and others invited by Disney have had seating at Candlelight Processional, with park guests forced to camp out all day in hopes of getting a good spot in the standing-room sections or maybe even an unfilled seat at the last minute. You can read more about the history over on Mouseplanet. OK, you’re not going to believe this, but before last Thursday, I had never seen Candlelight Processional at Disneyland, despite the fact that they’ve been doing it every year since 1958! Legend has it that the tradition started when Walt decided he wanted carolers on Main Street, and that eventually grew into an entire concert and retelling of the Christmas story on two nights each December.
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