On the day after Christmas in 2008, we were at Disney’s Animal Kingdom enjoying some family time together and decided to attend a showing of The Festival Of The Lion King. The crowd was growing and there were a lot of disabled to seat, so they opened the doors a bit earlier than they normally would. This meant guests were sitting around with nothing to do for an abnormally long time. As you might suspect a few people grew restless while Disney cast members tried to squeeze every last guest into the theater that they could.
About 10 minutes before the show was supposed to start every body was pretty much seated and had been for a few minues. At this point a few members of the crowd started to stomp their feet and clap. It was almost getting out of hand, but was met with a stern gannouncement from the Guest Control cast member that they would cancel the show if that continued.
With about five minutes to go before curtain, a group right in front of the control booth tried to get a wave going. Eventually most of the theater crowd joined in. Guest control cast members looked very uneasy, but there was really nothing they could do other than start the show early, which is exactly what they did.
I will admit I got a little nervous a couple times while the crowd was being unruly, it felt like it could easily get out of hand. But the wave, at least, was mostly just people having fun while they waited. Here’s a video I took of the crowd doing the wave.
I have only had the pleasure of seeing this show once and I am curious why a crowd doing the wave would be considered unruly or even clapping and stomping their feet. Were they just having fun or were they trying to hurt people? I am really just curious. The time we saw the show…it was not even full. Lucky us I guess. I hope you were able to enjoy it anyway.
I have also seen this show only once, but at the show I attended a cast member was actually leading the crowd in a clap-a-long contest while other cast members were seating the audience still coming in. It was a lot of fun for the kids and made the wait appear much shorter. As with Kimberdee, this video looks like people having a lot of fun, I can’t see unruliness or any danger being present.
I didn’t mean to imply that all the crowd doing the wave was unruly, but rather that the crowd was unruly before that. Although the wave looked like fun, and many audience members were just having fun, combined with what happened just a few moments before, it was unnerving.
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