Good
evening! Can everyone in the back hear me okay?
Welcome
to the first annual presentation of the Marchie Awards! Our purpose
tonight is to honor excellence in the art of theme park parades. By
an outlandish coincidence, all of our nominees for this ceremony are
units in the same
parade: Mickey's Soundsational Parade at Disneyland Park, Anaheim,
California! Let's meet them! In order of appearance:
Mickey
Strikes Up the Band!
Aladdin's
Magical Cymbal Celebration
Sebastian's
Calypso Carnival
Donald's
Fiesta Fantastico
Royal
Princess Romantic Melodies
Simba's
Beastly Beats
Tiana's
New Orleans Jazz Jubilee
Peter
Pan's Neverland Buccaneer Blast
Mary
Poppins's Spoonful of Rhythm
What
a great-looking bunch! Maybe it's not such a coincidence
after all—Mickey's Soundsational Parade is known for its overall
excellence. From the whimsical float design to the lavish costumes to
the wonderfully broad choice of movies to highlight, all of it in
service of the parade's theme—music!—it's clear that Disneyland's
Live Entertainment division was working at the top of its game in
creating this mobile show! Let's just hope all these competition
between co-stars doesn't breed resentment that would negatively
impact their performances in the future!
Now
without further ado...the Marchies!
Musical
Medleys
Our
first Marchie of the evening will be awarded to the unit with the
best recorded musical accompaniment. There are a lot of really strong
contenders here, and no wonder when the very purpose of the parade is
a celebration of Disney's amazing musical portfolio!
Honorable
Mention
goes to Mary Poppins's Spoonful of Rhythm. The most difficult thing
about crafting a medley of songs from any movie graced by the talent
of the Sherman Brothers must be narrowing down the choices, but the
showrunners did a fine job here, selecting “A Spoonful of Sugar,”
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” and “Step in Time,”
which match each other well in meter and energy level.
The
Runner-Up
in this category is Donald's Fiesta Fantastico, for its delightful
blending of tunes from both Saludos
Amigos
and The Three
Caballeros.
Who knew mariachi and samba went so well together? (Who besides José
Carioca and Panchito, that is?)
And
the Marchie
for Best Musical Medley
goes to...Tiana's New Orleans Jazz Jubilee! That hot mix of jazz and
zydeco is simply irresistible!
Live
Music
That
Marchie was for recorded music. Our next one is for Best Live Music.
Strangely enough for a parade that's all about music, Soundsational
doesn't include many performers playing functioning instruments.
Nonetheless, a few units have managed to distinguish themselves.
Mary
Poppins's Spoonful of Rhythm takes Honorable
Mention
again, not just for the concertina-wielding chimney sweep camped out
on the crescent moon...
...but
because of the clacking beads on the front wheel of the
pennyfarthing! It takes talent to make your float
tap out the beat for you!
That
said, living breathing musicians deserve higher honors than mere
machines. The Runner-Up
for this Marchie is Aladdin's Magical Cymbal Celebration, which
really lives up to its name with Aladdin's gong and the shiny cymbals
on the wrists of the bedlah dancers:
And
the Marchie
for Best Live Music
goes to...Mickey Strikes Up the Band! When a full drumline of hip
young men blazes a trail for Mickey Mouse himself to lay down some
sick beats, there's simply no contest!
Costumes
Our
next Marchie is for a category very close to my
heart: costuming! Even when music is the foundation of your show, the
visual element is just as important...and in this case, the visual
element often includes
musical instruments and notation symbols!
Nearly
every unit made a strong showing in this category. It would be a
shame to ignore the ones that didn't place considering how narrow the
margins were. These dancing princesses definitely understand
petticoat power:
The
Piñata
Girls of Donald's Fiesta Fantastico show off their moves:
This
Neverland butterfly went for broke with her color palette:
But
alas, only a few could take home prizes. Mickey Strikes Up the Band!
picks up the Honorable
Mention
here. The aforementioned drumline sets the tone in outfits suggesting
the waveforms of a mixing board:
Minnie's
darling piano-keys skirt...
...and
Goofy's snappy xylophone pants and vest ensemble...
...clearly
demonstrate the marriage between music and fashion. Even Pluto gets
in on the act, swapping out his collar tag for a musical triangle:
The
Runner-Up
in this category is Tiana's New Orleans Jazz Jubilee, for its spot-on
portrayal of 1920s couture as filtered through a Mardi Gras
aesthetic. Check out these amazing colors!
And
the Marchie
for Best Costumes
goes to...Sebastian's Calypso Carnival!
Wow!
I don't know if those gals on the outside are supposed to be
jellyfish or corals, but either way, those veils are positively
hypnotic! As for the ones on the inside...we never thought we'd see a
cross between a Caribbean princess, a shekere,
and a tide pool, but here we are! What a perfect summary of this
unit's cultural roots and aesthetic!
Floats
While
we're on the subject of visual elements, let's award the Marchie for
Float Design! Now, only five of our nine contenders this evening
submitted themselves for this particular award, but all five of them
went all-out. Still, one emerged as the clear champion.
Honorable
Mention
here goes to Royal Princess Romantic Melodies. I'll just let this
float speak for itself:
That's
some pretty impressive height, if nothing else.
The
Runner-Up
is Mary Poppins's Spoonful of Rhythm—we've seen bits and pieces of
this whimsical contraption in awarding the previous categories, but
it really bears a closer look:
It's
a carousel! It's a one-man band! It's an Edwardian foxhunt! It's
probably a bank vault and a talking umbrella too! And while we're at
it, these charming mounts that lead the unit deserve some praise too:
But
we can't lie...one float really stands above all the others in terms
of exemplfying not just the overall theme of the parade, but its own
stylistic subtheme. The Marchie
for Best Float Design
goes to...Tiana's New Orleans Jazz Jubilee!
What
can we say? It's a Louisiana riverboat made of jazzy musical
instruments! The smokestacks are clarinets, the railings are trombone
slides, and the paddlewheel is a tambourine! It simply doesn't get
any more clever and appropriate than that! Congrats, Tiana!
Dancing
We've
handed out awards for sounds and awards for sights...now for the
categories that combine the two! How do our nine units fare when it
comes to moving to the beat? Once again, all of our contenders worked
really hard and came up with some impressive moves. It was hard to
pick out a top three!
Honorable
Mention
in the category of dancing goes to Mary Poppins's Spoonful of Rhythm,
for those oh-so-lively chimney sweeps. Whether they're kicking their
knees up or flapping like birdies, they sure know how to step in
time!
Our
Runner-Up
is Aladdin's Magical Cymbal Celebration, whose bedlah girls epitomize
grace. Here they are mid-twirl:
And
the Marchie
for Best Dancing
goes to...Tiana's New Orleans Jazz Jubilee! These flappers and their
sheiks literally kick up their heels to dance the Charleston!
Stunts
and Acrobatics
Of
course, sometimes these performers go beyond mere dancing to give us
an outright stunt show. The Honorable
Mention
in this category goes to Mickey Strikes Up the Band!, for the
drumline's lively drumstick juggling.
The
Runner-Up
is Mary Poppins's Spoonful of Rhythm—those chimney sweeps do bounce
around, don't they? And the one sitting up on the moon must have
perfect balance in order to keep squeezing that squeezebox so
vigorously without falling.
But
the clear victor in this field, receiving the Marchie
for Stunts and Acrobatics is...Simba's
Beastly Beats, boasting not only a troupe of positively elasticated
monkeys, but these impressive stilt walkers:
How
they make it the whole length of the parade route, occasionally
jumping
on those things, but never falling, I don't pretend to know. Great
work, guys!
Best
In Show (And More!)
Soon,
we will award the coveted Marchie for Best Parade Unit. But first, a
few special prizes!
To
Aladdin's Magical Cymbal Celebration, we award this charming Original
Character Trophy,
for doing what many had considered impossible and inventing new
characters for
a parade—not
a movie or a TV special, but a parade—who have become fan favorites
on the strength of their incredibly distinctive costumes and
mannerisms. The characters in question are the elegant Coin Dancer...
...and
the wildly popular Banana Man!
Next
up, we have the Pleasant
Surprise Plaque,
for the unit we never would have expected to see, but are so glad we
did! This one goes to Donald's Fiesta Fantastico, for its hard work
in promoting awareness of the increasingly obscure “travelogue”
films, Saludos
Amigos
and The
Three Caballeros,
and reminding us all what a treat Latin music can be. Take a bow, you
crazy Caballeros!
And
now, because we'd hate for anyone to go home empty-handed, we have a
Participation
Trophy
for the one unit that has failed to place in any category...Peter
Pan's Neverland Buccaneer Blast. Sorry guys, but when the competition
is this stiff, you need to step up your game. I understand that both
pirates and pixies have a lot of appeal right now, but I would
recommend committing to one or the other in order to achieve a
stronger sense of genre with your music. Sea chanties would have been
a good basis for your unit. Celtic-inspired music like that found in
the Tinker Bell movies would also have been good. But the soundtrack
to Peter
Pan
just isn't distinctive enough on its own merits to compete with the
likes of The
Little Mermaid
and The
Princess and the Frog.
Better luck next time!
And
now...the moment we've all been waiting for...the top prize of them
all...the coveted Marchie
for Best Parade Unit Overall.
The Academy is pleased to grant this award to...Tiana's New Orleans
Jazz Jubilee! We can't deny it—you are the one unit we are always
most excited to see when Mickey's Soundsational Parade comes marching
through Main Street and Fantasyland. Rumor has it that the original
plan was to create an entire parade based on the music of The
Princess and the Frog,
before the showrunners decided to cast an even wider net and draw on
the entire legacy of Disney's music instead of just one film. That
would explain why the Jazz Jubilee is the best part—it condenses an
entire parade's worth of conceptual awesomeness into a single unit!
However...just as you can't make a tune with only one note, nor a
dance with only one step, the real treat, the real prize, is
when all nine of this evening's entrants work together to bring us
their production in its entirety. I have to be honest here...the
Academy considers this the best parade to be introduced at Disneyland
in at least twenty years. It's certainly the only one in such a
timespan to exist for its own sake instead of to promote a movie,
anniversary, or holiday. They didn't even pair it with a big
soundtrack sales push—they just let it speak for itself. And we're
going to do the same. Ladies and gentlemen...Mickey's Soundsational
Parade!
Thank
you for being with us here tonight at the introduction of the Marchie
Awards. Please collect all your belongings, including trash, as you
exit the auditorium. Good night, folks!
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