I hope it's not too sensitive a subject for me to talk about, I just wanted to try to same something about it from my own personal perspective.I found a Disney park soundtrack cassette that I now understand to be out of print in a thrift store, and noticed that it had a track at the very end of it called "Light Magic".
My first thought was, "What's Light Magic?" I didn't want to try looking it up on the internet since I don't think the net is always reliable about containing facts as opposed to mere gossip, so I decided to ask my Disney travel agent the next time I saw her to make a trip payment. She suddenly got a very unhappy look in her face and basically told me what she had heard about it, in a nutshell she had said that it was a new presentation Disneyland was working really hard on putting together, that it wasn't able to be completed in time because it was so complex, and that Disneyland had really gone out on a limb to throw a paid-admission premiere party for annual passholders only to apparently have annual passholders who attended "throw a tantrum" (her terminology, I'm just repeating what I was told as I wouldn't know) and... well, I'm sure you understand by now what she described to me.
I thought about it while at work as it made me feel, how can I word this, it made me feel so hurt for Disneyland and all those cast members who had worked so hard. I'll be honest, it really made me angry on the inside with whoever-the-people were who were supposed to be the "guests" of that audience given a new show who were acting that way as though the cast members didn't have feelings.
For one thing, it made me wonder if such "guests" understood the special difference between merely watching a movie or TV show and watching a live presentation. The difference is that when one is watching a live performance, those performers are personally performing for the guests! I mean, if I was there personally, the special thing is that these cast members would have been putting on a special show just for me as a guest, and even if it wasn't finished that shouldn't matter because it is a special new show and it was made just for me in that sense, you know what I mean?
It made me wonder if "guests" like these complainers my travel agent described would have mocked a broadway performance if something had gone wrong onstage. Or how such "guests" would have felt if they themselves were still in the first grade in a school play and then suddenly slipped on stage only to have their audience laugh at them. Or heck, if they themselves were adults on stage and the same thing happened? I mean, who cares if things may or may not go wrong in a live performance? What makes it special is that it's a special flesh and blood performance put on just for the audience to share on a personal level. That's the part that's the most fun. It also means for my end that "guests" who act so selfishly have basically already supposedly "spoken for" future guests like myself by causing it to be cancelled, and now people like me will never have the opportunity to see and experience it ourselves.
So as my reaction to hearing about this situation, I just wanted to tell all you cast members that if I was there, I would have LOVED watching that new presentation. I would have loved to see what you had all put together for me to enjoy, as I've only had a few visits to Disneyland I've only been able to see a few live performances there big and small and I've always enjoyed them because Disney has always had a special touch to theirs that no one else has. In my few visits I've seen your beautiful parade "A Christmas Fantasy", I've also seen "Mickey's Detective Agency" and "Goofy's Beach Party Blast" and thought they were both really cute. I've also heard live band performances, groups of Christmas carolers and a barbershop quartet on Main Street USA, and others. (You can really see a lot as long as you hang on to the schedule you're given at the entrance, of course.)
And I can assure you all that I would have loved being able to see "Light Magic" too. I only wish I could have been there back then so I could have at least tried to go up to you cast members and thank you for performing it for me.
. Seeing technical breakdowns, I'd feel a lot of concern but not rage.