Santa crossed the Macy’s Herald Square threshold last Thursday at 11:57 am and the Christmas season was officially on its way. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Sunday (?), and Cyber Monday are all behind us. In front of you is one of the great periods of time to visit WDW – that between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Between now and whenever your kids get out of school for the Holidays, the crowd at all your favorite theme parks are greatly minimized. It also provides you with a great opportunity to see something Disney does better than anyone else – Decking the Proverbial Halls.
This blog isn’t about that…
I am a huge Christmas fanatic, too much to print in the blog (it is so a memoir)… For years, my younger days of Christmas culminated with the King of Daytime TV, Regis Philbin, hosting the Walt Disney World Christmas Parade. In fact, once syndicator Buena Vista TV picked up ‘Live with Regis & Kathie Lee’, I practically relied on Reege to provide me with updates from The Diz throughout the year (more so than those Dateline: Disney newsreel updates they used to show on the Disney Channel). I recall the super stretch limo that coordinated with the opening of the Disney-MGM Studios in 1989 rolling into the LIVE studio. The televised visits to Disney never felt like a week long commercial. I would constantly be checking in the backgrounds of shots to see if anything looked different.
On Friday November 18, Regis left his fancy throne to Kelly Ripa. The tributes all week long were great. I was a huge ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ fan at the turn of the century which gave me the gift of a Regis Renaissance in adulthood. His appearances on Letterman were and are always terrific. But, it was his voice on the WDW Christmas Parade that made the morning feel complete. A voice of comfort everyday – the icing on the cake Christmas Day.
I did something two weeks ago I don’t usually do – that was make the great effort to meet Regis while on his book signing tour. Following a visit to the 5th Ave. Barnes & Nobles, I now have a personalized copy of his book ‘How I Got This Way’ and had an all too brief conversation with a man I called a ‘fearless entertainer’.
That was the icing on my cake.
Brother Dillo
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