News / VIP Guests

You can find Part 1 of the series here and Part 2 here.

Video – Corbin Bleu visits Walt Disney Studios Park

The main video begins with Corbin riding Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith and feeting the first few fans to recognise him, before strolling across the park (pointing to Tower of Terror) toward Crush’s Coaster, which he rides several times. Next, the video features his entire pre-parade and the star watching Disney Cinema Parade itself. The video ends with clips from 2007’s final High School Musical On Tour performance and Corbin signing more autographs from fans gathered during the show.

Video – Corbin Bleu interview at Walt Disney Studios Park

Against a backdrop of the High School Musical On Tour stage, Corbin speaks about visiting Paris, the differences between Disneyland Paris and California, the cast of the show, the 15th Anniversary and more.

The young star has certainly been trained in the art of making good soundbites, hasn’t he?

Both videos © Disney.

Part 2 of our Corbin Bleu visit coverage; You can see Part 1 here, with Corbin starring in the final performance of High School Musical On Tour.

The thrills began at 10am sharp, with Corbin entering Walt Disney Studios Park via the backstage gate in Backlot to be confronted right away with a favourite from his visits to Walt Disney World — Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith.

A theme runs throughout the entire collection of press photos from Corbin’s visit — yes, all the in-park shots are exclusively from Walt Disney Studios Park.

In the past, VIP guests have invariably posed in the usual spot beside Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant, and certainly always within Disneyland Park. However, Disneyland Resort Paris has apparently just remembered it has a second gate, and is only too happy to flaunt the newly-improved experience within.

After the non-celebrities who attended the Toon Studio launch and the original ‘VIPs’ of the 15th Anniversary launch (Andie MacDowell, anyone?), Corbin’s visit was quite a major event for the resort.

His debut album has been somewhat less succesful in the US than expected, but, adored by mostly female fans of a younger age (and no doubt their mothers), the premiere showings of his three “Disney Channel Original Movies” were seen by a total of 33.4 million viewers in their native country. The recent UK premiere of High School Musical 2 drew an impressive 1.3 million viewers on its own, one of the highest audiences in recent years for a digital subscription channel.

Be it from a love of the parks or simply to keep the mouse that made him famous happy, it’s nothing but refreshing to see a VIP guest who has no problem lending his smile to so many moments of great publicity for the Studios…

…or, in some cases, something nearer to a scream.

Next, Corbin headed across the park to Toon Studio and one attraction he certainly won’t have seen in the States: Crush’s Coaster. With his father David Reivers, most well-known, strangely, for his role in Corbin’s own Disney Channel hit “Jump In!”, Corbin made himself one of the first true celebrities to take on the resort’s newest roller coaster.

In interviews taken later, the star apparently had nothing but praise for the latest thrill, enjoying its spinning movement and comparing in detail the different experiences given from riding the initial part of the attraction forwards or backwards.

Speaking of Disneyland Park, he said the Castle was “beaaautiful!” and enjoyed how the original attractions were “the same, but also brand new”, comparing the story of Phantom Manor with its Haunted Mansion cousin. A good soundbite for the 15th Anniversary Celebration saw Corbin suggest how young the resort was and how much there will still be to come, “considering, in California, we just celebrated our 50th.”

Either this guy had a press release fed to him, or he really knows his Disney parks. Regardless, the resort now has a valuable collection of publicity from one of Disney’s biggest modern-day stars…

And he even said a quick “thank you” to Mickey Mouse himself.

All photos © Disney.

In what seems like a rather dangerous publicity stunt, Disneyland Resort Paris have taken the initative to announce Corbin’s appearance in advance via their official 15th Anniversary Blog. Seeing the startling commotion from fans young and old when the High School Musical 2 stars appeared at London’s O2 Arena last month, they’d better be preparing for a record day at Walt Disney Studios Park.

Corbin won’t simply be making a single appearance for the cameras this time either, oh no. According to the blog, he was due to spend a few hours at the resort (and no doubt the Disney Channel Television Studios which are located within Walt Disney Studios) on 15th October to publicise the premiere of High School Musical 2 in France. But, that’s just not good enough for a cool guy like Corbin.

Instead, guests at the park will be able to see him stroll the park, star in the parade and even appear in 2007’s final performance of High School Musical On Tour…

The blog announces that from 10am onwards Corbin will be exploring the park and specifically enjoying the two new attractions — Cars Quatre Roues Rallye and Crush’s Coaster — which he “has promised to try out”.

Then, at 1.15pm, when the drum roll begins and the booming announcements introduce Disney Cinema Parade, you’ll be able to see Corbin as a special guest star with the entire cast of High School Musical On Tour!

Finally, the sad moment arrives with the final performance of High School Musical On Tour for 2007. Yes, that’s right — the show won’t end tomorrow on 14th October 2007 as previously announced. One, final “encore” performance will take place at 2.30pm on Monday, featuring none other than Corbin Bleu himself.

No doubt the audio/visual crews of Disneyland Resort Paris will be out in full force to capture this entirely unique day in the 15th Anniversary celebrations, and we’ll try to bring you everything they capture as soon as possible.

If you’re visiting the park on Monday, or have taken the wild decision to skip work, cancel all plans and head over to Disneyland Resort Paris just from this announcement — expect a blockbuster day.

Disneyland Resort Paris has a long and interesting history of sporting star appearances in Disneyland Park. From the several Tour de France events to Michael Schumacher’s unforgettable “test drive” along Main Street in a Formula 1 car. With 2007’s Rugby World Cup hosted by France, the chance has arisen once again for a little more good publicity.

The South Africa team visited Disneyland Park only a few weeks ago, as reported by the official 15th Anniversary blog, with some rather more local sporting giants quick to follow this weekend…

The players who visited the park with their families posed for photos at an organised shoot in front of Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant, however the usual welcome from Mickey Mouse apparently wasn’t given — a mouse next to rugby players may not have been the ideal match, afterall. Disney’s best opponent for the team was instead the Beast, Belle by his side. (Just don’t tell the team they’re French.)

The visit couldn’t have come at a better time for Disneyland, providing an interesting story for the newspapers as they reported the previous Friday’s win against Tonga early this week. As if guaranteeing the park’s mention in reports about the team, their ride on Big Thunder Mountain turned out to be a little different to most, as The Sun reported:

Rugby squad left high and try

THE England rugby squad got stuck up a ROLLERCOASTER when they celebrated a victory at Disneyland Paris.

Players went to the theme park after beating Tonga.

But the Thunder Mountain ride ground to a halt for 15 minutes halfway up a climb.Ace Jonny Wilkinson said: ‘I was convinced it was just designed to scare us. We intend that to be the last technical hitch at this World Cup.’

A Disneyland spokesman said: ‘We stopped the ride to let them board. That caused it to go out-of-sync so we had to do safety checks.’

It was The Times this Monday which gave the most amount of coverage to the squad’s Disneyland visit, however, going so far as to fill half of the newspaper’s back page with a photo of players on Big Thunder Mountain.

Inside, a column written by player Jonny Wilkinson himself gives more details about the visit (with a surprising enthusiasm for the park, from a rugby player) and another large photo. The Big Thunder Mountain technical problems are also explained:

“That brief lull on Saturday was spent at EuroDisney, which the boys — wives and kids on board — really enjoyed, and the irrepressible Lewis Moody so enjoying himself that we weren’t sure if the rest he took was because of sheer exhaustion or a recurrence of the headache sustained in action against Tonga the night before.

“The most memorable moment, though, was when we had a large number of the England team, plus assorted family members, all sitting on a rollercoaster that got stuck halfway up a climb. I was convinced this was just an element of a typical fairground ride designed to scare us, although, after about 15 minutes of sitting there, I had to concede that mayber there was a more deep-seated problem after all.

“On getting back to the ground, we were amused to learn that this was actually our fault and that we had loaded up too slowly. Suffice to say, we intent that to be the last technical hitch in our side at this World Cup.”

Overall, an excellent week of publicity for the resort in the British press. The only downside to these features in The Times was the use of ‘EuroDisney’ rather than ‘Disneyland Resort Paris’, but then the chances of finding a DLRP fan who’s also a sports journalist are probably close to zero, right?

Photos/pages from The Times and DailyMail.co.uk