LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla.— Move over Regis and Kelly, a new Christmas Day Walt Disney World tradition has begun. While the long running Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade taped in early December airs on ABC this Christmas morning, another parade will be making its way down Main Street U.S.A. at the Magic Kingdom. The first annual Christmas Podcast Parade will be broadcast live from Walt Disney World on Christmas day, but it won’t be on any television station. The parade’s creator, Tom Corless, has received the exclusive rights to broadcast the parade on episode 23 of his popular WDW News Today podcast. “Being the creator of this new parade, I felt that I should be the only one airing it, plus, no television channel wanted a parade full of internet stars”, said Corless.
While many people are not aware of the stars of this particular parade, to thousands of Disney fans, they are pseudo-celebrities. Jason Diffendal, Adam Roth, Luke Manning, Steve Swanson, Tom Corless, Brian Sommer and John Corigliano are among the notables from the Disney Online Community to have their own float in this holiday parade. Another star of the community will be taking hosting duties, but he will only be the co-host of a podcasting newcomer, Larry Mongello. McLamb of the Disney News Weekly Podcast gives most of the spotlight to Mongello, who is looking to step out of his brother’s shadow. “With all of my brother Lou’s success, its been hard for me to find my spot in this community”, said Larry. Well, Larry will not have to share the fame this time around, his brother Lou could not make it to the parade due to a scheduling conflict.
This upstart holiday event has garnered some major attention from some big stars, and some people are even looking at this as an opportunity to save face. While Amy Adams and Roz appear in the parade to bask in their fame, Spaceship Earth narrator Judi Dench and Walt Disney Imagineering are using this chance to win over the people. Siemens and WDI have spent the last 6 months working on Spaceship Earth at Epcot as well as a corresponding float for this parade. Judi Dench will ride upon this float in an attempt to gain some good publicity for the attraction, which has been the butt of many jokes over the last few weeks since reopening from its lengthy refurbishment.
Will Larry Mongello become the next big star in the Disney Online Community? Will Disney fans learn to communicate with the new lackluster Spaceship Earth? Will John Corigliano wake up in time for the parade? The only way to find out is to tune in to episode 23 of the WDW News Today podcast on December 25th, 2007 for the First Annual Christmas Podcast Parade live from the Walt Disney World Resort.
To subsribe to the WDW News Today Podcast on Itunes, click this link. Otherwise, go HERE to download the show after it’s release.
