Pirates Of The Caribbean
AT WORLD'S END Premier
By : Suzanne Philips
SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2007
DISNEYLAND PARK, CALIFORNIA
The premiere for the last film in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy, AT WORLD'S END, held it's world premiere on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at Disneyland Park in California. As with the last premiere, the park rolled out a huge red carpet that stretched all the way down Main Street and ended at the gates of Frontierland.
At the start of the premiere, stilt walkers, jugglers, acrobats and musicians came out dressed as pirates to entertain the crowd. In attendance from the film were Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Jack Davenport, Lee Arenberg, Bill Nighy, Geoffrey Rush, Jonathan Pryce, Keith Richards, Kevin McNally, David Bailie, Naomi Harris, Martin Klebba and more. Other stars that came out for the event were Jon Voight, Kobe Bryant, Dancing with the stars celebs Carrie Ann Inaba, Joey Fatone, Ian Ziering, Apollo Anton Ono, Cuba Gooding Jr., Chad Michael Murray, and a host of people from The Disney Channel.
Unfortunately, Disney really dropped the ball this year. This was by far one of the worst handled premieres I have attended. Last year everything was set up when guests came into the park and the fans staked out spots early and were able to take shifts to eat, use the restrooms or check out some of the attractions. Everything went pretty smoothly and Disney was really nice and helpful to all of the fans. This year, they either had a new person running the show, or have decided that the fans are completely unimportant to them. They had taken about 3/4 of the red carpet for Press (probably due to the fact that the actors wanted to spend time with the fans last year and the press complained that they didn't get enough time with the actors) and one whole side of the street was devoted to Press, meaning that any fan on that side of the street was behind them and therefore unable to see. The employees working the carpet area were nice enough, but had been given no info and when they were asked a question had to give incorrect or conflicting information. At about 9:30 am, the powers that be decided everyone needed to stand until 8:00 that night and made everyone stand up. Later they said fans could sit back down and then decided they needed to stand again. They moved fans waiting in line several times and just generally didn't seem to care about the fans at all. A very disappointing outing from Disney since they need the screaming fans in their sound bites and video clips to help promote their film. Some of the main celebs in the film didn't have any handlers to help them and were wandering around the carpet trying to figure out where they should go. When Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom finally got to where the fans were, Disney security was pushing them along, rushing them to get into the premiere. Hopefully Disney publicity will re-think their policies for upcoming premieres after this fiasco.
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END opens Friday, May 25th in the U.S.