Saturday, May 15, 2010

Make Way For Prince Ali: Aladdin's Royal Caravan

During my trip to Disneyland in California in 1993, I got to see a great parade based on the 1992 Disney animated hit film, Aladdin.

The day after I saw this parade, I got to visit with Disney Archivist Dave Smith at the Walt Disney Studios.  What a fantastic trip!

Aladdin's Royal Caravan was based on the "Prince Ali" segment of the film, which was ideal for a theme park parade.

The camels on this float turn their heads and spit on the crowds of people.  These spitting camels (or copies of them) became part of the decor for the Magic Carpets of Aladdin ride in Adventureland at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in Florida in 2001.

For the finale, Aladdin (as Prince Ali) and Jasmine wave at everyone from the top of a large, impressive puppet of Abu as an Elephant. 

Aladdin's Royal Caravan was great fun, and could also be seen at Walt Disney World in Florida at The Disney MGM Studios.

7 comments:

  1. I loved this parade, but only got to see it once. I wish I had taken more pics of it! Thanks for sharing these. Not to be greedy... but do you have more???

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  2. Hey TokyoMagic! I only have one more picture of the Caravan, and it was such a bad shot that I didn't post it. It was another photo of the Elephant, and it was mostly sky, the roof of the Emporium, the tip of the Matterhorn, and other peoples' heads. I really should have taken more pictures of the parade, because it was really good!

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  3. I'll have to dig my photos out and post them with a link to yours......I'll just add that to the mile long list I have of future blog post subjects! My visit to Club 33 was over two months ago and it took me this long to get those posted!

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  4. Better late than never, TokyoMagic! At least we know you won't run out of things to write about.

    Being the Splash Mountain fanatic that I am, I was thrilled to see a picture somewhere online of a Tokyo Disneyland parade with what I believe was a Critter Country float. It featured the Brer characters, Pluto and some great frog, alligator and chicken characters that felt like Splash Mountain characters, but I believe were created specifically for the Parade (it's great fun when Disney does this).

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  5. I think I know the parade that you are talking about. It was Tokyo's 20th Anniversary parade from 2003 and they had floats for all the "Lands." There was also a Big Thunder float that was pretty cool. That was a great parade....I'll add that to my list of "things to post."

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  6. This rocks. I'm lovin' the Abu elephant.

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  7. Hey Peyton! Abu is one of my favorite Disney characters (monkeys are fun). When Aladdin was released, I thought for sure they'd make merchandise of Abu as an the Elephant, but they did not. McDonald's had a Happy Meal toy of Elephant Abu as part of a 1995 Disneyland promotion, but that's all I've seen.

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