Marching band featured in Magic Kingdom parade
Members of the Gilmer High School Marching Band didn’t just experience the Magic Kingdom on a recent class trip. They marched and made music as a guest band in one of Disney World’s famous town parades.
More than 100 students, including members of the GHS Marching Band, Color Guard and Chorus, embarked on the trip to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., during the spring school break.
The marching band was featured in the afternoon Imagination Campus parade Wednesday, April 6, which took the Bobcat purple-clad band past several quintessential attractions including Splash Mountain, Cinderella’s Castle and down Disney’s Main Street.
“They’ve got their standard parades with floats and characters and such, but, particularly in the spring, they’ll have marching bands from all over the country perform in between those larger parades. We were there with a group that had traveled from Michigan to perform,” said David Wiebers, GHS band director.
As they covered the ¾-mile parade route, the band performed a medley of songs from Disney’s “Frozen” — a sharp contrast to the humid Florida springtime. Fortunately, members of the marching band know they must adapt to whatever variety of weather is at hand when it come time to perform, Wiebers confirmed.
“The kids really enjoyed it, (even though) it was really hot and they were marching down the street in full wool uniforms in the swampy weather,” he added.
It was the band’s first out-of-state trip in more than two years and the first-ever band trip for some of the high schoolers.
“(The band has) played in this type of parade before but I don’t know how many years its been since they’ve been to Disney World. Maybe 8-10 years. Typically we go every two years and last year was supposed to be a trip year, but it wasn’t because of COVID. I don’t think some of them knew what to expect because most of the kids hadn’t done a parade or performance like this. (Seeing) that many people lined up, they instantly got into that performance mindset,” said Wiebers.
“Usually we’d have some longer periods in between playing, and the drums would maybe play a cadence for a little bit longer. Instead, we did shorter drum cadences in between pieces. It was just constantly playing as much as we could because there’s people from the beginning of the parade all the way to the end,” he added.
Weeks of rehearsals preceded the parade performance, which was done without sheet music on-hand, Wiebers noted.
“I wanted to make sure everything was from memory. If you put the music in front of the kids, they could spend the entire parade looking at that music. I wanted them to be able to look at what was going on around them and see the community people and the people from all over the world who were there. They worked really hard on trying to memorize it, and it worked out well,” he added.
Parades have just recently opened back up at the theme park following extensive COVID restrictions and precautions, some of which are still in place for the Disney parades, confirmed Wiebers.
“In a parade, we would typically go 5-6 across in each line, but they wanted us to go four (wide) so we could spread out more and socially distance. They’re still taking some precautions as they’re trying to get things back to 100 percent there,” he added.
The trip was partly paid for through fundraising efforts done over the past year, which included online fundraising campaigns and band members assisting with parking at the Georgia Apple Festival.
“We did a lot of (fundraising) things to help ease some of the burden on the parents so that we could get as many kids going as possible,” Wiebers said.
Now that performing at the Magic Kingdom is checked off the band’s crowded to-do list, they will start marching toward the end of the school year. Their spring concert will cap off the eventful year, which included getting back to a full schedule of performances and outings.
The spring concert, scheduled for Thursday, May 5, at the GHS band’s practice field, will be open to the public, Wiebers noted. Showtime is 6 p.m.
“It’s free of charge and we’d love for everybody to come out. They can bring some lawn chairs, blankets and that kind of thing. We’ll have the middle and high school bands along with our winter guard. It’s going to be our last big concert for the school year and a really great time,” Wiebers said.
As the school year nears its end, planning for next year’s marching band season has already begun.
“We’re designing the (halftime) show for next year’s marching band right now. We’ve got color guard auditions and percussion placement auditions this week. We’ve got a lot of stuff rocking and rolling,” said Wiebers.