Disney train brings early Christmas to New Orleans

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Disney train brings early Christmas to New Orleans
August 9, 2009
Daily World

NEW ORLEANS — In dozens of cities across the country, Christmas is coming early this year — and it's arriving by train.
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Walt Disney is in the midst of a 40-city train tour to promote its new holiday movie, an animated 3-D version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol that stars Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge.

The movie isn't due out until Nov. 6, but this week four custom-designed rail cars chock full of artifacts from the Charles Dickens Museum of London — as well as costumes and props from the film — rolled into New Orleans.

On Friday, the first of three days the train will be open for free tours in New Orleans, children played under soapy foam-like snowflakes, listened to carolers singing Joy to the World and watched jugglers on stilts and unicycles.

"This is really exciting," said Toney Cardoza, who took pictures of his 1-year-old son, Gavin, and wife, Stacie, playing in the fake snow in the sweltering New Orleans heat. "Christmas in August ... why not?"

Amtrak locomotives and engineers are leading the train tour. Inside the train are colorful displays of costumes and props, along with Dickens artifacts such as a first edition of A Christmas Carol dating to 1843, a portrait of Dickens and his original writing tools, including a quill pen made from goose feathers.

As guests tour the train, short clips about the making of the movie were shown on large flatscreen TVs. Carrey, who narrates some of the clips, said in one segment that making a 3-D movie is much more involved than doing voice-over work for a typical animation film.

Carrey described the 3-D process as "space age and wonderful" and was seen on TV decked head to toe in a special, leotard-like suit that allowed the camera to capture every action he made as he acted out a sequence for the movie from a warehouse with grids on the floor to measure his movement.

"It's just great storytelling and great fun," Carrey said on the video.

The movie, by filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (The Polar Express and Back to the Future), follows the classic Dickens tale. Scrooge begins the holiday season with his usual miserly contempt. But when the ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come pay him a visit, he must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it's too late.
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Carrey plays seven roles, including Scrooge and all three Christmas spirits.
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Producer Jack Rapke said in a phone interview from Los Angeles that A Christmas Carol is a classic that not only can but should be retold.

"Like any classic, it stands to be reinterpreted generation after generation," he said.

Stephanie Jones, 32, walked through the train Friday with her mother, 60, and daughter, 10.

"This is great, for all of us," Jones said. "The story, it teaches you that there's time to change and to not take anything for granted."

The train tour started in Los Angeles in May, where it attracted its biggest crowd — about 40,000 visitors, said Bob Gault, Disney's vice president of special events operations. The train is averaging 6,000-10,000 visitors per day at each location, he said.

The movie opens nationwide Nov. 6.

After New Orleans, the train tour heads to Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Omaha. In all, it will visit 40 cities in 36 states, ending with New York City at the end of October.