More than 30,000 South Florida residents headed to the Florida East Coast Railway Company throughout the weekend to check out the A Christmas Carol-themed train. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures converted a seven-car Amtrak train into a moving museum to promote the studio’s upcoming holiday movie, a new take on the classic Dickens novel.
“We’ve done [events with] planes and cars in the past, so we came up with the idea of doing a tour across the United States using a train and inflatable theater to promote the film,” said Bob Gault, vice president of special event operations for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
The tour began in Los Angeles on May 22 and made 35 stops around the country before arriving in Miami on Thursday to set up for the city’s opening day on Friday. Disney execs chose a mix of small and large cities—ranging from Fargo, North Dakota to Atlanta—in an attempt to create a tour that represented the diversity of America.
Disney worked with ImageMovers Digital to create the interactive exhibits with the same performance capture technology—which digitizes a person’s image into a cartoon-like character—used in the making of the film. The train’s four show cars displayed various exhibits, including behind-the-scenes images of the making of the movie and artifacts from the Charles Dickens Museum in London
Disney held a press conference at 7 a.m. on Friday to offer media a sneak peek inside before opening to the public at 9 a.m. After exiting the final car of the train, attendees entered the inflatable theater in groups of 100 to watch a 10-minute clip from the film in full 3-D. Snow cannons near the theater and Disney carolers added to the wintry ambience.
At each stop along the tour, the Disney Channel conducted its Hometown Movie Surfer contest for children ages six to 17. The winner in each city received an HP Touch Smart computer and printer, iFlip digital video camera, and served as a Disney Movie Surfer—the TV channel's name for its young behind-the-scenes reporters—for that city, taking TV cameras through their experience on the train.
The train heads to Jacksonville, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; and Philadelphia next before wrapping up in New York at Grand Central Station on November 1.
Correction: The number of stops the train made before arriving in Miami has been updated from what was originally reported.
