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Photo by Chris Bales, 1997 Emerging from backstage |
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Guests have lined the parade route. Floats with characters from The Hunchback of Notre Dame emerge from backstage. And parade music fills the air.
Topsy turvy! Only this isn’t really a parade, in the traditional sense. |
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Photo by Chris Bales, 1997 Phoebus on horseback |
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame Procession is a procession. Procession means people or vehicles moving forward in an orderly fashion, often as part of a ceremony. In a slightly earlier incarnation, it was The Hunchback of Notre Dame Topsy-Turvy Cavalcade. Cavalcade means a formal procession. You could just call it a micro-parade, because it’s so short. Or a traveling street show, because it periodically stops for a dance performance. By the way, do you know what strumpets (in the song) are? They’re not something you expect in an animated Disney feature. (Look it up in a dictionary.) But the word rhymes nicely with trumpets. |
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Photo by Chris Bales, 1997 Clopin and Esmeralda on the first float |
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This procession has exactly two floats and three horses. Phoebus is riding one horse. The other two horses are pulling one of the floats. In addition to Phoebus, the procession includes Clopin, Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Claude Frollo, along with at least two of Quasimodo’s three gargoyles—Victor, Hugo, and Laverne. |
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Photo by Chris Bales, 1997 Quasimodo’s bell tower float |
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It’s all over. Nobody promised you a long parade. Do you want to see it again? It starts again just 75 minutes after its previous start, but from “it’s a small world” instead of Town Square. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 1998 Phoebus riding south on Yester Main Street, U.S.A. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 1998 A performance stop, with dancing villagers and Quasimodo on the first float |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 1998 Quasimodo back on his bell tower float |
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That was it. You’ve now seen the procession twice—once in each direction. |
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame Procession was one of several parades, processions, and street shows along the Disney parade route during 1997:
Character Cavalcade The procession returned in 1998, along with longer parades:
Hunchback of Notre Dame Procession |
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Disneyland Today brochure cover © Disney Limited live entertainment, January 19–23, 1998 |
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Compared to traditional Disneyland parades, The Hunchback of Notre Dame Procession required few Cast Members. It would run on particularly slow days—such as Monday through Friday in late January 1998. On weekends and other busier days, Hercules Victory Parade would be on the parade route, and Hunchback of Notre Dame Festival of Fools would perform in a medieval setting in Frontierland. This allowed Disneyland management to control costs, while still giving guests something to watch on the parade route. So, if you visited Disneyland on a slow day, you could “join the bums and thieves and strumpets.” |
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© 2023 Werner Weiss — Disclaimers, Copyright, and Trademarks Updated November 3, 2023 |
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