"A Christmas Carol" Train

Disney's "A Christmas Carol" train is in Chicago this weekend at the Union Station. We visited the train and the preview yesterday. I must say that Disney must be spending a lot of money to do this kind of promotion. It certainly was impressive enough to make the trip to downtown Chicago on a Saturday morning worthwhile.

The signs for the train were all over Union station.



The train was located on Track 1 of Union Station. There was already a long line waiting to get onto the train. They were loading people a few at a time, for obvious reason so as to not over crowd the train beyond capacity.



In the summer months of July, we had Christmas carolers entertaining the folks while they stand in line.




More pictures as we get close to entering the train. Look at the skin of the train, this thing must attract quite an attention when it is traveling the country.




And we're in! The first thing we see right at the entrance is this giant movie poster.


The first car has all the costumes and the characters head shot. There were also a few Dickens memorabilia in various glass cases throughout the first 2 cars.












The next car has the concept art. They were all displayed on high-def monitors and show various artistic rendition of scenes from the movie. As with the previous car, this one also has several Dickens items on display.










The next car had sculptures of a couple of the characters' heads, and also miniatures of various buildings used in the movie.





Following that, the next car had a display on the stop-motion technique used in the movie. They had the suit that was similarly used in the movie to track the motion of the actors. These were then rendered by a computer and put into the scene in the movie.



The car after that contained many TV monitors showing various rendering of the movie. We didn't stay too long in this one.


The next car was a hoot! Here, get you to morph your face into one of the characters in the movie. You get assigned to one of the computer terminals. It then took a snap shot of your eyes and nose, and morphed it into one of the 4 characters from the movie. You can indicate your e-mail before doing this, and supposedly, these morphed photos will be sent to you. I'm still waiting for mine to be e-mailed.



After that came the last car. It was more of scene in a victorian parlor, with a "fireplace", and a dinner table. The scene "outside" looked like in the middle of winter. The only "inconsistency" here is that turkey is being served. I don't think they served turkey at christmas during the Dickens period, do they?



We got cut-out Christmas ornaments when we left the train. We then walked to the great hall area of Union Station where they built a structure to give a preview of the movie. Surrounding the area were carolers and jugglers, adding to a festive "holiday" feel to the whole experience.







We then went in for the preview. I only took a picture of this before the preview started, since obviously, no kind of audio and video taping is allowed during the movie, which was shown in 3D. It was VISUALLY SPECTACULAR! They only showed two short clips from 2 scenes, but they were enough to give you the idea of how the movie will look.


This is definitely a movie we will see when it is released this November. The next stop after Chicago for the Christmas Carol train will be St. Louis, MO.

Zz.