Main Street Memories

Feel-Good Disney These days it's fashionable to look for the dark side of Disney. Of course Disney has a dark side, but Dean Gaschler does not. As the Magic Kingdom's grand marshal coordinator for 14 years, his job was to make people happy. His book, chronicling those years, will make you happy. Did you ever wonder how Disney chose the families who waved and smiled from the lead vehicle in the Main Street parade? Or the ones who helped open the park at the Main Street train station with Mickey and the other characters? They weren't celebrities, usually; and they didn't have an uncle working at the park. They were just regular families, in the park for a special day, a celebration, or sometimes to recover from a traumatic event, or to stave off an impending medical or personal tragedy. Dean Gaschler's job was to pick one or two of these families, each day, from out of the thousands in the park, to be parade grand marshals. Dean truly did make magic every day, and the families he chose never forgot his kindness, or his big smile, and many of them became friends. Dean tells their stories in this book. And you know the cliché about how you'll laugh, you'll cry-well, you will.