The HKDL Source

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Hong Kong Disneyland staged a big premiere event for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End this week, and in a first for HKDL Source, we were given press access to the gala event. Come with us as our Chief Spy takes you through the events of the evening, with almost 50 EXCLUSIVE photos from the red carpet affair!

 

On Tuesday 22 May 2007, Hong Kong held an event for the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the third film in the successful franchise. While the event and screening itself was sponsored by the Standard Chartered Bank, and as such the film itself was for clients of the bank only, the media event put on to introduce the night was pure Disney. Spanning the freshly opened Pirate Land (nee Adventureland), Fantasyland and anywhere else you happened to see a pirate, it wasn’t so much a ‘premiere’ as a regional first screening with regional celebrities. The film’s stars were off in Tokyo it would seem.

Before Check In

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After innocently asking for press access at the last minute, HKDL Source was granted a visit to the Pirates Premiere event being held in Pirate Land in the park. Our trusty Chief Spy was the only person ready to get the job done, and we guess that’s why she’s the Chief! So we sent her into battle armed only with her camera, a wet weather warning and the following itinerary :

• 6:15 - 6:45pm : Media be escorted / seated inside the Theatre in the Wild (AL) for the media moment (facing the stage). There will be on stage moments listed as follows. Your rep might need a better photography equipment to capture the moments as the distance would be quite far away – it’s roughly from the center of the Lion King show stage area to the first few row of the audience seats.
• 7:00 – 7:15pm : Executives speeches and photo moments (from HKDL, BVI and SCB) followed by a short performance
• 7:15 – 8:00pm : Celebrity red carpet entrance. They will appear one by one on the stage for photo taking + backdrop signing. This may extend to 8:30pm depending on Celebrities’ arrival time
• 8:15pm : Media can join the VIP reception at Tahitian Terrace o It will be opened until 9:30pm

A flurry of emails and a small afternoon of panic later, our Chief Spy found herself inside the Inner Sanctum. In this case, the Inner Sanctum was a tarted-up version of Adventureland. The evening’s festivities were hosted by ‘Mirabella’, the fortune tella…er…teller. Introducing Managing Director Bill Ernest, who was allegedly “revelling in swashbuckling antics”, he thanked the long-time partner Standard Chartered Banking Corporation. Following this, a short speech was made by Ben Hung, Head of Consumer Banking at Standard Chartered, in which he reciprocated saying that Hong Kong Disneyland has been a wonderful partner for the last few years.

More suits follows, including Jo Yan from Buena Vista International Asia, but this was followed by the beautiful Bernice Liu. The Canadian born model-actress, and former Miss Chinese International Winner, commented on the stars of the film (Johnny Depp was adventurous, Orlando Bloom was beautiful, for example). After a flurry of photo taking, with everyone on stage, everybody left the stage and the fiery drummers came on. Hong Kong Disneyland are certainly getting their dollar value out of these drummers, as they’ve popped up in quite a few photos we’ve noticed!

Bill and Co

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After hearing “A Pirates Life for Me” for about five to ten minutes, which would be enough to test anyone’s patience, the local celebrities were rolled in. Our Chief Spy reports that she doesn’t know who half these people were, so we’ve pretty much got no chance of finding out. However, we do know that LuLu was there, Gloria Wong; the I Love You Boys; Monica and actor Michael Wong. The latter was apparently quite nice to our Chief Spy. He chatted with our Chief Spy for a short while, and after realising she wasn’t a ‘real’ press person (although we are convinced she does exist), she faithfully told him about HKDL Source. Bless her cotton socks! So to the four people that ignored her when she tried to talk to them, rest assured that we will be ignoring them the next time they try and speak to us! (They were probably only minor 15-minutes-of-fake-fame celebrities anyway). Guess we won’t be watching the Chinese equivalent of Big Brother any time soon…

Despite the show being over, and none of the big names showing up – even the Disney suits disappeared halfway through the minor celebs turning up – our Chief Spy stuck around for the little shindig afterwards, where two tables worth of food were put out. Who were they kidding – food for celebrities? Still, it looks really tasty we must say. Adventureland stayed open until approximately 9:00 PM. Jungle Cruise was running for whoever felt like jumping aboard. As soon as two people rocked up, the boats took off. Sounds like a pretty nice deal actually! Tarzan’s Treehouse – or should we say Pirate Island – remained closed.

Happy Chefs

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With her media pass not allowing her access to the actual screening of the film, our Chief Spy handed in her pass and received a gift bag in returned. Containing a pillow, Mickey pirate key chain and a puzzle; our Chief Spy evidently enjoyed the event, as one of her final comments to us was “let me know when the next one is”. With that ended the first of what we hope is many Hong Kong Disneyland premiere screenings of films. The venue seems built for such events, and perhaps that is where the future of Hong Kong Disneyland is : developing a local fan base by attraction local celebrities to events based around Disney products in the park. At any rate, it looked like a lot of fun.

HKDL would like to thank Disney Publicity and Hong Kong Disneyland for granting us press access to this event at the last moment, and giving us the opportunity to cover this event for our ever-growing readership. We know that they are snowballed at the moment with all of the Pirates madness, so we are extremely grateful they managed to slot us into their schedules and put our names on the door. Bless their cotton socks too!

Pirates Bags

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For a complete look at the pictures taken on the night, see our Pirate Premiere Gallery.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is now screening in cinemas internationally.

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