"Oz the Great and Powerful" Lands in Central Park

As part of the media blitz for Oz the Great and Powerful (perhaps you've heard of it), Disney launched a cross-country hot-air balloon tour that began on February 12 at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. The balloon made another appearance the next night at the film's world premiere in Hollywood before embarking on a cross-country excursion that ended in Manhattan with a two-day appearance in Central Park on March 5 and 6.

Or, rather, what was supposed to be a two-day appearance.

Like any good Oz fan would, I woke up early on the morning of March 5 and trudged through freezing temperatures to Cherry Hill in Central Park, not far from the famous Dakota. As I approached the balloon, I captured a few nice images.

This was as close as security would let me get.

At this point, I walked around to the other side of Cherry Hill and hopped a low fence so I could get a better view of the balloon. All told, this took about two minutes. In that two minutes, alas, the balloon had basically deflated.

At first I wondered whether Disney had decided to close up shop early. Eventually I figured out that the balloon had blown sideways and been punctured by the sharp tip of the adjacent fountain. In the shot above (which, as with all the photos, you can click to see in a larger size), the balloon is draped over the fountain with the point at the fountain's top protruding visibly.

It turns out that Good Morning America meteorologist Sam Champion had been ascending in the balloon when the mishap occurred, though fortunately nobody was hurt. You can read more details here; when the accident happened, the balloon was only 10 to 20 feet off the ground.

While I was disappointed not to have captured more shots of the inflated balloon, I had at least taken a few. I stood around shivering for as long as I could, taking pictures of the balloon rescue effort.

I discovered they had opened up the pedestrian path on the other side of Cherry Hill, much closer to the action, so I went around to the opposite side.

Here's the vehicle in which they haul around the balloon. I had a brief conversation with the driver, who was super-nice. He seemed to be taking the situation in stride, and said that this kind of thing happens all the time (I guess he meant punctures, because I don't know of too many balloon-fountain collisions).

Finally they brought in a truck with a crane, and began to extricate the poor balloon from the fountain.

Mission accomplished!

The balloon was supposed to be there in late afternoon as well as on the following morning. It's unclear, however, whether the balloon actually appeared later that day; this Tweet by a local reporter seems to indicate that there was a six-foot hole putting the balloon out of commission for the rest of the day. Regardless, I couldn't leave work in time to see it again that day, and when I asked Disney whether they might be in a different location the next morning due to that day's mishap, they told me that they might actually have to cancel the second-day appearance due to inclement weather.

I took my chances and got up early again the following morning. Unfortunately, the balloon wasn't there, so I have to be content with the few shots I was able to get on the first morning. Pulling off stunts like this can be tricky. Despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, I have to say that the Ozzy thrill of seeing the balloon through the trees as I approached it through Central Park was worth all the trouble.

The Magic of Oz in New York

Photo by Mo Riza (under a Creative Commons license).

L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and 13 full-length sequels, never lived in New York City, but he was born only 250 miles north of it, in the upstate town of Chittenango. W. W. Denslow, the illustrator of Wizard, lived in New York City off and on throughout his peripatetic life, and so did John R. Neill, who illustrated 35 of the first 36 Oz books. Jack Snow, who wrote two Oz novels in the latter half of the 1940s, called Manhattan home for the last 13 years of his abbreviated life. Snow's illustrator, Frank Kramer, was a lifelong New Yorker, while Snow's successor as Royal Historian, Rachel Cosgrove Payes, spent her entire adult life in neighboring New Jersey.

These connections between Oz and New York are just the tip of the iceberg. The runaway success of The Wizard of Oz on Broadway in 1903 established a place for Dorothy Gale and her friends in American popular culture that helped sustain the Oz phenomenon until the 1939 film adaptation ensured its permanence. In 1908, Baum brought his traveling show Fairylogue and Radio-Plays to New York. And the connections go on and on.

This blog will chronicle the many ways, both obvious and subtle, in which New York City doubles as the Emerald Apple.

(Thanks to Marcus Mebes for designing the wonderful header.)