Home > On Tour > Jungle Adventures > The Europe Tour 2000-2001 > Glasgow, Scotland
	Glasgow, Scotland Jungle Adventures Europe Tour <<<   Manchester, England >>>   Time again for another tour. My second European one, starting in the same city I did almost exactly two years ago. However, unlike 2 years ago, we are starting with a full week of rehearsals before we open, instead of just a day or two. This is due to the fact that more changes were made to the show during the US show's rehearsals (for those who don't know, two different tours of the same show opened this year, one in the US and one in Europe), and they needed to be rehearsed with our cast. The flights to Glasgow and the waiting period in between very fairly uneventful. I left Memphis at a fairly decent time, so I didn't have to get up at like 6am! However, I don't think I finished packing the night before, so I had to hurry in the morning! While on my 7-hour layover in Newark, I was so busy passing my time on my computer, I missed the entire crew sitting in a bar about 50 feet from me. I managed to hook up with them in just enough time to get in a drink before getting on the plane. The 6-hour flight went fairly fast. Usually, watching a movie or two passes the time quite quickly. We weren't so fortunate. We got one movie, and it was so painful to watch, it felt like time was going backwards. The selection of the week was Beetoven's Third, yeah about that big drooling dog. It had to be one of the worst directed, worst acted, worst written movies I had ever seen in my life. It was a relief to see the credits...they were more exciting than the movie, and they also meant I was two hours closer to where I was going! Arriving in Glasgow, we found that there was no transportation to take us to the hotel (a norm for this company), so we had to hire a bunch of taxis. The hotel was quite nice, although kind of not near anything of interest. One drawback though was the lack of rooms with two beds, so in many rooms, one person had to sleep on a couch. Luckily, my roommate opted for the couch, so I got the bed. With the choices of places to go at an all-time low, the hotel bar became the hang-out point for most people, and a sure-bet to find some people to chat with if you were bored at night. As soon as I got settled into the room, I went to bed. Yes, it was just 1pm, but the jet-lag had settled in. The next day, I joined a large group of people and headed to Edinburgh, a little city famous for it's amazing castle and a few other attractions. Indeed, the castle was a sight to see. It was built sometime back in the 1400's or 1500's and is like a small city of castle buildings with streets winding around through it, staircases going to different levels of buildings and roads, and countless rooms. There are several pictures of the castle on the photo page. After we left the castle, about half of the group went to see some different sights in the city, including the remains of some columned building that looked like something from Greece, a 300-year-old graveyard, and a few other places. After the days off, it was time for a bit of work. Load-in day...always a fun one. We took taxi's to the building, which none of us knew the location of. The taxi dropped us off in front of a shopping mall. We told him we were not in the right place and he got a bit confused and had to ask someone if this was the place. Indeed, the ice rink was in the back of the shopping mall. It turns out that although the building is only about 2 miles from the hotel, there is a canal with only one place to cross in the way (the hotel and the building are both right on this canal, almost within view of each other). Therefore, the only way to drive there is about 15 miles and takes about 30 minutes. It would almost be faster in a canoe. It was the first time Disney has ever played this building, and the first time this building has ever had any type of show in it. Saying they weren't prepared would be the understatement of the century! The actual load-in went fairly normally. It was what happened afterwards that at first baffled us and, before too long, infuriated us. We had been told to store the majority of our storage crates in a very long, wide hallway off to the side of the arena. It was quite difficult to get to, and no door could be propped open (they were built in such a way that nothing could be put under them or around them). No sooner had we gotten every crate stored in that hallway with ample room for a mack truck to drive through, than the fire marshall strolled in and said the hall had to be COMPLETELY clear...not even a piece of wood could reside in this hall because it was a FIRE EXIT. A 30' wide hallway with 6' of door to exit from, and it had to be completely clear. So they made us move every crate down to the end of that hall, up an elevator, and down another long hall into an usused store in the adjacent shopping mall. The crates that were too big were pushed first into the back loading area; then because they were in the way there, they were pushed almost 1/8 mile from the back door halfway down a parking garage. The fun didn't stop there. Back inside the arena, every crate had to be behind these chains that were about 5' off of each wall. Again, they needed at least 30' of space for FIRE EXITS. Pay no attention that the stairwells leading to these are only 8' wide. So more crates had to be removed to the far-off storage areas. Even 2' wide spaces behind stairwells were forbidden storage areas, because they said someone running in a fire may get confused and go into one of those spaces. Are these people really that stupid?? Next they wanted all of our work areas packed up, because having loose items around violated FIRE LAWS. We told them that we had to have that stuff available because we had to be able to get our work done. And that's where the shit really hot the fan. They said "No one can work in this building." Literally, word for word, that is what they said. Why? FIRE LAWS. Every person in management, including the vice president of the comapny had to fight tooth and nail to get us space to work in, and even at that, the building people started coming around with a cart and taking away anything they thought shouldn't be there. I was waiting for them to touch anything of mine, because there would have been problems...and I might have lost my job. This kind of fun continued every day for the entire two weeks we were in Glasgow. I thought about writing my true opinions of the building management on here, but the number of 4-letter words would probably offend even the most seasoned criminals. We counted the days until load-out, and it finally came. Now it was time to get all those crates out of East Bumfuck. This took 25 people and a tractor almost an hour. Now since of course we couldn't store them inside the building, they alloted a space outside the back door for us to keep them. Now of course this space was on the other side of a very wide walkway (75') and everything had to stay on the red tiles, because the white tiles closer to the building were FIRE LANES. And I nearly punched one of the security guys during this move. I was behind a guy who was pushing a crate into the red area, and had to stop on the white area, so that he could move another crate out of the way to get the one he was pushing into the red area. No sooner had he stopped pushing than the security guard was on him "That has to be on the red." I felt like just turning around and saying "No shit, Einstein" then punching him, but I kept it to myself. Now the question is, why were these people SO fanatical about fire safety in their building. I mean, of course fire safety is neccesary, but even Hitler was less fanatical than these people. First of all, NOTHING is this building is even flammable. Everything is made out of concrete and cinderblocks. There isn't even paint on the walls, it's just bare cinder block (making it look like an unfinished building). Now I can only assume it's the design of the building that gets them. The architect of this building really must have been on some heavy medication the day he drew this place up. There is only one public entrance and exit to the building, and it's backstage. All the power for show hookup is downstage and upstairs, at the opposite end of the building from where ANY show would need it. And who puts power UPSTAIRS?!?!? As well, it is the most confusuing layout of any building I have ever seen. There is no concourse and all kinds of stairwells lead to very strange locations and finding the way around there even after a week was daunting! I'm guessing that since the management of the building knew it was nearly impossible to find your way out of there in less than 45 minutes, it was necessary to have it all open!! I think there's something else that left a corkscrew up their asses (and this is kind of funny if you ask me). The building and the shopping mall attached to the building were almost entirely glass on the outside. And around the entire perimeter of the place were scaffolding platorms. I thought they were still working on the building. Nope...the scaffolding platforms were to catch falling glass panes. The company which had put every piece of glass in this building botched the entire job, didn't finish, then took all the money and ran. So they are left with a building of glass which is falling apart. How does one go about fixing that??? I did find one night during the run of this city to go out to a club. It was packed and very hot, but we did have a blast dancing and checking out women (or men for those so inclined). Oh well, that is my Glaswegian experience. It wasn't all bad, as long as we were away from that building! After a very late load-out, the crew had to join everyone else for a damn 8:00am bus to the next city. Several of us entertained the idea of renting a car so we wouldn't have to get up at 7:00. But we did, and headed on our way to Manchester, England.