ESPN College Gameday Visits Disney World Before Oregon Football vs Auburn

We thought that Oregon Football would be College Gameday‘s first subject of the 2019 season. Not so fast, my friend.

Before ESPN’s College Gameday makes its way to Fort Worth’s Sundance Square on August 31st to hype up the Week 1 matchup between the Oregon Ducks and the Auburn Tigers, they’ll make a “Week 0” Disney pit stop at the Magic Kingdom.

Lee, Kirk, Desmond, and Rece will team up with Mickey and the rest of the Fab Five to take over Walt Disney World Resort on August 24th to coincide with the Orlando-located Camping World Kickoff between Miami and Florida, later that day.

Before I dive right into it, let me make one thing abundantly clear:

"“I love College Gameday. That’s why I care enough to write about this in the first place. I love the atmosphere on college campuses that it both creates and captures. I will never not watch the show.  I also love ESPN. And I love Disney very dearly, too.” – Me, later in this article."

Ok, now let’s get into the mud.

Being an Oregon Duck fan, I’m no stranger to the harrowing—and occasionally rewarding—Gameday fan experience.

When the big orange van has rolled into Eugene, I’ve done it all. I’ve lined up in the Memorial Quad on campus starting around 10 PM PST on Friday. I’ve stood in line overnight until the gates to “The Pit” open around 3 AM. I’ve pushed my way to the front and then I’ve proceeded to stand around for even longer until the nationally-recognized Saturday morning pregame show finally starts filming.

West coast venues clearly get the short end of the stick as they aim to air the show live at 9 AM eastern time, but the early starts have honestly helped elevate the aura of CGD in Eugene, since the show begins at dawn, before the sun has even considered rising.

As exhausting as it is to get the “full” College Gameday experience, at least it showcases the true pageantry that sets college football apart from all other sports. At least you can stand in full-to-partial view of your favorite personalities and pundits. And at least attending the show was free.

As it has been announced, the August 24th the Disney-owned ESPN show at Magic Kingdom Park will provide absolutely none of those perks.

Since the beginning, Gameday has been all about the signs. Fans have spent countless hours and valuable creative energy making inventive, hilarious, and controversial cardboard signs to hold up for hours in the hopes that they might get some air time behind the set.

Whether the signs say, “LaMike for Heisman,” or, “Pete Carroll wears Jorts,” or something along the lines of, “Wade Boggs once drank 64 beers on a cross-country flight,” they’re obviously inherent to the popularity of Gameday.

But signs are banned from Walt Disney World. Along with banners, flags, horns, whistles and artificial noise makers of any kind.

By banning signs, banners, flags, horns, whistles and artificial noise makers—which are all fun things—College Gameday’s visit to Disney World will objectively make College Gameday less fun.

It’s worth noting that by prohibiting flags, Disney also threatens the streak of Washington State’s iconic “Ol’ Crimson” flag that has criss-crossed the country to fly at every single CGD show since 2003. Although, the flag’s twitter account has seemed to hint that they might try to get around Mickey and some of his newly sworn-in Stormtroopers.

The CGD crew also announced that they’ll be filming from an elevated train platform near the front of Main Street, U.S.A. This most likely means that ESPN will build something similar to their traditional set very close to the Main Street Train Station at the front of the park, which will conveniently frame the rest of the street and the iconic Cinderella Castle as the set’s backdrop.

The Camping World Kickoff twitter account sent out a release that said fans, “might catch a glimpse,” of the Gameday crew as they film the show, and a lot of other bloggers and twitter eggs have gotten super extra mad at the phrase, “catch a glimpse.”

I honestly think that whoever wrote that press release was just trying to be cute. I believe that the view and access to the set—once inside the park—will be no different than any other location that College Gameday has even been too.

I mentioned earlier that despite pulling an all-nighter, and despite having to push your way to through a crowd just to stand for basically ten hours straight, a huge selling point to the experience of the show is that the entire experience is free.

In order to see this special edition of Gameday, however, you’ll need valid park admission. While you won’t have to line up overnight, and you won’t have to be standing for ten hours prior to the show, and you can also go hop on Space Mountain right after Corso picks the Gators, you’ll do so for somewhere in the ballpark of $100 per person.

I love College Gameday. That’s why I care enough to write about this in the first place. I love the atmosphere on college campuses that it both creates and captures. I will never not watch the show.  I also love ESPN. And I love Disney very dearly, too.

In the end—as a one-off idea for College Gameday—the Magic Kingdom is way less stupid than their really stupid visit to Times Square. They’ll be able to fill the empty “Week 0” space in the show with funny clips of Lee Corso and his second favorite Duck, Donald.

There is no doubt that the show will have enough entertainment value for the folks at home, I’m just a but disappointed in the loss of the in-person fan experience that has made Gameday so special over the years.

It’s a good thing the crew will be able to return to form the following Saturday when they get to hype up the Ducks once again.

College Gameday will be live in Fort Worth, Texas, on August 31st at 7 AM PST to preview Oregon’s matchup with Auburn, as well as the rest of Week 1 of the 2019 college football season.

Go Ducks.