Yes, sir. Disney on Ice will open at 7:30 on Tuesday.
No matter whether it’s in Jakarta or Jacksonville, every Feld Entertainment promoter knows the show must go on and you do what it takes, preferably in trade not tender.
Brad Bryant started his career with Feld Entertainment in 1986 (a separate story). By 1992-93, he was expanding the entertainment conglomerate’s reach in Asia. One of his most memorable shows early in that sojourn of his long career with Feld occurred in Jakarta, Indonesia.
“With Feld in the old days, it was like the military – you’d trade for a hotel room, if you can’t you have to pay for it,” Bryant recalls. “You don’t have a typewriter? Well, give the guy who works at the front desk four tickets for the show and tell him you want to borrow his IBM Selectric at night and type your letters of agreement and all that stuff later…and have fun today.”
There’s always a way around something. “You never take no for an answer. You can do anything from anywhere. I’m going around you, through you, whatever it takes to get my job done and make sure the greatest show on earth starts on Tuesday at 7:30.”
Jakarta, Indonesia, was one of those memorable experiences. Bryant was put in charge of Feld’s expansion in Southeast Asia in 1992-93. As he understood it, he was to move to Australia, where he would work closely with partner Disney Consumer Products (the forerunner to Disney Theatricals), through which the show was licensed.
Early on, he traveled to Jakarta. He’d learned some basics of international travel, such as: “You always take a hotel driver and he waits for you so you know you have a safe way to get back to your hotel,” he said.
On this first trip into Jakarta, he found himself headed for a press conference at a different hotel than where he was staying to announce to the local media that the ice was coming. From there, they would caravan to the arena, Istora Senayan, where Bryant was working with a brand new promoter from Feld’s perspective. “They didn’t know anything about us and vice versa. They bought the show and I was the guide – to see that logistically we got into the city and that they’d rented the building they said they had.”
To Bryant’s recollection, he learned the building had been built by Russia as a gift to Indonesia. All it had was a personnel-size door at the back for loading in. Why? he asked.
“Because we only do cockfights here.”
All the seats were sectioned off by chicken wire so the fight fans wouldn’t throw beer bottles at each other. Spectators sat in groups of 6 or 8 in chicken wire enclosures (early pods? We Covid-19 vets might ask).
The arena also had no fresh water for making ice— at least what they had had such high salinity it wouldn’t freeze. Feld had to truck in real, fresh water from a local beer company.
“So we did the hoity toity press conference, with great local foods, at the hotel and then we caravan to the arena in buses and cars,” Bryant continues the story. The press gets a look at the ice floor and curtains and then parades up to the top level to look out over Jakarta from the third-level seating outdoor concourse.
“As I look down on Jakarta, there’s a full-on riot going on. Thousands and thousands of protestors, water cannons, tear gas, things flying. Holy shit. What is this?”
Bryant is admittedly freaking out and wants to get his driver and go back to the hotel and leave this country. “Everyone is laughing at me. I don’t speak the language. The interpreter ran up to say it’s okay.”
Turns out it was riot practice for their police force, but it was so realistic from three stories high looking down at these thousands of people who probably got $1 to go participate. That was a heck of an incident.
A couple weeks go by and the ice floor is in and here comes the show. Disney on Ice is loading in and Bryant gets a call from the show manager.
“You’d better get out here.”
“Why?”
“There are people out here setting up booths everywhere to sell things.”
Bryant is thinking a couple vendor guys trying to sell some knock-off Mickey Mouse dolls, but he heads to the arena and, once there, finds people trying to sell him tickets to the ice show that are literally the covers ripped off old popcorn boxes that just have the picture of Mickey on it. And a price.
“This is ticket, this is ticket,” he’s told again and again.
And there are vendors selling rice and fish and knock off items all around the circumference of the arena. Sells-Floto, Feld’s merchandise company, are set up inside the venue, but before you get to any official souvenirs, there are hundreds of these people milling about trying to sell you something.
Bryant to the local promoter: “This has to stop. This is going to affect our sales.”
So the promoter goes to the head of the National Guard, who happens to be “our security guy.” They all get in a big group and talk in the local language. Then the security head turns to Bryant and says, in perfect English, “Follow me.”
As they walk around the building, Bryant sees his soldiers are moving all these people away. The soldiers are in their camouflage uniforms. It was crazy. Like magic, problem solved.
As Bryant and the head of security walked around the building, the illegal vendors are all packing up and leaving, miraculously, “right in front of me. I’m thinking this is easy.”
“After we go around the building, he wants to go in, and I say, no, let’s do one more circle. And they’re all back.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Well, I told them they could come back.”
“Then we will have to continuously walk around this building for the next three weeks before, during and after the show because they can’t be here.”
“That whole time, it was just every hour I was getting a call from a show manager or the ice floor guy—we lost power or the fuel guy didn’t come. It was a constant thing. Similar things happened all over Asia.”
Then Bryant would have to find the local promoter and say, “This has to happen now or there is no show and all those people who paid for tickets, you have to give their money back. And you still owe us.”
Feld worked with that same promoter again, and the second time around, it was a lot different. There is always a learning curve, a sizing up, a testing of boundaries.
Once the show succeeds, it’s a simple, “if you want to do this again, these are the rules you have to follow.” It was too detrimental to Feld’s business, and Disney’s, not to have rules. But that first time, well…those were getting-to-know-you moments.
LESSONS LEARNED:
• From Bryant’s military training: Be more prepared. What’s one, what’s two, what’s three? In the Army, a three is two, two is one and one is none, because it’s probably going to break and then you don’t have anything.
• Promoting Disney On Ice Double Feature in Cairo, Feld served up a special performance for Mrs. Mubarak, the president’s wife, and family members and their security. There were maybe 100 people in a 10,000-seat arena. The venue had a dirt floor, so, to dress it up, they installed Persian carpets outside the ice floor headers, hiding the dirt. When the fireworks went off, sparks ignited the Persian carpets and the VIP’s were hastily exited while the fire was extinguished. Bryant remembers that outside the building, President Mubarak’s security, the General, had parked tanks. The situation was quickly controlled. Subsequently, did you remove the Persian carpets? No. We stopped doing fireworks.
• Shipping Containers: If we put all our containers on top of the ship, we’d be the first off and we could move in quicker. Yeah, but a bunch of those blow off, big sea, big wind, we’d be out. You want to be level three or four. It’s standard in shipping. You have to pay more, but loading on or off, you don’t want to be at the bottom because you have to wait forever, but on top, they fly off.
• You have to understand personalities, politics and cultural differences. That’s true with everything. Changes are made to fit the culture and, bottom line, if you don’t know this guy you can’t get that in. That’s what you do — figure it out.
• The show will go on at 7:30 Tuesday. — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
PHOTO: Brad Bryant, right, with Jeff Gaines and Donna Dowless at IAVM in 2018. (Photo courtesy of Venues Today)