Anyone that has listened to Orange Lounge Radio recently knows that I have been a sad program ever since the elecTRONica night time party at Disney's California Adventure left in favor of an Alice in Wonderland “T” party. I recently took a trip to the Disneyland Resort on June 6^th, and while I was disappointed to see Flynn's Arcade torn down, I was happy to see that the grid had not been totally deleted from the resort, as the Tron: Uprising promotional truck was in town.

The Tron: Uprising truck had been throughout the Los Angeles area over the past few weeks, and was making a final stop in Downtown Disney on a promotional tour leading up to the premiere of Tron: Uprising on Disney XD this past Friday, June 8^th.

I was at Disneyland with Xtofer from Horde House and his significant other Matt, who were both cool enough to agree to indulge me in my desire to experience a limited time Tron event at the park. Screenings were being held every half hour, and we arrived with plenty of time to spare. We were given a small free poster, as they were being handed out to everyone that walked by, to try and lure folks into the theater to see the show. We decided to wait in the shade of the truck instead of the roped line that had been set up, as there weren't exactly a lot of people waiting for the next show-- we were the only ones for quite some time. We snapped some pictures to share with you all here on the VOG Network (see the gallery at the end of this article) then about five minutes before, we moved into the regular line. A couple other folks who appeared to be Tron fans joined us in line, and then a couple of families joined the line as well.

The truck was pretty impressive inside. A thin, but fully stocked and very well air conditioned theater awaited inside. Trust me, on a hot day in Southern California, the air conditioning is appreciated. We picked our seats near the middle, and watched as plenty more families came in to see the show. It was likely much easier to pull in folks walking by to see a free cartoon in an air conditioned theater when there was no waiting outside to be done. The theater was made up of mostly families-- Parents and their children, and then us and the other tron fans we saw earlier. A pretty good makeup of who would actually be watching this show on television, I suppose.

A representative from the mobile marketing company got the show started and told us to make a little noise and get us excited to see the first episode of the Tron: Uprising cartoon that would be airing the next night on Disney XD. We were told to pay attention as there would be prizes given away for answering questions at the end. This got me very excited as I am always looking for more limited edition Tron memorabilia to add to my shelves at home.

The lights went down, the Sony Blu-Ray player was fired up, and the show began. Turns out, the episode we were watching was not the show that would ultimately air the first night, “Renegade Pt. 1”, but was the “Beck's Beginning” episode that had already been on YouTube and iTunes since mid May.

After the episode was completed, the representative came back with his hands full of shirts and mysterious envelopes ready to hand out some prizes! The rules were pretty simple-- raise your hand if you know the correct answer, and if you are right, you win a prize. We were told the mysterious envelopes contained toy identity discs that could be either “good” (blue) or “bad” (orange) and we just wouldn't know until we opened it. The first question was asked, and was a fairly simple question about the name of the main character. A child was picked to answer, and got it right. Another simple question was asked, and another child was picked to answer. “Oh...,” I thought to myself, “I get how this is going to go.” Sure enough, only kids were picked to answer the questions and win prizes. Once the prizes were gone, we were reminded to watch the show on Disney XD or download the premiere episode on iTunes now, then thanked for stopping by and sent on our way.

Our group as well as the other group of Tron fans tried to hang around for a minute to see if we could get any of the extra loot. There were also keychains being handed to the kids. The representative addressed the other Tron fans who had asked directly if they could get a keychain by answering “Let me get the kids first then I will see what I can do.” I hung out with the other Tron fans for a minute as the kids all got their pictures taken with their prizes in front of the truck by the representative, then parents talked to the representative for a bit trying to exchange prizes then-- the representative disappearing back into the truck.

Sigh. I can certainly understand it's important to please the kids, especially when we are talking about a cartoon. Although, I'm sure any geek out there who has ever enjoyed collecting silly knick-kacks related to their fandom can understand my disappointment at not only not getting the silly keychain, but being a bit blown off as well. Food for thought, promo guy: It won't be the kids getting out their wallet to pay for the episodes on iTunes.

Oh well, at least I got to experience something a bit different, see the episode on a nice, crisp digital projection with good sound, and I did get that poster. My minor frown aside, it was a good experience. Xtofer and Matt enjoyed the show too, which made me happy because they had given up the opportunity to get back in line for Space Mountain to indulge my fandom a bit.

Stay tuned for Part 2, my review of the Tron: Uprising anime itself, coming later this week