Students from the Ashland High School Music Department's marching band recently performed a rendition of Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me" from Toy Story at Walt Disney World's Main Street U.S.A.
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The visitors applauded the performance, unaware that a fifth of the students were playing instruments they had never touched before.
As reported by PEOPLE, many of the band's instruments were stolen from their equipment truck the day before the group's performance.
The Marching Band Was Spending Spring Break at Disney
On Friday, March 27, over 165 students, staff, and volunteers took a 22-hour bus trip to Orlando, Florida, starting their Ohio marching band's spring break adventure.
But when the group headed to Disney Springs on Sunday morning, Marty Kral, Ashland High School's Music Department chairman, noticed something unusual. It looked like someone had tampered with the band's equipment truck. The locks were gone, and when he peered inside, many of the instruments were missing.
"The next morning we were supposed to perform at Disney, and a huge amount of kids aren't gonna get that moment," Kral said. "We knew pretty clearly we weren't just gonna suddenly find everybody's instruments."
The Show Must Go On
Band leaders didn't want what happened to stand in the way of performing at Walt Disney World. They began a search began to find replacements locally.
Within a few hours, they reached out to Music & Arts, a retailer connected with a locally owned shop in Ashland. Kral and his assistant visited two music stores to arrange individual month-long rentals for each missing instrument.
Students weren't informed about the missing instruments until later that night. Most of the stolen instruments belonged to students, not the school.
"They all just seemed kind of violated," Kral said. "Like somebody did it as a personal attack to them, which I completely understand as a teenager."
Everyone but one saxophone player had an instrument. But the staff discovered another band from Ohio had recently performed at Walt Disney World. One family that just happened to own a sax was sticking around and lent it to the Ashland's marching band.
Miraculously, every student was able to take part in the parade at Walt Disney World.
"I would be shocked if anybody in the crowd that didn't know what had happened would have any idea that these kids had not played on these instruments before," Kral said. "They just went for it, and it was pretty darn good."
