It’s not often that I can impress my almost-8-year-old daughter and my husband at the same time.
Getting us tickets to Miley Cyrus‘ private 16th birthday party at Disneyland on Sunday, however, qualified as extremely cool in both of their books.
“Miley’s Sweet 16” was a party of epic proportions that took over most of Frontierland and New Orleans square. It also marked an invasion of pre-teen, tween and teenage girls hopped up on adrenaline, Beatlemania-level fandemonium (based on the decibel-level of screaming our ears absorbed tonight) and the cupcakes with two inches of lavender icing on the cupcakes that were handed out to each guest in honor of the occasion.
The event included all kinds of Miley-themed special installations for the night, of course. The Golden Horseshoe was transformed into the site of the “Hannah Montana Dance Party.” The courtyard adjacent to the Haunted Mansion (which has just lifted the veil on its annual “Nightmare Before Christmas” holiday-themed makeover as Haunted Mansion Holiday) turned into the “Miley Game Zone” full of vidgame installations, plus there were other crowd-pleasing amusements like a photo booth and “Hannah Montana Makeover Zone” offering girls the rock-star hair and makeup treatment.
Miley and her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, performed a mini-concert on a stage set up on Tom Sawyer Island, which made for great visuals (projecting over the Rivers of America) for the crowd that gathered in New Orleans Square for the show. The event also doubled as a promotional booster for non-profit org Youth Service America, which aims to encourage volunteerism among the “Hannah Montana” demo. Disney head honcho Robert Iger came out between Miley tunes to deliver a $1 million donation from Disney to Youth Service America. (“Isn’t this something,” Iger said of the scene when we ran into him later.)
