The very first Star Wars Celebration at the Wings over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver back in April and May 1999 has long passed into Star Wars legend, starting a tradition that has taken fans around the United States, to the UK, Germany and Japan and during The Phantom Menace 25th anniversary month of May StarWars.com look back to that first event. The article has comments from a number of attendees including Steve Sansweet and Dan Madsen who look back at the weather, which famously caused a number of issues.
Dan Madsen: But one of our biggest concerns, many months prior, was weather. I can tell you, we crossed our fingers and hoped that we would have sunny, warm days – something that can change in a minute in Colorado. As luck would have it, the weekend of Celebration, the heavens opened up and we had one of the worst rain storms in 100 years.
Steve Sansweet: The main thing was rain. And more rain. The area where we had the tents got flooded and muddy.
Dan Madsen: There were puddles of water everywhere, muddy areas and to add to that there were leaks in some of our tents. As producer Rick McCallum said to me, “It was Woodstock for Star Wars fans!” Anthony Daniels helped there, too, as he went out in the rain with an umbrella to those standing in line to get in and entertained them for quite some time. Anthony was Celebration I’s hero! We were horrified at the weather, and did everything we could to make the fans comfortable, but there were just certain times when fans had to stand in the rain. Enter Anthony – who, without any prodding, went out and met the fans, asked them where they were from, met them one-on-one and gave them what might be one of their most special memories from the event.
For another look at the first Celebration, check out our recent review of Star Wars Woodstock.
- Hardcover Book
- Revis, Beth (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 48 Pages - 12/03/2024 (Publication Date) - Random House/Star Wars (Publisher)
