Since early September, guests attending the Oogie Boogie Bash at Disney California Adventure in Disneyland (select dates September 5 – October 31, 2022) have seen the jaw-dropping visual performance of a real-life (or real-dead) Ernesto de la Cruz from Pixar’s Coco.
The combination of makeup and prosthetics has wowed audiences, and there has been a slew of videos uploaded to YouTube with variations of Ernesto’s audience conversations and performance of “Remember Me.”
We hope that due to the fan reaction and popularity of Ernesto, he will be seen more frequently in Disney parks.
The Entertainment Connection uploaded the first video that highlights some of Ernesto’s singing (lip-syncing) and conversation (which is fantastic).
We also loved this video by Theme Park Steve that shows the full, more ominous version of “Remember Me.”
This short video of Ernesto walking by and interacting with people (uploaded by Knockout) is great – he sounds just like the character.
Several performances of Ernesto were filmed during the daytime, but the additional drama of the darkness and stage lights at night truly make this a magical performance.
GUITAR
Let’s also talk about Ernesto’s guitar — well, really Hector’s guitar. At first glance, this looks like it may be one of the real-life replica guitars from the film, but we were relieved to see that Ernesto isn’t using one of the twenty $15,000 guitars produced by master luthier German Vazquez Rubio. Whew!
It looks like the Disney Parks team created a wonderful recreation, though!
We’re still hoping that a version of Ernesto’s guitar will be released within an approachable price point – we’d love to own it and display it in our Pixar collection. You can read more about the Coco-themed guitars that Cordoba released in 2017 in our earlier post.
The differences are subtle but one of the first differences that stood out is that the nut at the top of the fretboard is gold-colored in the version used in the parks (shown above). The official recreation (shown below) is white. The design around the sound hole uses different colors for their triangle designs, too (among other differences).
What did you think about Ernesto de la Cruz at a face character in the Disney parks? Would you like to have a character meet-and-greet encounter with Ernesto annually?
In this case, who was the performer who played him?