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Suspiria777 and Eilozette write:
Hi, we visit theonering.net frequently and thought you might like a report on the Middle Earth Shuttle in New York City today. Sorry to report it was a bit of a disappointment.
We’ve attached pictures–we apologize in advance if they give you email any problems or if they’re too big. We don’t know how to reduce the image size.
We work within a short subway ride of Times Square, so we decided to go up to see the “Middle Earth Shuttle” on our lunch hour on Tuesday Nov. 18th. The official press release said the event would run from 11:30-1:30.
We took the S from Times Square to Grand Central and arrived at about 12:15 or 12:20. To our disappointment, they were turning crowds of people away. The woman who seemed to be in charge said, a bit irritably, that they ran out of free giveaways and decided to end it. They were letting the press through but no one else. There was no explanation beyond that, no apology. We asked if we could just look into the subwar car, but she said no. Her tone was rude. We do want to mention that the cops manning the event were polite.
Anyway, we got at least a glimpse of what was going on:
A single car on the S train was decorated and lit with a green light–it looked pretty atmospheric. There were twigs wrapped around the subway pillars. The best part were the Golum figures–about 2-3 feet high, there were several crouched on Lord of the Rings stands. There were big banners announcing “The Middle Earth Shuttle.”
The press release turned out to be misleading. We only saw one decorated subway car, but the press release stated that “cars” would be decorated and it would “carry commuters…between both stops from 11:30AM-1:30PM.” The release also mentioned “12-foot ents” but we saw no sign of them. As for giveaways, we had absolutely no expectation of “getting” anything except maybe a few pictures and a story to tell.
While the experience hasn’t dimmed our excitement about the films, we feel that New Line Cinema, or whoever sponsored the event, could have been a bit more respectful to the fans. Maybe New Line could organize events in a way that doesn’t leave fans annoyed and disappointed–we all remember how well New Line and other large companies handled Trilogy Tuesday ticket sales.
Odile writes:
To promote the release of TTT:EE DVD being released today, They (not sure who was responsible) decorated the Times Square Shuttle with green light, gollums and Ents (who were outside.) I’m attaching a couple of pictures…
They were also giving away pewter(?) medallion thingies embossed with Treebeard from Sideshow WETA.
