What's it like to be a professional musician?

I got some idea over April vacation when the Methuen High School Ranger Band (in which I play clarinet) went to Walt Disney World in Orlando for a week.

We went to perform in the Saturday night Light Parade in the Magic Kingdom, but we did so much more - relating to and not relating to music.

First the music: We got to attend a Magic Music Days Workshop run by a professional musician. Our teacher had performed in more than a dozen different Walt Disney World shows. In this workshop, we were given the chance to record our own music for the classic Disney movie, "Aladdin." We recorded two songs, including "A Whole New World" and "Prince Ali."

After recording the songs, a sound technician removed the original music from a video of the movie and replaced it with our performance. So we got to see the movie with our music playing, which was pretty cool.

The following day, we went back to Magic Kingdom, and that night we got to perform in the Light Parade with three other high school marching bands. We started at the bottom of Main Street USA and we made our way up toward Cinderella's Castle, and then toward Splash Mountain. We played "Belle" from Disney's "Beauty and the Beast."

The only thing I remember about the parade is seeing at least 2,000 people standing on both sides of the band as we passed.

When we weren't playing, we got to visit the parks, including Magic Kingdom, Epcot, MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom. We also went to Universal Studios, Medieval Times and Sea World.

I took several fun memories home from the trip. There was a Russian man named Alfonso who, for a whole day, did nothing but the moon walk; a mascot we nicknamed "Bobby Goulet,"

and hotel rooms with door bells.

This trip was great - and yes, I am already looking forward to our next one.