Over the weekend of April 25-26, a special event called “TikTok Galliday” was born. Galliday is a fan-planned event that meets at Disneyland twice a year. It’s designed for BBC’s Doctor Who fans to go to Disneyland in their Doctor Who cosplay, hang out with each other, and “take over” the park. Sadly, the April event was cancelled. Disney parks are closed until COVID-19 is under control. However, there were so many people looking forward to it. This is where TikTok comes in! Jessica, aka @jaytherose on TikTok decided to bring the fun virtually. Thus, “TikTok Galliday” was created!
Jessica received help from her co-host Eric, aka @perfecttencosplay on TikTok, to spread the word! I was able to interview both of them online. TikTok Galliday was, personally, a highlight of my weekend. In fact, it was a much bigger event than they had anticipated!
How did the idea of Galliday on TikTok come about?
Jessica said:
It was a whim really. After the lockdown was in place I saw everyone talking about the events they had wanted to go to being cancelled and after Disneyland closed I remembered Galliday. I was really looking forward to that this year so I was a little disappointed. I remembered that there had been a tiktokprom and I thought it would be cool if somebody thought of that for Galliday! When I didn’t hear anything about it I was like, well, let me throw the idea out there? Just to see? Maybe somebody already thought of it and I’m just missing it. I posted the video and the rest is history! I honestly thought since I was such a small time tiktoker, nobody would pay attention. Then I tagged some people and boy was I wrong!
For reference, here is the video she made to let people know what she was planning:
@jaytherose I had a thot…read the comments section #doctorwho #tiktokgalliday #events #foryoupage #foryou #fyp
Eric said:
That was all JaytheRose. I happened to see her video she posted about wanting to bring Galliday to TikTok since Disneyland is closed and the actual Galliday wasn’t going to happen this year. Having never attended Galliday myself I found this to be a wonderful idea and started tagging every Whovian on TikTok I could think of! I think that was about the time JaytheRose and I started chatting and decided to help spread the idea with my own video and encourage people to do the same. I knew from being on TikTok the last ten months that we have a wonderful and supportive Whovian community that would jump at the chance to do something like this! After word spread and it looked like this was going to become huge, JaytheRose asked me if I would co-host with her and I was absolutely delighted to do so!
Here is Eric’s announcement video:
@perfecttencosplay @jaytherose You can tell I’m just a little excited about this! 😆 #tiktokgalliday #cosplay #doctorwho #tenthdoctor #thedoctor #foryou #quarantine
What was it like getting the word out about TikTok Galliday?
I asked both Jessica and Eric if getting the word out was all about simply tagging others. Sure enough, that was really all it took!
Pretty much. For the first video I tagged everybody I followed that I knew did Doctor Who content. My co-host was the first one I tagged
Jessica mentioned tagging Eric, and his excitement helped this take off!
After I tagged him that’s when it got crazy. He started tagging people and then he said he was gonna do an advertisement video and I was like oh my god yes!
After that it was basically word of mouth. People were tagging people in the videos we had done.
Eric said it was quite easy to let people know what they had planned.
Absolutely, I made my announcement and once again tagged every Whovian I knew of on that video. From there, people dueted me, made their own announcement videos and it kind of grew like wild fire from there! I also spent the week leading up to Galliday following new Whovians that would show up in my feed and immediately tagging them in my video!
Talk about building a community base! It goes to show how powerful coming together can be. The Doctor Who community has a lot of wonderful people who are willing to build others up and truly connect. Especially right now, being part of something like this is exactly what we needed.
How are you feeling about the response?
Both Jessica and Eric said they were feeling both overwhelmed and over the moon!
Jessica said:
Overwhelmed! I really didn’t think this was gonna go anywhere, like I mentioned. And I’m really glad everyone has had fun and that this has provided a fun distraction for everyone too. It’s something we need right. I was starting to go stir crazy so I can only imagine how everyone else was feeling.
Eric said:
Absolutely elated and a tiny bit overwhelmed! JaytheRose and I were celebrating when the hashtag got 50K views, but we ended the weekend at midnight last night PST with 1.3 million views!!
I know personally, I felt almost like I was at a convention. I spent almost the whole weekend in cosplay. This was just what a lot of people needed.
Below are some of the videos fans created using the hashtag #TikTokGalliday that spread so quickly across the app over the weekend.
@missdemina Pt 1 #eleven never listens! #eleventhdoctor #duetme #bluebox #TARDIS #tiktokgalliday #doctorwho #doctorwhocosplay #thedoctorswife
@sunshinecosplays taking advantage of an old trend as always #tiktokgalliday #amypond #amypondcosplay #cosplay #doctorwho #doctorwhocosplay #travelthrowback #MMMDrop
@maddie_whovian Basically, run. #tiktokgalliday #doctorwhocosplay #eleventhdoctor #11thdoctor #doctorwho #eleventhdoctorcosplay #genderbendcosplay
@amber_of_arendelle #DonnaNoble as LaurenCooper, longer version. Happy TikTokGalliday, everyone! 💙#doctorwho #doctorwhocosplay #donnanoblecosplay
To go along with TikTok Galliday, Eric started a “pass the sonic” trend. Jessica stitched a lot of the videos together. She had so many people participate that the video had to be broken into pieces. Here is part 1!
If you want to check out loads more videos, then be sure to search for the hashtag and see the incredible creativity, time, and excitement went into the content.
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