The Nostalgic Mayhem of Being a Grown Adult at a Disney Channel Convention

In A Cinderella Story, star Hilary Duff, who plays Samantha “Sam” Montgomery, says that waiting for the movie’s hunky lead character Austin Ames is like “waiting for rain in this drought, useless and disappointing.” Chad Michael Murray, however, the actor who played Austin in the 2004 film, is well worth the wait.

Fans had a chance to meet Murray in Orlando, Florida, on Jan. 25 at the “Decade Days” convention, a three-day event full of panels and opportunities for fans to meet stars from Lost, Teen Witch, the Degrassi franchise, Disney Channel shows and movies, and more. Some attendees repped One Tree Hill’s Ravens and others showed their Fighting Frogs colors in honor of A Cinderella Story.

The convention began on Jan. 24 at Dezerland Park, which houses Florida’s largest pinball arcade (over 90 machines), indoor kart racing, a movie theater, the Orlando Auto Museum, and more. It was fun to step into a venue that felt nostalgic itself, full of classic cars, a life-sized Bugs Bunny, and even a Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine.

Event organizer Autumn Dawn Nierode has worked in the fan convention business for about 13 years and has done themed cons around series like One Tree Hill and The Vampire Diaries.

Nierode originally planned a “DCOM Convention” in 2023, with stars from classic Disney Channel Original Movies set to attend, but postponed the event because of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes that were happening at the time. Nierode expanded the “DCOM Convention” idea to “Decade Days,” broadening the pop culture scope while still making Disney Channel a tentpole.

The website noted that “Decade Days” was “a celebration of the ’80s, ’90s, and more—pop culture, movies, and television.” One fan appreciated that the event covered multiple generations. The concept reminded me of Decade Days back in school, when we’d get to dress up in the styles of other eras.

Raviv Ullman, from Phil of the Future and Pixel Perfect, and Aly Michalka, a star of Cow Belles, Phil of the Future, and one half of Aly & AJ, had their first reunion panel for Phil—and it was Ullman’s first con ever. The actors are both new parents and are just as heartwarming today as they were on-screen 20 years ago.

While answering questions in their Phil of the Future panel, they told stories every diehard Disney Channel fan wants to hear: Ullman once raided a wardrobe closet and found the wig Hilary Duff’s stunt double wore, so he dressed as Lizzie McGuire for Halloween 2004. They also gave a behind-the-scenes scoop about 2004’s iconic Disney Channel Circle of Stars music video for “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.” Michalka said that she liked the fingerless gloves she memorably wore in the clip. Ullman said he was instructed to sound like Green Day. He reprised his line from the song in the panel, to the crowd’s delight.

Fans knew Phil of the Future well enough to converse with Ullman about the gadgets from the show. He was amused that two different attendees would choose the series’ spray food cans over the Skyak. “You’re saying that we had a jet ski that flew in the sky, and you would rather have spray brownies?” he countered. He marveled again the next day at fans choosing “Cheez Whiz.”

When an attendee told the actor, “You were my gay awakening,” Ullman stretched out his arms and gave the fan a big hug. This fan also informed Michalka that it wasn’t really Christmas until he played Aly & AJ’s 2006 Acoustic Hearts of Winter album.

Ullman is preparing to direct his debut feature film, which he also wrote. Aly & AJ, the music duo made up of sisters Aly and AJ Michalka, have an upcoming album called Silver Deliverer and have released the lead single, “What It Feels Like.” The lyrics are appropriate for a convention full of fans who have grown up, too. “Been thinking ‘bout the way my blue jeans fit / Yeah, every year they hang a little different / The way my hair blows in the wind / Is not the way it looked back then / But I’m standing taller than I’ve ever been,” the sisters sing.

Decade Days was a chance for Michalka to recall her years playing Keely Teslow on Phil of the Future. When asked about balancing the past with the artistry she’s creating now, Michalka told Obsessed, “It’s a balance [of] embracing these projects and memories that are from the past and honoring those and being able to connect with the fans in person, and then also being able to honor this newer version of myself that’s now a mom, that now has made so many albums and toured over the years and has grown up and is now no longer a kid.”

Though she can both embrace her early career and “tuck it away for a moment,” she was willing to reminisce with me about the Phil episode in which her character sang “Protecting Me” and shared Aly & AJ’s music with many fans for the first time. “I think at that time, I was such a little baby in my confidence as a singer. So I definitely can relate to how Keely was feeling in that moment, the nervousness. And it’s sweet to look back on it now because I’ve changed so much as a performer over that many years, but it’s kind of a little time capsule of where I was at as an artist,” she said.

Tiered weekend admission (not including taxes or fees) for Decade Days started at $135, then $195 for “Totally Rad,” $275 for “That’s Hot,” and $575 for “Bling Bling” tiers, building up to perks like a free or discounted autograph or photo op. Some fans participated in a half-hour group meet-and-greet with Murray for roughly $200 per person. Other attendees stood patiently in his autograph line or waited until a Q&A session to ask him their burning questions. One fan wore a sparkly pink dress and a tiara—a cute way to meet the prince of A Cinderella Story.

“This one’s for Chad. I really enjoyed The Merry Gentlemen. It’s one of my favorite Christmas movies now,” another fan said during the “Leading Men” panel in which Murray was sandwiched between actors Jon Abrahams (Scary Movie) and Drew Seeley (High School Musical, Another Cinderella Story). “So me and some girls are wondering, [are] there any Christmas films that are similar to that in your future?”

CMM said that he loves his “stripper Christmas movie,” which premiered on Netflix on Nov. 20, and there was no argument from the audience when he suggested that Seeley and Abrahams sign on to dance as merry gentlemen in a sequel.

Murray answered a question from Obsessed during the panel: What was going through his mind when he shot his pivotal “...Baby One More Time” performance for 2003’s Freaky Friday? The scene was planned as a nod to John Cusack holding up the boombox in Say Anything, but director Mark Waters instead had Murray sing Britney Spears’ hit a cappella at 11 pm on a residential street.

“So everyone’s standing outside, and you just gotta go,” Murray said. “It’s go time. And in that moment, that song became famous. It wasn’t before then. So I’d like to take a little bit of the credit for ‘Hit Me Baby, One More Time.’ For destroying it, that is.”

Body-swapping in this year’s Freakier Friday sequel will become “so complicated that you literally have to stay on your toes to clock [who’s who],” Murray told a Decade Days attendee. He praised co-star Jamie Lee Curtis, who came up with the perfect strategy for a table read: “hats that you put on when you’re in a different place, like you’re in someone else’s shoes.”

If you want to talk about stepping into someone else’s shoes, the DCOM for that is Motocrossed. Actor Riley Smith, the male lead of the Disney Channel’s cross-dressing classic, was in attendance. He told Obsessed that he kept his character’s green racing suit. A fan brought a Motocrossed VHS to the Smith’s for him to sign. “I have one up on my mantle as a keepsake. But I don’t know what you do with VHSes these days,” the actor told Obsessed.

Brandon Baker from Johnny Tsunami complimented my Big Comfy Couch sweatshirt as I sat down at his table to interview him. This was Baker’s first fan convention, and he said he was a little nervous. “I no longer act. I feel really good about that,” Baker told Obsessed. (He is a wedding officiant based in Colorado, and is recently married himself.) Yet here at this convention, he saw the love for Johnny Tsunami and sent the love right back. “And while I do have imposter syndrome to some degree, to at all add joy to someone’s life, someone’s day in some small way?”

Before Baker could continue, right on cue, a fan came up to his booth and asked him to draw a turtle on a Post-it note, a rather unique request. The fan, Izzy, explained to Obsessed via DM, “Well they don’t ever get asked to draw a random animal. So I always ask them to draw my favorite animals! Turtles and dolphins are my favorite but also not something easy to draw. It always makes everyone laugh on how they turn out.” As she assembled her Post-its to show him an example (a shark Shane Kippel from Degrassi drew for her), Baker kept the positive vibes going and concluded, “I think I am more comfortable being myself than I ever have been.”

Next to him was a table for Sam Horrigan, the actor who played the ferocious Spike from Little Giants and notorious villain Val from Brink!. “I love doing these events because people are allowing me to go into deep storage of my memory banks, and all of a sudden I remember something that would not have come to my mind any other way,” the DCOM star told Obsessed. “Meeting people that are fans of something that I got to be a part of is an honor.” Fans have memories associated with watching Brink!, but Horrigan gets to recall actually creating the scenes. “Good times. I was freezing cold when they dumped about 50 milkshakes on me on the Santa Monica Pier. But good times,” he told Obsessed, referring to Val’s comeuppance.

The convention’s Orlando location was an obvious bonus for folks who wanted to visit the Disney amusement parks, or Universal’s. I randomly ran into celebrity guest Riley Smith in a Disney parking garage and also spotted a Decade Days attendee having fun in Disney Springs.

Drew Seeley is actually from the area, so the weekend offered him the opportunity to spend time with his friends and family, as well as a respite from Los Angeles in the wake of the fires. Seeley was recognized throughout the convention for his melodious vocals in High School Musical, and he devoted Sunday evening to a post-convention benefit concert for suicide prevention and mental health, also featuring MKTO.

Fellow Orlando native Anthony Pyatt from the cast of Disney’s Descendants: The Rise of Red made the lineup even more multi-generational; his film debuted just last year, whereas most of the other talent at Decade Days starred in movies from the turn of the millennium. He told Obsessed that walking to his Disney set as blue-haired Hades felt just like the “epic music” that suddenly started playing on the convention floor.

“I’m trying to play it cool at this convention, but it’s blowing my mind that I’m sitting at the tables next to people I grew up watching,” he said. But Pyatt took to the convention like a duck to water. He high-fived me after crushing it in a go-kart race against Baker, Horrigan, and some other new friends (professional wrestler Melina Perez, Guinness World Records holder and Ripley’s Believe it or Not’s most flexible person Liberty Barros, and cosplayer and model Maddie Mason).

“Disney’s got a real special way of cracking the formula on what types of emotional connections we love to make and love to deliver to children and teens, and how to deliver it in a palatable way that’s funny and full of love and opens a lot of doors; it shows people their identities,” Pyatt told fans from the panel stage. He basically just described a good DCOM in a nutshell. He added that he was grateful for a “golden ticket to step onboard the boat to be a part of that bigger mission.”

As the weekend wound down, Nierode estimated that a total of 25 celebrity guests and 400-450 attendees stopped by Decade Days. (Next up for her is the spring’s Gilmore Girls event in Milford, Connecticut, “A Weekend in the Life.” Matt Czruchy and Scott Patterson are among the first confirmed celebrity guests.)

It’s easy to grow up imagining what it would be like to hang out with the people you see on your TV screen. For a weekend, Decade Days created space for that.

Baker said he doesn’t know if younger generations will have that same communal, formative pop-culture experience. “It’s this really unique time in culture where we grew up with monoculture,” he told Obsessed. Then the Internet brought like-minded fans together and to real-life events like Decade Days. It might not be the same in the future when people are talking about a specific YouTube channel from 2025, Baker said.

But for now, we can wear ’80s, ’90s and Y2K-inspired fashion and talk to our hearts’ content about the TV we watched that has shaped us as, now, grown adults.

“So it is this cool thing that I feel like I’m part of a time in which we all were consuming very similar media at the same time,” Baker added. “And hence, we’re all nostalgic for that time, where you feel like part of a community.”