Stolen Instruments Won't Stop Ohio Marching Band From Disney World Performance

Twenty percent of the Ashland High School Marching Band's 100 performers took the stage on Main Street U.S.A. at Magic Kingdom last Monday playing instruments they had never touched before. The crowd cheered. Nobody noticed.

The performance capped a frantic 24-hour scramble after thieves broke into the band's locked equipment trailer in a hotel parking lot near International Drive in Orlando on the evening of Saturday, March 28, stealing between 20 and 30 instruments, including clarinets, trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and flutes worth thousands of dollars. Nearly all of the stolen instruments were personally owned by students, not school property. Some had been carried since fifth grade. Others were family heirlooms passed down through generations.

For the Ashland Arrows, the Walt Disney World trip is a once-every-four-years tradition, meaning each student gets exactly one shot during their entire high school career. The 165 students, staff, and volunteers who climbed onto buses for the 22-hour, roughly 1,000-mile ride from Ashland, Ohio, to Orlando had been fundraising since 2022 through car washes, coupon books, and community events. Director of Bands Marty Kral framed what was at stake plainly: "Four years of hype for some of these kids, especially the seniors, and we were going to make sure, Monday morning, that they were able to perform their dream parade in Disney."

Kral discovered the theft Sunday morning, March 29, less than 24 hours before the scheduled performance. He and assistant director McNaull immediately began calling local Orlando music stores, negotiating individual month-long rental agreements for each stolen instrument one by one. The scramble exposed a vulnerability that many school travel programs share: there is no standard protocol for securing high-value personal instruments on the road, and the distinction between school-owned and personally owned equipment can leave students without institutional protection when theft occurs. The Ashland school district is now hoping its insurance covers the stolen items, though that question remains unresolved.

The last piece proved the hardest to replace. A saxophone player still had no instrument late Sunday night. Kral and McNaull turned to social media, messaging other high school bands performing at the park that weekend. A reply came from the Anna High School Marching Band from Anna, a small village in Shelby County, Ohio. The Anna group was leaving the next morning, but one of its saxophonists was staying on with her family. Kral arranged to meet the student's mother that night. "We were really, really fortunate to connect with the Anna High School boosters group," McNaull said. "They were, in fact, leaving the next day, but were able to loan us the vital instrument we needed." The saxophone reached Kral's hands, as he described it, "quite literally around 12:30 Sunday night into Monday morning."

By dawn, every marching band member was equipped. The Ashland Arrows performed "You've Got a Friend in Me" from Toy Story to cheering crowds, then played a second set at Disney Springs. "Our entire marching band was at Disney, marching in the parade, and 20 percent of them had never played that instrument in their life," Kral said afterward. "In some of that footage that's out there, you'll see, nobody would've known."

The Orange County Sheriff's Office is investigating; the case remains open. The Ashland High School Band Boosters launched a GoFundMe to help students replace their stolen personal instruments, a campaign that Anna High School's boosters amplified on social media. Michael Metcalf, owner of Mike's Music Corner in Ashland, the shop facilitating the return of the rental instruments, put the loss in perspective: "For a lot of kids, those instruments are part of who they are. It's like losing a piece of yourself."

Kral knows replacement instruments cannot fully restore what was taken. "I know that's not going to take away that it was bought by someone special or passed down from family," he said. "But my goal is just to make it right.