After a long day at work, the thought of hundreds of kids running around kicking beachballs, singing karaoke and eating deep-fried macaroni and cheese balls sounds like a nightmare. But there I was Monday night at the Highlands in Hollywood where Disney through one heck of a festive party for the DVD release of "High School Musical 2." And ya know what? It was really a lot of fun. The fact that a movie and the music and the stars from that movie makes so many people happy is a wonderful thing.

And those mac & cheese balls? Like crack cocaine. I had three and decided to stand on the other side of the room before I had four, five...25 of 'em.
I missed the screening so waited outside the club for the party to start and there went Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens bounding up the stairs. They stopped to pose for pictures with this adorable little blonde girl who just happened to be at the absolute right place and the right time.

Once inside, I saw Cordin Blue surrounded by young fans and cast members Ashley Tisdale and Monique Coleman were among the other cast members present. Also being treated like a rock star was the film's director, Kenny Ortega, who I had chatted with the night before at the Diversity Awards where he was honored.

With the cast so famous, so quickly, I wondered if Kenny worries about them being under such an intense spotlight - especially Zac and Vanessa.
"Yeah, I do. Not that they can't handle it or that they can't be responsible. It's just that they're chased around a lot. I'm discovering that it's hard for them to have personal lives - just to step outside of an apartment and go down the street and grab a sandwich is a thing of their past. That bothers me. They love new adventure, they love being kids, they love going to the movies, they love hanging out with friends and going to parties and that part of being young has kind of been taken away from them. Their interests is what makes them interesting people. You start to pull them back and not allow them to have that sort of full experience."

I tried to get Kenny to shed some light on the phenomenal success of the franchise which has struck a deep cord with this generation of kids and their parents. "Sometimes you just end up with a lot of the right ingredients. This was not a recipe that anybody sort of laid out and said, 'If you do all this, it's gonna work.' But we took our time I think in putting together a wonderful group of kids and [writer] Peter [Barsocchini] created a wonderful world with some stunning and important themes at the center of it. And then I think the wish fantasy of high school and music and dancing with are always so much a part of young culture. I think all of those ideas coming together made for something that has grabbed the attention of a global youth audience." "We're doing 'High School [Musical] 3' for the big screen," he added. "We're back at East High, final year, and we're gonna bring in some new characters and have some fun. Mix it up a bit."

With the "High School Musical" franchise such a success and "Hairpsray" and "Dreamgirls" doing some well at the box office, does Kenny think this really is the return of the musical - a genre which used to dominate in decades past but since the 60s has only resurfaced, successfully, every so often.
"I'm hoping that they're gonna stay around and that we're gonna get the chance to make more of them and that audiences will want them," he said. "I just saw Julie Taymor's film the other night, "Across the Universe," and I loved it. Beatles music, brilliant staging, gorgeous casting, wonderful cinematography."