This summer Christmas is coming early in almost every major city across the country. Starting in Los Angeles on May 22 and finishing in New York City on November 1, the Disney's A Christmas Carol Train Tour, an interactive promotional event for the upcoming film, will be stopping in a total of 40 cities across the United States and covering more than 16,000.

Earlier this month, Yo got to take part in the tour in Albuquerque and shared his experience (including video footage) right here on HollywoodJesus. The other day, when it pulled into Oakland, I got my chance to see what it was all about too.

Like Yo said, while temperatures will probably be somewhere in the 80s or 90s at many of its stops, it really is like Christmas on wheels. There's fake snow. There's Christmas music. And while I'm not exactly sure what Christmas smells like, the last train car captures that scent to a T.

Inside each train car are displays and interactive exhibits that invite the public to step right into the film's story and its making. In the first car are collections of Dickens and Christmas Carol memorabilia, costumes from the movie, and portraits of characters at various ages (each one played by the same actor and morphed into their younger or older selves). As you continue through the train, you are surrounded by character models, set models, and even a mock motion-capture studio. In one car, wall-to-wall televisions play a number of videos detailing aspects of the film's development and production. Before exiting, you can even take your photograph and morph yourself into one of the film's characters.

As I saw it, the train is like the film's DVD extras brought to life. And as I looked at the many details about its production and process rolled out for the public months before the film will even be released, I found its near defiance of the standard film release and publicity timeline fascinating. In stark contrast to most publicity campaigns that rely on only a few select clips and press which generally skews away from the actual making of the film and more towards celebrity gossip and a few carefully-crafted (and repeated) on-set stories, the train tour puts its money on the possibility that the film's story and artistry might sell it just as well (or better). And while us press were invited to help spread the word about the tour, bringing to life many of the details we are often given in press notes (and, I'll admit, rarely find the time or space to share with our readers), the tour is also one that essentially eliminates the need for us middlemen and delivers the magic of the movie's making right to the hands of the general public.

Not to go completely untraditional on us, also included in the tour is a series of trailers and clips from the film played in, yes you are reading right, an inflatable movie theater. Before I went in I was told that some portion of the footage we were seeing had not been shown at other locations and some portion was only being shown to press, so whether you will see exactly what I did, I do not know. What I did see, however, made me think that while I might not take any young children with me, come November, I will probably go see Disney's A Christmas Carol myself. Although I am not personally a big fan of motion-capture animation, as we caught glimpses of the film and various people involved commented on how they thought the medium would be able to bring to life Dickens' tale in a way that hadn't been done before, I could see that it very well might. Watching what was probably one of the film's earliest scenes introducing Jim Carrey's Scrooge, as well as Gary Oldman's Bob Cratchit and Colin Firth's Fred (Scrooge's nephew), I found myself already able to believe that each man was the character he played and the story into which we were suddenly able to see real. And in the scene in which Scrooge meets the ghost of Bob Marley (also played by Gary Oldman), I was perhaps most drawn in by the sense that the film is one that will not only recognize its story's magic, but also its inherent darkness.

Of course, with the Train Tour probably making a stop near you, you don't have to rely on me to tell you whether the film looks like a good one or not. Just check out the Disney Train Tour website for the Train Tour's schedule, and you can see for yourself.