Christmas Day special on ABC will begin with dancing dinnerware

Here’s when a performer knows his career is thriving: He’s asked to sing in a Christmas Day special backed by dancing dinnerware.

“I’ve done everything else,” John O’Hurley jokes. “I’ve danced with hammers, saws, appliances. I’m ready for spoons and forks now.”

That’s in the “Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade,” which adds some final flash to TV’s Christmas programming marathon.

The ABC special (today at 2:30 p.m. on KXLY-4) is expected to start with O’Hurley singing “Be Our Guest” from “Beauty and the Beast.” Behind him will be Cinderella’s castle, plus lots of dancing teacups and spoons and such.

For O’Hurley, Disney World is pure nostalgia. “My friends and I were there when it opened,” he says.

The show includes other seasoned stars. Lonestar and Vanessa Williams will sing; Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa will host; and Ryan Seacrest will lead the parade. Tiger Woods, Julie Andrews, Star Jones and others will also be there.

And there will be relative newcomers. They include Fantasia, Aly and AJ, the Cheetah Girls and the young stars of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

“Disney World is our favorite place,” says Kiely Williams, 16, one of the singing-dancing Cheetah Girls, a group born out of a wildly successful Disney Channel movie.

“You see all the characters you grew up with. When I saw Goofy, it was overwhelming. … Cinderella was there. So was Jasmine and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.”

All of this is new to Williams. She grew up in New Jersey and had never been to Disney World. Then came “The Cheetah Girls,” a 2003 Disney Channel movie based on books about four teen friends.

The film drew big ratings, and its four stars have been busy. Currently the Cheetah Girls, which also includes Raven, Adrienne Bailon and Sabrina Bryan, are on tour; in March, they’ll start filming their second cable movie.