25 Years of Fantasmic! – A Look Back and a Review

Disneyland’s Fantasmic! ran for nearly 20 years basically unchanged, from the guest point of view, until the summer of 2009 aka Summer Nightastic!

Summer Nightastic was a summer push to drive guests back into Disneyland with new fireworks, a dance party in Tomorrowland, and a plussed Fantasmic! with a fully animated 40-foot-tall dragon, cutting-edge digital video technology and an appearance by Flotsam and Jetsam — the slithering eels who serve Ursula the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid.

Unfortunately, Murphy the dragon, as he was dubbed because of the Murphy’s Law “anything that can go wrong will,” was far from reliable and would often cause the show to be canceled before or even during. Eventually, the dragon’s appearance was pulled from the performance and Maleficent would just stay in her elevated position to battle Mickey Mouse. The Flotsam and Jetsam jet ski duo, while visually impressive, didn’t work out so well either (seems to be the curse of the Sea Witch) having difficulty seeing, the drivers were said to “often run into things along the river including each other” and just as the Ursula float before them they also didn’t last more than a few summers before being removed.

Of course, over its 20 year run, technology had been updated behind the scenes with projectors and lighting being revamped every few years. But with the exception of Murphy, who finally started working more than not by 2011, the show celebrated its 20th anniversary with a few special parties for annual passholders with a special opening featuring special opening day footage.

Before we move on to the New Fantasmic! we have to take a look at the other two shows located around the world.

First, we have the Walt Disney World version. Opened in 1998 this was a departure from the Disneyland version as a full arena was built in the shadow of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney MGM-Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios) to increase capacity.

The show itself holds true to the original but goes through and does some “interesting” changes most notable is the Pocahontas section in place of the original Peter Pan section but without a Sailing Ship Columbia, it was understandable. Also, the addition of more villains and the infamous “bubbles” not only gave the ability to include more recent characters and add more as time went along it also added nearly five minutes bring the WDW version to 27 minutes whereas the Disneyland version was 23 minutes.

The most recent entry into the Fantasmic! world came in 2011 when Tokyo DisneySea retired its long running BraviSeamo! show.

Tokyo DisneySea unlike both the US parks is a park based around a volcano and waterways without a central island or structure to build off of, so being the most innovative park they decided to make the entire show moveable as to not disrupt the beauty of the park until closer to showtime.

This version sticks a little bit closer to the Disneyland version where less is more when it comes to the villains but does expand on the presence of Mickey as opposed to more of the scenes that all happened in the original. Being this is one of the largest viewing areas for a show of this type some views are not the best but this show as you are about to find out plays a HUGE part in the updated Disneyland version.

Now that we have seen the past, let’s take a look at the present! Head to page 3 for what it now looks like!