Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, we’ll take a trip back to the past to look at an attraction that was billed as the future of Epcot (nighttime shows).
This coming Monday, Epcot Forever’s second run in its eponymous park comes to a close, just a few months after its sudden reemergence. The show first opened in 2019 to an extremely tepid response, though it was always billed as a temporary show designed to hold the restless crowds until today’s featured attraction, Harmonious, was finally ready to make its Epcot debut.
But what held Harmonious back?
The show was first announced in 2018 at Destination D as the eventual replacement to IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth, pretty huge shoes to fill with many placing the show as their favorite Disney nighttime show amongst all of the parks. The original plan was to open the show in 2020, but obviously that little pandemic thing came in the way, delaying the show’s opening until a very fitting date, Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary celebration.
With the extra time in hand, Disney had the time to fine tune everything as they went all in the show, as they had to deal with the unenviable challenge of replacing one of the most loved theme park shows of all-time. Water fountains, searchlights and pyrotechnics were a given, but then they went ahead and added lasers and LED screens, to up the ante even more. And then there were the barges.
Now, we have to take a minute to discuss these barges because they were all anyone could talk about when they were first installed in the World Showcase Lagoon, with the key word being installed. These barges were permanent installations, blocking sightlines across the lagoon as well as looking just a bit ugly in the light. Before the show had even debuted, it was already facing scrutiny, raising the bar even higher for the attraction, which had so much going against it already.
While IllumiNations was void of Disney characters, Harmonious took a different tact, instead relying solely on Disney movies to tie with the vision of the park, with a lack of an original song throughout. The show divided itself into three parts, known as Gather, Celebrate, and Unite, all of which featured Disney songs in a variety of languages, so let’s dig a little deeper to see what made its way into the show.
The Gather section could be breath-taking at times, particularly when those barges first opened and displayed that they had arms from which pyrotechnics and water cannons could be shot out of, while also functioning as LED screens. Though an eyesore, those barges really helped make the show what it was because they could do basically everything.
To match the splendor of the barges, the music began with a mashup of “How Far I’ll Go” and “Go the Distance” sung in multiple languages in the goal to merge the cultures as best as possible. With the “I Wish” songs really stressing the importance of stretching one’s wings, I felt they served as the perfect choices for our “gathering” to set us on the right path to “Celebrate.”
The Celebrate section was split into sections, each of which focused on a different region or country, with a song or two from a Disney movie driving the action forward in each. The party started in the Middle East where Aladdin was the easy choice, though most of the segment featured the song “Arabian Nights,” definitely not most people’s first choice from the movie, though it does make a lot of sense when trying to evoke the region.
India was the next group represented, with “I Wanna Be Like You” from The Jungle Book. Throughout the show, each of the LED screens on the barges would showcase designs and patterns, though interestingly, not a ton of character animation. Instead, they took the route of creating more generic looks, closer to the feel of each region as opposed to the stylized look of each Disney film.
Moving along, China was featured next, using “Reflection” from Mulan to craft one of the coolest fireworks portions of the experience. Like some of the earlier sections, a good amount of the song was in Chinese. I love hearing the non-English version of Disney songs because they are so similar and yet so different.
Africa popped its head up next, with “Hakuna Matata” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” from The Lion King as the songs (to pretty much nobody’s surprise). This section was probably my favorite one because it felt like a true crescendo of all the different elements in the show coalescing perfectly.
Europe followed Africa, and easily got the most playtime of any region, with the section starting with some visuals and the score of Beauty and the Beast before transitioning to “Out There” from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with the song having a resurgence of late that I am 100% here for. But Europe wasn’t done there as Brave got to be part of the fun as well with “Touch the Sky” also making its way into the air.
Latin America was next on the docket with Coco songs “Remember Me” and “The World Es Mi Familia” getting the call to action, though I’m sure Encanto would have made its way in there too if the show had been produced a year later.
The Celebrate section came to a close with “Dig a Little Deeper” from The Princess and the Frog and let me tell you, this song went really hard. They pulled out all the stops and it almost felt like a pre-finale with all of the visuals, each LED, water and pyrotechnic.
But Disney kept the good times rolling with “Someday,” also from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in place to “Unite” the audiences with a fireworks extravaganza of a finale and a great closing message of unity.
The show was quite the whirlwind, though it wasn’t without its detractors, with two particularly salient points revolving around the fact that there was no direct story to the show, highlighted by the lack of narrator. The show also lacked an original song, though that was actually a positive for me because I generally feel that the original songs pale in comparison to the Disney classics we know and love.
So while some didn’t love it, I thought it was a fun time that did the best a show could to tie to the message of Epcot when hamstrung by needing to exclusively use Disney songs. I thought that the show was technically super impressive, with the barges really doing everything one could possibly imagine.
However, I think that the show became a bit too expensive in the long run, so the “long-term” replacement to IllumiNations closed for good on April 2, 2023, not even two years after its opening. For a brief period, it was replaced by Epcot Forever, but next week Luminous: The Symphony Us will take over the Epcot skies, so let’s see if it can fill the void that Harmonious feel short of, well for most audiences.
Via Orlando Weekly
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!