EPCOT Reflections of Earth confirmed to be replaced by Harmonious

[ToTBellHop]

I do kinda get "Burn" vibes when I think of what Chapek has done to my relationship with Epcot. Pardon me while I fetch my nightgown and a lantern. I have some letters to burn...

You’ll make up later after your son, KiteTails dies because it was overly confident. By the time there is a new CEO, you’ll be the one telling Bob’s story. It’s only a matter of time.

 

[Mac Tonight]

"Hi, my name is Bobby Chapek. I am in charge of Disney now, and will ruin everything you once loved. Please buy more merchandise."

 

[trainplane3]

Email The Zach.

There's a funny story about that.
Knew someone and made a joke about emailing him. They asked what he did, looked him up in the email system, and the reaction was a whopping "oh, so that's what they do now" in the most driest tone.

 

[themarchhare]

Rewatched and my thoughts are...

I can't wait to see this tech with a well-produced, Illuminations-like show. And for them to build a dock so that monstrosity doesn't ruin the sightlines during the day anymore.

 

[ToTBellHop]

Rewatched and my thoughts are...

I can't wait to see this tech with a well-produced, Illuminations-like show. And for them to build a dock so that monstrosity doesn't ruin the sightlines during the day anymore.

I don’t think undocking is an option anymore. New show obviously is. They could pretty easily program one after hours and roll it out seamlessly if they want.

 

[hpyhnt 1000]

I don’t think undocking is an option anymore. New show obviously is. They could pretty easily program one after hours and roll it out seamlessly if they want.

The tacos aren’t even motorized, right, or am I misremembering? If they aren’t, they’d have to push them with a speedboat which sounds like a big hassle.

 

[RSoxNo1]

Speaker by me is dead but pretty sure it's the EF loop

Edit. Yeah, definitely EF loop or something extremely similar.

Were you in Norway? I was hoping that speaker would be fixed.

See, I actually think it is really cool to hear songs you know sung in different languages. Until RoE, IllumiNations was similarly made up of music you already knew. They made this show as Epcot as possible while meeting their boss’s demands for IP integration.

And I think the fountains look stunning. Think back to the fountains in RoE. They’ve come a long way.

It will obviously look more impressive in person.

All the elements are there, the show just has no flow or story to it. It could be a solid magic kingdom style show if it had some “glue” to hold all the segments together. Also can we discuss how visually underwhelming the taco shaped LED screens are. It’s like they designed a solution looking for a problem and then didn’t know what visual elements to put on them. Water screens would have worked great. Still… can’t wait to see it for myself before I pass to harsh of judgement. Excited to read other people’s thoughts!

I think the concept of leaning into the cultures for music and visuals was a great idea and the individual segments did that well in parts. That being said, I think the overall execution was quite poor. This show needed a unifying thread, perhaps even a narrator to spell out the segments. Reflections of Earth gets away with not doing that because most of the show is a singular piece of music.

My initial thought was that this would be a fitting replacement to Fantasmic, but in talking about it with a few people, the cultural representation component here is immensely important. That being said, if one or more songs could have been cut (looking at you, weird Beauty and the Beast segment) in favor of better story/narration it would go along way.

Also half way through, I had Jeff Goldblum in my ear saying, "You do plan on having fireworks in your fireworks show, don't you?"

 

[tnemgif]

So I watched a full (zoomed out) recording on YouTube and I liked the show significantly better. I think the zoomed in footage that Disney gave us yesterday just didn’t do the show justice. There were a lot of cool features and moments that just weren’t captured in the fancy cinematography yesterday. IMO

Edit: You know what. I change my opinion completely. I like it. It’s a little disjointed, yeah, but the hardware is cool and impressive. The theme and music is moving. There’s a lot more pyro than the footage last night showed. People were cheering at the end. It’s a change and I miss ROE. But I like this too.

I know I’m just ranting and rambling, but I appreciate all the people who worked on this and I think they created something great.

 

[WDWTrojan]

This is now an actual take on social media: disliking Harmonious doesn’t count if you’re white, because Epcot showcased the white male experience for 40 years and this one’s not for you.

People are agreeing with it.

The insane thing with that thread is the has another thread shortly thereafter where he just complains about the show, with the same complaints everyone else has. Bizarre.

 

[DisneyNeighbor]

Bring back illuminations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[trainplane3]

The tacos aren’t even motorized, right, or am I misremembering? If they aren’t, they’d have to push them with a speedboat which sounds like a big hassle.

Not motorized. Which brings back this:

"It's not that they couldn't have brought these crazy huge platforms out from the marina everyday. They really could have (even if the marina would be a little tight on space). The issue is that the projected amount of time to get these things in and out was way higher than anyone was willing to stomach. Supposedly it could have gone over an hour on a windy day, which was something that ops wasn't willing to put up with. That drawbridge would either stay up for an obscenely long amount of time, or go up and down enough to be like a game of frogger for guests."
-A Friend on why the Platforms are docked Permanently

Epcot Forever was a temporary show with minimal moving bits. If they had the budget an expanded marina and a new lift bridge should've happened. Build a temp bridge after RoE was removed from the lagoon (say from Italy to China running parallel to a point with the existing path), dismantle current lift bridge, widen gap by a good 15ft, install longer lift bridge. It would've been ugly for over a year but the end result would be worth it. Easier said then done but it would've been the right way to do things. Wider gap would've allowed more room for these things and quicker moves even if they only brought out two at a time.

This is stuff that should've been "easy" to pull off in under two years. Marina expansion could've been done before RoEs retirement.

 

[brb1006]

"Hi, my name is Bobby Chapek. I am in charge of Disney now, and will ruin everything you once loved. Please buy more merchandise."

View attachment 590204

"That Bob Ain't Right"

BTW can somebody in this thread please make an edit without the Harmonious barges for future memes templets? I love this so much you guys!

 

[Sir_Cliff]

The insane thing with that thread is the has another thread shortly thereafter where he just complains about the show, with the same complaints everyone else has. Bizarre.

The thing with social media is that anyone can have an account and post things, so something posted on social media even if it's liked by a handful of people doesn't really represent anything other than a random person's point of view. This is why it always annoys me when media outlets quote the reaction on social media to something and it's just a few random tweets without a particularly high degree of engagement. In this case, hell, even I have more followers than this guy on Twitter and no-one cares what I think!

 

[RSoxNo1]

This is now an actual take on social media: disliking Harmonious doesn’t count if you’re white, because Epcot showcased the white male experience for 40 years and this one’s not for you.

People are agreeing with it.

He goes into a breakdown of that thought and talks in detail about representation. There are absolutely some valid points there. Having said that, it doesn't take away the fact that there is a poor connective thread to all the segments, reduced pyro, restricted viewing angles and visual intrusions during the daytime.

I would absolutely say it's a better show than EPCOT Forever, but for the hype train and the visual intrusion during the day time, this show had to be much better than it was, IMO.

 

[Thelazer]

Let's hope entertainment gets the go ahead to do the holiday show.. in the way the local team / designers would like to do it.

 

[hpyhnt 1000]

Let's hope entertainment gets the go ahead to do the holiday show.. in the way the local team / designers would like to do it.

Go on…

Holiday songs from around the world, sung in their local language, would be amazing. Even a 5 minute tag would be great.

 

[MisterPenguin]

I loved the ending of HarmonioUS. When Spaceship Earth lights up like that? It really is the best part of the whole show.

The best part of Harmonious was the part that wasn't part of Harmonious!!

 

[Squishy]

I feel like the post-show message/music is causing some of the "Is that it?" confusion into thinking that something is going to happen after similar to HEA's finale.

 

[monothingie]

There is one led pod on SSE that is out. OCD overload.

 

[donaldtoo]

The post show Spaceship Earth lights looks like the best part of the show.

Just my opinion, but, I thought the lights on SE were tacky.
It used to look classy the way it was lighted at night, now it looks like a carnival ride.

As far as the “Lagoondoggle” goes…
I posted somewhere here a while back, that for how downright crappy the giant star gate and lopsided tacos look livin’ in the lagoon full-time, this better be the best freakin’ nighttime show ever produced anywhere by anybody.
And…