News Epcot Forever to debut as interim show before full Reflections of Earth replacement

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WDW Monorail

Well-Known Member
It’s a very njcely put together and well thought out fireworks show with some basic cue sequences and some more intricate ones as well. I never really cared for many of the older Epcot attraction songs but they turned out nicely I guess. I much prefer the last 5 minutes or so including Golden Dream, Celebrate the Future and of course A Whole New World. That is one of my favorite Disney songs so I loved hearing it during the show and am glad it served as the finale song. Very well arranged instrumental. While the fireworks shells design during that segment is nice, it’s mostly just volleys of 2 or 4 shells at a time. I do really like the purple mines used in the earlier part of that segment. The use of the seawall comets on sequential cues is fantastic and a great build up to the finale.

Edit: Also, this show offers the best implementation of the lasers at Epcot by far.
 
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RSoxNo1

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
marni1971 said:
Remember, this was never meant to create emotion. It is a pure entertaining fireworks show.

The emotions come with the next one.
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Seems like I'm disagreeing with you a lot lately.

Disney stated that this was a love letter to Epcot. In the same way they play up movie based IP because of our existing emotional attachment to the stories and characters, that was absolutely the intent here. Play up existing attachments to Epcot attractions from the past and present. You know full well that good execution will be able to create that emotion even if the familiarity with the source material isn't there.

Saying that a Disney fireworks show wasn't meant to create an emotion is silly.
 
marni1971

marni1971

Park History nut
Premium Member
RSoxNo1 said:
Seems like I'm disagreeing with you a lot lately.

Disney stated that this was a love letter to Epcot. In the same way they play up movie based IP because of our existing emotional attachment to the stories and characters, that was absolutely the intent here. Play up existing attachments to Epcot attractions from the past and present. You know full well that good execution will be able to create that emotion even if the familiarity with the source material isn't there.

Saying that a Disney fireworks show wasn't meant to create an emotion is silly.
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Believe the the PR all you want (which was trying to deflect the mountain of criticism they knew was coming). Harmonious is the wannabe RoE equivalent.

If everyone agreed forums would be boring.
 
RSoxNo1

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
WDW Monorail said:
It’s a very njcely put together and well thought out fireworks show with some basic cue sequences and some more intricate ones as well. I never really cared for many of the older Epcot attraction songs but they turned out nicely I guess. I much prefer the last 5 minutes or so including Golden Dream, Celebrate the Future and of course A Whole New World. That is one of my favorite Disney songs so I loved hearing it during the show and am glad it served as the finale song. Very well arranged instrumental. While the fireworks shells design during that segment is nice, it’s mostly just volleys of 2 or 4 shells at a time. I do really like the purple mines used in the earlier part of that segment. The use of the seawall comets on sequential cues is fantastic and a great build up to the finale.

Edit: Also, this show offers the best implementation of the lasers at Epcot by far.
Click to expand...
I don't accept this.

You can argue that it was a difficult task to put together 37 years of a park into an 11 minute show, but having an orchestra at your disposal combined with a library of audio and you or I could have done a better job. That shouldn't be the case. Imagineers, Featured Entertainment and Disney are supposed to be the best at what they do and this show missed the mark tremendously.

For the first few minutes, the mixture of children and Walt was jarring, and the snippets of songs were too short. As it transitioned into Tapestry/Golden Dreams/Celebrate the Future I thought they were on the right track and then it took an immediate wrong turn into A Whole New World. Had they continued the vibe of that middle section and finished with an Epcot appropriate song the show could have been saved. It wouldn't have been an A+ show, but a better finale could have put this in the B/B- range, right now I've got it as an F.

I didn't have any objections to the visuals. I thought the kites were a cool idea using reduced infrastructure (which we knew going in). I appreciated the lasers as well.
 
RSoxNo1

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
marni1971 said:
Believe the the PR all you want (which was trying to deflect the mountain of criticism they knew was coming). Harmonious is the wannabe RoE equivalent.

If everyone agreed forums would be boring.
Click to expand...
One thing Disney has done very poorly in recent years is managing expectations. Why put out a show if they knew criticism was coming? Any teasers they've shown played up the classic Epcot vibe of the show and deliberately avoided the Whole New World section. It's as if the people that assembled the show never went to Epcot prior to 1998 and those that assembled the preview clips of the show were going since 1982.

Recognizing that I couldn't change the composition of the fireworks themselves, I made a few minor changes to the first 9 minutes of the show and simply swapped out the final two minutes with a segment of Illuminations.

 
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marni1971

marni1971

Park History nut
Premium Member
RSoxNo1 said:
One thing Disney has done very poorly in recent years is managing expectations. Why put out a show if the knew criticism was coming? Any teasers they've shown played up the classic Epcot vibe of the show and deliberately avoided the Whole New World section. It's as if the people that assembled the show never went to Epcot prior to 1998 and those that assembled the preview clips of the show were going since 1982.

Recognizing that I couldn't change the composition of the fireworks themselves, I made a few minor changes to the first 9 minutes of the show and simply swapped out the final two minutes with a segment of Illuminations.

Click to expand...

Personally I thought the ending should have gone back to We’ve Just Begun to Dream (use the second verse if need be to begin with). It would have added only another 30 seconds unless they re recorded it quicker.

but that’s just me
 
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Epcot82Guy

Epcot82Guy

Well-Known Member
RSoxNo1 said:
This could have absolutely been used to replace the Earth Globe as an Illuminations update. Have a drone torch at the end and then have fireworks "explode" through it:

Click to expand...


That is pretty incredible. I always thought it would have been amazing to update the show with smaller globes ala ROL to better showcase the ideas from the globe. If you had something like this over the top of it, it would be incredible.
 

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