After watching a video of it on YouTube, I can say that the refurbishment was a massive improvement on a technical level. But even though I do think the show has best effects any version of the show has ever had, I can't say it's an all around superior version. While I wouldn't say Disney ruined it, I would say major structural damage was caused in certain parts. They pretty much changed things just to change things. There are so many changes, I have to break it down scene by scene to describe how I feel about it.
The First major issue is that Mickey comes out way before his musical cue. It really diminishes the impact. Second major issue is that almost everything from the score to Mickey Mouse's dialogue has been unnecessarily rerecorded with a quality noticeably lower than the pitch perfect original. Because of this, the whole show never feels as right as it should. That isn't to say there weren't changes that I like. Combining the Lion King and Jungle Book scenes worked out very well as did the Genie replacement for the Pinocchio scene. But then there's the PotC scene on the Columbia which I knew I would like less than Peter Pan due to the latter being an inherently better IP for the show tonally speaking. After that is the Whole New World section which I feel is a little tacked on and would've been better if audio of Aladdin and Jasmine singing to each other was in place instead of a singer who sounds a bit over the top for what the scene should be. Another poor change is Rapunzel in place of Snow White in the Princess scene. I'm not against Rapunzel being in the show, but I feel the flow of the scene is broken. However, the absolute worst change in the show is the transition to the Villain section of the show. Instead of the Queen talking to the magic mirror and transforming into the witch, it's now Mickey for some strange reason. The witch still shows up after this, but the villainous buildup of that scene is completely destroyed. The show from here on out is pretty much the same aside from the unnecessarily rerecorded dialogue that I mentioned earlier.
All in all, I still think that Fantasmic! is a solid show and looks better than ever, but like a lot of things in Disney today, unnecessary modernizations hurt the final project. If it were up to me, I would've updated the effects in a similar fashion, but changed the actual content in very few ways. I do think there's a reason the original 1992 version of Fantasmic! is widely considered to be the best version around the world. Sadly, it appears Disney didn't learn why and turned it into something that suffers from a lot of the same issues as its clones but to a greater extent in some respects.
