Fantasmic! 2.0 Rumors, Speculation, Announcments

[SuddenStorm]

I'm always interested by folks who seem to know what a new show will be like from just a few vague sentences read on the Internet. Not only do they know what the future holds, but they can judge it from the present.

Disneyland's circa 1992 show needed an update to its content and characters, and what they have planned seems wonderful.

This 2017 remake and reboot should catapult it into some of the best Disney entertainment spectaculars in existence for years to come.

It seems that judging what a new show will be like from limited information is difficult to escape...

 

[SuddenStorm]

So far, I think the most hopeful thing I've heard about the new show is @GiveMeTheMusic 's confidence that it will be amazing. I hope that means that whoever they've talked to are equally confident that the show will be everything we want it to be.

But the Fantasmic!! change (even if they didn't follow through) and Aladdin concept art kind of sucked. At least two other people on different sites have said that some people working the show prefer the original iteration.

Davison has a really hit or miss track record when creating "timeless" content. Wasn't impressed by Tokyo's Fantasmic- so I hope he learned from those mistakes when giving this revamp a go. Yes, they're redoing all the technical stuff but that's only half the battle when making a quality show.

I'm very cautiously optimistic- because if this new show can be better than the '92 iteration, it will be the greatest show Disney has ever done.

 

[TP2000]

It seems that judging what a new show will be like from limited information is difficult to escape...

I have no idea what the new segments will turn out like. It could be total junk.

But just including Pirates, Tangled and Aladdin (and ignoring Frozen) seems like a wise move. If they meet the show standards of 1992, it will be great. If they can exceed those 1992 standards with new tech, it will be epic.

If this was 2002 and Paul Pressler and Cynthia Harriss were still running the show, I would be worried. But those two were fired by The Gap over a decade ago and haven't been heard from since. The execs in charge now spend money where it counts, and the revamped show should glow for old and new fans alike.

 

[nevol]

I have no idea what the new segments will turn out like. It could be total junk.

But just including Pirates, Tangled and Aladdin (and ignoring Frozen) seems like a wise move. If they meet the show standards of 1992, it will be great. If they can exceed those 1992 standards with new tech, it will be epic.

If this was 2002 and Paul Pressler and Cynthia Harriss were still running the show, I would be worried. But those two were fired by The Gap over a decade ago and haven't been heard from since. The execs in charge now spend money where it counts, and the revamped show should glow for old and new fans alike.

The legacy, however, of the corners of Eisner's brain that brought us DHS's Fantasmic!, California Adventure, Pressler and Harris, Bruce Vaughn's apathy toward the parks and resorts the Imagineers he led, and now Chapek, live on, in one capacity or another.

Meaning, simply, if you had a problem with the commerciality of Fantasmic's '92 iteration, they've only continued to produce rides and shows this way, with far less effort to bury such intentions. Even the big budget projects now are safer. Creative entertainment got less and less subtle with their commercial intentions through to the 60th, and 2017 has marked a turning point for creative entertainment in orlando with both HAE and ROL. Yes projects, not just entertainment projects, have bigger budgets now and more attention to show quality than when Pressler and Harris were running things with Eisner and Rasulo, but those projects follow the formulas from this era that we can't seem to escape. I am really looking forward to D23 this year because things could go either way from this point; continued improvement in show or not, and secondly, an expansion of content or not. The shape of the epcot projects in particular will speak volumes. I know I'm not alone in thinking that it is basically unimaginable that an epcot or animal kingdom would be built from scratch in 2017. If fantasmic was one corny side show from an ambitious company willing to build massive permanent world's expos on either coast, then all that is left is the side show.

 

[SMLR]

Fantasmic 2.0 got hit really hard by the star wars land budget smh
https://twitter.com/royaltheataylor/status/876466622088724480

 

[Rich T]

Fantasmic! at Disneyland has been wonderful for 25 years. But it was a happy accident, a show that was originally only slated to run for three years until Toontown and Indiana Jones were finished. It was cutting edge yet kind of hokey, a tribute to classic Disney animation but also designed to shill the latest "Now Available On VHS!" marketing campaigns.

Disneyland's circa 1992 show needed an update to its content and characters, and what they have planned seems wonderful. Disneyland's version had upgraded technology circa 2009 that was already vastly superior to the creaky 1998 version at WDW that is shown in Disney's version of Shamu Stadium. This 2017 remake and reboot should catapult it into some of the best Disney entertainment spectaculars in existence for years to come.

Borrowing the old commercial tagline... It could only happen at Disneyland!

Y'know, I've expressed a bit of skepticism on whether or not Fantasmic's ligtning-in-a-bottle success can strike twice with a major reworking, but man do I love your optimism! And, combined with (pretty much unrelated) my current elation with how incredible a job Disney's doing with the DuckTales reboot... I'm aboard!!!

 

[Deleted member 107043]

Fantasmic 2.0 got hit really hard by the star wars land budget smh
https://twitter.com/royaltheataylor/status/876466622088724480

LOL!

 

[nevol]

Y'know, I've expressed a bit of skepticism on whether or not Fantasmic's ligtning-in-a-bottle success can strike twice with a major reworking, but man do I love your optimism! And, combined with (pretty much unrelated) my current elation with how incredible a job Disney's doing with the DuckTales reboot... I'm aboard!!!

This blind optimism does nothing to actually improve the experience or the quality of show. The opposite is actually true. If Disney knows that their audience will always equate newer with better, then they can make any junk they want with no incentive for it to be good. Tech improvements upon an old show should and would be enhancements. Restructuring the show and swapping out scenes creates too many variables and there is no longer an if-then. If newer was always better, Tokyo's Fantasmic would be the best one. Instead, if I were visiting Tokyo Disney Resort, I seriously would not watch it. I find it abysmal.

I too am eager to see the show and miss it dearly and am really excited. But somebody else's blind, baseless optimism based on over-simplistic logic makes no case for the reassurance being preached.

 

[InsideDisney]

From what I heard from a fantasmic performer disneyland is hoping fantasmic will drag people away from paint the night.

 

[jrhwdw]

From what I heard from a fantasmic performer disneyland is hoping fantasmic will drag people away from paint the night.

So, there's talk of PTN for DL and not DCA, etc?

 

[InsideDisney]

So, there's talk of PTN for DL and not DCA, etc?

Haven't really heard anything about paint the night in DCA

 

[jrhwdw]

Haven't really heard anything about paint the night in DCA

There was some in the MSEP/PTN thread

 

[SuddenStorm]

From what I heard from a fantasmic performer disneyland is hoping fantasmic will drag people away from paint the night.

You were talking to a performer in the show, and this is the info you bring us?

In all seriousness, this seems like an interesting thought process for Disney if the rumor of PTN going to DCA is true. Why would Disney want to pull people away from DCA? And, PTN isn't even running right now, and won't be in the near future.

What's more likely is that Disney is hoping Fantasmic will pull people away from the MSEP (cause that parade is actually running) so that Disney can have it make a quiet "glow away" again in August, and can then heavily market a PTN return to either Disneyland, or DCA once the Fantasmic! crowds start to subside.

 

[drizgirl]

Honestly, with SWL coming, they should have moved Fantasmic to DCA if crowd manipulation was their goal.

I can see wanting Fantasmic back to spread the crowds around. But it historically does not even run every night. Heck, during much of the Halloween season it only runs twice a week.

 

[InsideDisney]

You were talking to a performer in the show, and this is the info you bring us?

In all seriousness, this seems like an interesting thought process for Disney if the rumor of PTN going to DCA is true. Why would Disney want to pull people away from DCA? And, PTN isn't even running right now, and won't be in the near future.

What's more likely is that Disney is hoping Fantasmic will pull people away from the MSEP (cause that parade is actually running) so that Disney can have it make a quiet "glow away" again in August, and can then heavily market a PTN return to either Disneyland, or DCA once the Fantasmic! crowds start to subside.

What else am I supposed to tell you? That there are drones? Ya you wish. Besides in the end of 2016 they made budget cuts on the paint the night schedule where it only preformed on weekends.

 

[Californian Elitist]

What else am I supposed to tell you? That there are drones? Ya you wish.

LOL What?

 

[FerretAfros]

Remember, this is the same team that enthusiastically and proudly bragged to the entire world that Happily Ever After was only the third nighttime show in the park's 45 year history. Meanwhile, DL has had about what, three new shows since Wishes debuted?

Actually 5, but who's counting?

• Remember...Dreams Come True, 2005
• Magical, 2009
• Halloween Screams, 2009 (nightly in 2009, party nights only after that)
• Fantasy in the Sky, 2015 (new version, short show)
• Disneyland Forever, 2015

Additionally, DL runs Believe...in Holiday Magic nightly during the Christmas season (no lousy parties here!), making for a great variety of shows throughout the year, in addition to having new ones introduced regularly into the mix.

In addition to Wishes being quite old by the time it was finally replaced, I never thought it was a particularly good show to begin with. Sure, it made for nice photos with the fireworks centered on the castle, but beyond that most basic concept it always fell flat to me. I never understood the cult-like obsession with it; perhaps that was just because it had been around for so long and people didn't realize there were other (better) options

 

[Ag11gani]

Actually 5, but who's counting?

• Remember...Dreams Come True, 2005
• Magical, 2009
• Halloween Screams, 2009 (nightly in 2009, party nights only after that)
• Fantasy in the Sky, 2015 (new version, short show)
• Disneyland Forever, 2015

Additionally, DL runs Believe...in Holiday Magic nightly during the Christmas season (no lousy parties here!), making for a great variety of shows throughout the year, in addition to having new ones introduced regularly into the mix.

In addition to Wishes being quite old by the time it was finally replaced, I never thought it was a particularly good show to begin with. Sure, it made for nice photos with the fireworks centered on the castle, but beyond that most basic concept it always fell flat to me. I never understood the cult-like obsession with it; perhaps that was just because it had been around for so long and people didn't realize there were other (better) options

Well if your counting those shows aswell then:
HallowWishes
Holiday Wishes
Magic, Music, Mayhem!
Celebrate America! A Forth of July Concert in the Sky
Happily Ever After

 

[SuddenStorm]

Besides in the end of 2016 they made budget cuts on the paint the night schedule where it only preformed on weekends.

This was likely because the huge crowds from the 60th started to subside. Disney usually runs a seasonal show schedule, where some of the shows only run on the weekends. Not sure what this has to do with Fantasmic potentially being used to pull crowds away from PTN.

 

[SuddenStorm]

What else am I supposed to tell you? That there are drones? Ya you wish.

People have been speculating that some of the new segments are very similar to the Tokyo Fantasmic iteration of the show.
Some people worry (myself included) that the new segments won't mesh well with the 92 segments.
One person said that the new show has been dubbed "Fantrashmic" among the cast.

These are all things that a performer would be able to confirm or deny, however a performer likely wouldn't be informed on Disney's crowd control strategies for the distant future (PTN isn't running right now, and likely won't for a while).

Obviously, any new information or rumors are excellent, this one just seems a bit odd.