And the fact that Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey is featured throughout the show instead of the finale reveal, that's always bugged me.The new music works for me. Love the new effects. Magic Carpet. Tangled.
Downgrades for me were:
- Friend like Me Segment. It offers nothing special, at least the Pinocchio puppets were large scaled, adding the "how did they do that?" factor.
- Witch Transformation cut
- Mickey on top of the Mill before the finale
- Dragon rising from stage, which removes the special reveal moment. It looks cool, granted. But I think there's more of a wow when the darkness reveals glowing eyes, and then a full scale dragon is suddenly on the stage.
I think in general my issue with modern Disney shows is they reveal all their cards in the first moments of the show. The best thing about the OG version is that it held stuff back. New effects, new moments were constantly revealed in each scene.
It wasn't until the end that Mickey appeared up top. The lasers only came out at the end, etc.
You need to keep surprises throughout.
The "play all your cards immediately" thing is something Steve Davison has been guilty of for a long time, since around World of Color. There are no surprise elements/moments anymore, it's all laid out on the table in the first five seconds.