Fantasmic...not so great

SpenceMan01

SpenceMan01

Well-Known Member
I LOVE Fantasmic. I love the music. I love the visuals. Everything. It embodies the entire Disney experience, IMO. For me it is the best half-hour in WDW, hands down. I've got the theme music as the ring tone on my cell phone I love it so much. I'll never forget the first time I saw Mickey's disappear/reappear at the end of the show. It never ceases to amaze me. I also love sitting near people seeing it for the first time and seeing their reactions. I love when the cannon shot startles everyone.

Granted, I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. I'm with the previous posters who don't particularly like Illuminations:ROE. The music is good, the beginning and ending are pretty cool, but the lull in the middle kills the show for me. Give me the pre-2000 Illuminations over the current show any day.

To each his own.

:wave:
 
DznyRktekt

DznyRktekt

Well-Known Member
Fantasmic is like driving a Buick Lesabre.
Illuminations reflections of earth is like driving a BMW.

Illuminations ROE is like nothing I have seen anywhere else. The music is spectacular and the entire premise is right on the money.

To me, Fantasmic should have stayed at Disneyland, the place it was designed for. There the Rivers of America and the real riverboat make a great difference. At MGM, the boat is poorly executed and the characters are on pontoons. I don't particualrly like the ampitheater or walking backstage to leave after the show. It seems like an afterthought.
 
amandagibbins

amandagibbins

New Member
i really liked it but i hadn't heard anything about it first but i was a bit miffed as there was no captain hook plus as we hadn't heard anything about it we sat in the front row and got a bit wet:ROFLOL:
 
Cinderella1976

Cinderella1976

New Member
I've seen Fantasmic twice and enjoyed the show very much. My husband thinks it is the best of the night time shows. Fantasmic is the only show that completely held my kids' attention (ages 3, 5, & 9) the whole time. They were mesmerized. I do agree that the water projection sequences do go on for a little too long. Last year we were in the second row (on a night in December) and we thought we had one of the best seats in the house but the wind was blowing and we kept getting sprayed with the water and we were all freezing. I do think that everyone should at least see the show once and make your own judgement, but it is a must do on our trips.
 
Fun2BFree

Fun2BFree

Active Member
Well, I like Fantasmic. It has a much better staging area than DL's, but it is a little too focused on 90s animated films. That's insignificant however. Great show.
 
slowbee

slowbee

New Member
man I'm happy my wife didn't see this thread. It's her favorite show.

I actually love the show. It's alot of fun, I enjoy the music and getting to watch a show where Mickey does some magic is the cat's meow.

We got back Sunday night from WDW and saw it two different nights. Even bought the CD for the music.

But everyone is entitled to their opinion. My brother in law and their family were down there with us and they thought it was way better than Illuminations.
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Shrike said:
The Disneyland version of Fantasmic is orders of magnitude better, which might account for at least some of the hype.
Click to expand...

I agree. Through no fault of his own, mitchk probably lumped the hype from the Disneyland version of Fantasmic! in with the lesser WDW version and his expectations were rather high for this show.

I had seen the Disneyland version repeatedly over a period of several years before I saw the WDW version. I vividly remember watching the WDW version for the first time and feeling extremely underwhelmed with the whole thing. The lack of a Columbia/Peter Pan sequence, and that corny Mark Twain riverboat that looks like it was made after two trips to Home Depot sealed the deal for me on the WDW version. My mom summed it up best at the end of our first viewing of WDW Fantasmic! by saying "Well, that wasn't that great, was it." :lol:

While the aquacade stadium seating at WDW is nice, the rest of the show and its production values go downhill from there. The fact that at Disneyland the Tom Sawyer Island stage and the big boats used in the show are attractions that you likely had been riding on a few hours earlier in the day pump up the magic and the WOW! factor quite a bit. I think that's something they couldn't plan for in WDW, but in hindsight it really makes a difference for the Disneyland version.
 
DznyRktekt

DznyRktekt

Well-Known Member
TP2000 said:
I agree. Through no fault of his own, mitchk probably lumped the hype from the Disneyland version of Fantasmic! in with the lesser WDW version and his expectations were rather high for this show.

I had seen the Disneyland version repeatedly over a period of several years before I saw the WDW version. I vividly remember watching the WDW version for the first time and feeling extremely underwhelmed with the whole thing. The lack of a Columbia/Peter Pan sequence, and that corny Mark Twain riverboat that looks like it was made after two trips to Home Depot sealed the deal for me on the WDW version. My mom summed it up best at the end of our first viewing of WDW Fantasmic! by saying "Well, that wasn't that great, was it." :lol:

While the aquacade stadium seating at WDW is nice, the rest of the show and its production values go downhill from there. The fact that at Disneyland the Tom Sawyer Island stage and the big boats used in the show are attractions that you likely had been riding on a few hours earlier in the day pump up the magic and the WOW! factor quite a bit. I think that's something they couldn't plan for in WDW, but in hindsight it really makes a difference for the Disneyland version.
Click to expand...

Well said. If you type "fantasmic boat" in google image search you can see the DL version in the first two pics and the MGM version in the next two. Quite a difference.
 
year45

year45

New Member
Well Fantasmic has its pros and cons. I does have a magical feel to it and is one of my personal favorites but really the WDW fails in comparison to the DL version hands down. While WDW has more room and actual seats. DLs has a more magical presense because it takes place not on an actual stage but on Tom Sawyers Island, the Mark Twain Riverboat and The Columbia Sailing Ship places guests can go to and to have them all of the sudden become part of huge spectacular where good fights evil on such a grand scale is amazing to see. The Shows differ in more ways then most people think but it all comes down to preference. I will always enjoy both shows but somehow WDW's allways seems to lack something.
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
CAPTAIN HOOK said:
Because it was "invented" during the World Cup finals in Mexico
Click to expand...

If you are talking about the "wave" crowd effect at stadiums, I think you are mistaken.

The Wave was first conceived and performed at the University of Washington in Seattle at a Huskies Football game. I believe it was during the 1981-82 Football season, and it was the brainchild of a spunky Yell Leader whose name escapes me right now. I was living in Seattle during that time and used to go to Husky games a lot, and I remember the claim to fame that the Huskies invented The Wave. Let me google up the details...

http://gohuskies.cstv.com/trads/020498aad.html

Yup. Invented in Seattle at Husky Stadium in the Fall of 1981. The UofW site nails it down to the third quarter of the game against Stanford played on October 31st, 1981. It caught on quickly when the Husky games were televised the rest of that season, and was being used in American football stadiums all over the country regularly by 1983. Checking in with Wikipedia, it was first used in an international event at a soccer game in Mexico in 1986.

Mexico has offered up many wonderful things to the world. But The Wave is not one of them. They just happened to use the five year old American invention at a televised event in 1986 that was being beamed to Europe. :wave:
 
C

cybertheo

New Member
The first time I saw “Fantasmic”, I felt the same way. I think I was expecting it to make more sense because it is presented as a show.
The plot is basically Mickey vs. Bad Guys – Several Explosions and cool effects later Mickey Wins and then everyone parades around on a boat. YAY. The next time I saw it because I read more about it getting the idea that Mickey is supposed to be asleep dreaming or something and the whole event is taking place in Mickey’s head and his bad imagination goes wild etc. Well ya’ll have seen it.
Now, I really enjoy it for whatever it is and because we go in the non peak season getting a seat never so bad.
But for a first time viewer it might help if they knew the above (Mickey VS. Bad Guys – Mickey Wins because he’s Mickey)
Just enjoy the spectacle that it is.

It's funny how b/c I saw WDW Fantasmic first - I think DisneyLand's Fantasmic is Missing something.
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
DznyRktekt said:
Well said. If you type "fantasmic boat" in google image search you can see the DL version in the first two pics and the MGM version in the next two. Quite a difference.
Click to expand...

Wow, that Google trick really lays out the differences between Disneyland and WDW. Thanks. :)

It's the "riverboat" finale' that really speaks volumes about the WDW version I think. I get that maybe they were trying to go with a simplistic, stylized version of the Mark Twain in WDW, but it just doesn't work. Or, at least it doesn't work if you have ever seen the Disneyland finale' and are using that as a point of reference.
 
Jekyll_Baker

Jekyll_Baker

Active Member
Fantasmic at WDW is a nice show (I've never seen the DL version), but it's not one I have to see. Once was really enough, though the second and third times I had seen it were with different people each time. The water screens are cool the first couple times they're used, but to me, the biggest disappointments of the show are the giant snake with hi-beam eyes and the Maleficent dragon (which to me, looks NOTHING like the dragon that's on all the posters and other artwork relating to Fantasmic)
 

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