News Flights of Wonder closing and replaced by 'UP! A Great Bird Adventure'

[Kman101]

I loved Flights of Wonder and have seen it between 30 and 40 times. Here is what I did and didn't like about UP! A Great Bird Adventure:

What I liked:

• Theming on the outside and inside looks great! Ever since they upgraded the roof of the theater they left the front unfinished, so it wasn't hard to improve on that, but I think it looks beautiful and fits perfectly in the rest of Asia.
• The posters of Russell and Dug on the outside are nice. I like the painted Asian movie poster style they went with. I think these will draw more people in that may otherwise walk by.
• There are several new perches at the back of the theater that birds fly to. Macaws used to make an appearance in the show and just fly over, now they fly around the theater and there are many more.
• I like the beginning with the birds changing the channel on the radio. That was cute.
• Some of the birds from the old show are still there, like Frasier and Miles. The old show used to have a bit of variety between shows, which made it fun and surprising each time. I assume that they will do the same with this show, so we may see some other familiar birds make appearances. A lot of the dialogue is now pre-recorded, so it will be harder to mix things up, but some of the things that Russell and Dug say is intentionally left vague. Russell refers to a "beautiful bird" or "a really cool bird" instead of calling it a "toucan", so they can still switch those birds out.
• The audience interaction is good. The old show had a kid throw up a grape, the crow getting the dollar bill, and two adults with cameras come on stage. Now they had people at the end of each row get up to make a 'forest' and had Miles fly through. That was neat. And two people came on stage and had a toucan hop over their arms. No interaction with any children, which I thought was surprising as the show is more targeted at kids now. It would be nice if they mix things up. Miles has a lot of experience catching grapes, so they could still have him do that.
• The old bird handlers are still there. In the old show they would always have one bird expert do the entire show, but now others came out to do small bits. I think that was nice.

What I didn't like:

• There is no longer a small stage in front of the entrance where a bird handler would typically stand with an owl or other bird to answer questions from people waiting to get inside. The small stage is gone and there are now lots of ropes for the standby and Fastpass queue.
• I don't think it makes much sense to add characters like Russell and Dug to a live bird show and I would have preferred if they hadn't. I cannot imagine that the bird experts working on the show like this in any way. Birds are unpredictable and so much can go wrong with all this pre-recorded audio. But ... I understand that this may draw more people and especially children into the show, which is good. Having said that, Russell and Dug are in it waaaay too much. They keep coming back after each segment and there is no purpose to it. Nothing the two characters say moves the show forward. I hope they cut some of that out and spend more time with the birds. In the beginning Russell leaves to get his camera and I would have liked it so much better if he had stayed away the rest of the show to come back in the end with his camera to find out that he missed everything. That would have been a typical Russell thing to do.
• With every word Russell said he moved his head up and down vigorously and his hat would flop along. This was really distracting and annoying.
• The old show had a much better message. Yes, it was a bit silly that Guano Joe was afraid of birds, but throughout the show he learned (along with the audience) how amazing birds are, that birds have a tough life and in the end he feeds Frasier and finds 'Hope' ... Namaste! Guana Joe progressed through the show as someone who would hide from birds behind a tree to getting an appreciation for the animals. Even if you don't like Guano Joe, you have to admit that is a much better story than Russell saying some random stuff and Dug running after chickens. There is just no story to the new show, except for Russell going on a "Bird Adventure". I thought the old show was much more clever in that way, with the audience being the tour group and Joe losing his flag to the crow. There is nothing like that now.
• I find that the old show was much more about conservation than the new show. In the old show the bird expert would give many more facts about birds and bird conservation than we get in the new show. In fact, as they took out many of the scientific bird facts, the new Indian host keeps bringing up things about folklore and ancient mythology in India and South America. I really didn't like this. Here's a quote from the new show: Bird expert: "Did you guys know that toucans are magical birds?" Indian host: "That's right, the indigenous people of South America say that the toucan can send messages between the living and spirits. They're even immortalized in the night sky in the constellation Tucana" ... are you kidding me?! As Dug was running around the stage chasing chickens the guy even made some food-related chicken jokes, which I thought were really inappropriate.

Ugh, I could go on but this is getting too long. I don't like the new show very much. I agree that after 20 years of Guano Joe it was time to change the show, but this is much worse.

Very well said.

It didn't have to be worse, IMO. It's too bad IP inclusion seems to be dumbing a show down to attract children. Russell makes a lot of sense filling the Joe role, actually, with the whole Explorer's thing, but it just doesn't come together because they seemed to just want to add characters without trying to go all in on a new show (it's very easy to come up with a cohesive show that captures the spirit of the old while adding the new characters, but agreed that it's hard for foamheads to fill a reactionary character like Joe). It's a shame they didn't do their best here because I was very open to the switch.

Did someone tell them this was a good show or something? Why not try a little harder? I'm disappointed in them because AK has been knocking it out of the park. I had higher expectations here. It's a shame.

 

[GlacierGlacier]

The only consolation is that while the show may be bad on the inside, the theater is so nice that if you never enter it the overall quality of Asia isn't diminished in any way.

 

[Horizons1]

Synergy! Gotta push that IP!

 

[Kevin_W]

Just you wait, Tricera- Top Spin is next... (not really, but the fact that AlSwSa is getting it is blatantly absurd).

Dang, I though't I'd been on Disney message boards long enough to know all the acronyms. But AlSwSa took me longer than it should have! Beats the shorter acronym, though.

 

[wdwmagic]

Here is a look at the show from yesterday



and some more photos of the exterior https://www.wdwmagic.com/attraction...-bird-adventure-at-disneys-animal-kingdom.htm

 

[TiggersPooh]

Saw it yesterday. Never again.

 

[Brian Swan]

Basing my opinion solely on the posted video.... I didn't think it was possible to create dialog more insipid than what was in Flights of Wonder, but I guess I was selling Disney short... this is embarrassing. Not only did they "dumb down" the already thin educational elements of the old show, they actually dumbed down the IP characters that they so inelegantly inserted into it. And they reduced the number of birds that were in it (and the ones in it clearly didn't learn their cues yet). The bald eagle is my hero; his "comment" upon entering the stage pretty much sums it all up.

 

[cjkeating]

Saw it yesterday. Never again.

I have only watched clips but it looks tragic.

 

[wdwmagic]

I feel bad for the birds. They're performing in a show with an influx of IP that wasn't needed.

Who wrote this script? It needs some work. Badly.

Marsha Jackson-Randolph was the show director, but I don't know who else was involved.

 

[neoshinok]

Avoided the early videos. Saw it today in person and was so incredibly disappointed. I was the one in my family that made us see Flights of Wonder every time we're at AK. I don't think I'll ever want to watch this show again. I hope they at least close temporarily to rework it, remove about half of Russell, Dugg and the Indian woman. And FFS maybe actually feature the BIRDS in the show? I hoped they would do the show justice with the character integration but this is such a complete flop it's truly sad.

 

[tissandtully]

Avoided the early videos. Saw it today in person and was so incredibly disappointed. I was the one in my family that made us see Flights of Wonder every time we're at AK. I don't think I'll ever want to watch this show again. I hope they at least close temporarily to rework it, remove about half of Russell, Dugg and the Indian woman. And FFS maybe actually feature the BIRDS in the show? I hoped they would do the show justice with the character integration but this is such a complete flop it's truly sad.

Ah man, I haven't watched the videos (and don't plan to till I can get time to go see it), but FoW was my favorite show on property. I know it was old, but this doesn't sound like a good switch at all.

 

[Calm Down Rover]

The overwhelming feeling I'm getting from that video is secondhand embarrassment for the actors, to be honest. There are far too many chattering people onstage and too few birds.

But hey, at least they gave us the fascinating, incredible nature fact that you shouldn't feed birds chocolate.

 

[Castle Cake Apologist]

I really feel like the new show tries way too hard and has no real direction. The birds seem to have so much less stage time, and they're barely cooperating when they are there.

Russell and Dug really add absolutely nothing to the show and the canned dialogue just makes it awkward when somebody forgets a line or a bird misses its cue.

This mess really needs to be fixed.

 

[larryz]

The overwhelming feeling I'm getting from that video is secondhand embarrassment for the actors, to be honest. There are far too many chattering people onstage and too few birds.

But hey, at least they gave us the fascinating, incredible nature fact that you shouldn't feed birds chocolate.

And we learn that Adam can enter on cue.

 

[matt2394]

Wow. I think that might top Barbie's World for sheer unadulterated awfulness. I mean...its that bad.

 

[WondersOfLife]

Marsha Jackson-Randolph was the show director, but I don't know who else was involved.

What else has she done?

 

[steve2wdw]

Saw the show on Sunday, the day it officially opened. It was a bit rough in places (live performers interacting with a recording), but overall, it was acceptable. After the cast gets comfortable with the cadence, that will be fine. Personally, I'd edit a bit of Doug's routine as there was some repetition. The kids in the audience reacted well to the characters, so it was probably a wise move for Disney. I guess it's all a matter of taste....just a new storyline around the same animal behaviors. Not trying to date myself, but like when Clyde and Seymour's story (at Sea World) was changed from their Hotel to Pirate Island (and now something else from what I gather).

 

[WondersOfLife]

Saw the show on Sunday, the day it officially opened. It was a bit rough in places (live performers interacting with a recording), but overall, it was acceptable. After the cast gets comfortable with the cadence, that will be fine. Personally, I'd edit a bit of Doug's routine as there was some repetition. The kids in the audience reacted well to the characters, so it was probably a wise move for Disney. I guess it's all a matter of taste....just a new storyline around the same animal behaviors. Not trying to date myself, but like when Clyde and Seymour's story (at Sea World) was changed from their Hotel to Pirate Island (and now something else from what I gather).

The cast should've been comfortable with everything BEFORE the attraction opened. You don't open up a live show unprepared. It's immediately bound to be bad. It's like they skipped over tech week before the first performance.

 

[Kman101]

And the show should be more than "acceptable".

 

[steve2wdw]

The cast should've been comfortable with everything BEFORE the attraction opened. You don't open up a live show unprepared. It's immediately bound to be bad. It's like they skipped over tech week before the first performance.

Yes....they should've been comfortable with it, but they weren't, so it was a bit rough, but I wouldn't call the cast unprepared. Far from it. You have to realize that no matter how prepared you are in "live" theatre, the minute you add in a real audience, it changes. There were times where the audience laughed longer than probably expected, and recorded lines couldn't be heard.