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Wondrous

In 1923, Walt Disney stepped off the train in Los Angeles, launching the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio on Hyperion Ave. And here in 2023, Disney officially launched its celebration of the moment – Disney100. A cross-company campaign, the "100 Years of Wonder" banner flies high over Disney's studios, subsidiaries, and theme parks this year. As you'd expect from Disney's strategy of annual promotional campaigns, Disney100 is marked by an incredibly robust merchandising roll-out that's seen platinum iridescence and royal purple garb spread across the company's assets.

Monthly releases correspond to the company's "Decades" beginning with the 1920s. Likewise, a new "Eras" collection features call-backs to the studio's early days, with must-have merch for Disney history fans. And Disneyland (centerpiece of the celebration) is decked out in limited-time decorations with must-try snacks, souvenirs, and clothing selling out gift shops. (In other words, yes, Disney has successfully masked the fact that it's cutting 7,000 jobs despite record profits, and that it has zero domestic theme park projects on the horizon post-2024.) 

Image: Disney

Disney100 has seen a new nighttime show launch at both of Disneyland's parks. At Disney California Adventure, World of Color has again been co-opted, this time as WORLD OF COLOR – ONE. Predictably packed with references to the last decade of Disney and Pixar animation, the show is... fine. Swapping the classic "World of Color" anthem for a custom song called "Start a Wave," One is built on the theme that one person – like you! – can "be the one" whose actions ripple outward, changing our world. Conveniently, that basically serves as a framing device for... well... every Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars heroes out there, who all show up in a smorgasbord clip show that feels more cross-promotional than emotional. 

World of Color – One isn't a bad show, and there's no doubt that pieces of it should be folded back into the original World of Color (which, by nature of debuting in 2010, excludes every film from The Princess and the Frog onward.) But it's not a show that gives us hope for Disney Parks nighttime spectaculars to come. If anything, it feels a whole lot like the last decade of after dark entertainment, which – frankly – isn't exactly a great thing...

After Dark Decline

Image: Disney

Looking back from 2023, it's easy to see that for the last decade, Disney seems to have had as many nighttime spectacular misses as they've had hits...

One isn't the first show to overtake World of Color's inherently-adaptable fountain array. And thankfully, it's not the worst, either. 2013's WORLD OF COLOR: WINTER DREAMS was a holiday overlay that was almost legendarily bad... and apparently, a hint of what was to come. After all, in 2015, as part of Disneyland's 60th Anniversary "Diamond Celebration," the original show became WORLD OF COLOR: CELEBRATE! THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WALT DISNEY. Awkwardly re-using World of Color's inherently-abstract, artistic format for an almost unwatchably bad "documentary" style program starring Neil Patrick Harris, the cringey show played for only a year... but it felt like a very long year.

Image: Disney

On paper, it made sense to use the basic premise of World of Color at Disney's Animal Kingdom, swapping "animation" for "nature" and integrating live actors as storytellers, puppeteers, and acrobats. But apparently, Disney Parks leadership saw a draft of the show shortly before its planned debut in April 2016 and were incredibly disappointed, mandating that its launch be delayed and the show re-thought. It was nearly a full year – February 2017 – before RIVERS OF LIGHT made its debut as a late addition to the after-dark programming package that had rolled out around the opening of Pandora: The World of Avatar.

Rivers of Light never quite found its footing, and certainly failed to capture the audience that its 5,000-seat custom-built amphitheater was constructed for... So you can't blame the Entertainment team for rewriting the show just two years into its run as RIVERS OF LIGHT: WE ARE ONE, shoe-horning in Disney characters and songs. Unfortunately, that show, too, met lukewarm reception. When the Disney Parks closed at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, it gave executives the excuse they needed to announce that Rivers of Light was permanently retired, representing a massive financial write-off. 

Image: Disney

Most recently, Walt Disney World's 50th Anniversary – already lackluster by most fans' standards – came pre-packaged with two new shows. At Magic Kingdom DISNEY ENCHANTMENT faced an uphill battle by following the beloved fan-favorite Happily Ever After, and spectacularly failed to recapture the magic. (It took a full year of guest complaints before Disney awkwardly inserted a "prologue" to the show acknowledging Disney World, its anniversary, and Walt Disney himself.) At EPCOT, HARMONIOUS broke with tradition by turning World Showcase Lagoon into a singalong celebration of Disney Animation that kinda-sorta represent other countries (if you pretend Aladdin somehow represents the Middle East and The Lion King counts as celebrating all of Africa). 

Those shows also suffered from being a little too harmonious... As we explored in our review of both, they fell into the all-too-common 2010s and 2020s Disney Parks issue of sharing many of the same modern and contemporary movie selections, even repeating songs and key scenes. It can feel as if the two teams working on the shows forgot to compare notes at all, creating two shows that are definitely different, but feel a little too "samesies" for our taste. We clearly aren't alone given that both shows will end this spring, representing multi-million-dollar write-offs for what were surely meant to be decade-long investments.

Image: Disney

And then comes WORLD OF COLOR – ONEserving as a fairly generic clip show using many of those same songs and movies, now mixing in moments of Star Wars and Avengers and sort of blatantly demonstrating the era of Disney-Parks-as-brand-loyalty-centers rather than as creative, meaningful places worth celebrating in their own right... 

Altogether, you can see why Disney Parks fans had to wonder – had Disney lost its touch? Was Disney even capable of crafting a clever, unique, and timeless nighttime spectacular anymore? Or were fans doomed to endure years of "copy-paste" after-dark shows drawing the same sing-along moments from the same roster of 1990s Renaissance and 2010s Rebirth era films? When would Disney Parks find its next long-lasting, emotional, enduring show that could stand among Fantasmic, World of Color, Remember... Dreams Come True, Happily Ever After, or Illuminations? We may have our answer...

 
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