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Ch-ch-ch-changes

Cinderella Castle

Image: Disney

The late 1960s innovations of musical accompaniment and programmable fireworks leveled up Disney’s nighttime festivities. The fireworks had always proved popular with park guests, but they storytelling capabilities were now the talk of theme park tourists across the land. With Walt Disney World scheduled to open soon, Disney correctly deduced that east coast fans would enjoy Fantasy in the Sky just as much as Anaheim visitors.

The difference between the two parks was one of scale. The much larger area surrounding Cinderella Castle allowed Disney storyboard artists to produce a greater spectacle. The Magic Kingdom version of Fantasy in the Sky almost immediately surpassed its predecessor in terms of show quality and fireworks utilized. Disney eventually followed a similar pattern a dozen years later with the introduction of Tokyo Disneyland. It too featured an improved version of the original exhibition. Even though the company originally chose to exclude it from Disneyland Paris, they soon flip-flopped on the subject, introducing it approximately a year after that park debuted. Simply stated, Fantasy in the Sky became synonymous with the end of a day at a Disney theme park, much as Wishes is today.

Disney did what they could to keep the evening showcase feeling fresh. They’d add themed displays into the mix. The Christmas overlay of Fantasy in the Sky added intrigue across the world. It proved popular even at Tokyo Disneyland, part of a country that doesn’t celebrate this particular holiday. The Japanese culture celebrates the season as one of happiness in romance. In fact, Christmas Eve is a sort of Valentine’s Day, which makes it more popular than Christmas Day. So, their version of Christmas Fantasy in the Sky played up the idea of love in the air. Disneyland and Magic Kingdom both enjoyed more traditional celebrations, but the modest seasonal additions sustained interest in Fantasy in the Sky for decades.

Fireworks

Image: Disney

By this point, a state of saturation was unavoidable. Loyal park visitors at Disneyland witnessed the fire in the sky dozens if not hundreds of times throughout their lives. Even with the occasional refresh of the stage presentation, Disney officials recognized that they faced an uphill battle in preventing stagnancy. For this reason, an age-old problem recurred. The entire purpose for the fireworks display at Disney theme parks was to keep guests staying until late in the evening. Once everyone was overly familiar with Fantasy in the Sky, it stopped serving its core purpose. Having watched it so many times before, Disney visitors altered their behavior. They no longer felt compelled to remain in the park after dark to enjoy it yet again.

Saturation wasn’t the only issue, either.  One of the offshoot issues of a precisely timed fireworks display is that the show ends at the same time for everyone in the park. Many Disney fans equate the finale of the show as the end of the day at the park. So, they rush to the exits, creating a mass of humanity all attempting to do the same thing. They seek transportation to depart from the Disney facilities. It’s a mob scene, and everyone reading this knows it all too well.

After people had watched Fantasy in the Sky a few times, they faced a simple choice. As a day at Disney ended, they could beat the crowds by skipping the fireworks display. Alternately, they could stay and enjoy the festivities for the umpteenth time. By choosing the latter, they’d add hours to their day without enjoying any additional benefits of spending time at Disney. All they’d get for their trouble was that fireworks display they’d watched before.

You can understand why Fantasy in the Sky started to dwindle in popularity. Even as the first major nightly exhibition of its kind in the world, its stature couldn’t save it from the economics of time calculations that plays such an important factor in the decision making of theme park tourists. Eventually, Disney chose to do something unprecedented. They pulled the plug on one of their oldest and dearest showcases. As the world approached the 21st century, park planners were ready to do something new at night.

Tokyo moves forward while taking many steps back

Tokyo Fireworks

Image: Disney

Tokyo Disneyland became the first Disney theme park to display a fireworks exhibition that wasn’t based in the Fantasy in the Sky mythos. The park planners there aren’t employed by Disney, which means they have a bit more latitude with regards to change. After only five years with the original show, they started to change it.

Their initial offering was Starlight Fantasy, a fifth anniversary celebration. Tokyo Disneyland embraced the concept of frequent change during this timeframe. After only two years of the program, they updated it to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fantasia, naming the performance Starlight Fantasy: Fantasia '90. Less than two years later, they modified the show again to turn it into Dancing Starlight Fantasy.  All of this causes questions about the necessity of moving away from Fantasy in the Sky so quickly. Tokyo Disneyland tried three different alternatives to the original display, none of which proved successful.

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Tokyo Disneyland, they once again changed their lights display. This one was never intended as a permanent replacement. Instead, it was a stopgap solution entitled Magic in the Sky, which is different from a later version that you may have watched if you visited the park from 2003 to 2012. After Magic in the Sky’s brief run ended, the park replaced it with Stardust Fantasy, not to be confused with the earlier Starlight Fantasy. I could go on here, but you get the point.

Tokyo Disneyland wanted to change the fireworks exhibition from the original American one, Fantasy in the Sky, to one befitting the Asian audience, a culture that relishes fireworks celebrations. What they discovered during their umpteen attempts is what Disney learned early on. It’s difficult finding the perfect fireworks display to entice crowds to stay until late in the evening, even ones already prone to love such exhibitions.

Tokyo Disneyland ultimately needed 20 years to find the perfect program to end the night. That one was also Magic in the Sky, although both its displays and its musical accompaniment were entirely new from the 1993 version. Their various attempts to duplicate the popularity of Fantasy in the Sky merely underscored how lucky Disney park planners had been with their original fireworks display.

The end of an era

Wishes

Image: Disney

Disney strategists watched with interest as Tokyo Disneyland experimented with all their fireworks alterations. What happened in Japan reinforced a longstanding fear of park planners. They had reason to fear that once Fantasy in the Sky ended, the next show might prove unpopular. It’d always be judged against the original, a beloved program that had stood the test of time over 40 years.

This thought process explains why Disney felt reticence in changing a system that worked, even if its value had diminished over time. While many guests no longer stayed until the fireworks shot into the sky, the post-show crowds exemplified that many still did. Fantasy in the Sky was a Disney classic. Any change away from it endangered what Mickey Aronson had accomplished during the 1960s when he was a single man shooting off bottle rockets from the parking lot.

Ultimately, Disney planners appreciated that change was good, and it was also necessary in this instance. Fantasy in the Sky had outlived its usefulness. It was dated. Disney officials understood that while there were risks, they could do better. Plans began to replace the vaunted nightly exhibition with something newer and more daring. The time seemed perfect since both a century and millennia were ending. It felt like the perfect moment to say Auld Lang Signe to remnants of the early days of Disneyland and Magic Kingdom.

 
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Comments

Thank you for this article.
Hopefully it reminds people that although Walt Disney created Disneyland for families to enjoy, he was first and foremost a businessman.

Therefore all these new upcharge events that Disney has or will introduce should really not come as a complete shock to people.

All they are doing now is employing another method to keep people on site longer than before albeit in a more upfront and some would say a greedy manner.

Great article! Very interesting read and most certainly love all the night time shows at Disney World!

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