Believe... In Holiday Magic
| Believe... In Holiday Magic | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disneyland Park |
| Land / area | Sleeping Beauty Castle, Main Street, U.S.A., Rivers of America and It's a small world |
| Type | Holiday fireworks spectacular |
| Opened | November 3, 2000 |
| Designer | Disney Live Entertainment
|
| Status | Seasonal |
Believe... In Holiday Magic is a holiday fireworks spectacular at Disneyland Park at the Disneyland Resort in California, presented each year during Holidays at the Disneyland Resort, generally from mid-November until the first weekend of January. A holiday version of the park's 45th-anniversary fireworks show, it weaves traditional Christmas music around an original theme sung by Kellie Coffey and ends with artificial snow falling over Main Street, U.S.A. and other areas of the park. It opened on November 3, 2000, and was described at the time as the first holiday pyrotechnic display in Disneyland's history.[1][2]
History
In February 2000 Disneyland premiered Believe... There's Magic in the Stars for the park's 45th anniversary, its first major new fireworks show in decades. The show proved so popular in its first months that Disney created a holiday edition of it for the same year's Christmas season, fusing classic Christmas songs into a roughly thirteen-minute spectacular.[1] Believe... In Holiday Magic therefore debuted in November 2000, only a few years after the It's a small world holiday overlay had shown how strongly guests responded to full seasonal transformations of the park.
The show became the anchor of the Disneyland holiday season and has returned for nearly every season since. The main exceptions were anniversary years: in 2005 the 50th-anniversary show Remember... Dreams Come True played through the holidays instead, and in 2015 the 60th-anniversary Disneyland Forever did the same, although the "White Christmas" snowfall finale was retained as a tag in those years.[3] The 2020 season was lost to the park's closure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The show also absorbed newer technology as it appeared: from 2007 Sleeping Beauty Castle gained its winter dressing of icicle lights for the season, and from 2017 the Main Street projections and Rivers of America water screens installed for Disneyland Forever were incorporated into the performance.[4]
It should not be confused with Disney's LuminAria, a separate, short-lived low-level fireworks show performed on Paradise Bay at Disney California Adventure during the 2001–02 holiday season only. The two shows were neighbours on the resort's shared Holiday Magic soundtrack album, but LuminAria belonged to the other park and never returned after its single season.[5]
Show
A female narrator opens by asking whether the listener's heart still holds the magic of the holidays, and Kellie Coffey sings the show's theme, "Can You Remember", a holiday arrangement built on "Remember the Magic". The body of the show is a sequence of instrumental Christmas favourites — carols and seasonal standards matched with fireworks, castle lighting and, in later versions, projections — moving between quiet, reflective passages and fuller pyrotechnic sections.
The finale is the part guests remember longest. As Coffey sings "White Christmas", two comets streak toward each other overhead, and artificial snow begins to fall on the crowd — along Main Street, U.S.A., in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle, around It's a small world and along the Rivers of America.[2] The snowfall, novel in Southern California in 2000, became a signature Disneyland holiday moment and has been imitated across Disney parks since. On nights when high winds force the fireworks to be cancelled, the park has at times presented the castle lighting and snowfall elements on their own, so that at least the finale still takes place.
Together with A Christmas Fantasy Parade in the daytime and the It's a small world holiday overlay, Believe... In Holiday Magic forms the core of the traditional Disneyland Christmas that the resort rebuilds every November.
See also
- Disneyland Park
- Sleeping Beauty Castle
- It's a small world
- A Christmas Fantasy Parade
- Wondrous Journeys
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Wikipedia, "Believe... In Holiday Magic" — a holiday fireworks show at the Disneyland Resort launched in 2000, opening November 3, 2000, running through much of the holiday season.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Laughing Place, Disney press release, October 31, 2000 — "Believe... In Holiday Magic" would run November 3 through January 1 as the first holiday pyrotechnic display in Disneyland history, capped by a snowfall finale along Main Street, U.S.A. and other locations.
- ↑ Disney by Mark, "'Believe… in Holiday Magic' – Full Show 2022", November 2022 — the show has run every holiday season since 2000 except 2005 and 2015, when anniversary spectaculars continued instead.
- ↑ Disney Parks Wiki, "Believe... In Holiday Magic" — grand opening November 3, 2000; Main Street projections and Rivers of America water screens were added in 2017.
- ↑ Wikipedia, "Disney's LuminAria" — a 2001–2002 fireworks show on Paradise Bay at Disney California Adventure, opening November 9, 2001 and closing January 6, 2002, lasting only one winter season.