Fantasmic!
| Fantasmic! | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disney's Hollywood Studios |
| Land / area | Sunset Boulevard |
| Type | Nighttime spectacular show |
| Opened | October 15, 1998 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Duration | About 25 minutes |
| Status | Operating |
Fantasmic! is a nighttime spectacular show at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World. Opened on October 15, 1998, in the purpose-built Hollywood Hills Amphitheater off Sunset Boulevard, it follows Mickey Mouse through a dream in which the power of his imagination is challenged by a succession of Disney villains. The show combines live performers, water screens, fountains, lasers, pyrotechnics, fireworks, boats and a large dragon puppet, and runs about 25 minutes.
History
Fantasmic! originated at Disneyland Park in California, where it opened in 1992 on the Rivers of America. The Florida version was not a copy moved indoors to a theatre; it was restaged for a dedicated amphitheatre built behind The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, with a larger stage, a larger cast and several sequences that differ from the California original, including a Pocahontas segment in place of California's Peter Pan sequence.
The Hollywood Hills Amphitheater seats about 6,900 guests, with standing room for roughly 3,000 more. Its stage is an island surrounded by a moat holding about 1.9 million US gallons of water, dominated by a man-made mountain roughly 50 feet tall from which Mickey appears and from which the dragon emerges.
The show closed with the rest of Walt Disney World in March 2020 and remained closed well after the park reopened. It returned on November 3, 2022, with a revised middle section: a new heroes sequence brought in scenes and songs from Moana, Frozen 2, Aladdin, Mulan and Pocahontas, with updated lighting, lasers and water effects throughout. The core story — Mickey's dream, the villains' takeover and Mickey's victory — was unchanged.
The show
Fantasmic! opens with Mickey as a conductor, directing fountains and fireworks, before appearing as the Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia and conducting waves and stars projected onto three large water screens. The dream moves through a series of film sequences projected on those screens and acted on the island, including a jungle sequence with characters from The Jungle Book and The Lion King, a bubble sequence of classic animated films, and the heroes sequence added in 2022.
The tone shifts when the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs summons other villains — among them Ursula, Cruella de Vil, Scar, Jafar, Hades and Chernabog — to turn Mickey's dream into a nightmare. Jafar transforms into a cobra and Mickey briefly faces him before Maleficent rises as a dragon about 40 feet tall, which sets the water of the moat alight. Mickey, reappearing with a sword, defeats the dragon and the villains.
For the finale, a riverboat modelled on Steamboat Willie carries Mickey — at the wheel as Steamboat Willie — and a large cast of characters past the audience, followed by a final appearance of Sorcerer Mickey directing fireworks from the mountaintop.
Versions elsewhere
Besides Florida, Fantasmic! has been performed at Disneyland in California since 1992 — where it uses the Rivers of America and a sailing ship rather than a dedicated theatre — and at Tokyo DisneySea from 2011 to 2020, where a version staged entirely on the park's harbour replaced it as part of that park's anniversary celebrations.