Fantasmic Disney's Hollywood Studios




Disney's Hollywood Studios was a rushed park. It opened with relatively few attractions in order to open before Universal Studios Orlando. It didn't even have a fireworks show.

That all changed in 1998.

Disney World got a copy of Disneyland's popular nighttime show Fantasmic.

But here there were some major changes made to the show in order to bring it to a completely different park.

The show was put in a custom-built theatre, The Hollywood Hills Amphitheater, which holds almost 10,000 people as opposed to the Rivers of America where it causes major crowding issues in Disneyland. This makes it less intimate but it makes up for it in scale.

It also made a few changes. To try and be more modern the Peter Pan (now Pirates of the Caribbean) segment was replaced with a Pocahontas segment featuring Pocahontas, Governor Ratcliffe, and John Smith. More villains were also given cameos, bringing in Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Scar from Lion King and more to the evil schemes.

Some of these changes make the show better like adding lasers to the finale and incorporating more lesser used villains, but others make the show just feel inferior to its predecessor.

The Mark Twain is substituted with a much smaller Steamboat Willie where a lot of characters are crammed in a small space. The Pocahontas scene features a lot of stunts, but the stage is so far away it isn't as impressive as the pirate ship antics they replaced.

It is sill a fun version of the show and it is a great way to end a day at Disney Hollywood Studios, although it could use a refresh similar to what Disneyland got in 2007.

The show uses so many Disney characters and is a great tribute to Disney films as they are featured in the rest of the park. It also manages to stay current by adding new characters to the finale and to the bubble sequence. This is a subtle way to keep the show modern without a full refurbishment.

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