One of the Walt Disney World's night-time spectaculars is finally making its post-lockdown return to the parks.
Disney World confirmed today that Fantasmic! will reopen officially on November 3 at Disney's Hollywood Studios. The Disneyland original has won our Theme Park Insider Award for Best Show three times, and the Disney World version remained one of the resort's most popular show for years before closing during the pandemic.
The nearly 30-minute show will play nightly in the 6,900-seat Hollywood Hills Amphitheater off Sunset Boulevard in Disney's Hollywood Studios. With standing room for another 3,000 people, the show can play to nearly 10,000 visitors each night.
When it returns, Disney World's Fantasmic! will include a new sequence that will reference moments from “Aladdin,” “Moana,” “Mulan,” “Pocahontas,” and “Frozen 2.”
"Bringing back Fantasmic! here at Disney’s Hollywood Studios means so much to our guests," Creative Producer for Disney Live Entertainment Katrina Mena Rick said. "It was a task to not only preserve the legacy of the show but also introduce new characters for the next generation."
Beginning October 26, dining packages for select restaurants at Disney's Hollywood Studios that include Fantasmic! seating will be available for reservations beginning November 30.
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Yes, and in the case of Fantasmic!, it pushes nearly half of the guests in the park into the amphitheater, allowing for much shorter attraction lines (aside from ToT and RnRC because of their proximity) before, during, and after the performance(s). Now that RotR operates a standby line, I would anticipate the real wait times (not the inflated times used in MDE at the end of the day to shift guests away from the popular attraction) to significantly drop even more than they do now during the last 2 hours of the day.
FWIW, weren't Aladdin and Pocahontas already featured in Fantasmic!?
I'm not sure we will see a large drop-off in wait times at HS in the evenings for the rest of the year. I suspect the reopening of Fantasmic will encourage parkhoppers to plan their evenings for HS, and that Disney, knowing they have now have extra capacity for nearly 10,000 more guests in the amphitheater, will increase that park's capacity in the evening.
I don't recall Pocahontas being in the show, but I'm pretty sure Governor Ratcliffe was (I could be wrong about this).
Only 13 months after the 50th Anniversary Celebration kicked off. Not bad !
The post bubble sequence was a huge Pocahontas live action production on the river and the mountain, with explosions, canoes, and folks swinging from ropes. It’s the replacement for the pirate ship sequence of the Disneyland original, based on the new IP at the time. Curious how the singularly focused scene will be replaced by more than one story. And what does this mean for number of performers and overall length of the show. Interesting that this feels like the first big change in the show since its premiere, while Disneyland version has had many updates over the years (new dragon, Pirates vs Pan, etc)
Also, bummed as will miss this by a day. Maybe need to change plans?
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Outstanding news! It keeps people in the park.