Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, I jumped right over Thanksgiving to move into the Christmas season head-on.
This weekend, Moana 2 is going to blow past Frozen 2’s record for biggest Thanksgiving weekend of all-time at the domestic box office. Frozen 2 made $125 million over the five day Thanksgiving weekend, with Moana 2 on pace to reach $170 million or even higher. Disney has made the Thanksgiving weekend the home of its animated titles for over a decade to huge success and soaring box office numbers, especially with the prevalence of sequels to the pantheon. It’s a great launching pad of a weekend with the Christmas corridor behind it, leading to nice legs for the titles.
But we aren’t here to talk about Thanksgiving as it's now time for all things Christmas.
Back in the year of 2009, Disney began the Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom on the nice and early date of November 10, 2009. It was starting to move toward the standard of Christmas beginning almost immediately after Halloween’s conclusion, but with the changes that year, Walt Disney World decided to really shake things up and add a Christmas show to Tomorrowland. Yes, it was a bit of an odd choice but what is life without a little risk, right? And thus, A Totally Tomorrowland Christmas was born.
The show wanted to make sure that no one was confused about this being a Christmas dance party, so they started things off right with a rendition of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” led by the show’s lead singer as well as some background dancers. They looked to get some Tomorrowland action in there right away, so Buzz Lightyear and Mike Wasowski popped out on stage at one point to dance around a bit.
After the opening number, Stitch showed up on a video board above the stage to try and chat with the singer. She looked to explain who Santa Claus was and how Stitch would need to help Santa who was seemingly lost flying around.
Via Jeff Lange DVD
A Totally Tomorrowland Christmas then introduced its first “guest star” (their words, not mine) and he went by the name of Buzz Lightyear. All of the background dancers changed into some Star Command adjacent outfits to assist Buzz in his rendition of “Jingle Bells” with many lyrics changed to be more so about Buzz fighting Zurg.
It was a fun way to subvert expectations a bit before moving on to the lead singer and Stitch chatting again. This time, she urged Stitch to fly up to the North Pole to check on Santa because she was worried that he hadn’t shown up yet.
Via YouTube
Mike Wasowski was our next guest, coming out to sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” while also adding in a bit of stand up and other funny jokes. One doesn’t often get little touches like that in a theme park show, particularly a holiday exclusive, so it was important to take advantage when it came along.
Stitch popped back in again after to tell us how he was still looking for Santa but also to wonder how we could like Santa when all that he did was break into houses.
Via YouTube
But the show endured as it moved right along to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” which led to the highlight of the show, Stitch emerging in a Santa Claus outfit. It was such a fun moment to see and luckily Stitch’s diversion only needed to last for a little while as Santa gave his signature “Ho Ho Ho” over the loudspeakers at the close of the show.
A Totally Tomorrowland Christmas was such a fun show for the season and very innovative in how they involved Tomorrowland characters. I love it when they try something new and we get to see different characters
In fact, the show was so successful that Disneyland Paris created a nearly identical show called Merry Stitchmas, but because it was part of the Castle Stage in Fantasyland, they swapped out Buzz and Mike for members of the Fab Five. The show was part of Paris’ Christmas celebrations in 2017 and 2018.
A Totally Tomorrowland Christmas had an extremely long shelf-life, sticking around until New Year’s Day 2023, with no replacement either of the last couple of years. It remains to be whether we’ll see something take its place one day, but I’m certainly not holding my breath. While it lasted, it was a fun little dance party that accomplished its goal of spreading Christmas cheer.
Via Disney Wiki
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!