Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, I took a look back at the most recent Magic Kingdom fireworks show to close at the park.
This past Sunday, Walt Disney World and the Magic Kingdom celebrated their 52nd anniversary, with a little pageantry, but overall nothing super exciting as the resort was still recovering from the massiveness that was its 50th anniversary celebration. The nineteen month celebration featured new attractions, shows, and so much more. Each one of the parks got at least something special with special lighting on each of the park’s icons as well as special shows at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom that brought guests in droves, especially on the anniversary date of October 1, 2021 (myself included).
With that in mind, let’s jump to Magic Kingdom today where today’s attraction opened as the latest and greatest (?) fireworks show in the park’s history.
To celebrate the park’s biggest anniversary to date, Disney aimed to pull out all the stops with a fireworks spectacular full of lasers, searchlights and projection mapping, including the first projection mapping on Main Street USA at Magic Kingdom. They brought in Angela Bassett to narrate the show and crafted a new song called “You Are the Magic” that basically screams Disney fireworks show song. With all of those facets going into making the show a success, what could possibly go wrong?
Disney Enchantment opened on October 1, 2021 as part of the official start of the 50th anniversary celebration, with the show beginning with a montage of Walt and Roy Disney discussing the origins of the park. Some of the attractions popped up on the castle during this point with some musical riffs to help tie the show into the world of theme parks that it was celebrating. To cap off the opening, Mickey addressed the crowd and invited them to join in the celebration, a touching and sweet way to tie into the new song.
From there, the show basically became a standard Disney fireworks montage show with the characters from Moana and Frozen taking center stage as one might expect. The show jumped from song to song with a three minute musical medley instrumental even thrown in the middle of the show. There was a fun little villain segment featuring Chernabog and other villains, but overall nothing tied the scenes together, with the narration barely even registering except at the beginning and the end. The show felt very similar to its predecessor, Happily Ever After, only not as good. For the 50th anniversary, it was a major drop of the ball that could have cost Disney the game.
In fact, the opening of the show that set up the idea of celebrating the parks was only added in April of 2022 after nearly everyone who saw Disney Enchantment felt nearly the same as I did. Magic Kingdom had had two nearly universally loved fireworks shows in Wishes and Happily Ever After, so a new show for the 50th anniversary that didn’t measure up to either of them could only be described as a disappointment. To make matters worse, Disneyland’s 50th anniversary fireworks show, Remember … Dreams Come True, set the standard with each part of the show centering around a land at the park and truly celebrating the beauty that is Disneyland.
I was there for DIsney Enchantment’s opening night and waited three hours to see the show, so it's possible some of my resentment comes from waiting so long for something that just celebrated Disney animation instead of the amazing parks that we were all there for. It’s honestly just a disappointment that we could have had so much more and all we got was a pedestrian show that didn’t do anything special.
All that aside, Disney Enchantment did manage to stick around until the end of the 50th anniversary on April 2, 2023 and wasn’t even the first show to close from the 50th. (Hello, KiteTails.) In its place, Happily Ever After returned and we Disney parks fans can now see the shows happily for ever after.
Via Deviant Art
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!