How Imagineers Teach the Colors to Dance
29|04|10 20:01 Filed in: Disneyland
How Imagineers Teach the Colors to Dance
| There are big things underway at Disney's California Adventure Park, and the first of many exciting changes is almost ready to be unveiled. The lagoon near Paradise Pier is in the final stages of a makeover that sets the stage for the most spectacular water show in Disney history — and quite possibly anywhere! This summer, night will take on a whole new color (or a rainbow of them). Picture more than 1,200 powerful fountains dancing in elaborate choreographed patterns, fire effects, fog, lasers, and stunning color displays, all set to stirring music — and topped with animation "painted" on to screens of moving water! It's "World of Color," and it will be lighting up the nights at California Adventure Park starting late this year. Walt Disney Imagineering Creative Entertainment's director of show production, Sayre Wiseman, took a break from the feverish final preparations to tell us all about "World of Color." "It really is a 25-minute journey through incredible Disney storytelling. It goes from Disney's pioneering TV show 'Wonderful World of Color' to 'The Princess and the Frog,'" she explains. One unusual feature of the show is the use of animated images projected on "screens" of water — a technique used elsewhere, but never on this scale ("World of Color" boasts the world's largest projected water screen — a wall of water 380 feet wide by 50 feet high). New animation has been created especially for the show, with sequences starring everyone from "Alice in Wonderland" to Heimlich the Caterpillar from Disney·Pixar's "A Bug's Life." However, the show is far more than "a movie on water." Sayre says, "John Lasseter really encouraged us not just have the Guests watch a movie, but to use all these tools to tell a story in a new way. The music is so powerful, and we want to encourage the audience to use their imagination!" She points especially to the score composed by Mark Hammond and performed by a London orchestra as a lavish invitation to set Guests' imaginations free. It's never easy to build a new world, and this one has been in production for the last five years. Sayre says ruefully, "The lagoon was never designed to have a show in it, so everything had to be installed. We had to drain the lagoon completely!" Imagineers added a special superstructure nearly an acre in size to the lagoon bottom, complete with lighting fixtures, fountain jets, and controls. The entire contraption can be raised for performances or sink beneath the water surface — and is so heavy that the lagoon bottom needed special reinforcements. The payoff for all that work? Fountains that can leap as much as 200 feet in the air (by comparison Mickey's Fun Wheel, the nearby giant Ferris wheel that's a California Adventure icon, is only 150 feet high), plus visual and audio effects that sweep across the lagoon, soar into the sky, and rush toward the audience — truly a show that's worth waiting for nightfall to experience. So, Guests who linger after sunset will find that California summer nights have never been more dreamy, more inspiring ... or more colorful. |
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