It’s no secret that Symphony in the Stars was one of my favorite fireworks shows of all time, so when we broke the news that Disney was going to kicking the show up a notch with new lighting, projection mapping, and fire, to say I was excited would be an understatement.
Last night, Star Wars – A Galactic Celebration debuted at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. If you haven’t seen it yet, we do have video:
There are some fantastic “WOW” moments in the show, from a smoke cloud that is used as a projection surface, to the fact that all of the trees in the Center Stage area were rigged with lights (which is actually why I chose the spot we were in to film this). There is some fantastic newer technology at play in this show and the projections, lighting, and effects around guests are stupendous.
My major issue with the show is the amount of fireworks and the location of them. The new launch site behind the park is far, far away and very off center. As you can see in our video, we are standing at an extreme angle, but the fireworks appear straight away from us despite that. Also, there is a lot less pyro than the previous show. Some are saying it is budget cut related, but I tend to think it’s just a different style show and the fireworks not being so close gives the show less of an impact. The thing that made the Studios fireworks shows different was how close you felt to the action and the large barrages of fireworks they would use to make up for the fact that they couldn’t do as big of a show as Magic Kingdom. Apparently, if we want Star Wars and Toy Story Land, we’re going to have to live with this new launch site for fireworks. Luckily, this show does its very best to counter that with a lot of really neat effects (barring the flamethrowers which missed the debut show).
Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular is really good, it just lacks the bang of the previous show, but you may just be distracted enough by all of the new, fun technology they installed to notice. It is definitely worth seeing on your next visit to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
