VIDEO & REVIEW: “World of Color – Celebrate!” Debuts at Disney California Adventure
If you thought World of Color was impressive in 2010, the technical wizards at WDI will blow you away again with the new “World of Color – Celebrate!”. However, they seemingly got caught up in the new technology and forgot what kind of show they were making.
Let’s start with the good: new lightning, laser, fountain, and smoke effects make the show brand new again and set the stage for future shows that can do things that the 2010 infrastructure never could. The bad: the show is horribly disjointed and breaks away from any sense of the theme advertised at several points.
The show is meant to celebrate Walt Disney and is hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and Mickey Mouse. The theme is perfectly executed in the early segments featuring Mickey Mouse and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but collapses when a montage of Disney Animation starts to nondescript music and no actual dialogue from the films. The touching montages of the former show aren’t replicated here, although there are some sure-to-be-emotional moments where we see Walt talking about his creations or a lovely look at Disneyland through the years. But overall, the show is stopped dead in its tracks for a random Frozen musical number or a clip show of Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer moments. It just doesn’t make sense and it isn’t intended to just be a trip through movie moments like the old show. The theme of the show essentially changes several time, and by the end it is hard to tell if we are celebrating the achievements of Walt Disney or Bob Iger and John Lasseter.
In the end it feels like they got ten minutes into the show and realized they only half a show to cover another 70 years of Disney legacy. It also seems there may have been some demands from management to include larger segments with contemporary characters and upcoming films.
Regardless, the future looks bright for the Paradise Pier lagoon with all of the new tricks the show has up its sleeves, but for now, we will have to live with the slightly shorter and more disjointed “World of Color – Celebrate!”.
See video of the show from the Dis: