Photos: “Mickey and a Magic Map” uncover during Disneyland

The new uncover casts a mischievous Mickey Mouse, in his classical purpose of sorcerer’s neophyte from “Fantasia,” in a 22-minute low-pitched featuring songs from half a dozen Disney charcterised films.

During a premiere of a new uncover we saw Thursday evening, about dual dozen dancers and singers achieved with a subsidy soundtrack in a prolongation coming Broadway peculiarity in a refurbished Fantasyland Theatre.

A onetime home to productions starring Snow White, Pocahontas and even Dick Tracy, a museum had been used in new years as a meet-and-greet plcae for a Disney princesses, withdrawal a theatre and a 1,800 seats radically unused.

I came mostly to see how Disney blended technological advances like an huge LED shade backdrop and a “talking” King Louis impression with live actors and normal melodramatic props and sets.

The “Magical Map” in a pretension of a uncover was achieved with 6 companion LED screens divided plumb into thirds by a span of mostly invisible catwalk stages for a performers.

At initial we found a 240-square-foot unsentimental map to be distractingly differing with a brew of hand-drawn cartography, computer-rendered characters and even a occasional live-action Mickey all projected on a hulk LED screen. Overwhelmed by a constantly in suit digital backdrop, we was incompetent to heed a performers in a steampunk-inspired costumes from a painterly map with all onstage sketch from a same earthtone palette.

Midway by a show, a horde and star Mickey left from a theatre and became a digital impression on a shade — causing me to remove hold with a categorical impression and feel like we was examination a film rather than a live performance. It wasn’t until nearby a finale, when a digital Mickey remade before a eyes behind into a costumed impression (with a assistance of a trap door), that we was means to strike a change visually between a live and prerecorded performances.

Similar camouflaged LCD screens were used to good outcome on a Disney Dream journey boat in a form of unsentimental portholes, fascinated design and digital dance floors. Unfortunately, a enchanting map in a Disneyland uncover left me wondering “Why are they doing this?” rather than “How are they doing this?”

Disney has been regulating a articulated “talking” characters in smaller shows via a parks — many recently in “Minnie’s Fly Girls” and “Disney Dance Crew.”

For me, a “talking” King Louie from a “Jungle Book” was a prominence of a show, dancing extravagantly with his swift feet and sharp-witted prolonged arms. His platypus-like mouth changed in sync with a lyrics to “I Wanna Be Like You” while his blinking eyes enlivened his face.

Another prominence was a princess miscellany that seamlessly blended together songs by Pocahontas and Mulan — dual characters frequency seen in a park — with a third balance by Rapunzel.

One of my favorite moments was when a beautifully rendered 18-foot-tall riverboat delivered Tiana onstage between a separate in a hulk LED shade for “Dig a Little Deeper.”

Conversely, we found a “Under a Sea” series by Sebastian a crab from “The Little Mermaid” to be a slightest successful series of a show. we couldn’t get over a fact that a puppeteer singing a lead outspoken had his hands shoved low inside a backside of a crab’s shell. He looked approach too most like an obstetrician delivering a baby crustacean — a visible we couldn’t get out of my head.

The jukebox low-pitched featuring a review of Disney stars has turn common use over a final few years for Disneyland parades, night eyeglasses and theatre shows. And while we cite a single-story productions once featured during a Fantasyland Theatre, we know a unsentimental profitableness of a multi-character revues. It only creates some-more clarity in terms of flexibility, shelf life and interchangeability. But it doesn’t meant we can’t prolonged for another staged prolongation of “Aladdin” or “Beauty and a Beast.” It never hurts to ask.

For now though, “Mickey and a Magical Map” will offer as a stout workhorse for Disneyland — and substantially will for years to come. You can design new numbers to get substituted in whenever a latest Disney charcterised underline hits a theaters and maybe even a holiday chronicle of a uncover here or there.

Related thesis park stories and print galleries:

Disneyland: Fantasy Faire | Mickey a Magical Map

Universal Studios Hollywood: Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Six Flags Magic Mountain: Full Throttle

Knott’s Berry Farm: Timber Mountain | Coast Rider

SeaWorld San Diego: Aquatica

U.S. parks: Top 13 for 2013 | Disney World | Cedar Point | Top 10 H2O coasters

International parks: Top 13 for 2013 | Shanghai Disneyland | Disneyland Paris | Top 20 H2O parks

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