The new Disneyland Pixar Fireworks started last night. Here is one of the first videos I found from Main Street view. What does everyone think?
Interesting. I don't think I've ever seen shells that produced jellyfish-shaped bursts. And I haven't seen that many creative lighting effects on Main Street buildings since Light Magic closed. (For the record, the lighting effects are better than any that were seen for LM, although for large portions of the video, I didn't have the slightest idea what movie was being depicted.). Except for the aforementioned jellyfish shells, I wouldn't say the fireworks themselves were particularly novel, or particularly well tied to the subject matter, certainly not to the degree seen in other Disney fireworks shows (or in the late, great, Gene Evans' work at Hollywood Bowl). I find myself thinking about the TV spots promoting the "Pixar Festival." And of my admittedly snarky response to the line about ". . . and your favorite nighttime parade": Funny, I thought they were running "Pain in the Night."
We were treated to a test of the Pixar fireworks during our stay. It was after hours so there was no sound. But we were fascinated by the bursts themselves and thought some of them were quite novel. I have not watched a video as I want to wait to see it in person.
I'm not impressed. It seems like they took all of the least successful elements from World of Color and combined them into a fireworks show. Instead of having an overarching emotional arc, it's just a randomly assembled bunch of sound bites and one-liners. Similar to Disneyland Forever, the projections just make the whole thing feel cluttered, like wherever you're looking there's a better view somewhere else This show also reflects one of the biggest flaws of the whole Pixar Fest concept to me: Pixar just doesn't have particularly great music. It's all quite serviceable and never detracts from the film, but with a couple exceptions (The Incredibles, Up, Ratatouille, and maaaaybe A Bug's Life), none of the scores are particularly iconic or instantly recognizable. And unlike Disney's catalog of musicals, Pixar films really only have one song each, and most of those are typical Randy Newman mushmouth junk (as a personal note, I particularly dislike You've Got a Friend in Me, which is even more overplayed than Let It Go). It just makes it tough to do large-scale entertainment, which by it's very nature tends to be music-based; Pixar Play Parade was really smart in largely ditching music from its respective films Luckily, it seems like this show will really just be for the duration of Pixar Fest and will be retired after that. If there were rumors of it sticking around longer, like Remember, then I'd be more concerned about it. I think it's fine for a few months as a summer promotion, but wouldn't want to make a habit of it. I'm not planning on visiting before it goes away, but from what I've seen, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to see it in person
