Laura's Disney Lines

On Thursday Disney held a media event on the DCA expansion, with a focus on the new Disney's World of Color show, which will premiere next spring. I'll have more detailed information in upcoming blog entries, but I wanted to talk a bit about the event and especially the lagoon walkthrough itself.

The event began in Blue Sky Cellar, DCA's preview center, which has been updated with new concept art, models, and a new video.

Mary Lowery, Director of Internet Strategy and Business Management for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, announced a brand new website, www.disneyscaliforniaadventure.com, which will provide frequently updated information on DCA's expansion. The website went on-line just a few minutes before Mary began her demonstration. Check it out - there are lots of videos on things like the World of Color, the Little Mermaid attraction, and Cars Land. (Note that the Mickey Mouse clock shows the correct time - and if you click on it the alarm goes off!)

Steven Davison gave a fairly lengthy presentation on the upcoming World of Color nighttime spectacular, including several videos. One of the videos was a test of some of the fountains, mist screens and digital projectors that they did in the lagoon over a year ago, before it was drained. It was pretty impressive!

I didn't think we'd get it ready in time to post with this blog entry, but thanks to the efforts of my husband Lee, here is Steven Davison's presentation. It's in 3 parts due to the length. There's a couple of minutes between the end of the first clip and the start of the second that was proprietary and has been removed.

The name Disney's World of Color comes from the 1960s television show Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, which brought Walt Disney into our living rooms on Sunday nights. The opening music for the show will be an updated version of that theme song. There are more than 1200 different fountains, with several different kinds of nozzles - some shooting as high as 200' in the air (to give you an idea, Mickey's Fun Wheel is 150' high). Each fountain has its own set of LED lights, which can produce 18 million colors. The show will also include lasers, fog, and fire. Plus the world's largest projected water screen - 380 feet wide and 50 feet high (that's 19,000 square feet!).

The show will include animation and music from films such as Alice in Wonderland, Pocahontas, The Lion King, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and WALL-E. I have to say that the Colors of the Wind segment from Pocahontas looks amazing.

The new viewing area will accommodate 9000 guests, though the show will be visible from just about anywhere around Paradise Bay. It's anticipated to be 25 minutes long.

After that it was time to actually go into the lagoon and see just how they are going to pull this off. First off, we had to don hardhats, vests, and safety glasses. Our "guides" were Sayre Weisman, Show Producer, and Chuck Davis, World of Color Technical Producer.

We could not take any pictures while we were in the lagoon, but here's a video Disney released that shows some of the construction and the underside of the platform.

Here's some of my notes:

The platform is 400' long and 120' wide at its widest points. It is built out of individual 12' x 16' sections which are made of structural fiberglass.

As you can see in the video, the platforms were put into place with a huge crane - it took a couple of days and nights.

About 2/3 of the fountains are currently installed.

The entire platform raises and lowers - it has three different levels: hidden level, where everything is under the surface of the water, show level, which is 23" below the surface, and maintenance level, where the entire platform can be dry.

The blue tanks that you can see in the photo above are the "ballast tanks" - air displaces water (or vice versa) to raise or lower the platforms. Once they reach the desired level they are locked into place with scissor lifts.

There are several kinds of fountains, including grid fountains, which can shoot 43' high, chaser fountains, which go to 85', and blow pops, which can shoot 200' in the air. Each fountain has its own 1 HP well pump and its own LED light ring, which can illuminate the whole fountain. Each has electrically piloted pneumatic valves (I had to be sure to write that down!), to control the flow of water. The fastest ones can cycle in 1/8 of a second!

Each platform has a SUB - a submersible utility box - which contains the logic, electronics, power, and air, etc. for each platform. Everything is remotely controllable.

The lagoon tour concluded with a demonstration of a blow pop fountain - and they said it's the first time they've done that. Since there's no water in the lagoon they had to bring in a water tank. It shot a column of water about 150' in the air - it was pretty impressive even though it didn't last very long since they quickly ran out of water.

After the tour there was a Q&A session with Steven Davison, Sayre Wiseman, Chuck Davis and Bob Weis.

The event was very interesting - it was really cool to get the "under the scenes" tour of the World of Color show. It really looks amazing - I'm looking forward to next spring!