At the end of every night at Disney parks across the globe, guests gather around to watch what has become the signature feature of the Disney experience: The evening spectacular. Each park has its own unique take on it, but they all tend to revolve around the same idea. They have fireworks and projections. They have soaring music and famous Disney characters. They have their special circumstances and features – Fantasmic is more of a stage show, and World of Color is technologically marvelous – but they are all cut from the same cloth.
That is except for one.
In 1982, EPCOT Center opened at Walt Disney World in Orlando, and from the beginning, it was a different kind of theme park. While Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom before it told fantastic stories of pirates, rocket ships, and princess, EPCOT Center was devoted to a realer kind of magic. It celebrated innovation, invention, and the human experience. Its pavilions honored not just the intellectual hunger that has led humanity to invent things such as phones, the internet, cars, and agriculture, but also the desire to connect with one another. And, indeed, that is the thread that has always linked the varying parts of EPCOT Center (now, simply, Epcot): We – that is, humans – will always strive to work together and experience the world as one.
Those are complicated ideas, and as Epcot grew into those ideas, Disney realized that its traditional fireworks bonanzas, amazing though they are, simply wouldn’t fit in. Thus, a different kind of show was conceived; that show wound up being Illuminations.
Let’s take a moment to look at our beloved and delightfully odd show – where it’s been, where it is, and where it might be headed.
1. The history and the idea
Disney first realized it needed a different kind of nighttime spectacle with the opening of Epcot, but it wasn’t entirely sure which route to follow. The first six years of the park’s existence, Epcot cycled through a handful of shows that never quite stuck. Early shows such as A New World Fantasy were far more like the Seven Seas Lagoon’s Electrical Water Pageant than the Illuminations we know today. They were set to highly synthesized music and usually featured classical music and projection screens. They were also presented almost entirely to guests in the area from Mexico to Canada, limiting not only the area , but the scale of the show.
From there, Disney tried to step things up and developed its first laser light show, Laserphonic Fantasy. It was essentially the same show as its predecessors – featuring largely the same music — although it included plenty of fireworks and lasers. And, in many ways, Laserphonic Fantasy was the forefather of the modern Illuminations.
Eventually, Disney decided to try something new and went out in search of a show that tied in more clearly with the park’s messages and themes. And so, in 1988, Illuminations debuted.
2. The pavilions and the lights
Illuminations gave Disney a few new opportunities to rethink their own approach to evening show design. Up until this point, Disney’s main storytelling devices were overhead fireworks – which, obviously, are wonderful. But given a new park, one that was intended to always look into the future, they wanted to try something new.
In this manner, the original version of Illuminations delivered. Its most important innovation was that it was a show performed in the round. Unlike the Magic Kingdom-style shows where guests look up above the main castle for their entertainment, Illuminations had guests stand around a central location looking not just at the fireworks, but at each other too.
And, secondly, there were the lights on the pavilions themselves. Unlike previous attempts at creating a nighttime show, with Illuminations, Disney decided to make the countries the real focal point of the show. And so, each country played a role in the show – adding an element of spectacle to the already amazing event.
When all of these elements combined, the result was a truly innovative production. Sure, it was also an extremely 1980s-y production, but it was innovative all the same and an enormous departure from what Disney did at the time. This willingness to explore new things beyond the proven Disneyland-style is what ultimately defined Epcot and led Walt Disney World to become the massive resort it is today. The original Illuminations was simply the perfect embodiment of that – lasers and all.
3. The new(est) story
One of the great draws of Epcot is that, in being slightly removed from the fantasy world of Disney, it has always been able to accommodate celebrations and events that take on a larger significance in the world. It’s an amazing place to watch the World Cup, or to enjoy the New Year’s Eve festivities.
But in its history, there probably wasn’t a celebration more perfectly suited to its unique charm than the Millennium Celebration of the year 2000. The Epcot of today is largely a product of that celebration, with international flavor and cultural literacy becoming far more important for the park’s identity.
And for that celebration, Disney realized they needed to create a new version of their popular nighttime show – something with a message suited to this new era into which we were all moving.
Thus, Illuminations: Reflections of Earth was born.
While most of the attention goes to the show’s exquisite score by Gavin Greenaway, or the brilliantly choreographed lights and fireworks, I think the most impressive thing about it is that the show does what any great Disney attraction does: It tells a compelling story.
If you weren’t aware, Illuminations: Reflections of Earth actually tells its story in three acts. The first focuses on the birth of the Earth, and it attempts to portray the violent aether from which it sprang forth. The second shows how the Earth eventually became home to people, countries, and our inventions — this is when the countries themselves finally are put on display. The third and final act serves to inspire us all to look forward, and envisions a world in which all of humanity is united together.
And so, in redeveloping Illuminations, Disney was able to do something quite amazing – they gave a fireworks show a compelling story.
4. The message
When you think about it, Walt Disney World’s reimagination of their most spectacular nighttime show (yeah, I’ll say it – come at me, Wishes) was extraordinarily prescient. Our world is far more interconnected than ever before. We can Skype with friends halfway across the globe. We can log onto Twitter and watch news break in Syria in real time. We can visit Google Street View and explore cities and towns we couldn’t all have visited before.
And so, Illuminations: Reflections of Earth has not only lived up to the new millennium it was meant to introduce, but it has served as a beautifully artistic representation of our current times. Even the subtitle, Reflections of Earth, has a kind of beautiful echoing of the digital representations of Earth and each other that we experience every day over those Skype connections and Street View journeys. That echoing is further strengthened by the digital representation of Earth floating at the center of the World Showcase Lagoon – which, in turn, features its own digital representations of Earth’s inhabitants.
With all that synchronicity, it stands to reason that the show’s message would resonate with 21st century audiences as well – and in this regard, it doesn’t disappoint. One needn’t look any further than the show’s inspiring finale to find that message and see that, truly, it speaks to our interconnected world: “We go on, through the joy and through the tears. We go on, to discover new frontiers. Moving on, through the courage of the years. We go on.”
The message is clear: Now that we’re all so connected, nothing can stop our progress. We go on, no matter what. And, considering the hectic and tense beginnings of our new Millennium, that message couldn’t have been delivered at a more perfect time.
5. The possible future
Yet, despite the perfect symmetry between the show’s story, message, and social context, there are rumors that Disney is contemplating reworking Epcot’s centerpiece show. It’s a funny kind of contradiction – at the same time we’re complaining that Disney hasn’t updated Epcot enough, we’re also fearing the replacement of a show that’s currently 15 years old. Yes, it speaks perfectly to the early years of the 2000s we’ve experienced so far, but what about the next 15 years? Would we rather have a show that works in the present, or one that looks forward to the future?
There are, of course, fears that Disney could replace Illuminations with either a copy of California Adventure’s marvelous World of Color. And, looking at the recent introduction of Disney properties into Epcot – adding Finding Nemo to The Seas, and replacing Maelstrom with a Frozen -themed ride – it absolutely seems within the realm of possibility that they’d go this route.
But here’s the thing about Epcot: It will always have that massive geodesic sphere at its gate, daring Imagineers and executives to be a bit more ambitious. There’s something about that part that challenges you to think bigger, to take a wider view. The question is whether Disney will live up to that challenge or not.
