World of Color Part 2

Throughout early 2010, many have speculated how World of Color was going to be. Various videos throughout the months captured the show being put together after park hours.

In order to accomodate the sessions, the park would close as early as 6-8pm on weekdays. The sessions were held 6 days a week with Saturday being the day off. Each session lasted till about 7am in the morning.

Then in April, a video was posted of them running the show in an earlier form that was presented to Bob Iger and Tom Staggs.



There are plenty of differences shown in that video:

1. The Little Mermaid was different
2. Aladdin was vastly different and was tagged with Hercules
3. The Firebird was not present and they were using the Chernabog Tower, a metal structure that was cut by Steve Davison who deemed it not good enough.
4. So Close was sang by 2 female singers
5. Finale had flamethrowers activated in a different part. Chesire Cat was not present.

By Memorial Day Weekend, the show was finished with new things added:

1. Friend Like Me from Aladdin replaced Hercules
2. Little Mermaid changed
3. Firebird returns with Chernabog being modified to show without tower
4. So Close is changed to the soundtrack version.
5. Finale added Chesire Cat and Flamethrowers were moved to the final part before show fades to black.

Previews would soon begin the weekend before June 11th. On June 4th, the show was runned for WDI and their families while June 5th was for the other people that worked on it. On June 6th and 7th, Cast Member Previews were conducted, primarily to test out the crowd strategies. (I was lucky enough to attend one of these preview dates!) On June 8th, a party was held by 2 local radio stations and attended by the winners. On June 10th, the show had its big premiere!



The premiere was attended by celebrites and some Disney Legends (like the Sherman Bros the creators of the Wonderful World of Color theme song).

On June 11th, hundreds of people lined up outside as early as 2am to be one of the first to obtain Fastpasses (the main show ticket) to see World of Color! Opening night was a huge success and has become a major success to the park which was struggling without a nighttime spectacular.