Disneyland Presents “The Magic, The Memories, and You!”

The Disneyland Resort debuted its new nighttime show – “The Magic, The Memories, and You!” this past week.  Unlike its counterpart at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, the home for this spectacular show is the classic facade of it’s a small world.

Now, it’s a small world is no stranger to this type of projection experience.  For the last several winter holiday seasons, a wonderful show has taken place on its facade to a variety of Christmas songs.

This show is different.  Not only are classic Disney characters blended with lights, color, and creative animation, but it is even tailored to the unique structure of the it’s a small world facade.  When we showed you the World of Color Roadshow, it was somewhat of a sneak preview into this groundbreaking technology.   This show is definitely more of a challenge than using the relatively flat, expansive, screen-like surfaces of the Walt Disney Concert Hall.  it’s a small world utilizes so many intricate, geometric and famous iconic shapes from around the world in its facade.

Unlike the Walt Disney World version shown on the castle, no projection screens are dropped for this showing – they just make the most of the shaping of the facade – which is naturally the perfect screen – white with gold accents!

Some of our favorite sequences:

• There were several great uses of the facade include highlighting all of the detailed “destination shapes” – such as the Eiffel Tower and Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Those are features that you could simply miss when looking at it during the daylight.   It almost seemed that they were turning it into a coloring book of sorts – and then later, they did.
• The variation on the Clock Tower show.  For those who are not familiar with this show, think of a German cuckoo clock.  Every 15 minutes, when the tower doors open, the Small World children “erupt” forth in a parade of nations.  The Imagineers have translated this tradition into the show, by having them start at the clock tower doors and then parade across different levels of the facade!
• Turning the facade into the clock tower from the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Clock Cleaners. This was extremely intricate – making the most of each nook and crevice of the structure.  I was completely drawn in to watching how the characters moved about the surface, with its abundance of scaffolding.  Very cool.
• The two “windows” in the facade that opened up with millions of bouncing balls pouring out.  Great effect.
• Rapunzel’s hair cascading down the facade.  Nice.
• The “collage video”  of Walt – made up from thousands of photos.  While we were used to seeing collages made up of guests’ photos scattered around the park for the 50th anniversary of Disneyland, this takes that art to a new dimension.

We did get a couple valuable tips.

• Because the show features the “memories” of guests who are visiting the park that day, any guest that wants to take a chance of seeing themselves in the show should try to get their photographs taken by and Disney PhotoPass photographer before 3:00 pm.  There is no guarantee, but guests (who give permission for their photographs to be used in the show) will  be glad to know that their photos are then pooled into the specially designed show system and they will be randomly presented in a wide variety of ways.  As you could see in the video, all of them are pretty darn cool.
• Due to fireworks, there is a chance that the amazing Disneyland fire prevention team will be looking at wind levels to make sure that it is safe to shoot them.  We’ll have to see how Disneyland plans to handle the show if the Santa Ana winds whip up high enough to cause concern.   The show is still new enough that we don’t know if high winds could be cause for cancellation or if they will simply do the show without them.

Also, one thing that surprised us was how many people kept getting on the attraction during the show, instead of watching.   it’s a small world is open during the showings – and the ride was a walk-on during the show.  However, once the summer season hits,  if there is a long line, the queue may possibly be one of the most fabulous places to catch the show from!

Video by I. Johnson.  Photos by N. Johnson.