Review: Disney Enchantment Fireworks at Magic Kingdom
My favorite current TV show is Ted Lasso. Every episode brings a smile to my face with its warmth, wholesomeness, and heart. For me, it’s above reproach because it brings so much joy and happiness to my life–while I have favorites, every episode is some degree of good. As it has blown up in popularity, more criticism has entered the discourse. I couldn’t care less about any of that. It’s the rare piece of art or entertainment about which I’m not interested in reading reviews or hearing critique, just enjoying the magic of Ted Lasso.
For many people, Magic Kingdom fireworks shows are a similar story. All of them have the same core qualities, with pyro exploding over Cinderella Castle to conclude a long, memory-filled day at Walt Disney World. The music is pulled from sentimental moments in memorable Disney movies and the visuals are dazzling. The whole production tugs at the heartstrings, overwhelming the senses and emotions in the best way possible.
Consequently, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a bad nighttime spectacular at Magic Kingdom or any other castle park in the world. Those foundational qualities outweigh any perceived flaws, and always manage to win me over. Basically, there’s a minimum baseline for any Magic Kingdom nighttime spectacular, and even an arguably “bad” one is still “good” in the grand scheme of things. I know the same is true for a lot of Disney fans, many of whom may not even be interested in fireworks critique. If that’s you, it might be time to close out this review, because Disney Enchantment is pretty close to that minimum baseline for me.
I’ve held off on publishing this review of Disney Enchantment until well after its debut because I want to like the new Magic Kingdom nighttime spectacular. We’ve revisited it numerous times from an array of angles and vantages in an effort to give it a fair shake. I truly want to see in it what its defenders do.
In response to the backlash over Disney Enchantment, some have suggested that Walt Disney World fans are resistant to change, never satisfied with new offerings at first, and have opinions colored by nostalgia. Generally speaking, these are all fair points. Some have pointed to the outrage over Wishes being replaced by Happily Ever After, which quickly became beloved.
Just for the record, we were always on board with Happily Ever After. From our commentary to its original announcement: “While we enjoy Wishes and the nostalgics in us will miss the show, it has a good, long run.
“Moreover, Disney Creative Entertainment has demonstrated what it is capable of in the intervening years, fully harnessing technological innovations to create an entire new generation of nighttime spectaculars. If Wishes was Disney Fireworks 2.0, these new shows…are Disney Fireworks 3.0.”
“Given this, we are pretty excited to see what Walt Disney World has in store with Happily Ever After. Magic Kingdom deserves a ‘3.0’ show like Paris and Shanghai, and we are really rooting for this to be a worthy successor to Wishes! The big question is whether it will deliver on an emotional level, because all the technology in the world is meaningless if it doesn’t have heart.
“We suspect Disney will deliver. They no doubt realize the stakes are high: fans love Wishes and many are going to be predisposed to favoring their nostalgic favorite over anything new, no matter how good.”
Then there was our Happily Ever After Review published immediately after that show’s debut, which put it bluntly: “Happily Ever After is the best regular fireworks show to ever grace the skies above Magic Kingdom.” Moreover, “it’s better than Wishes, and also better than the nighttime spectaculars in Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.”
The point is that at no time were we against Happily Ever After replacing Wishes, despite our nostalgia for the latter. Likewise, in the lead-up to Disney Enchantment, you won’t find any feet-dragging on our part about the change. We went into this new nighttime spectacular with an open mind, assuming that Walt Disney World was pretty confident in it if they already announced it would not just be a temporary replacement for Happily Ever After.
The above review is potentially worth revisiting now, as it compares Happily Ever After to other castle park nighttime spectaculars. Much of the review revolves around how Happily Ever After avoided common pitfalls of those montage shows.
In part, I think the backlash to Disney Enchantment stems from many Walt Disney World fans never experiencing one of those choppy and uneven shows. Many of us–even fans of Happily Ever After–didn’t realize how good we had it with that nighttime spectacular.
There’s also undoubtedly the matter of expectations. I’ll be the first to admit that for Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary, I wanted a show that was a love letter to the park itself. The Vacation Kingdom of the World turning 50 is a big deal, and one worth proudly celebrating with explosions.
In several posts, we expressed hope that the new Magic Kingdom fireworks would be like Celebrate Tokyo Disneyland or Remember… Dreams Come True. That fizzled over the summer when Disney began releasing details and the new fireworks were clearly going to focus on films.
No matter, as I assumed Enchantment would go the direction of Disneyland Forever, the 60th Anniversary fireworks that bookended dazzling animated film segments with sentimentality and Walt Disney.
Despite it not being my beloved Remember… Dreams Come True, I loved Disneyland Forever. (Sorry for the prior post callbacks, just trying to “prove” I have an open mind when it comes to nighttime spectaculars and am not blinded by nostalgia.)
Disney Enchantment is unlike even that.
Rather than trying to balance the nostalgia of longtime fans with the expectations of casual guests, the new Magic Kingdom nighttime spectacular seems to actively repudiate sentimentality. It leans heavily on animated movies from the last decade, including many that are far from classics. It’s essentially the antithesis of an anniversary show.
Why Walt Disney World so steadfastly refuses to lean into its own history (except when there’s food or merchandise to be monetized) will forever confound me.
The place has thrived for five decades on its inherent sentimentality, and now has a loyal army of APs, DVC members, and other regulars who are wistful for the past. It becomes more like Disneyland with each year, and even first-timers will either buy into that nostalgia and become repeat visitors…or won’t and won’t. But all of that is another lengthy topic for another day.
I understand that the company really wants to push Disney+ and whatever is hot on there, but I think it’s a mistake to insert the latest new thing into shows unless the nighttime spectacular is not intended to be long-term or it’s done as a pre- or post-show tag (World of Color used to do this exceptionally).
Maybe this is “old man yells at cloud” territory–a blind spot because I don’t have kids who love the latest movies–but if a show is going to run for several years, it should only include movies with a certain timelessness. Onward does not have that standard (yet?). It would’ve been equally misguided to insert Brother Bear, Treasure Planet, Chicken Little, or Meet the Robinsons into Wishes back in the day (sorry, fans of those, but they’re not classics).
There’s also a lot of overlap between Enchantment and Harmonious. As much as I love Moana and think it’s already a modern classic (see, not totally an old man!), it’s overkill to have it featured heavily in both.
Same goes for Aladdin, Hercules, Brave, and others. When the announcement came that Happily Ever After was being retired, it seemed potentially driven by the overlap between that and Harmonious. Guess not.
Speaking of which, Enchantment also includes songs and properties that were present in Happily Ever After, inviting direct comparisons. None of those are favorable.
The musical renditions, pyro arrangements, and even the projections were superior in Happily Ever After (how is that last one even possible–technology has progressed since then!). I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that, at points, Disney Enchantment feels like a bootleg Happily Ever After.
Sticking with the Happily Ever After comparisons, that show had great cadence, flowing from scene to scene with smooth transitions and, to the extent possible for a montage nighttime spectacular, compelling storytelling. All of this is absent from Enchantment.
Paradoxically, Enchantment is both slow and fast. If you’re focusing primarily on the music, it’s the former. The show never develops a rhythm–and don’t even get me started on that lengthy instrumental segment. (I’ve never said this about a castle fireworks show before, but the middle of Disney Enchantment drags.)
By contrast, the projections are moving at lightning speed, bouncing among various sets of characters with little rhyme or reason, often divorced from the tone of the accompanying music. There’s the vague sense that Enchantment is building to something towards the end of the core show, but I couldn’t tell you what.
There’s no through-line whatsoever, not even the vague one offered by Disney of going on a journey or adventure. It’s just a bunch of songs and characters, popping up at random.
We’re not entirely negative on Disney Enchantment. I genuinely like “You Are The Magic,” which does a good job presenting positivity and inviting introspection. I’d even say that song meets the moment, and is the perfect choice for this time, something that might become more apparent with the benefit of hindsight.
That song is one aspect of the show about which opinions will soften over time. It might be a bit schmaltzy, but the same could be said for almost any parks’ theme song. Once “You Are The Magic” has its own nostalgia formed from visits during the show’s run, it’ll become beloved by fans.
Same goes for Angela Bassett’s narration. She sets the perfect tone for “You Are The Magic” and its underlying message, and her commanding voice gives those lyrics even more resonance.
The problem is not her or what she says, but that there’s absolutely no support from the show in between. On top of that, there’s the matter of who doesn’t speak at the show’s opening or closing. No Walt Disney or Mickey Mouse was certainly “a choice” by the show’s creative team–how is even that too much nostalgia? Nevertheless, the conspicuous omission of Walt and Mickey shouldn’t be taken out on Ms. Bassett or her otherwise strong narration.
There’s also mesmerizing pyro, pretty arrangements of innovative and unique bursts (even if they’re sometimes discordant with the music), and great lighting effects. While some technical aspects are a downgrade as compared to Happily Ever After, there are enhancements, too.
The projections on Main Street are one such feature. However, and maybe this is unfair, but as someone who has seen these for years at Disneyland, it’s hard to shower Walt Disney World with praise here for bringing a rudimentary version of what has been done there for a while. If anything, this is overdue–and so too is adding projections elsewhere in Magic Kingdom to help spread out the crowds.
Ultimately, neither of us care for Disney Enchantment. I truly hope you disagree, and love it as much as Happily Ever After. Emotion is a funny thing, and different entertainment hits differently for different people. Disney Enchantment might be your perfect nighttime spectacular. We’ve tried to give it a fair shake, watching from several viewpoints to see if any of them offered that “special” perspective that does the trick.
None did, and the nighttime spectacular hasn’t grown on us in the least even after multiple in-person viewings. Even attempting to be as objective as possible and removing all expectations about what a Walt Disney World 50th Anniversary fireworks show should entail, it falls short for both of us. Disney Enchantment is lacking in emotion, heart, and the flow necessary to make for a truly transcendent fireworks show.
With all of that said, we have heard plenty of cheering and clapping at the end of each scene in Disney Enchantment every single time we’ve watched it, and the crowd going wild following the finale. Plenty of guests seem to be enjoying it, and like me with reviews of Ted Lasso, couldn’t care less about online criticism.
The fact of the matter is, it’s still fireworks in Magic Kingdom. It still offers pyro exploding over Cinderella Castle to conclude the evening in the park. It still features nostalgic and sentimental music that tugs at the heartstrings. At the end of the day, fireworks shows in Magic Kingdom are inherently enchanting (lowercase “e”), so Disney Enchantment at least delivers in part on its name.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Are you excited to see Disney Enchantment in person? If you’ve watched video, what’s your first impression of Magic Kingdom’s new nighttime spectacular? Does Enchantment “work” for you, or is it a misfire that fails to evoke emotion? Is Enchantment a worthy replacement to Happily Ever After? Is this an appropriate fireworks show for Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary? Do you agree or disagree with our review? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
We are not locals but got to see the two shows about a month apart and Happily Ever After was magical…Enchantment was forgettable. With HEA I watched with my mom and daughter and all three generations were singing and dancing and loving every moment. That was not there for the new show. HEA seemed like a reminder of why we fell in love with Disney…it makes us feel good and it sparks our imagination through sight and sound and things we’ve never seen before. Enchantment was none of those things. It was still good but now part of me is wishing I didn’t know about HEA because this will be a let down each time in comparison. Each new turn seems to be a letdown from Disney these days….Boo Bash was an incredibly expensive taste of what the Halloween Party used to be and it’s coming at a time when we could all use more magic in our lives…not less!
I dont like enchantment. Wishes was great but no castle projection. Happily ever after is the greatest firework music show ever. Why change it after only 4 years. Only reason I can think of is money maybe because of pandemic and less crowds so I don’t know if this new show is cheaper or new ceo n imagineers don’t have the same vision as the past ones. Disney is suppose to be about a magical experience and telling a story about wishes and magic and the wow factor. They should of had tinkerbell start the fairy dust and have wish upon a star n starlight starbright and new orleans prologue where it says magic is in the air and anything can happen.. It needs better catchy music like happily ever after has. And this one needs a better ending. People remember the ending the most like happily ever after. And they should add in some of once upon a time. This new one had no efficience wen abt to surprise us with tinkerbell at the end. This new one is like cheaper version. Like it’s once upon a time b4 the main extravaganza show. Wen I want to bring my kids to disney n show them the greatest , now I can’t. I’ll say we can miss the last show. It’s no big deal. What a shame. They should have feedback so I can write to them with suggestions.
Seems to follow the continuing trend at WDW of increasing costs with decreasing output and benefit. We will be there in December and I will certainly go into viewing this with an open mind, but will have lower expectations now.
Seems like The Main Street Electrical Parade would have been appropriate to bring back for the 50th Anniversary?
Saw it couple times last wk and hands down, HEA is so much better bc the music gives u that emotional connection. Tugs at your heart. Hoping they bring it back even tho they’ve retired it Why fix what’s not broke?!
My latest visit was September 29-October 7th 2021. My all time favorite that moves me and my emotions is WISHES! For me nothing comes close to WISHES! I literally can cry of joy, love and beauty with WISHES, the music, the story and presentation.
Buttons 65
Although this is by no means a hard and fast rule…it seems like many of the IP they focus on in their shows is stuff that doesn’t have as much representation in the parks. No Brave ride? No problem, just throw her in the show. Tangled bathrooms and Magic Carpets not enough for you? Don’t worry, its in the show~
Great review! Definitely a downgrade from shows past! You Are The Magic is ok. I like the opening verse. The other music and singing is not that good! Happily Ever After had a short run, I don’t get the rush to replace it, especially after not having it for a year! If anything they could’ve upgraded it abs waited until they had something at least on the same level to replace it!
I agree completely with the thought that Harmonious and Disney Enchantment are too much alike. The current crowd of Disney “Imagineers” can’t get past their love of projections of their favorite scenes from what I call “modern” Disney movies. Even Beauty and the Beast seems old fashioned to them. They have forgotten to be STORYTELLERS. I wish they’d put more emphasis on musical scores and creating a show than just throwing up images of their favorite IPs.
The only thing more disappointing than Enchantment is Harmonious. Where is the heart? There was no emotion and left us feeling flat. The music for both is awful and completely uninspiring. So disappointing.
We always loved wishes, and were sad to see it go. But it was always more about the song than the show. And actually thinking back, I may have only actually watched wished twice in its entirety… in other words not just walking off Pirates to find it running, and singing along as we made our way to our next attraction.
Happily Ever After was different. We saw it and were hooked. It became something we watched on every trip at least once from the hub, getting there an hour early to get the best possible viewing location. I don’t even think we realized how attached we were to this show.
I have been negative on Enchantment from its announcement because I knew how big the shoes were it had to fill, and I also feared the show the direction of current Disney management, along with the seeming lack of creativity at WDI were incapable of making it happen. I was sure it would be a soul-less commercial, and nothing else.
I wish they would have proved me wrong. But with every review of the show I hear the same thing. The most seen to say defending the show is that it has to have time to grow on us. I doubt that will happen, but maybe I’m wrong this time.
Fingers crossed HAE returns. I know Disney has brought back other nighttime shows in the past, but alas this is not the same Disney we had even five years ago. So I am not holding my breath. I’ll just gather the family around the tv and watch videos of HAE on YouTube.
Visited Magic Kingdom on Oct 1. I am one of those who loved HEA, and not Enchantment. Been going to WDW at least once a year for 30 years.
Wished they had done a fireworks show to honor the memory of Walt Disney’s work. Maybe 2 minutes of the show to of honor the man who started it all and what his dream was. Maybe they didn’t do that because they are moving far from what that man’s dream ever was.
At a time where it really feels like WDW is taking its Covid financial losses out on park visitors, slowly yanking perks from guests and DVC owners, they could have easily won us back by honoring the man, and mouse, who started it all.
I agree that it felt a little like throw everything in from the last decade but remove the Mouse. Coco was a really good movie but…. better than Mickey? I wouldn’t agree. I dislike the very long instrumental part and in one song, it felt like the singing was bordering on something much less pleasant on the ears. Watching the fireworks from the shore of the Polynesian minus the rest of the show was my fav and I highly recommend others do that too. Then go see Enchantment but just the projections since trying to watch both together doesn’t seem to work.
Ted Lasso “wholesome”?…..which leads me to question your judgement on absolutely everything you review here.
As well as Tom explained, Cynthia summed up Disney’s leadership. I think the Disney Walt Disney dreamed of will gradually disappear, unfortunately.
I’m going to go against the grain a little here- I did not care for the “You are the Magic” and in a way it felt a little, well….. insulting. All I could think the whole time was how it feels like all the perks are being taken away, we are charged more for less, pay for things that were no additional cost, perks of on-site stays dwindling, etc., etc….. so “You are the Magic” felt like Disney telling me if I’m complaining and not feeling that Disney Magic it’s my fault- it’s on me to conjur the Magic and nostalgia and one more thing they aren’t responsible for. I love Disney, go all the time and will continue to go, but still felt a little like a slap in the face in a way.
I am glad to read your review as it makes me feel sane and no longer second guessing myself about whether I’m being an armchair critic. I haven’t been back to the parks yet (going this week) but have seen the online videos and “bootleg Happily Ever After” sums it up. I feel it is competent enough of a show that if I had not see HEA, I’d probably be fairly satisfied. But it just hurts my head trying to understand WHY they would downgrade absolutely every element on the experience–less good original music, less good selections and renditions of movie music, projections that did not seem to fit the castle well at many times, less clear “theme” to the segments, less nostalgia, less je ne sais quoi basically. It feels like a kick in the teeth after we put up with so much that has tried our patience as loyal Disney fans this past year, always giving Disney the benefit of the doubt. This feels like it was put together (1) sloppily; (2) without sufficient vetting/feedback by people who love Magic Kingdom; and (3) cheaply.
I am glad they kept Tinker Bell flying, although again that felt a lesser moment to HEA because the musical score did not built up to it as powerfully. I did like both Moana sequences–but better projections would have really made it soar. I honestly don’t remember a lot of the other song choices even though I’ve watched it several times now because they just weren’t memorable.
Please please please let this be a short lived 50th anniversary thing and be swiftly replaced with something superior (or return to Happily Ever After)`.
We go most every year and honestly couldn’t tell you if the fireworks show was different from the last one we’d seen there. We’re never close enough to see the show bc of the crowds & a lack of desire to waste precious park time sitting near the castle for over an hour to get a good spot. We just like the fireworks. We didn’t like not being able to see any when we went earlier this year. It was sad to not have any fireworks at any of the parks, so we’ll be happy with whatever Disney shoots into the sky to entertain us.
Let’s just all pray this one only lasts the 18 months during the celebration!!
I guess we are the odd ones. We have seen the previous shows and loved them, but we also absolutely loved the new show. It was hard to know where to look between the fireworks, the castle the lasers, lights down the street and through the trees. And best of all they kept Tinkerbell. We loved it.
The following night we went to Epcot and except for the finale, we were somewhat disappointed. I felt that a lot of the show shamelessly was plagiarized from the cancelled River of Lights show and I really felt that a lot of the Epcot show was better themed to Animal Kingdom. The fireworks finale was redeeming though.