Featured Image Courtesy: Disney Parks
Let me give a fair warning before we go into this article. I’m going to eviscerate the new show, Harmonious. I don’t often do that in a review, but this is a failure at a gargantuan scale for Disney Parks. It’s like showing up for your doctoral dissertation with macaroni noodle art and thinking you’ve done something special. So if you’re not interested in reading the objective reasons this show is designed horribly, then it’s best to stop now. Just understand, I would not have expected before the premiere to be this disappointed with such a sophomoric presentation.
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Let’s start with one of the unforgivable design flaws that we’ve known was almost certain, but was amplified last night. Harmonious has a giant ring in the middle of World Showcase Lagoon. Its predecessor used a globe since that’s an object that is visible at any vantage point. However, the ring — that uses a water mist screen to display images — is optimally viewed by about 25% of the normal vantage points. Perhaps 50% of the lagoon has a sub-optimal view of the show, and another 25% essentially cannot see what is going on. That means three quarters of the audience have a less-than-ideal view of the nighttime “spectacular”. Compared that to Reflections of Earth, which had a nearly 100% optimal viewing experience.
🎶 I’ll have spent one day out there 🎶 #Harmonious pic.twitter.com/BJAsKtTZNe
— Disney Food Blog (@DisneyFoodBlog) September 30, 2021
Someone on Twitter said that Harmonious is like a group project where everyone does their own thing, then show up on the last day to see how they can mix it all together. That’s about right. The taco-shaped barges serve no purpose other than to display cheaply-made computer graphics. The arms on the barges are curious, but ultimately do little. There is no original score… only Disney music you’ve heard over and over sung in different languages. You can get that on YouTube. Fireworks do not begin until eight minutes into the show — likely a cost-cutting measure. Epcot Forever was a decent little show over the lake that was ho-hum, but it at least had a narrative. That makes it significantly better than Harmonious. The show is so lacking in any direction that the way it ends is a child telling you “good night”. That’s literally the way it ends.
On the plus side, the technology is impressive at night. Given a good narrative and better graphics, it could perhaps be used to present a heck of a demonstration for the 25% of the viewpoints that can see it optimally. On the bad, the barges look like backstage concert equipment all day long, harming the aesthetic of World Showcase by more than a little.
I”ll also touch on the Spaceship Earth Beacon of Magic for a moment. This refers to the little lights all over the icon of Epcot. I’m seeing that quite a few people really liked them… but I have a different take. I think it ruins the subtle beauty of the ball, and instead turns it into an image out of Vegas. This can be remedied by dimming those lights a bit. They really should. Epcot should be beautiful, not garish.
The ball is lit!!!!!! #epcot #HARMONIOUS pic.twitter.com/ayABzvmRIo
— Buzz Bradley 🌐 (@DisneyOnParade) September 30, 2021
So in summary, they’ve replaced a beautiful nighttime show at Walt Disney World about the unity of mankind into a Disney sing-along in different languages (but mostly English). They won’t do what I recommend, but I think they should just honestly fess up to the egg on their face, scrap Harmonious as it is, and go back to Epcot Forever during the 50th. Retool all the graphics, the narrative, create an original score, and come back with something befitting Epcot at night. As is, Harmonious is embarrassingly bad. When I wrote for Pirates and Princesses, I covered some of the Imagineers behind Harmonious and how they didn’t come across as competent on their social media posts. We can only hope that it’s limited to those who worked on this Epcot project, because otherwise we’re heading for pathetic additions for a good long while.
Don’t even get me started on “kite tails”…
