Thrasherman at Dragon*Con

I know I emailed this to a lot of you that read this, but here it is again.



Also, I got a backstage tour of Fantasmic! today. It was amazing. We started in the control tower, went onto the island down to the basement, up on stage, through the dragon tunnel and into the mountain. We climbed up and up and ended up at the top.

For those unfamiliar, Fanstasmic! is a show at Disney's Hollywood Studios. It's massive and centers on Mickey fighting his worst nightmares, which just happen to be a slew of Disney villians.

Unfortunately, I can't post most of what I heard and saw for security reasons. I can say the mountain is an actual island. The bridge is raised before the show to ensure that those that don't need to be on there are not. About 90 folks are on the island during the show, including around 60 performers. There are a ton of special effects from water, fireworks and pyros operated from a central control tower. There are a number of safety systems and everything that is a potential danger requires at least two people to give the go ahead. It also has two massive hard drives with the show stored on them so if one fails the other picks it right up.

It was really awesome. I saw the dragon, the snake, and all the little entrances for the characters as well as the small navy of boats, including Imagineering boats, platoon boats, canoes, and of course Steamboat Willie. I also saw the moat, all the markings on stage as well as the projector room with the film inside. I could actually see some animation, the scene where the different villians are turning into one another. Specifically, I saw Jafar morphing into Hades (perhaps the other way, but I'm pretty sure it was J to H).

I hope to post some pictures tomorrow of some resorts. We shall see if that really happens. I'll also try to post some Fantasmic! show shots as well.