While there are many great attractions that exist at both Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World, there are also those that you can only experience if you visit one park or the other. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride hasn't been at Walt Disney World in a long time and the only remaining Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in North America is at Walt Disney World. Since 2003, if you wanted to experience the 3D film Mickey's PhilharMagic, you had to go to the east coast, or another country, but that's about to change, as the popular attraction will be making its debut at Disney California Adventure next month.
The show will open soon at the Sunset Showcase Theater in Hollywood Land. The location was the former home of Muppet*Vision 3D before being replaced by a Frozen Sing-Along Celebration in 2014. Since 2016 however, the location has been a theater without a theme that has been primarily used to show previews of upcoming Disney theatrical releases.
According to the Disney Parks Blog, Mickey's PhilharMagic will take place at the Sunset Showcase Theater, not replace it. This would seem to imply that this means the show will only be a limited engagement, rather than a new permanent attraction, though no official opening or closing date have been announced, so that's not clear.
The show is making the move during a year long celebration of Mickey Mouse, called Get Your Ears On – A Mickey and Minnie Celebration, so if I were a betting man, I'd expect to see PhilharMagic hang around for the rest of this year at least.
While the name of the attraction is Mickey's PhilharMagic, the real star of the show is Donald Duck. All of your favorite classic Disney characters, Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy are preparing a concert for the audience. Donald, while getting the orchestra ready to perform, picks up Mickey's sorcerer's hat from Fantasia, which results in a lot of magical chaos and ends up throwing the duck through a number of musical moments in classic Disney animated movies like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.
In addition to the 3D film, a number of "4-D" effects, like water being sprayed at the audience, and various scents being pumped into the theater help deepen the immersion of the experience. The Muppet Theater was outfitted for at least some of these, so it's likely they'll make the jump to California.
Of the various 3D shows that have appeared at Disney Parks over the years, Mickey's PhilharMagic is absolutely one of the better shows, so seeing it be added to Disney California Adventure, in what has been a criminally underutilized space in recent years, is very nice. Hopefully, the show will hang around until something more permanent is created for the theater. The show may be 15 years old, but a decades old show is a better use of the theater than glorified movie trailers.
Images courtesy WDWnews.com/Disney
