Mickey's PhilharMagic

Mickey's PhilharMagic is an attraction located in Fantasyland.

Attraction Development and History

The creation of Mickey's PhilharMagic began in the early 2000s when Walt Disney Imagineering and the Walt Disney Feature Animation division teamed up to create a new attraction. The partnership had previously worked together to create Fantasmic! for Disney's Hollywood Studios and Disneyland. Walt Disney Imagineering created the attraction's storyline and choose the featured characters. They then turned the project over to Walt Disney Feature Animation who created the film. Many of the artists who worked on the characters in their original movie, contributed to both the storyline and animation process.

Mickey's PhilharMagic is a "4D" show that uses 3D technology, scents and water to tell a story. The film took over three years to complete, due to the fact that many characters had to be re-rendered in 3D. 3000 3D elements had to be molded, painted and animated in order to create the show. Disney animator Glen Keane returned to render Ariel in 3D. Likewise, Nik Ranieri the supervising animator of Lumiere (during Beauty and the Beast) re-rendered him. Disney tried to use the characters original voice actors as much as possible (either through re-recording or archival recordings), although some characters required new voice actors to be brought in. Perhaps most significantly, archival recordings of Clarence Nash (the original voice of Donald Duck) were used to voice Donald. According to George Scribner, the animation director of Mickey's PhilharMagic said that Donald Duck was chosen as the films main character because he showed his emotional extremes quickly.

Disney announced the creation of PhilharMagic in a press release issued on January 31, 2002. The show replaced the Legend of the Lion King in the Fantasyland Theater (the theater located next to Peter Pan's Flight. Construction began on March 1, 2002, only five days after the Legend of the Lion King Closed. On October 3, 2003 Mickey's PhilharMagic officially opened. Since it's opening, the show has not experienced any significant changes.

Attraction Plot

Mickey's PhilharMagic is a 4D show, which follows Donald Duck in his quest to recover Mickey's Sorcerer Hat.