Here’s Why the Drone Show Isn’t at Animal Kingdom
I’m seeing a question being raised quite a bit this week.
Disney’s recent announcement about a drone show at Disney Springs has confused some fans.
A few of you understandably wonder about the choice of Disney Springs as the setting rather than a theme park.
You naturally point to a specific park as lacking a nighttime presentation and believe it’s a perfect fit.
Here’s why the new drone show isn’t at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
About the Disney Drone Shows
Last week, MickeyBlog reported on a new drone show coming to Disney Springs.
Disney Dreams That Soar will entertain shoppers each night this summer.
The presentation will employ drone technology to paint a picture in the sky.
Illuminated flying drones will tell a story involving classic Disney characters and the power of flight.
The news of the announcement was far from surprising, as Disney’s international parks have toyed with this technology for a while now.
In fact, the Marvel drone show at Disneyland Paris earned a spot on our Best Disney Innovations of 2023 list.
Disney had filed some drone show patents in 2020, and I wrote this piece in 2021 that I should probably reevaluate for accuracy.
The drone show portion was definitely a bingo, though. And we’ve seen variants of the idea implemented at Hong Kong Disneyland.
Tokyo Disney Resort hosted a drone show as part of its 40th anniversary celebration as well.
In short, this concept has already been in play at Disney parks around the world. And that’s not all!
Disney Springs was on the cutting edge of this technology all the way back in 2016.
I can hear you saying, “pics or it didn’t happen,” and here’s my video proof:
You just watched a first-of-its-kind presentation, Starbright Holidays – An Intel Celebration.
Disney collaborated with Intel – we say Disney x Intel now – to create the first 300-drone show in the United States.
You probably think that the presentation was lovely but threadbare.
That’s an accurate description because the technology was new in 2016, and this show used “only” 300 drones.
The Marvel presentation at Disneyland Paris employs 500, which creates a visual canvas that’s 67 percent larger.
About Drone Shows and Their Dangers
Management selected Disney Springs as the location in 2016 for two very specific reasons.
The first is that the entertainment complex didn’t have a competing nighttime presentation.
Every other Disney park offered a nighttime show save for Animal Kingdom, which was prepping for Rivers of Light at the time.
The waters over Disney Springs provided the only viable space for such a collaboration. But that’s not the only reason.
All technology includes a failure rate. I’m sure you’ve had several appliances, phones, and televisions break at some point.
Usually, that happens at the worst possible time. Now consider the same issue with a drone.
During the technology’s earliest days, people would describe the device as a flying drone.
That’s akin to saying a moving car. The moving part is assumed otherwise it’s not much of a car.
When a drone’s not flying, it’s just a piece of metal junk on the ground.
There’s an even darker interpretation of that as well. I presume you’re familiar with the WKRP in Cincinnati turkey episode?
Well, drones are like turkeys. When you stick them in the air, and they’re not flying, bad stuff can happen.
Specifically, these metal objects become dangerous projectiles plummeting to the ground at high speeds.
So, Disney tried the first large-scale drone show over the waters of Disney Springs for an excellent reason.
Should the drones fail, they’d safely fall into the water rather than, you know, crashing through people’s windshields like the WKRP turkeys.
You’re probably thinking that never happens, right? Well…
That incident didn’t happen during the early days of drone shows, either. The drones fell from the sky in July 2023.
Why the Drone Show Isn’t at Animal Kingdom
I’m pretty sure you can tell where I’m going with this one.
Those unfortunate Aussies spent a good deal of time fishing more than 100 drones from the Yarra River.
Now, let’s consider that same incident occurring at Disney.
Would you rather it happen in the waters of Lake Buena Vista or in a lion’s den? And I mean a literal one.
Before Disney can even think about a drone-based nighttime presentation at Animal Kingdom, it must test the tech thoroughly.
As you might imagine, testing drones at Animal Kingdom isn’t the easiest thing to do.
So, Disney Springs will host the first semi-permanent drone presentation at Walt Disney World this summer.
Management will then meticulously examine this data to learn the failure rates of the drones.
Obviously, park officials would be wildly reckless to risk such a disruption to the lives of the actual residents of Animal Kingdom, the animals.
Should Disney’s testing suggest that the tech is perfectly safe to implement, Animal Kingdom becomes a possibility at a later date.
Currently, the park lacks a nighttime presentation of any sort, with Disney officials recently acknowledging an oft-whispered secret.
The conversion of Animal Kingdom to a nighttime park didn’t go as smoothly as hoped.
As Disney continues to work out the kinks on Animal Kingdom after dark, a drone show would add another layer of difficulty.
For this reason, leadership must proceed with caution, even on a seemingly perfect fit like a drone show at Animal Kingdom.
Even fishing drones from Discovery Lagoon could cause issues for the local wildlife.
So, this idea sounds better in theory than in practice.
Nobody wants the skies at Animal Kingdom to rain drones for an evening.
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Feature Photo: Disney