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Start Date
13-6-2025 2:30 PM
Description
The Disney theme parks are known among the fan community for their careful attention to musical detail, but academics have only recently begun to examine the inner workings of theme park music. Most visitors see at least one fireworks spectacular during their time at the parks – each of Disney’s twelve international parks presents at least one – and these are often at the centre of their subsequent reminiscences. These shows use new and classic Disney songs to reinforce the existence of the Disney music canon and to engender notions of nostalgia as visitors are guided to reminisce about their earlier musical experiences. In this paper I examine how Disney crafts their fireworks scores around newly composed and pre-existing music to create cohesively structured musical narratives. The Magic Kingdom’s current fireworks show Happily Ever After is indicative in that it includes 24 songs in its 18 minutes, ranging from full choruses heard in their original film versions to single phrases newly arranged or combined with other songs. But far from being merely Disney song highlights reels, these shows are carefully crafted to convey narratives of success, triumph, and/or imagination. Happily Ever After and Fantasmic! (at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland) are case studies that demonstrate this narrative drive through a pointed ordering of the musical material in a way that builds large-scale narratives from disparate songs, and dramatic modulatory progressions borrowed from contemporary film scoring practices. Disney keeps its visitors coming back to the parks through their fireworks displays and their frisson-inducing music.
Recommended Citation
Camp, Gregory, "Where Nostalgia Meets Frisson: Music for Disney Fireworks" (2025). Theme Park Music and Sound. 8.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/tpms/2025/friday/8
Where Nostalgia Meets Frisson: Music for Disney Fireworks
The Disney theme parks are known among the fan community for their careful attention to musical detail, but academics have only recently begun to examine the inner workings of theme park music. Most visitors see at least one fireworks spectacular during their time at the parks – each of Disney’s twelve international parks presents at least one – and these are often at the centre of their subsequent reminiscences. These shows use new and classic Disney songs to reinforce the existence of the Disney music canon and to engender notions of nostalgia as visitors are guided to reminisce about their earlier musical experiences. In this paper I examine how Disney crafts their fireworks scores around newly composed and pre-existing music to create cohesively structured musical narratives. The Magic Kingdom’s current fireworks show Happily Ever After is indicative in that it includes 24 songs in its 18 minutes, ranging from full choruses heard in their original film versions to single phrases newly arranged or combined with other songs. But far from being merely Disney song highlights reels, these shows are carefully crafted to convey narratives of success, triumph, and/or imagination. Happily Ever After and Fantasmic! (at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland) are case studies that demonstrate this narrative drive through a pointed ordering of the musical material in a way that builds large-scale narratives from disparate songs, and dramatic modulatory progressions borrowed from contemporary film scoring practices. Disney keeps its visitors coming back to the parks through their fireworks displays and their frisson-inducing music.