Today on the podcast, we continue our story of Fantasmic, which has become a fixture at many Disney parks.

Now I know there are some significant differences between a show like Fantasmic, which over the years has grown to be nearly 30 minutes in length and a two-hour Broadway musical.

But let me use Broadway musicals as a comparison. The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Weber is Broadway's longest continuous

running musical with a cumulative number of productions of nearly 14,000, from January 1988,

up through April, 2023.

Fantasmic, just using those numbers from the Disneyland performances, is very close to that.

According to Disney's own numbers, Fantasmic at Disneyland has seen about 11,000 performances since it premiered in 1992. And to throw in a small

spoiler here, I'm using Andrew Lloyd-Weber's Phantom, not only because Phantom is the longest-running

Broadway musical, but because Andrew Lloyd-Weber will play a key role in today's episode. Last week, we looked at

early influences that would lead to Fantasmic, including Dixieland at Disneyland and that

haunted mansion-themed show that was developed in multiple forms for the river. And today,

we'll look at some other early influences, but we'll also start to explore

how this river show changed the power dynamics inside of Disneyland.

If I were to ask you who makes popular Disney attractions, I think that most of you would

likely answer why it's the Imagineers, whose corporate

offices are over in Glendale. But the story here of Fantasmic is also the story of how the

entertainment divisions, which are housed at individual resorts, begin to take a larger seat at the planning table, and how this show in

particular changed some of the political structures inside of the American parks. So today we'll explore

some fascinating but little known and never built projects, and we'll also start to explore

how phantasmic with Eisner as CEO began to change the power structure in the parks themselves.

So, if you're ready, let's go. One of the most complex never-built productions, the River Haunt was finally deemed too elaborate,

a show that would require not only tens of millions of dollars to develop, but would also require

...