With 1,200 moving water fountains, some shooting 200 feet in the air, jets of fire, lasers, fog, cloud effects and one of the largest water projection screens in the world, Disney's new "World of Color" water-and-light show is serious entertainment.

The 25-minute show, which opened to the public on Friday, is the first piece of a major expansion project at Disney's California Adventure, the 9-year-old sister park to Disneyland. Still to come are a "Little Mermaid" ride in 2011, and a 12-acre "Cars"-themed zone in 2012, but to give park-goers a taste of what's in store, Disney officials decided to start big with "World of Color."

"We have huge plans to make Disney's California Adventure bigger, better and more exciting, so we wanted to start with something unique," said Bob Iger, Disney Co. president and CEO, in an interview before a media sneak peek on Thursday night. "We wanted to give people something they've never seen anywhere else in the world."...

http://www.nctimes.c...4b8766f09d.html

Five years to plan...

Fifteen months to build...

There is much, much more to this, as the article goes on to detail.

A show that will knott be taken for granted, this, my friends, is much, much more than "hey look at the pretty lights - ok, I'm done now."

The official world premier was streaming live the other night around 11:15 Eastern Time, and I watched - I think the show is fantastic, and so well done.

My only "complaints" are that there's no story per se, and the show is a tad long (as the article says, 25 minutes). For those reasons, I doubt it will surpass the popularity of Fantastic, which has a moving and involved story with some great physical props and effects. World of Color is somewhat disjointed, just showing Disney clips with no tale to weave them together. The music that was specially composed for the show only plays at the beginning and end, and isn't used to join the clips together or anything, whereas in Fantasmic!, the same theme music is adapted throughout and used in most every scene in one way or another, helping to tie it all together.

Overall, I'm sure that World of Color is a show that thrives off of its sheer size. There's no way I could judge fairly because half of the show is certainly about it's power. Consider a 320 foot tall screen of water... It's easy to watch the videos and YouTube and go "what's the big deal?" but standing in front of fountains blasting over two-hundred feet in the air, it's bound to impress by its sheer size if nothing else.

I think Disney really got what it wanted, in many ways: A show where (unlike Fantasmic! and it's massive cast, costumes, moving props, complex elevators, perfectly timed expensive fireworks and boats) one could realistically just hit the "on" button and watch the waters come alive. World of Color is certainly a fantastic, fantastic show from what I saw, and a really necessary part of California Adventure's re-do.

Now if only we could get a similar nighttime show at Islands of Adventure... Or (dare I say) a much-scaled down version at Kings Island?