Tale
of Two Castles: Snow Blankets Disneyland, Ice Drapes Walt Disney World
as New Holiday Magic Transforms Both Theme Park Icons into Wintry
Palaces
Guests to Disney Parks on both coasts are
in for some eye-popping spectacle this holiday season. Thanks to new
lighting and special effects packages, glistening snow blankets Sleeping
Beauty Castle at Disneyland while Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney
World Resort is bathed in shimmering cascades of ice.
At Disneyland
New enchantment arrived in Disneyland Nov.
16. The holiday season finds Sleeping Beauty's Winter Castle covered in
freshly fallen snow. With its exciting new look, the castle will serve
as a shimmering centerpiece for a daytime holiday celebration, and as a
snow-capped stage for the new music, lighting and special effects that
will precede the legendary "Believe ... in Holiday Magic" nighttime
fireworks spectacular.
The castle will create a magical sense of
wintertime enchantment throughout the holidays at Disneyland, adding to
the many delights that traditionally welcome guests when Disneyland and
Disney's California Adventure parks are transformed into dazzling
holiday wonderlands.
As evening arrives, the castle undergoes a
transformation as special lighting effects and a new musical score take
guests on a journey that dramatizes a young child's dream for snow.
This magical spell will build to the
highlight of the evening: the fireworks spectacular, "Believe ... in
Holiday Magic," which will take guests on a journey of sights and sounds
of the season and will end with one of Disneyland's most beloved
holiday traditions: a climactic snowfall that swirls down on Main
Street, U.S.A. To top it all off, the beautiful blanket of snow on the
castle will begin to shimmer like never before.
At Walt Disney World Resort
A dazzling new lighting spectacle is
transforming the iconic Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World Resort
into a glimmering, shimmering ice palace at holiday time.
Bathed in more than 200,000 tiny white
lights, the castle glows and glistens as "Cinderella's Holiday Wish"
delights Magic Kingdom guests. The nightly (5:45 p.m.) illumination
follows live onstage appearances by Mickey, Minnie and the gang, Fairy
Godmother, Cinderella and her Prince Charming.
Park guests are treated to an icy wonderland seeming to fill up half the sky.
As if suddenly dusted in a million ice
crystals, Cinderella Castle shines like the galaxies, adding to the
wintertime wonderment of the holidays at Florida's Vacation Kingdom.
To transform Cinderella's fairytale castle into a magical ice palace it took ...
* Five weeks and 65 elves
* Two cranes
* 15 miles of cables, cut and dyed castle colors, supporting ...
* 32,000 square feet of fishing nets, supporting ...
* 200,000 energy-efficient LEDs, interspersed with ...
* 500 strobes
* One Fairy Godmother working some very special magic ..
With the wave of her wand and the help of
park guests, Fairy Godmother grants Cinderella's wish that her castle
should shimmer like her famous glass slippers. In a dazzling instant,
the castle suddenly shines like a glistening blanket of ice.
Cinderella Castle aglow will also play a
supporting role in other Magic Kingdom entertainment such as live stage
shows, the nighttime fireworks extravaganza "Holiday Wishes," and the
after-hours Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, a specially-ticketed
event.
Disney's U.S. castles will be joined by
those at Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland in lighting
spectacles for the holidays. Disney's newly expanded global celebration
was inspired by Disneyland Paris which began the lighting tradition in
2005.
Source: Walt Disney World Resort
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla., Nov. 26, 2007 /PRNewswire/ --
