In the fall of 1993 Disney began to transform Epcot in an attempt to breath some new life
into the rapidly aging theme park.
That transformation included everything from new rides replacing old ones, to old rides getting
updated, to new shows being introduced.
Some of those changes would go on to be long lasting and remembered elements of Epcot.
Others… not so much.
Splashtacular at Epcot would ultimately fall into the latter category, and if you’ve
never heard of it, that’s OK, because it wasn’t around for long.
The show was one of the early additions to Epcot during that revitalization effort, and
as it would turn out, it’d be one of the first to go as well.
Announced in the fall of ‘93, Splashtacular would be a twenty-minute show that would take
place on a stage just behind the Fountain of Nations in Future World.
The basic premise of the show was that Mickey and his friends, along with fifty dancers,
are peacefully dancing and celebrating their favorite colors, you know... like you do
when along comes this evil alien lady whose planet doesn't have any color because of intergalactic war.
So she uses her powers to steal the colors from Mickey and his pals, and then goes on
to summon a four and a half story dinosaur robot hybrid called TerrasaurX.
I hate when that happens.
All the while the over 200 jets in the Fountain of Nations create a dancing tapestry of water for a backdrop
Mickey fights the monster. Mickey wins. All the color returns. Everybody’s happy.
Oh yeah, there’s also a giant inflatable rainbow by Spaceship Earth.
Now if this all sounds really bizarre for Epcot, that’s because it is, and it’s
also because the show wasn’t originally written for Epcot.
Splashtacular was, in-fact, an adaptation of a show created for Tokyo Disneyland’s
10th Anniversary called “It’s Magical”.
It was virtually the same, with the major changes being that instead of an evil alien
lady and a robot dinosaur, Mickey faced off with Maleficent in human and dragon form.
Sure it was kind of a strange concept, but with attraction refurbishment and replacements
taking time, shows were a quicker and easier way to add new content to the parks to hold people over.
They’d do something similar that same fall over in World Showcase with a stage show celebrating
Mattel’s Barbie.
So I guess it was just the year of the oddly themed Epcot shows.
Splashtacular held a preview show that November 21st in honor of Kid’s Day, and that Thanksgiving
weekend it officially opened.
Now shows of this scope usually stick around for a few years.
Even the ones that don’t fare as well will at least see a full year before being replaced.
Splashtacular?
It was gone just seven months later.
Officially, a Disney spokesperson cited the mismatched theme with the direction of Future
World as a reason for cutting the show.
They argued that the story of Splashtacular wasn’t appropriate for the more World’s
Fair/Convention vibe that they were trying to create with the upcoming Innoventions,
which would open just a few months later.
However according to insiders who spoke to the Orlando Sentinel, the real reason was
that the show simply wasn’t as popular as Disney had hoped it would be.
While that first reason wasn’t wrong, I’d personally put my money on the second reason being
the one that drove the decision.
After all, it’s not as if Disney didn’t know Innoventions was coming or that they
didn’t know what the plot of Splashtacular was.
None of it was a surprise.
If the theme was really the problem, they would have avoided the issue to begin with.
Now this part is pure speculation, but it was something I couldn’t shake when I watched
Splashtacular for the first time.
Mickey and other famous Disney dancing characters find themselves facing off with evil forces
in a grand stage show filled with music and a giant evil monster.
I don’t know, doesn’t it seem a little familiar?
Fantasmic had already been running for a couple of years in Disneyland, and I’m not trying
to argue that this was inspired by Fantasmic or vise versa, but maybe Disney was trying
to put an east coast Fantasmic in Walt Disney World with Splashtacular.
Right around the time Splashtacular closed was when rumors began to arise that Disney-MGM
Studios would be getting their own version of Fantasmic, although it would be another
four years before it would actually happen, so maybe it’s just a coincidence.
In any case, Splashtacular wasn’t a total loss.
Rather than cutting the show entirely, Disney kept the Fountain of Nation water show concept
and called it “The Innoventions Water Ballet”, which ran automatically every fifteen minutes.
It was just as quickly renamed to the “Fountain of Nations Water Ballet”, and to this day
the fountain still puts on shows throughout the day set to music.
It has become somewhat of an iconic element of Future World, and yet it was born from
this weird forced show that lasted just half a year.
It just goes to show you that sometimes you don’t know what good ideas will come out
of bad ones.