The Disney Parks Live-Entertainment Bracket -- Round Five, Day One

Good morning, friends. As we all prepare to light the first candle of Hanukkah (or, for some of you, I suppose prepare for the week before Christmas), it’s time to embark upon the Final Four of the Disney Parks Live-Entertainment bracket. There are just two more matchups left until the big finale, and four of the six theme parks from the continental Disney resorts represented.

Before we dive into the first of two Final-Four matchups, I will only say that I’m surprised that three of our four top-seeded live-entertainment options survived this far. (I am too lazy, as I write these words on a late Saturday night, to look up if we’ve had a Final Four of all top seeds, but I imagine it’s happened once over the last two-plus years. Still surprises me.) I will also note that two versions of the same show have made it this far, and they technically could face off in the Top Two, but I sure hope they don’t!

But that’s all up to you. So let’s dive in and decide one-half of the big finale.

(2) IllumiNations vs. (1) Fantasmic (DL): Honestly, I’m a bit torn. I adore IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth. And I adore the Disneyland version of Fantasmic, a sentiment I have no doubt I will be revisiting and emphasizing in tomorrow’s newsletter. Of the Final Four as a whole, only one of the four is a show I don’t particularly want to win the whole megillah (and if you need to guess which one, just think about the implications of the previous sentence of this paragraph).

Where I am landing here, as you can tell from the photo, is by voting for Fantasmic. And it’s largely for one reason. IllumiNations, like much of the first era of Epcot (if you call it that), is a Disney show without being loudly Disney-esque. There are no appearances from Mickey Mouse, there are no cameos from Disney characters, etc. The closest you get is the setup narration from Jim Cummings, and I only call it close because Jim Cummings is a consummate Disney voice actor. IllumiNations is a wonderful nighttime spectacular, but it is not a combo package of Disney characters, films, and nostalgia.

Fantasmic is, and it is a high point of the subgenre of nighttime spectaculars. In the end, I prefer to vote for the nighttime show that does lean heavy on Disney-esque characteristics. But I understand that IllumiNations may buck the trend for you on purpose. All the chatter aside, it’s up to you: how do you vote?