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

It's time to head back to the thunderdome.

Good morning, everyone! Apologies again for the newsletter being just a little bit late, but it won’t happen…well, it won’t happen today. I am not a seer, so I can’t guarantee it won’t happen in the future, because life is just funny that way.

In between yesterday and today, what happened of note? Well, the Mets nearly had their hands on Carlos Correa, before it became clear that they never did and were likely being used for leverage purposes. (My morning-after thoughts, for any of you who might care: it’s very nice that the Mets get to serve a role in which they strike fear into the hearts of other executives who are inspired to spend stupid amounts of money, but considering Correa’s presence in the 2017 Astros cheating scandal, I am not…shall we say, super-disappointed.)

And this morning — as I type these words, this announcement was unveiled:

Scott Gustin @ScottGustin

NEW: Super Nintendo World will open Feb. 17 at Universal Studios Hollywood.

As noted recently, my family and I traveled to Universal Studios Hollywood a few weeks ago, and saw the under-construction Super Mario World without any awareness of how close it was to completion. All I hope is that it features the dulcet tones of Chris Pratt in every possible nook and cranny! (I mostly wish I had a trip planned next spring, as my kids will likely go nuts for this area.)

Now, of course, we’re not here to talk about the Universal theme parks. We’re here to talk about and vote in a bracket themed to Disney theme parks and their live-entertainment options. Now that we’ve arrived in the Elite Eight, the new playlist is a lot shorter and we’re scaling back to just one matchup per day until the big finale.

Are you ready to dive in? Let’s go.

(1) Main Street Electrical Parade vs. (2) IllumiNations: Here’s a fun fact: all four of the top seeds from the start of this bracket have made it to the Elite Eight. (The same cannot be said of all four of the two-seeds.) No daytime parades made it this far, either — in fact, only one non-nighttime show has made it to the Elite Eight.

In this matchup, though, I am not so much predicting what will win as much as telling you what I really hope wins. (Such is my wont.) There’s not quite the same amount of putting my thumb on the scale as there used to be on Twitter. (By the way, while I have been tweeting a bit more in the last couple weeks, man, there is a strong vibe of the Titanic sinking right now over there. But hey, that’s what happens when the very rich man in charge engages in nonsense threads about how Twitter used to…do you know, I don’t even have a great grasp on the point of the various threads from faux- and/or ex-journalists. Point is, it’s all stinking to high heaven of desperate bullshit.)

Anyway. All four top seeds made it to the Elite Eight. I am hoping that at least one of them will not move to the Final Four. Yes, that’s right, I am voting here against the Main Street Electrical Parade, and very much in favor of Epcot’s sadly departed IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth. There’s no doubt that the show’s depiction of harmony among and across cultures and nations is one-dimensional and facile, but then, I do not recall a ton of nuance in most Disney nighttime shows. Part of it is that I just adore the music — not just the show music itself, but also the pre- and post-show music — for IllumiNations as opposed to “Baroque Hoedown”, the electronica theme that gets repeated a ton in the Main Street Electrical Parade. Part of it is that the combination of laser-lights, fireworks, and video just works very, very well for me. I understand that Epcot’s replacement show was quite bad, but it also had a very high bar to clear.

IllumiNations for the win. But that’s just my choice. What do you think?