By now, you’ve no doubt heard about what happened at
Disney’s Hollywood Studios this past Friday night. How a New Year’s Eve-sized
crowd turned out for this “Limited Time Magic” event. Which led to
some pretty interesting challenges for the very unlucky WDW cast members who
were scheduled to work at this theme park on Friday the 13th.
It was body-to-body along Hollywood Boulevard this past Friday night.
Photo by Angela Ragno
Now there are plenty of places that you go online this morning if you’re looking
to learn more about what went wrong at “Unleash the Villains.” But
me? I thought that I’d try and focus on the positives on this LMT event. Which
were largely due to the creative choices made by Mark Renfrow, the show
director & writer on “Unleash the Villains.”
I was lucky enough to get Mark on the phone towards the middle of last week.
Which is probably when the very first annual passholders began lining up outside
of “Villains in Vogue” in an effort to score some of those limited
edition t-shirts. And I asked him about the origins of this “Limited Time
Magic” event.
“For almost a decade now, we’ve been trying to get a
park-wide, Halloween-themed event going at the Studios which would then be
built around the Disney Villains,” Mark explained. “And the last time
we seriously talked about this project, one of the ideas that I pitched was
Hades’ Hangout. Which was supposed to be this combination underworld environment
/ exclusive New York nightclub that would serve as the hub of this Villains celebration.”
Hades welcome everyone to his hangout. Photo by Angela Ragno
But WDW management once again nixed the idea of a separate
Halloween event for the Studios. So everything that Mark wrote for Hades’
Hangout got filed away. Until last Fall when word came down that Disney Parks
& Resorts’ year-long “Limited Time Magic” event was in the works.
“And as soon as ‘Limited Time Magic’ got announced,
people in Entertainment at the Parks began saying ‘You know what would be a
really good fit for this? Hades’ Hangout,’ ” Renfrow continued. “So
we dusted off that idea and began looking at the calendar. And as soon as we
saw that there was a Friday the 13th in September, that’s when we knew that we
had to stage this Disney Villains event at the Studio.”
Okay. So that explains how “Unleash the Villains”
wound up being held at Disney’s Hollywood Studios this past Friday night. But
how then did the villain from 1997’s “Hercules
” wind up as its master
of ceremony?
The Big Bad Bad Wolf was a big man on campus this past
Friday night. Photo by Angela Ragno
“Who would be better for this gig than Hades?,” Mark said. “Do
you remember how this character was portrayed in that movie? Hades was already
throwing off one liners. He’s a natural comic. So this Disney Villain has
license to be funny. More to the point, because he’s the Lord of the
Underworld, Hades has got to be familiar with all of the other Disney Villains’
work. So who better to send out the invites to this sinister shindig?”
So with Hades as “Unleash the Villains” MC ( More importantly, with
his “Hercules” co-horts — Meg, Pain and Panic — acting as his
co-hosts), Renfrow then had to decide which Disney Villains to showcase at this
Friday the 13th event.
“And since we were working this event on the 13th, we then decide to limit
the number of Disney Villains that we were going to put in the spotlight to
just 13,” Mark stated. “And I wanted to make sure that we weren’t
going to fall back on the same old characters. I wanted to show some of the
more obscure Disney Villains some love. Characters that people hadn’t seen in a
while or ever before inside of the Florida
parks.”
Oogie Boogie makes his Walt Disney World debut.
Photo by Angela Ragno
And given the positive reaction that Bowler Hat Guy from “Meet the
Robinsons
,” Shan-Yu from “Mulan
” and especially Oogie Boogie
from Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” got from the
thousands of people who lined up to have their pictures taken with these seldom-seen
Disney Villains, Renfrow obviously has a knack for picking just the right
characters to showcase at an event like this.
But of all the aspects of “Unleash the Villains,” which did Mark find
the toughest to do? Writing that 10 minute-long production number which opened
the evening and then introduced all of the Disney Villains to be showcased at
this event? Casting the face talent for this show? Designing the logo for this
“Limited Time Magic” event?
“The biggest challenge was actually the ‘Villainy in the Sky’ fireworks
display. I didn’t want to fall back on the same old music that Disney always
seems to use whenever they’re touching
on the villains in a fireworks show. You know, songs like ‘Be Prepared‘,”
Renfrow said. “So I dug down deep into the soundtracks of our animated features
and came up with some Villain-related tracks that I don’t think people have
heard in quite a while.”
Photo by Angela Ragno
And indeed — as people stood in Hollywood Boulevard on Friday night and
watched as pyro shells exploded overhead to the music of the Hun Charge from
“Mulan,” Aladdin’s battle with Jafar-as-a-giant-snake from
“Aladdin
,” Gaston & the Beast’s battle on the rooftop from
“Beauty & the Beast
” and Esmeralda being burned at the stake in
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame
” — they knew that this was the sort of
fireworks display that they’d never ever seen (or heard) before inside of a
Disney theme park.
“Of course, once you’ve put together the score for your fireworks show,
you’ve then got to select all of the shells that you’re going to be
using,” Mark continued. “We started picking out pyro back in
February. And given that this is going to be the largest fireworks display that
has ever been presented at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, we had a lot of shells
to select.”
For all of you folks who remember Disney-MGM’s old “Sorcery in the
Sky” fireworks … The reason that “Villainy in the Sky”
looked so different than “Sorcery” is that shells were being fired
from six different locations around that theme park on Friday night.
Photo by Angela Ragno
So after the estimated 35,000 attendees exited DHS after 1 a.m. on
Saturday morning to the strains of “Carmina Burana,” given how popular
this “Limited Time Magic” event had clearly been with Central
Floridians, annual passholders and WDW cast members, the obvious question then
was: Will Walt Disney World ever host another “Unleash the Villains”
-like event? When I spoke with Renfrow last Tuesday, he was cautiously
optimistic about that idea.
“Look, in their movies, the Disney Villains are always popping up where
& when you least expect them,” Mark concluded. “So could an event
like this rear its wicked head again sometime further on down the line? Who
knows? I guess it all depends on what happens on Friday night.”
And given that we all now know how “Unleash the Villains” turned out,
the question now is: Will Disney Parks and Resorts — given that it’s been
proven beyond a shadow (man) of a doubt that there is in fact a sizeable &
passionate audience out there for a Disney Villains-based event — now take
this “Limited Time Magic” event and then turn it into an annual thing
at Disney’s Hollywood Studios?
It was a long, slow slog to the parking lot as the thirteenth hour struck.
Photo by Angela Ragno
And if they did actually do that, what sort of changes / improvements would you
like to see them make to “Unleash the Villains” to then make this
event a bit more fan friendly?
Your thoughts?