The official first night of Summer Nightastic! was last night (Friday), and Lee and I made our way up to Anaheim yesterday afternoon to experience as much of it as we could.

As most of you have probably heard, the highly anticipated premiere of the new 3-D dragon in Fantasmic! has been delayed until later this summer. You can read more about that on this L.A. Times blog entry.

When we asked Cast Members yesterday we were told that the dragon “is on medical leave” (clever!), and that they hope she will be able to appear by the 4th of July.

Cast Members were telling the people who staked out a spot hours before the show that there wasn’t going to be a dragon – but that didn’t deter them. By 6:00, three hours before the 9:00 show, all of the area right by the edge of the Rivers of America was filled with blankets marking the spots of people who were waiting. At 8:00 there was a park-wide announcement that Fantasmic! was full, and to come back for the later performance.

The problem was that many people who saw the early show stayed for the second show, so there wasn’t space for those trying to get in. At 10:00 they made another park-wide announcement that Fantasmic! was again full (for the 10:30 show). It was gridlock back there for a while. We were trying to get to the Reserved seats (we had booked the Fantasmic!) dessert package), and thought we might not be able to get there in time! But there was just no place for people to go.

But I digress. I plan to do a more comprehensive blog about the new Fantasmic! and the dessert package later, and for now I just want to hit the highlights of Summer Nightastic!

The TLT Dance Club at the Tomorrowland Terrace kicked off last night at 7:00. Suburban Legends was the featured band last night. Really very entertaining – a rock band with a brass section! There were lots of people there early enjoying them. The Dance Club looks like its aimed at Teens and Tweens, but I saw mostly 20-somethings there – maybe later in the evening it’s different.

The new fireworks show, Magical has had a number of previews over the past week or so, so there weren’t as many people waiting for it as for Fantasmic!. Still, Main Street was quite full! One of it highly anticipated moments was the flight of Dumbo – unfortunately Dumbo was grounded for some reason last night – maybe Timothy misplaced the magic feather?

What’s wrong with this picture? Ah yes, no flying elephant…

It’s a nice show, but it’s not nearly as elaborate as Remember, Dreams Come True. Though since there are fewer fireworks and they appear to be much lower in the sky, I hope that it will not be as prone to cancellation because of wind as Remember is.

It’s a glorious pink and blue finale!

Lee is working on a video of Magical that we will be posting later.

We thought it puzzling that there was nothing in the Daily Times Guide about the new Pixie Hollow Enchantment – all it said was that the Meet and Greet was open until 8:00. But after that Pixie Hollow comes to life about every 15 minutes, with music and animated lights and jumping fountains.

In between it’s still an enchanting place – you can see the lights from the various pixies’ homes, there’s pixie music, and “pixie dust” on the trees and even on people who are wandering through.

We saw the “show” about 11:15 – there were quite a few people waiting for it, including three Cast Members who had taken a break from their regular duties to come and see the show.

The new updated Fantasmic! is still very good, even without the dragon. The HD projection on the water screens is much clearer.

Here’s the new Flotsam and Jetsam critters (how do we know which is which?). They didn’t move and slither quite as much as I expected, but they still looked good. They looked pretty fierce with their mouths opening and closing!

The new Crocodile following the pirate ship was a nice addition, also.

Disney has had to operate in “dragon-less” mode before (apparently the old dragon was rather cantankerous at times – but what do you expect from a dragon?), and I thought the show went on quite seamlessly. Maleficent still rose 35 feet in the air, but instead of “transforming” into the dragon, the dragon appeared on the water screens in front of her. It still looked impressive and the show got lots of applause at the end.

One thing we were surprised NOT to see was a lot of Summer Nightastic merchandise. At the Press Event Deb and I attended in April, they said they would have lot of things that glow in the night. But all of the merchandise carts had the same-old glow necklaces and swords and spinny things – we didn’t see anything new. Now, we also didn’t have time to go in any of the shops, but I also didn’t see people with anything new, which I would have expected. They did have a “Chocolate Moonbeam” cupcake in the Bakery, though. Oh, and the Mickey balloons with the glowing lights inside were pretty cool, too, though I don’t know if those are new.

I’ll have more photos (and video!) later, but wanted to get this posted for now.

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