by The Disney Purist

#3 Fantasia (1940)

  1. BACKGROUND
  2. STORY #1: TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR: BACH
  3. STORY #2: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE: TCHAIKOVSKY
  4. STORY #3: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: DUKAS
  5. STORY #4: THE RITE OF SPRING: STRAVINSKY
  6. STORY #5: INTERMISSION / MEET THE SOUNDTRACK
  7. STORY #6: THE PASTORAL SYMPHONY: BEETHOVEN
  8. STORY #7: DANCE OF THE HOURS: PONCHIELLI
  9. STORY #8: NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN / AVE MARIA: MUSSORGSKY / SCHUBERT
  10. PRODUCTION
  11. RECEPTION
  12. LEGACY
  13. FINAL THOUGHTS
  14. REFERENCES

BACKGROUND

Walt Disney was an appreciator of both art and music. Despite not being a musician himself, Walt understood the importance of music and song in his film-making.

Within the Silly Symphony series of cartoons, the Disney Studios began to use music to enhance their story-telling, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) went one step further by having the songs move the narrative forward, at a time when musicals revues, shows that consisted of numerous singing and dancing numbers that did not come together to form an overall plot, were all the rage.

After the success of Snow White, Walt wanted to go further with both music and animation, deciding to set classical music to animated sequences in an experience like no other. Something that was more of a concert than a feature film.

With the help of a famed conductor, the Disney Studios released Fantasia, hoping for very positive reviews. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way for Walt’s project, with many audiences and even some critics confused by this strange movie.

I’m not ashamed to say that I am one of those people. I have never liked Fantasia.

It’s not that I don’t like classical music, though I cannot say I am anything close to a connoisseur, and it’s not that I don’t like the animation, although some of the pieces are quite abstract and bizarre. The main problem I have is that Fantasia is just so long.

With a runtime of a little over two hours, Fantasia is the longest of all the Disney animated classics. That’s not to say that I have a short attention span because I don’t think I do; if I’m fully focused and interested in the subject, then I can easily watch a movie of two hours, sometimes more. But I started to lose interest about halfway into Fantasia, around the time of the Intermission, because of the lack of an overall story, and by the end of the movie, I just felt relieved it was over.

Fantasia is split into eight individual, standalone animated sections with a corresponding piece of music being played by an orchestra in the background. These segments have no relation to each other, and are of varying length.

These eight sections are:

  1. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”: Bach
  2. “The Nutcracker Suite“: Tchaikovsky
  3. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice“: Dukas
  4. “The Rite of Spring“: Stravinsky
  5. “Intermission/Meet the Soundtrack“
  6. “The Pastoral Symphony“: Beethoven
  7. “Dance of the Hours“: Ponchielli
  8. “Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria“: Mussorgsky/Schubert

Fantasia does not follow any traditional story-telling format. Instead, the film showcases how animation and music can work in harmony with each other. It does succeed in that mission, but I don’t know if anyone can honestly say that every single section of Fantasia interests them, or that they enjoy every piece of music.

STORY #1: TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR: BACH

The introduction to Fantasia sees the viewer watching as the live orchestra prepares for their “concert”, getting to their seats and tuning up their instruments. Deems Taylor, the Master of Ceremonies for Fantasia who introduces each section of the film, then welcomes the audience, explaining what they are about to see in this feature film. Taylor explains that there are three types of music within Fantasia: music that tells a definite story; music that paints a picture; and music that exists for its own sake. He then introduces conductor Leopold Stokowski, who takes his place on stage.

The first sequence, Toccata and Fugue, is the third type of music. It has no story and is instead purely artistic, showing a series of abstract designs that are suggested by the classical piece itself. It begins with silhouettes of the orchestra, highlighted in different colours, before moving on to show lines and shapes mimicking the orchestra’s movements. These shapes combine to create forms and landscapes. It ends by returning to Stokowski and his orchestra on the stage.

Walt Disney wanted to have an animated abstract piece here that had no story, something that was experimental in nature. The work of German artist Oskar Fischinger was used as inspiration for this sequence. Fischinger was known for using lots of geometric patterns in his work and because of his experience, he was asked to help the artists with this sequence at the Disney Studios, however, he left the Studios because he did not like the fact that his designs were being altered by the Disney artists to fit their overall vision; Fischinger was used to working as an individual, not being within a collaborative work environment.

Toccata and Fugue is certainly abstract, and not exactly the best way of enticing an uncertain audience into enjoying Fantasia, if you ask me. I don’t enjoy the animation and I struggle to pay attention throughout this sequence. It is at least matched with a fairly well-known piece of music though.

STORY #2: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE: TCHAIKOVSKY

Pretty much everyone is familiar with “The Nutcracker Suite” music, or at least parts of it. However, instead of this sequence following the popular story of The Nutcracker ballet, something that has become a staple part of Christmas entertainment in many countries, Disney decided to move away from this and have their version tell a story of the changing seasons, featuring fairies, leaves, flowers, and mushrooms.

The Paint department experimented with new techniques for this piece, such as dry brushing, as they wanted it to be a spectacular piece of artwork and something that provoked an emotional reaction, so it took longer than normal to complete.

I really like the music of “The Nutcracker Suite” and I try to watch a version of the ballet on television every Christmas if it is airing. My favourite parts of Disney’s The Nutcracker Suite are the dancing mushrooms, with the little one that gets frustrated by being out of step with the others being the best part of it – apparently, his name is Hop Low[1] – and the dance with the thistles. Art Babbitt, the animator who designed the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Geppetto in Pinocchio (1940) animated the dancing mushrooms, and despite that “dance” only be a couple of minutes long, it is perhaps the most memorable in The Nutcracker Suite.

The colour, changing scenery, and familiarity of the music of this sequence help to keep the viewer interested here.

STORY #3: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: DUKAS

Of all of the Fantasia sections, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is easily the most well-known to the general public, probably because it stars Mickey Mouse as the apprentice. It also popularised Dukas’ music. It helps that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is one of the more interesting segments, actually telling a complete story. It is definitely my favourite section.

It shows Mickey using a magical hat to bring a broom to life so that it will fetch water for Mickey who is so tired of doing his chores for the sorcerer. Eventually, things get out of hand though, as Mickey falls asleep and dreams that he is controlling the whole universe and all the oceans, clearly enjoying his power. When Mickey awakens, he finds that the room is flooded with water, and that he cannot stop the broom from collecting water. Mickey decides the best way to deal with the situation is to hack the unruly broom to pieces but that doesn’t work, and the wood shards come back to life, making more brooms than ever. They go back to collecting water and almost drown Mickey in the room. Finally, the sorcerer returns and is able to magic away all that water, though he is most annoyed at his apprentice. It’s a good thing this happened to a sorcerer who could magic all the water away; imagine the insurance documents we’d have to fill in if our basements flooded. I doubt many companies insure against enchanted brooms… On returning to the orchestra stage, we then see Mickey shake hands with conductor Leopold Stokowski.

This story is the one that began the whole production of Fantasia, as Walt Disney wanted to make a new short cartoon that highlighted Mickey Mouse as the star attraction he is, and to give him an opportunity to act more expressively than he had done in his short humorous cartoons.

Mickey is obviously “the apprentice” here, with the Sorcerer being given the named Yen Sid, which is “Disney” spelt backwards. He is a strict man and one that is easily irritated. The disapproving look that he gives Mickey at the end of the story, with that raised eyebrow, was supposedly meant to be an imitation of the same disapproving look Walt Disney had[2]!

Sorcerer Yen Sid first spoke in a 1971 episode of The Wonderful World of Disney, as Fantasia contains no dialogue within the animation. The episode was called “Disney on Parade” and the character was voiced by Michael Rye[3]. Yen Sid also appeared in other Disney projects, such as House of Mouse (2001-03), the video game franchises Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey, as well as in the interactive game Fantasia: Music Evolved.

STORY #4: THE RITE OF SPRING: STRAVINSKY

The Rite of Spring takes us through the origin of life on Earth, including the lifespan of dinosaurs. It begins by taking us through space, through the galaxy, before descending on Earth where volcanoes bubble, lava flows, and oceans cascade over the ground. Then, we see the dinosaurs, and how they live in this environment alongside each other. Obviously, things don’t remain harmonious when a Tyrannosaurus Rex comes in to terrorise all the other dinosaurs, and a battle ensues between it and a Stegosaurus, with the Stegosaurus ultimately losing… The whole ground dries up, leaving no food or water for the dinosaurs. Eventually, they all die. But there’s no meteor shower here to finish them off; they just collapse and become extinct.

Apparently, The Rite of Spring as a single short film was used as an educational film for school science classes in the 1950s and 1960s, which makes sense, as it is kind of informative. I, sadly, find the length of the short, at just over 20 minutes, to be too long, and as I’m not overly interested in dinosaurs, I don’t particularly like it, but many do find this section of Fantasia to be one of the best ones.

Without computer animation, the Disney artists and effects team had to work out how to show the earliest times on Earth in an effective way. For example, the smoke clouds were created by setting oily rags on fire, and putting paint pots upside down in water created some of the smoke patterns. This adds drama to the piece, and these effects do make the sequence look impressive. Disney also wanted to make the dinosaurs as realistic as possible, studying dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History for hours to get the visuals right. Some of the science is not quite accurate, with some of the dinosaur species not co-existing together in real-life as they do on screen, but that’s getting a bit picky[4]. 

As well as the subject matter of evolution being quite daring, the choice of music was too. Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” was first performed in 1913, making it one of the “newer” pieces of classical music within Fantasia, but there was also a riot at the premiere of Stravinsky’s music, this being one of the most famous scandals in the art world. Some of the audience did not like the piece, or the primitive dance numbers that were choreographed to go alongside it. It was a shock to see, but there were also political tensions around the time that no doubt inflamed the people’s actions[5].

STORY #5: INTERMISSION / MEET THE SOUNDTRACK

Following on from that, we get to the Intermission, or Meet the Soundtrack as this section is also known. It is by far the most random part of Fantasia, even more abstract than Toccata and Fugue, feeling completely unnecessary to the overall feature.

It involves a short “jam session” with some of the musicians before moving us on to meet ‘Soundtrack’, a vertical white line, who moves to mimic the different instruments being played. I suppose Disney wanted to show how they can give an inanimate object a personality, and to give more of an insight into the musicians and performers. Luckily, it’s not much to sit through, but I feel like just showing the movie’s title card and playing a piece of calming music would’ve been more fitting for an Intermission.  

STORY #6: THE PASTORAL SYMPHONY: BEETHOVEN

The Pastoral Symphony depicts creatures from Greek mythology, such as centaurs and “centaurettes”, the female version of centaurs, where Disney artists had to make a decision over how much of their uncovered “top halves” should be exposed, according to Ward Kimball, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, as well as cherubs and Pegasus horses, just going about their day, relaxing, flirting, falling in love. Bacchus, the God of Wine, then shows up, seemingly drunk, and they all have a party. That is, until a dark cloud comes over, bringing a storm to the area. It turns out that it is Zeus, wanting to ruin the party, seemingly for no reason, other than I guess he was bored or was in a mood because he wasn’t invited, so he begins to throw lightning bolts at everyone below him, causing them to flee in terror. A bolt hits a huge barrel of wine and it floods the place. Zeus has had enough of causing problems for the day, and goes back to his business. The next day, the sun is out and everyone gets back to enjoying themselves once more.

The Pastoral Symphony is the most colourful of the Fantasia pieces, with the artists being told to be as free and creative with colour as they could be. According to Disney legend, background painter Ray Huffine was annoyed one day at not being able to find the perfect colour for some aspects of the scenery in The Pastoral Symphony. As he pondered what to do, he opened up his lunch and found that his wife had packed him a jar of boysenberry jam. It gave him an idea – by putting a light wash of jam on the cel, he had found the perfect colour[6]! Originally, Pierné’s music “Cydalise” was going to be used to accompany this section, however, it was decided that they needed something bigger and more dramatic for the sequence, so went with Beethoven.

The Pastoral Symphony happens to be the most controversial sequence within Fantasia. That is because it clearly introduced two stereotypical and caricatured African-American centaurettes, who are maids to the white centaurettes. The first of these is called Sunflower, who could be seen shining the white centaurettes hooves, and braiding flowers into their hair. Later on, another Black centaurette named Atika, who looks almost identical to Sunflower other than the fact she was given a slightly different hairstyle, could be seen holding a garland of one of the centaurettes and following behind her, as though Atika was picking up the train of a wedding dress. Sunflower also appeared later, unrolling the red carpet for the god Bacchus and attempting to help him into his seat. By the 1960s, these characters had been edited out of the film in the rise of the Civil Rights movement[7].

STORY #7: DANCE OF THE HOURS: PONCHIELLI

Dance of the Hours is perhaps the most fun section of Fantasia, and it is also relatively short so that’s helpful if your attention begins to wane at this point, like mine does. It starts with ostriches dancing to signal the start of the day. By the afternoon, we then see hippos dancing in the late day sun. In the evening, elephants can be seen dancing in the sunset; and then, the alligators appear in the dark of night, seemingly looking like they are up to no good, but one alligator dances with a huge hippo that he loves dearly. The piece ends with a big group number with all of the animals appearing.

Dance of the Hours was meant to be a parody of the highbrow dance numbers that had begun to become an essential part of motion pictures at the time. Although I do not know what films had been used as inspiration for this parody, I am well aware that many movie musicals of the 1960s have moments like this, where there is an overly long, largely unnecessary dance number that appears towards the end of the film, breaking up the main storyline, so I think I can understand this parody! Ponchielli’s music, the Act 3 finale of the opera La Gioconda, is also a familiar piece of music, so that contributed to the joke.

Since this is predominately a sequence of ballet dancing, animators studied real ballet dancers to get a sense of what accurate ballet dance steps would look like. They then used those movements to animate these animals as ballet dancers, to make a realistic, but comic, ballet. It is funny to see some of the least graceful creatures in the animal kingdom doing one of the most elegant dance styles in the world[8].

STORY #8: NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN / AVE MARIA: MUSSORGSKY / SCHUBERT

Night on Bald Mountain / Ave Maria, the final sequence of Fantasia, was envisioned as a classic take on the battle between good versus evil, and light versus dark.

It begins with the bat-like demon Chernabog summoning witches and evil spirits on Halloween night as he sits atop his mountain, overlooking a village. He begins to sacrifice some of these evil beings into the fiery pit of the mountain. Chernabog is them defeated by the next morning’s sunrise, cowering away from the light, and concealing himself into the face of the mountain again. Church bells ring as a procession of figures walk to see the sunrise in a perfect contrast to the horror just witnessed.

Animator Bill Tytla was the leading figure on this sequence for Fantasia, animating Chernabog, who was based on the God of the Night from Slavic mythology. Because of Chernabog’s status as one of Disney’s most powerful and terrifying villains, Night on Bald Mountain is regularly referenced by Disney on Halloween, making this another popular segment of Fantasia. Chernabog is also part of the Disney Villains franchise, appearing occasionally for Halloween events, as well as in the nighttime show Fantasmic! Chernabog is also a key villain in the Disney fiction series Kingdom Keepers. Although I find Chernabog and this whole story to be quite frightening and disturbing, I do like the music here.

For the Ave Maria section, they had planned to use the horizontal multiplane camera to shoot the procession as one continuous shot, even though it took days to do this. On their first attempt, they discovered that one camera lens was wrong, so they had to start again. Their second attempt was then interrupted by an earthquake. It was third time lucky though, as the third attempt successfully completed the shot[9].

PRODUCTION

Fantasia was a passion project for Walt Disney. Walt wanted to show that music and animation could complement each other, and that the two forms of art worked well together.

Previously, music in animated short cartoons had only been used to accompany the story or to highlight certain actions. This all changed with the Silly Symphonies, the short cartoons that the Disney Studios developed throughout the 1930s. One song in particular became very popular after the release of a short cartoon, and that was “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” from Three Little Pigs (1933), which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1934.

From this, the Disney Studios used music and songs to drive the narrative forward for their first full-length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). This soundtrack also became very popular with the public. But this time, Walt knew they could do something different – pair classical music with animated stories.

Fantasia began its life as just one short film. Mickey Mouse had been Disney’s star character, however, with the introduction of the easily-irritated, funny Donald Duck, Mickey’s star power was starting to decline, and it was becoming a struggle to find stories for Mickey to be a part of. Walt didn’t want his main creation to be sidelined, and he happened to come across the story of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

This story started out as a poem by Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, which was written in 1797, telling the tale of a sorcerer who leaves his apprentice with chores to do, however, the apprentice, fed up with having to do everything by hand, enchants a broom to do his work for him, but since the apprentice is not full trained in magic, when things get out of hand, he is powerless to stop it. Eventually, the sorcerer returns and breaks the spell. French composer Paul Dukas used this poem as the basis for his classical piece “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, which was first performed in Paris in 1897.

Walt felt that this story was perfect for Mickey and the animators set about animating the sequence. The animators began by updating Mickey’s look for this as he needed to be more expressive in the face and eyes since there would be no dialogue. The biggest change was in Mickey’s eyes. Previously, Mickey had only black oval shapes for eyes, but the animators decided to put pupils into those shapes, giving him eyes truer to real-life. The redesign of Mickey was led by animator Fred Moore, who had supervised animation on the dwarfs in Snow White (1937), and went on to animate Timothy Q. Mouse for Dumbo (1941).

As development on this piece was ongoing, Walt Disney happened to meet Leopold Stokowski for dinner. Stokowski was one of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century and was a big celebrity, even outside of the classical music world. He became the director and conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912, and was famed for his recordings and radio appearances from the 1910s. He appeared in two films in 1937, The Big Broadcast of 1937 and One Hundred Men and a Girl, and even appeared on the cover of Time for the 28th April 1930 issue, and again on the 18th November 1940 issue to promote Fantasia[10]. Stokowski was very interested in Walt’s idea of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice short cartoon and offered to conduct the music for it[11].

Stokowski and Walt assembled a 100-piece orchestra to record The Sorcerer’s Apprentice score, and the recording took place in January 1938 at the Pathé Studios in Culver City, allegedly between midnight and 3am, with excessive coffee drinking keeping everyone awake and alert. Roy O. Disney, Walt’s brother, was very concerned about how much time, effort, and money was being spent on this one short film. He knew that they’d never make their money back on this film, so Walt then decided that they’d put lots of similar short cartoons together to make a feature film, a concert of classical music with animated sequences. This project was then referred to as The Concert Feature for a while.

Deems Taylor, another famous celebrity of the music world at the time, having been a composer, radio commentator and music critic, was brought in to help Walt and Stokowski decide on the musical selections for The Concert Feature, alongside Disney story writers Joe Grant and Dick Huemer who went on to co-write Dumbo (1941). Taylor also appeared as the Master of Ceremonies in the final film. Many selections were considered and then discarded for various reasons, such as “Swan of Tuonela” by Sibelius and “Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner”, but eight pieces of music were eventually chosen for the film, and were recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra with Stokowski as conductor.

It was later deemed that The Concert Feature was quite a mundane title for what would surely become a masterpiece. The name Fantasia was chosen for the film, as the word means a free-form piece of music, matching the imaginative nature of the movie.

Since Fantasia was always meant to be like a concert, Walt Disney wanted a roadshow attraction where audiences would have to buy a ticket to have a reserved seat like it was an actual concert or play. Two shows of Fantasia would run per day. As RKO, Disney’s movie distributor at the time, didn’t like the expense of this plan and didn’t believe it would work, Disney had to do it themselves.

They designed beautiful programmes and even wanted to change the typical sound system to suit their movie. Walt and Stokowski said the sound system had to be better than anything that existed at the time. They wanted the music to surround the audience and so Fantasound was created to enhance the movie, basically an early version of surround sound[12]. Walt didn’t want to just stop their either; he wanted his film to be in 3D and even had the idea of trying to get perfume scents to waft into the theatres at certain points during The Nutcracker Suite. Stokowski thought gunpowder would be a good smell for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Neither of these actually happened, however, we now know that 3D media is now quite commonplace and Smell-O-Vision continues to be developed.

RECEPTION

Fantasia first opened on 13th November 1940 at the Broadway Theatre in New York City, which happened to be the same theatre where the short cartoon Steamboat Willie (1928) debuted. The Fantasia roadshow later moved on to other areas, including San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ premiere had been held in December 1937.

Fantasia only managed to reach a select number of people as only 12 venues were fitted with the Fantasound system. This inconsistent release of the show hurt Fantasia’s reach, and with World War II in Europe, the movie was not going to be able to reach the overseas market. Not only that but many weren’t even interested in watching the film, since it was not an animated fairy tale, like Snow White or Pinocchio (1940), which audiences had come to know, like, and expect from the Disney Studios. Music critics didn’t like Fantasia at all, feeling that the movie ruined the classical pieces with its rearrangements, but film critics seemed to like the idea of the movie, although some of the animated sequences were not as appealing as others. Others said it was pretentious.

From April 1941, RKO took over the distribution of the film, cutting the movie down from its two-hour runtime to 80 minutes, editing out some of the more abstract, less appealing segments such as Toccata and Fugue, but it still failed to take off[13].

The reaction to Fantasia was definitely a disappointment to Walt, as he had put a lot of energy into his project. It was clearly an experiment from the Disney Studios, but Walt had hoped for more of a positive reaction anyway. Despite the lack of commercial and financial success, Fantasia did receive two honorary Academy Awards at the 1942 ceremony: one to Walt, William E. Garity and RCA for the development of Fantasound, and the second to Stokowski and his orchestra for the creation of a new form of visualised music. Segments from Fantasia were then later used in some of Walt’s television series in the 1950s, and the movie finally turned a profit in the 1960s thanks to some clever ‘psychedelic’ advertising, fitting of the time period, after being reissued theatrically every few years[14].

Fantasia slowly but surely gained popularity over the decades and more contemporary reviews of Fantasia are generally in agreement that this film is iconic and a real Disney classic, recognising the ambitiousness of the project.

LEGACY

It was hoped that Fantasia could constantly be added to, with new sections replacing older sections, giving movie-goers a new experience each time the film was re-released.

Because of the disappointing reaction to Fantasia, that didn’t happen, despite the fact some segments were already being worked on. These included a segment using Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”, another set to Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf”, and one using Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”. Luckily, during the late 1940s, a similar format of film to Fantasia was being created at the Disney Studios, now known as the “package features”. These featured animated short cartoons set to music that were packaged together to make a feature film, despite none of them being at all related to each other. “Peter and the Wolf” ended up in Make Mine Music (1946), with a swing version of “Flight of the Bumblebee” becoming Bumble Boogie in Melody Time (1948). “Clair de Lune” was meant to be used for the Blue Bayou segment of Make Mine Music, but a new song replaced it in the final film.

In the late 1970s, the idea of making a new Fantasia was revived by veteran Disney animators Mel Shaw and Woolie Reitherman. This new Fantasia was to be called Musicana and would have featured music and stories from other countries. Mel Shaw had been recruited by Walt Disney to do development work on Bambi (1942), and left the Studios shortly after to enlist in the army. He returned to the Disney Studios in 1975, where he did a lot of development work for movies at that time, including The Rescuers (1977).

Pieces of music were chosen, and stories were created for them. Some of these included a sequence of frogs playing jazz music in the Southern US, using a song by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong; a story based on Aztec and Incan folklore set to a song by Peruvian soprano singer Yma Sumac; a Mickey Mouse short retelling the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Emperor’s Nightingale, though it is unclear what music was planned to go alongside it; another using Sibelius’ “Finlandia” about an Ice god and a Sun god battling; and one more on the Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves tale, using the piece “Scheherazade” by Rimsky-Korsakov. Despite all this development work, the Studios passed on the project[15].

On screen, Disney Animation later did finally do a follow-up film to Fantasia, called Fantasia 2000 (1999), which I feel is more interesting and accessible to modern audiences; I also appreciate its shorter runtime of around 75 minutes.

In recent years, Disney have gone back to their idea of making Fantasia into a concert experience. This is the touring concert Disney Fantasia: Live in Concert, where a live orchestra plays the classical pieces of music, whilst a screen shows the animated segments. The programme contains a mixture of sequences from both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, although the programme seems to change. It is unclear to me when Disney Fantasia: Live in Concert first began, with the earliest date I can find going back to 2012. It is currently still touring in 2024.

Another film released by Disney which is vaguely related to Fantasia is the live-action film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010), starring Jay Baruchel as “the apprentice”, Dave, and Nicholas Cage as “the sorcerer”, Balthazar. Although it takes its name from the Mickey Mouse short within Fantasia, and features a brief scene parodying the famous cartoon, except this time with the added danger of mixing electricity and buckets of water, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is based more on the legend of the magician Merlin, and has nothing to do with Yensid or Mickey Mouse. It’s a good film though.

At the Disney Parks, I was surprised to find that Fantasia is actually represented in all of the international Disney resorts, albeit some in quite small ways. For example, at Disneyland Paris, you can find two miniature scenes recreated from the film during Le Pays des Contes de Fées, the Paris version of Disneyland’s Storybook Land Canal Boats: one of these is Mount Olympus from The Pastoral Symphony, and the other is from Night on Bald Mountain, with Chernabog sitting atop his castle, overlooking the village below. These scenes do not feature in Disneyland’s version of the ride. Outside of the entrance to Disneyland Paris, as well as the Disneyland Paris Hotel, there is also a small landscaped area titled Fantasia Gardens, featuring topiaries of some of the characters from the film. There used to be the Café Fantasia inside the hotel, a bar area with subtle references to the movie, however, that has been rethemed.

At Hong Kong Disneyland, there is another landscaped area called Fantasy Gardens, which, like Paris, is subtly themed to Fantasia, with topiaries of some of the film’s most well-known characters. Fantasy Gardens can be found in Fantasyland, and is also a character meet-and-greet location. At Tokyo Disneyland, at the Disney Ambassador Hotel, guests can stay in the Fantasia Suite, which is, again, subtly themed to the film.

The Shanghai Disneyland Hotel also has some Fantasia-themed areas, such as the quick-service food location Ballet Café, inspired by the Dance of the Hours sequence, and the bar and lounge area Bacchus Lounge, appropriately named after the God of Wine who appears in The Pastoral Symphony. Inside Shanghai Disneyland, you can also find the Fantasia Carousel, which is a typical carousel that features the Pegasus horses from The Pastoral Symphony instead of normal horses. During their boat ride attraction Voyage to the Crystal Grotto, guests pass by a scene of Sorcerer Mickey attempting to control all those brooms with their buckets of water.

At Disneyland, there are a few references to Fantasia. One of these is the Primeval World section of the Disneyland Railroad. Although not specifically themed to The Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia, it is believed that the Primeval World scene, originally created for the Magic Skyway attraction at the 1964-65 New York World’s fair, was inspired by the battle between the T-Rex and Stegosaurus in Fantasia, a scene animated by Woolie Reitherman, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men[16].The Christmas version of the World of Color nighttime show, World of Color – Season of Light, features a Fantasia section, utilising “The Nutcracker Suite” music, as well as projecting scenes of the Dance of the Hours ballet onto the water screens, and the Wondrous Journeys fireworks feature some clips of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. At Disney California Adventure Park, you can even eat at the Carthay Circle Restaurant, a fine dining experience residing inside a reproduction of the actual Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, where Fantasia was shown. At the Disneyland Hotel, some of the new 1- and 2- Bedroom Villas have been themed to Fantasia, using artwork from the movie to decorate. The hotel also has Disney’s Fantasia Shop.

Currently at Walt Disney World Resort, the most interesting reference to Fantasia can be found at the Fantasia Gardens Mini Golf course, located behind the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resorts. The 18-hole miniature golf course is elaborately themed to the movie, with sections of the course being themed to Toccata and Fugue, The Nutcracker Suite, The Pastoral Symphony, Dance of the Hours, and finally The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Clever verses introduce each hole, and you’ll find a few surprises as you make your way through the course. I love a good mini golf course, and this is one of the best ones I’ve done. On the opposite side of Fantasia Gardens, you can find the Fantasia Fairways, which is a more difficult course and does not feature much theming, only that the hole names are named after characters or sections from the film.

Some of the Walt Disney World Resort hotels also feature theming to Fantasia. One of these is the All-Star Movies Resort, where one of the resort pools and one of their hotel buildings is themed to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. At the Riviera Resort, the children’s water play area, named S’il Vous Play, is themed to the characters from the Dance of the Hours section of Fantasia. At the Contemporary Resort, their main shop is named Fantasia Market and they also have the Fantasia Ballroom meeting space.

All the Disney Parks, except Shanghai Disneyland, have the 4D show Mickey’s PhilarMagic. This is based on the story of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, except Mickey uses the hat to conduct the orchestra. During the story of Mickey’s PhilarMagic, guests follow Donald Duck as he goes through different Disney animated films to retrieve the hat that he used without permission, finding the magic too difficult to control – much like Mickey in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence. It also features a small section of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, where the brooms splash water onto the guests.

There were plenty of other references to Fantasia that have since left the Disney Parks. One of these was a small section of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice being shown during The Great Movie Ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios; another is the huge Sorcerer’s Hat that was placed in front of the Chinese Theater also at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the 100 Years of Magic celebration in 2001. It became the park’s icon, until 2015 when it was removed, to the delight of some guests who felt it was a bit of an eyesore.

During the SpectroMagic parade that no-one seems to talk about for some reason, preferring to discuss the Main Street Electrical Parade that I certainly do not prefer over SpectroMagic despite some of those “SpectroMen” creeping me out, there was a Chernabog float. The creature would open and close his wings either to reveal or conceal himself in the mountain. It was a really cool float. There were also other floats featuring the dancing ostriches from Dance of the Hours and elements of The Pastoral Symphony. The SpectroMagic parade ran from 1991 to 1999, and then again from 2001 to 2010 at the Walt Disney World Resort.

There were even meant to be Fantasia attractions that sadly never came to be. One of these would have been housed within the Beastly Kingdom that never arrived at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, probably due to budgetary reasons. This land, that would have featured attractions themed to mythical and fantastical creatures, was going to have the Fantasia Gardens boat ride, a musical boat ride themed to Fantasia, passing by scenes of Mount Olympus and all the creatures from The Pastoral Symphony sequence, as well as going past a recreation of the animal ballet from Dance of the Hours[17].

At Disneyland, there were plans for a Fantasia boat ride to replace the Disneyland Fantasyland Motor Boats. It would have featured music and scenes from the films, using “water sculptures”. This concept was soon abandoned after Imagineers realised that noise from the nearby Autopia would drown out the soundtrack. This idea was then reconfigured to be a potential walkthrough attraction for Walt Disney World to replace the Swan Boats that operated in and around the Magic Kingdom hub and the Swiss Family Treehouse from 1973 to 1983. They wanted to fill this new area with topiaries of the Fantasia characters, but it was deemed too expensive and never proceeded, although Fantasia Gardens areas did come to be in some of the international parks in some form or another[18].

For character meet-and-greets, at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, you can actually meet Sorcerer Mickey, at Meet Disney Stars at Red Carpet Dreams, located just outside of the ABC Commissary quick-service location; Minnie Mouse also meets here. It is unlikely that any other Fantasia characters will be available to meet anywhere else, although Hyacinth Hippo and Madame Upanova Ostrich have been known to come out for Special Events at the Disney Parks. Sorcerer Mickey is not a usual meet-and-greet character, but the nighttime show Fantasmic! that currently operates at Disneyland and Walt Disney World does feature Sorcerer Mickey briefly for the grand finale.

Within merchandising, there are plenty of items featuring Sorcerer Mickey, such as plush toys, figurines, and pins, with the character also featured in Disney video games, such as Disney Infinity and Epic Mickey. Outside of that, any other Fantasia character merchandise will be harder to find, especially outside of a movie milestone anniversary, however, for the Disney100 Decades Collection for the 1940s, five of the Pegasus horses were released as plush toys.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Walt Disney struggled to get over the lack of financial success of Fantasia, but truly believed in the creation. The original plan had been for Fantasia to constantly have additional sections added, and others taken away, so it could be re-released year-on-year and always be a new experience. This never materialised during Walt’s lifetime. It wasn’t until the late 1990s when work on Fantasia 2000 would begin, thanks to Roy E. Disney, Walt’s nephew.

I am glad that Fantasia 2000 was released as a homage to the amount of effort and work that went into Fantasia, and to keep Walt’s dream “alive” in some way. I can see exactly what the Disney Studios wanted to achieve, and it did push creative boundaries. It also took courage to do something so “out there” and different, risking the reputation of the Studios. They survived the lukewarm reception, and difficult global events, and pressed on.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[2] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[3] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Fantasia (1940), pp. 7-9.

[4] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[5] Credit: Author Unknown, ‘This is what REALLY happened at The Rite of Spring riot in 1913’, ClassicFM.com, 15th October 2018.

[6] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[7] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Lost “Fantasia”: The Disappearance of Sunflower’, CartoonResearch.com, 27th March 2020.

[8] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[9] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[10] Credit: Jim Fanning, ‘Fifteen Fascinating Facts About Fantasia’, D23.com, date unknown.

[11] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[12] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[13] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[14] Credit: Jim Fanning, ‘Fifteen Fascinating Facts About Fantasia’, D23.com, date unknown.

[15] Credit: Disney, Musicana: The Fantasia Sequel That Never Was (2010).

[16] Credit: Jim Fanning, ‘Fifteen Fascinating Facts About Fantasia’, D23.com, date unknown.

[17] Credit: Jim Korkis, Disney Never Lands (2019), ‘Beastly Kingdom’, pp. 55-60.

[18] Credit: Michael, ‘Neverworlds – The Magic Kingdom’s Fantasia Gardens’, ProgressCityUSA.com, 19th June 2009.

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