You have to love any inanimate object that causes people to treat it like an old friend. The iconic IllumiNations Earth Globe has long made its home along the shores of World Showcase. We saw the famed Earth Globe, IllumiNations' centerpiece, begin its final journey back to the shores of the lagoon and people were literally waving to it and saying, 'Thank you!' That has always been the golden IllumiNations rule: let the hordes leave and enjoy the calm and serenity a mostly empty World Showcase offers you at the end of the night. 3 – Earth GlobeĪs my sons and I meandered around World Showcase on our way back to Future World, we made sure to take our time. It's a beautiful piece of music that, I'm sure, has had an emotional impact on thousands of guests over the years and I'm certainly one of them. To me, it always walked the fine line between poignancy and over-sentimentality just perfectly. The lyrics to 'We Go On' were written by Don Dorsey, producer and director of IllumiNations, and the musical accompaniment was composed by Gavin Greenway. Only Disney could write a great song specifically for a fireworks show, one that actually sticks in your head and is something you want to hear and never get sick of. The atmosphere in World Showcase is pretty hard to top, but this music unified all the nations, which was, of course, the whole point of the show hearing it used to get me very excited that IllumiNations was beginning soon. If you were a regular visitor, you knew what that meant and it really did build up the anticipation to the big show.Īs the sun sets, the music begins to change and the entire lagoon begins to become one. World Showcase always has music playing as you stroll through the countries, but that all changed when the torches were lit and you would begin to hear the same music no matter where you went around the lagoon. Something that was unique about IllumiNations was that it had its own pre-show music. Why exactly? Let's take a closer look with my Top 5 Things I'll miss about IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth. In short, IlluminNations was one of those life affirming things and it was, quite possibly, in my humble opinion, one of the best 14 minutes of entertainment that Disney has ever produced. It was, for many of us, this writer included, the pinnacle of all that we love about Walt Disney World. The show represented the spirit of Epcot. Those of us who have been making Walt Disney World visits a significant part of our lives and, for that matter, even those who don't, have all been blown away by IllumiNations. It was such a big hit that when the millennium celebration concluded, the show was kept in place and closed one day shy of it's 20 birthday. Then named IllumiNations 2000: Reflections of Earth, the award winning show dazzled guests with music, fireworks, lasers, water fountains, lighting, flames, torches and, of course, the spinning, floating Earth globe. The Epcot nighttime spectacular first ran on Octoas part of Walt Disney World's celebration of the new millennium. I would coincidentally be there and be able to give it a proper goodbye. As fate would have it, the final IllumiNations was scheduled for this past Monday, September 30. They happily obliged and we began the process of planning yet another Disney vacation. A trip to Germany wasn't feasible for all of us, so the obvious thing to do was to book a long weekend at Walt Disney World for me and my twin teenage boys. I realized back when she signed up that she'd be gone for about a week, right around the time the boys and I would be off from school for a four-day weekend courtesy of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. My indefatigable wife ran the Berlin Marathon this past weekend. Now, I didn't plan to be down here for this momentous event. The big difference was, this time, it was the last ever presentation of IllumiNations. Our day ended, like every Disney day should, by watching the glorious IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth. We took an afternoon break to swim at the Alligator Bayou quiet pool, and then headed over to Epcot's World Showcase for some delectable delights from the Food and Wine Festival. Six hours later, we were headed out of Pandora. We started off the day at Animal Kingdom on Kilimanjaro Safaris.

My boys are asleep in their beds, conked out after another amazing but exhausting marathon day in the parks. Stacy Aswad is on the television in an endless loop - it's the only thing allowed on TV while we're down here. Right now, I'm sitting in my room in the Alligator Bayou section of Disney's Port Orleans Riverside resort tapping away at the laptop. In all the years of writing here on MousePlanet, going back about 11 years, I've never actually written an article while I'm in Walt Disney World, until now that is.

Illuminations epcot tracks