This summer, the global tourism industry’s focus has been firmly on Orlando’s grand openings, but California’s attractions have been making news of their own with new offerings tied to milestone anniversaries. Last weekend, I hopped aboard one of Breeze Airways’ final flights of the season from our Orange County to the other one, and logged over 50,000 steps while visiting four theme parks within 48 hours in order to bring back this report on things Disney and Universal should bring to their East Coast resorts.
Walt Disney: A Magical Life
When Disneyland first announced that they would be celebrating the park’s 70th birthday by resurrecting its late founder in audio-animatronic form, I was among the many fans (and some vocal Disney family members) to reflexively recoil from the idea of a Robo-Walt. The initial video clips released of the new figure, which quickly inspired mocking memes online, did little to assuage my apprehension, and I entered Main Street U.S.A.’s Opera House with low expectations.
Luckily, the pre-show displays in the lobby softened my mood with fascinating site plans charting the park’s development, original furniture from Walt’s private firehouse apartment and other nostalgia-stirring artifacts. Once inside the ornate theater ordinarily devoted to Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln (which will eventually return to run in rotation with Walt), guests watch a re-edited version of One Man’s Dream, the documentary that’s been running for years at Orlando’s Hollywood Studios, before the curtain rises on the most advanced artificial human ever built.
During the three or so minutes he’s onstage, Disney delivers a few anecdotes and well-worn catchphrases from a replica of his Burbank office, leaning casually against his desk; when he takes a step forward, his weight shifts in a believable way that EPCOT’s “walking” Ben Franklin could only dream of. At moments, his body movements and physical mannerisms manage to emerge out of the uncanny valley, and the micro-expressions around his gleaming eyes are simply mesmerizing.
Unfortunately, while Walt looks far better in person than I feared, those mocking videos accurately reflect the figure’s two severe but fixable flaws. His voice sounds over-processed with digital cleaning, lacking his trademark rasp and sibilance; and his familiar face is too wide. If Disney can only dial back their ProTools filter and dig up legendary sculptor Blaine Gibson — or at least get whoever fixed Trump’s face for the Hall of Presidents — I’d fully embrace including an updated version in the recently announced redevelopment of DHS’ Animation Courtyard.
Disney Starlight Parade vs. Paint the Night
Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom hadn’t debuted an all-new nighttime parade since the early 1990s, so my hopes were sky-high for the July 20 opening of Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away, especially after experiencing Tokyo Disneyland’s standard-setting DreamLights last fall. Sadly, seeing both Starlight and the returning Paint the Night at Disneyland days apart made pointedly clear what a disappointing step backward the new procession is from one designed a decade ago.
To start on a positive note, Starlight’s 10 main float units — which feature modern-day franchises like Wish, Encanto, Frozen, Coco and Moana, along with a menagerie of OG characters — enjoy an impressive sense of scale, and indeed do sparkle with an uncountable constellation of color-changing LED lights. Oddly, those color changes don’t have the same dramatic impact as the iconic chromatic transformations SpectroMagic pioneered over a generation ago, and aside from a few animated props, none of Starlight’s floats can compare with Paint the Night’s kinetic special effects. More crucially, Starlight locks its float-bound performers into brief pre-recorded lines and has noticeably fewer dancers between units, resulting in much less audience interaction.
Finally — and most fatally — while I still have tunes like “Baroque Hoedown” and “When Can I See You Again?” forever embedded in my brain — the Starlight score surprisingly lacks any memorable connective melodic thread, relying instead on Electrical Parade fan service to give the ending some emotional impact. The best thing that could happen to Florida would be for Disneyland to ship us Paint the Night after its anniversary party ends next year.
Universal Studios Hollywood’s Mega Movie Summer
Universal Orlando has been teasing longtime fans of late with cryptic construction signs referencing Ghostbusters and other classic attractions, but aside from the imminent extinction of Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit (rest in pieces), the rest of Universal Studios Florida is looking a bit neglected compared to its elder sibling. I was only inside the Hollywood park’s gates to experience its Mega Movie Summer event for a few hours, but I clocked a fistful of features — not counting the crazy-looking Fast & Furious roller coaster opening next year — that I’d love to see Orlando import as fast as possible.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jaws, both parks offered special food and photo ops, but USH got the bigger boat with hilarious interactive Chief Brody and Quint meet-and-greets, plus a quick-service lobster roll with more tail meat than Lombardi’s. Even better was the opportunity to pose with Back to the Future‘s Marty McFly and Einstein the dog alongside an immaculate DeLorean time machine, while Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride boogied at the nearby nightly dance party. Hollywood no longer has a Frog Choir outside of Christmas season, but their Wizarding World’s Triwizard Spirit Rally is far better than IOA’s; and watching the award-winning Waterworld stunt show during a rare nighttime performance, I wondered why every equivalent stadium at Universal Orlando has sat empty for eons.
Topping off my wish list is for Orlando’s Transformers ride to get the same TLC that Hollywood’s just received, in the form of razor-sharp new video projectors. At points they are almost too bright and colorful compared to the surrounding sets, and the final screen of Optimus Prime has added an odd jitter to its pre-existing squinching error. But I’ll happily take those bugs over the dim, blurry mess that our version has degenerated into.
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2025.