The new version first opened officially yesterday at Shanghai Disneyland, where it plays as Soarin' Over the Horizon. Unique to this show is the different ending in each park. The DCA version I saw retains the flight down Main Street USA in Disneyland, while the Shanghai version shows that city and the Epcot version visits that park.
(To clarify: It's a reshot flight down Main Street for the DCA version. But it's still Main Street. And as much as I like that flight down Main Street, it's still weird for the climax of a theme park attraction to be a scene from... another theme park. With DCA's beautiful new Buena Vista Street and Carthay Circle, California Adventure could have provided a delightful ending for its own Soarin' film. I'd even have preferred it to the rather bland Epcot finale.)
The concept is the same here as in the old Soarin' — we're "flying" on hang gliders above famous and interesting sights. Even the pre-flight instruction video is the same. (And yes, you'll still get to enjoy a variety of scents while flying.) While the concept traps the camera in the air and prevents us from getting too close to or lingering too long on any one subject, freeing us to travel the globe instead of just around the Golden State allows us to visit many more compelling locations. Here's the video of the DCA show, with location spoilers in the next paragraph.
The new show opens with the Matterhorn and includes glimpses at the Arctic, the Sydney Opera House, Neuschwanstein Castle, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza, the Taj Mahal, Monument Valley (look for the hidden Mickey!), Fiji, the Iguazu Falls in Paraguay, and the Eiffel Tower, as well as the local finale.
If there's a missed opportunity here, it's that Soarin' Around the World uses the same soundtrack as the original film. One of the reasons why Epcot's Impressions de France sets the standard for theme park travel films is its enthralling classical score. While the repertoire of California-inspired classical music is pretty thin (the Korngold violin concerto? Maybe?), retheming Soarin' to the entire world opens the entirety of classical scores for potential use. How much more thrilling this could have been if we could hear music as memorable as these vistas on our five-minute journey around the world.
And that opening shot of the snow-covered Matterhorn made me wonder,if just for a spilt second, if Paramount actually filmed the new Soarin' film.
Still, it's a fun ride, and it's nice for loyal Disney theme park fans to have an attraction such as this updated with a fresh show.
You Might Also Like:
Soaring Over California fit California Adventure like a glove; the new version has nothing to do with California.
Soarin Over California emphasized the incredible diversity of California's natural landscapes. The new version mostly ignores nature's beauty for the sake of man-made objects. The Great Wall is not great. Most of it was reconstructed back in the 1980's. It's alright but hardly spectacular. They should call it the Alright Wall of China.
And Jerry Goldsmith composed the musical score especially for California, not for China or India or France! Sticking Goldsmith's score onto the new version lacks any emotional context. Apparently Iger was too cheap to hire a new composer to give the new version its own score.
Say what you will about Michael Eisner, but he was a man of great taste. Eisner would never have allowed such a half-baked version of Soarin' to see the light of day. He had some pride.
I'll be honest and say I prefer the old movie and soundtrack.
And Disney just shouldn't try to wrap up a travel film with the Eiffel Tower, anyway. It just reminds the audience that Soarin' isn't even in the same league as Impressions de France.
-The footage is great, and I think there is a nice selection of locations featured. However, I do wish they had either filmed a large number of sequences with random destinations in each flight or at least added a few additional US sequences for the US versions.
-The transitions sometimes work and sometimes don't, but at least they tried to make something better than the straight cuts before.
-It would be interesting to see how many CGI enhancements were added in this ride. There were a few in the original, but it appears more were added in this version and some are really obvious (or Disney just got super lucky with filming). I wish they had done less and only used CGI where absolutely necessary.
-There is no logical sense to the order of scenes. This is one of the things I liked with the original ride...you went roughly north to south through California. On this, you're hopping from Switzerland to the Arctic to Australia to Germany and so on.
-The music is NOT the same soundtrack, it is a new soundtrack using the same core theme. Personally, I think this was the right way to go. Soarin' had one of the best scores ever created for a theme park attraction and it was around long enough that the music was well known.
It's hard to say without riding the ride, but my hunch is that this film is good but won't become as classic as the original ride film. I'm glad that they updated the attraction and I'm excited for the new version, it just looks like they went 80% of the way and called it good enough. Particularly in California, I think random sequences are necessary to maintain long-term popularity of this attraction under the Around the World concept.
I actually like the score of Soarin. It is memorable and brings the old to the new.
I am a little worried about the CGI. The whole point of Soarin is that it shows the natural wonders of the World (or California).
Looking forward to experiencing this, but, unfortunately, that might only be in October of next year.
(Also, those scene transitions were a little too much. Many of the other riders with me kept ducking at every scene transition. Maybe they were trying to recreate the golf ball part from the first one with the bird, the kite, the plane, the water, and the sand, but it just got annoying after a while.)
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
