There is a new king of nighttime spectaculars. And it's music to a theme park fan's ears.
Universal Orlando tonight debuted its newest nighttime spectacular, CineSational: A Symphonic Spectacular. As the name implies, this is a love letter to the sweeping, symphonic musical scores of Universal's movies. But it's much more than an aural performance. CineSational fills your vision with almost every medium in nighttime spectacular entertainment, including fireworks, fountains, lasers, water screen projections, and - for the first time in a Universal Studios Florida lagoon show - drones.
Starting with the sounds of an orchestra tuning, CineSational begins with an overture before leading us through a medley of familiar tunes from multiple Universal films. The addition of drones provides another dimension that literally helps elevate this production over previous Universal lagoon shows.
I'm not gonna lie, seeing a giant drone Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man loom over the park during the Ghostbusters segment got me. Ultimately, though, it's the music that makes this show so emotional. It's a masterful work of arrangement by Micheal Aiello's team at Universal and its partners in producing this show.
In the end, it might be the best nighttime spectacular I've seen. If you are visiting Universal, please go see CineSational.
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The USF lagoon show has always been a solid homage to the company's movie history. Unfortunately, the design of the space has always made the shows difficult to watch and enjoy to the point where most guests staying late, who are typically more interested in getting in a few last rides for closing time, just skip it. I hope this new show gains some traction with the fans and doesn't end up the same as every previous incarnation of USF lagoon show, discontinued after a few months.
I'm not watching the video but from the pictures it looks amazing and I can't wait to see it! I really don't like the name of the show but as good as it looks I think it can be overlooked.
I really do hope Epic fixes the viewing aspect of shows. IOA's is truly terrible for that and Studios all though much better then IOA still not that great. Central Park is not big enough for the amount of people that want the front facing view. At least when its full you can go to the sides of the lagoon but for the Hogwart's show your just stuck.
Universal’s nighttime shows have never been massive crowd draws (they can’t have too many fireworks due to residential areas nearby), but I think this is a solid improvement. I find the water projections much too blurry (like half the time I don’t know what I’m looking at) and there really are very few fireworks). The drones were great though. So I’d give it like 7.5 out of 10, but it’s sort of a one-and-done for me. The crowd I was with seemed to love it.
That was my complaint with Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios the water screens are never that good. That show was a dud for me and had I watched an online video of it probably would have skipped it!
saw it last night and it is definitely a major improvement over what they've put on in the past. i agree some of the water images were blurry and hard to make out unless you were front and center and there was talk of no drones due to windy conditions but they did get them flying, thankfully. maybe the old miami vice stunt show was better but this is definitely the best lagoon show i've seen since then.
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They included Universal Monsters and King Kong! I love it. This is a much more impressive show than I was expecting. Now hopefully people will be able to figure out when it's playing and how to get there.