Disneyland Paris's new night-time spectacular, Disney Tales of Magic, debuted on January 10, 2025 and includes beloved figures from Disney and Pixar. Designed by Tim Lutkin with Adrien Mourey, and also directed by Lutkin for Disney Imagineering, it is the first night show to integrate the Main Street, USA area of the park.
Production and lighting designer Lutkin has won multiple international awards including a Tony for Life of Pi on Broadway and Laurence Olivier Awards for Life of Pi and Chimera in London. He has worked with Walt Disney Imagineering since 2015.
Lutkin and Mourey's session at Showlight covered the highlights of the show and the inspiration behind it.
Lutkin described the process of coming up with the concept. "At Disney, we have a "bake off" where people are invited to submit a concept and mine was chosen." He had been thinking about it on a flight to NYC and realized that a visit to a Disney park is not just about what you see, but what you feel, and the guests all leave saying that it feels magical. Lutkin said, "Magic is felt, not just seen, and I thought how can we tap into that?"
Lutkin explained, "Tales of Magic tells the story of how Disney was reliant from the 1940s to 1960s on memorable images—changing the color of the dress in Sleeping Beauty and Mary Poppins flying, but after that there is a shift into experiences. In the show, we open with visual magic then about three minutes in we say that not all magic is something you see with your eyes, and then we go on a journey and talk about the magic of love, and also of loss and remembrance, and taking a journey."
There were challenges. He commented, "It was tricky to create a 22-minute show when all the Disney executives and marketing wanted a different IP in the show, and we do feel pressure from the fans who always want something new."
Lutkin brought on board Adrien Mourey, a designer with the Show Technical Development Department at Disneyland Paris who has worked in live entertainment since he was a child actor. At Disneyland Paris, he is part of the team designing the lights, lasers, fountain effects, and drones for shows and parades. It could have been difficult, as they are both lighting designers, but Mourey said that working with a director who knows the technical side was a different way to collaborate and it worked like 'magic.'
The designers had previously worked on Disney Dreams for the 20th anniversary of the park in 2012 and Disney Illuminations in 2017 using ten lights behind the castle and a lot of fireworks. For the 30th anniversary in 2022 and Bastille Day they used 1500 drones to pick out the Disney logo. Since then, they have tested ways to add new tools to light all of Main Street, which had not been part of the spectacle before, to extend the experience and surround the audience in an immersive show, adding fixtures on the roofs and pixel mapping the buildings to show beloved characters including Mulan, Lilo and Stitch, Pinochio, and Cinderella.
Lutkin said, "There were lots of lasers and a huge new video mapping package and when I presented the show to Disney executives they were worried that with all the color on Main Street it would distract spectators and disconnect them from the castle so we had to add visual guides up to it." They also added lighting to the fountains in the lake. The drones are still part of the show, but Lutkin explained, "Our show runs 22 minutes and drones only fly for 11 minutes, so we had to place them as part of the show so it did't just look like the finale. Also, they couldn't carry an integral part of the story because the weather conditions in France mean we run around 30 percent of the shows without them."
Mourey said, "We have about 200 lights on the castle which took around three weeks of programming just for the architectural lighting alone. It has its own complete light show."
The Sleeping Beauty Castle
Lutkin had worked on Hong Kong Disneyland when it had a smaller castle than Shanghai which is five times larger [the park has a smaller footprint] and fans complained. The castle was then rebuilt to make it three times taller creating the need for a huge architectural lighting package. Then, when Lutkin was lighting a new opening for the World of Frozen, he started to play with video content with a lot of black. When it played on the castle it was quite dark, so some architectural lighting was added, but they made sure that the castle wasn't swamped with light to keep it vibrant, and some smoke effects were also added.
There are now 20 Robe iBolts behind the castle and 16 iBolts hidden around the stage. Mourey said, "It is a challenge because it is a laser source and so to make it safe for the public they are never angled near visitors. When you first see them it is a spectacle. There are 20,000 people every night and when you first see the iBolts it looks as though they are coming out of the crowd. However, we need a lot of safety features around them and we can’t use them in bad weather."
On Main Street, they added Cobras from Ayrton, another phosphor laser source, which gives very dynamic colors from the roofs. Mourey said that it took 55 nights to do all the programming and required a lot of studies to make sure everything including the cabling is safe. Combined with a score recorded by 110 piece orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in London, the show immerses more of the audience in the magic of the park and, Mourey added, "We are still working on it."