Disney Immersive Experience opens in San Antonio
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A child dances in front of a projection of Dumbo during the Disney Immersive Experience VIP preview Monday night in San Antonio. Photo: Megan Stringer/Axios
The happiest place on earth has arrived in San Antonio.
Driving the news: Disney Animation: Immersive Experience opens Tuesday at Lighthouse ArtSpace, 221 Burleson St., on the east side.
Why it matters: The immersive exhibit is sure to be a hit with children, but is a nostalgic celebration for those of us who are Disney adults too.
Details: The projection exhibition presents music and art from the Disney canon, ranging from newbies "Encanto" and "Frozen" to classics "The Lion King," "Peter Pan" and "Pinocchio."
- An interactive floor features images that move along with your feet.
- A light-up wristband changes colors with the projections around you. In one moment during a VIP preview Monday night, it lit up like all the candles in a scene from "Tangled."
- The experience offers something for all generations of Disney fans, spanning decades of iconic moments.
💠Megan's thought bubble: One of my favorite parts was hearing "Colors of the Wind" from "Pocahontas."
- We all know the songs and the movies. But it's different to experience them all around you, in a room full of people, color and light — not on a screen.
- Watching children jump and dance offered a light and hopeful moment in a time when the news can often feel heavy.
Flashback: The exhibit comes from Lighthouse Immersive, the Toronto-based entertainment company that brought Immersive Van Gogh to San Antonio last year. The Disney experience is housed in the same location.
- That exhibit grew popular after a similar experience appeared on the Netflix show "Emily in Paris."
- More than 100,000 people visited Immersive Van Gogh in San Antonio, including out-of-town travelers, Corey Ross, co-founder of Lighthouse Immersive, tells Axios. It sold out its first couple weeks last year and saw an extended run, per the SA Current.
What they're saying: "In every city that the program has been presented so far, it has been very warmly embraced, and we expect that the reaction will be similar in San Antonio," Ross tells Axios.
Zoom out: San Antonio is the only city in Texas to host the Disney immersive experience and one of 10 cities in North America.
- It's also showing in Boston, Columbus, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Nashville and Toronto.
By the numbers: The exhibit includes:
- 64,995 frames of video
- 570,000 cubic feet of projections
- 112,896,000 pixels
Visit: Tickets are available through May 29 and start at $36. You can buy them online, and the website says they're selling fast for much of March.