This is the first time I’ve read about this. Amazing find!
epcotexplorer:
Son et Lumière: A Rare Look at EPCOT Center’s First Night Spectacular
These rare 1982 press shots gives us a rare insight to one of EPCOT Center’s shortest lived and obscurest shows: Carnival de Lumière.
The precursor to the now famous line of IllumiNations shows, Carnival was rather basic, in the fact that it only preformed on the entrance part of World Showcase Promenade. Instead of the quadrant of barges that form a loop in the center of World Showcase Lagoon, as in IllumiNations, Carnival had a fan of three barges that stretched from Mexico to Canada, much in the same way Disneyland’s World of Color is preformed today. The barges were solely for the purposes of projecting imagery onto large screens of misted water, a precursor to Laserphonic Fantasy employing actual lasers to paint bright shapes and images on larger curtains of water. Above, note the fountains positioned higher up, and being shot “down” into the lagoon, so as to be screens for the projections.
Pyrotechnics, meanwhile, were launched from smaller barges in between the fountain barges, and provided for a seamless line of spectacle across the northern shores of World Showcase Lagoon. The pyro effects weren’t as large as today’s presentations, but an assortment of comets, bursts, and streamers were used to accent the musical score.
Although there are no known recordings of the score, we can surmise that it was much like Laserphonic Fantasy’s: the original IllumiNations score, but under the guise of a heavy synthesizer.
However, despite all these negative qualifiers, this was the first! The first EPCOT Center night show that used the classical music of the nations of World Showcase, and the technical wizardry of Future World. A perfect synthesis for the grand and inspiring showcase that EPCOT Center is.
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