The lagoon learns to play the whole shoreline.
In June 1983 the lagoon's second show replaced its first, and this time Don ran it. A New World Fantasy kept Carnaval de Lumière's floating projection barges and fountains, added automated moving lights, and swapped the original suite for something that became a lagoon signature: well-known classical music, performed on synthesizers. Don supervised the show and produced its score, and most of that soundtrack survives on his album Busted.
A year later, the projectors gave way to light itself. Laserphonic Fantasy premiered on June 9, 1984, keeping the score and adding lasers fired from the barges and from positions around the shoreline. That solved the problem that had hobbled the first show: a beam over open water can be seen from everywhere. For the first time, the whole promenade was the audience.
It is also where laser animation grew up. The Skater, an award-winning segment of the show, drew a figure gliding across a screen made of water droplets: the first laser image ever projected on a water-droplet screen, and the first laser animation to use non-continuous lines. Disney's own D23 encyclopedia lists Laserphonic Fantasy first among the nighttime spectaculars Don created and directed for Walt Disney World.
Laserphonic Fantasy held the lagoon until January 24, 1988, and by the time it closed the formula was set: the music leads, the shoreline is the theater, and every new technology auditions over open water. What the synthesizers had sketched, an orchestra was about to paint.
Next in the story: IllumiNations. Or go back to the Lagoon.
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