Review: The Jungle Book Alive With Magic
By Dave Shute
JUNGLE BOOK: ALIVE WITH MAGIC
The evening show Jungle Book: Alive With Magic opened as a temporary (one hopes) replacement for the delayed Rivers of Light show in May 2016.
There’s no word on when Rivers of Light will open, nor on how the transition from Jungle Book to Rivers of Light will happen.
As I write this, it is scheduled for 9 and 10.30p every night between now and Labor Day, and then is not on the schedules afterward.
However, since Disney’s evening show calendars lately have played the role of sophisticated display front-ends to databases with no data, I am not ready to say that the show will in fact end in early September–although there are rumors to that effect.
The show takes place in the waters in front of Expedition Everest in the Asia section of the park. New construction has turned the banks of the waterfront into an amphitheater.
There is not much rise between the seat levels of the amphitheater, but since there are only about 5 inches on average between eye level and top of forehead (yes I looked it up) it actually takes less rise than many think to give a clear view to successive rows.
The setting designed for Rivers of Light includes three off-shore stages and three on-shore stages.
For Jungle Book, singers are delivered by raft to the middle one of the three off-shore stages…
…and dancers populate each of the three closer on-shore stages.
Basically, the singers and dancers take the audience through the story and songs of the Jungle Book, accompanied by simple projections on water screens–note above Ballou on the left-most screen, and Akela in the center.
The Jungle Book: Alive With Magic has been the most savaged major attraction opened at Disney World that I can recall. While I think the reaction has been a bit unfair–and Josh tells me that the projections are much improved since it first opened, when many of these negative reactions were first published–it remains true that even positive reactions are a bit muted.
Frankly, the show suffers terribly in comparison to the don’t-miss evening shows (Wishes, Fantasmic, and IllumiNations) at the other parks, and people who bring expectations based on those three will be quite disappointed–at least until Florida’s approach to legalized marijuana profoundly changes.
In particular, it is not worth profoundly bending your day or your visit to assure that you can see it.
That said, the setting is gorgeous, the show is OK, and the Animal Kingdom is lovely at night. So if you can fit an evening visit to the Animal Kingdom into your plans, you should, and then you might as well check out this show. With expectations sufficiently low, you might well be pleasantly surprised.
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