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Harmonious

They really found a way to give people a sour feeling from Day 0. The Boarding Groups for Ratatouille are just the cherry on top of the mess.
Honestly the saddest thing about all of this for me is that even the Merch that people are crowding in for isn't even particularly good. The only good designs are the ones copied directly from the 70s, everything else looks like a Earidescent reskin of bad shirts from the early 2000s.

I get that pandemic related changes threw a lot of this out of whack with scheduling and budget, but the overall design choices made really indicate to me that they were always planning to phone most of this in.
 
Honestly the saddest thing about all of this for me is that even the Merch that people are crowding in for isn't even particularly good. The only good designs are the ones copied directly from the 70s, everything else looks like a Earidescent reskin of bad shirts from the early 2000s.

I get that pandemic related changes threw a lot of this out of whack with scheduling and budget, but the overall design choices made really indicate to me that they were always planning to phone most of this in.
Agree on the merch.

Let's somehow figure out how to get this all back on track though since this is the Harmonious thread. Much of this conversation may be best to bring over to the 50th Anniversary thread at this point. That can be used as a catch-all for all of the disappointment :lol:
 
I want to add, that I do not think this show will be around terribly long so I'm also taking that into consideration in my thoughts
 
I want to add, that I do not think this show will be around terribly long so I'm also taking that into consideration in my thoughts
I don't know how long Harmonious specifically will be around, but I think we will be seeing nighttime spectaculars use this show infrastructure in the lagoon for many, many years to come.
 
So having seen the DIS video of this one, hrrrrrrmmmm...

As others have said, no narrative to tie everything together hinders this show. It's literally a clipshow in the most basic form possible, with no original piece to open and close the show to bring it all together. An for something that's supposed to be about living in unity and harmony, it just doesn't come off that way. Heck, the show is more chaotic and disjointed than anything else at points. An as @Joe pointed out, there's no harmonizing, that's something that's served on a silver platter on how you can really hammer home the concept and they don't use it.

This show feels like it has a Rivers of Light problem - not enough action. As a show, the last 6 minutes of this show are pretty good, but like RoL with the Lotus float, it's just a good way to end a boring show. My read is they added these screens so you are distracted enough that you don't notice that they massively cut down on pyro throughout almost the entire show.

You're not the only one who feels this show has a Rivers of Light problem, but for me the RoL problem is Harmonius shows it's hand way too early and has nowhere to go from there. After the opening segment, my reaction was "Uh-Ohhhhhh" since I could tell this is how the entire show was gonna' be. It wasn't gonna' throw in any new tricks since it already had the screens, fountains and moving arms going bombastic. (The only surprise to be had was the pyro off the arms way later in the show.)

When you show your hand too early, the show has to truly rely on it's segments and unfortunately most of them weren't that strong for me. Coming back to a earlier comment, the show feels chaotic. You're never really given time to enjoy a piece because it feels like they're changing songs and languages on the fly. I would've preferred if they played a song in it's native language and let it shine. Since a segment I did enjoy early on was the Mulan segment, since that one mainly focused on Reflection and that was seriously beautiful when it did. I wish a lot of the other segments were more like that.

But then we have segments like the France segment which jumped from BatB's prologue to Hellfire to Out There in a matter of second and that just irked me. Felt like a indecisive person at the controls of a radio.

For me, the show didn't pick up until the Coco and PatF segments which I really enjoyed, both of those are easily the strongest segments of the show as it feels like everything is working together the way it should without rapidly jumping from one thing to another. But as mentioned before, when those segments don't kick in till the 14 minute mark on a 20 minute show, that's a BIG problem.

The segments from Mulan, Coco and PatF show there's nice potential for this show, but as it stands those three segments can't save a show which needs a a good amount of editing, a clear focus and...harmony.
 
For me, the show didn't pick up until the Coco and PatF segments which I really enjoyed, both of those are easily the strongest segments of the show as it feels like everything is working together the way it should without rapidly jumping from one thing to another. But as mentioned before, when those segments don't kick in till the 14 minute mark on a 20 minute show, that's a BIG problem.
I had these exact same thoughts. Like I was saying, the last 6 minutes of the show are generally pretty good, but it takes 14 sluggish minutes in order to finally get there.
 
I'm a bit confused by some of the comments here because it sounds like people are saying both that the show takes too long to get to the good/exciting stuff, and that it uses up all of it's tricks too early so there's nothing good left for the rest of the show. Those arguments feel somewhat contradictory, and I'm not sure how to reconcile it, especially because that feels like a can't win type situation.

- - -

I've watched a few different videos of the show (but not in person), and I don't think it seems THAT bad.

It's technically and visually impressive, I like the supposed story, most of the music is good, and most of the scenes are well put together. I have two main complaints:

1) It lacks cohesion in the storytelling, particularly in the realms of transitions and narration. Previously, I thought of clip shows as falling somewhere along a spectrum of storytelling, where on one end you have HEA with its strong narration and original theme in the opening and finale to frame a story told through the IP clips. On the other end you have something like Universal's Cinematic Celebration, which is just clips delivered in a blatant "greatest hits" style with no transitions, but it works because at the beginning they come right out and say that's what they're doing. What makes harmonious weird and confusing is that's supposedly trying to deliver a story, but it's basically doing it in the greatest hits style. If they just focused a little bit more on making the transitions and narration fit together to tell the story I think this could have been a pretty darn good show.

2) It's disappointing that the center screen is only really visible from two sides, and makes me wonder if the now-cancelled table festival pavilion would have helped with providing more viewing points along that axis.
 
I'm a bit confused by some of the comments here because it sounds like people are saying both that the show takes too long to get to the good/exciting stuff, and that it uses up all of it's tricks too early so there's nothing good left for the rest of the show. Those arguments feel somewhat contradictory, and I'm not sure how to reconcile it, especially because that feels like a can't win type situation.

- - -

I've watched a few different videos of the show (but not in person), and I don't think it seems THAT bad.

It's technically and visually impressive, I like the supposed story, most of the music is good, and most of the scenes are well put together. I have two main complaints:

1) It lacks cohesion in the storytelling, particularly in the realms of transitions and narration. Previously, I thought of clip shows as falling somewhere along a spectrum of storytelling, where on one end you have HEA with its strong narration and original theme in the opening and finale to frame a story told through the IP clips. On the other end you have something like Universal's Cinematic Celebration, which is just clips delivered in a blatant "greatest hits" style with no transitions, but it works because at the beginning they come right out and say that's what they're doing. What makes harmonious weird and confusing is that's supposedly trying to deliver a story, but it's basically doing it in the greatest hits style. If they just focused a little bit more on making the transitions and narration fit together to tell the story I think this could have been a pretty darn good show.

2) It's disappointing that the center screen is only really visible from two sides, and makes me wonder if the now-cancelled table festival pavilion would have helped with providing more viewing points along that axis.
For my part, I don’t think it necessarily shows all its cards/tricks too early, my issue is it doesn’t start to use them well until the 14 minute mark.
 
You're not the only one who feels this show has a Rivers of Light problem, but for me the RoL problem is Harmonius shows it's hand way too early and has nowhere to go from there. After the opening segment, my reaction was "Uh-Ohhhhhh" since I could tell this is how the entire show was gonna' be. It wasn't gonna' throw in any new tricks since it already had the screens, fountains and moving arms going bombastic. (The only surprise to be had was the pyro off the arms way later in the show.)

Yeah it shows its hand rather quickly.

I'm a bit confused by some of the comments here because it sounds like people are saying both that the show takes too long to get to the good/exciting stuff, and that it uses up all of it's tricks too early so there's nothing good left for the rest of the show. Those arguments feel somewhat contradictory, and I'm not sure how to reconcile it, especially because that feels like a can't win type situation.

Let me put it this way:

Imagine if Reflection of Earth showed the fire, earth moving, earth opening up, LED screens, fountains, and all the fireworks varieties in the first five minutes or so of a 20 minute show. Or WoC dropped the planter fountains, fire, all the projections, and all the things the fountains can do right in the opening number. That's what we mean. Hold back some gimmicks to properly elevate other segments of the show. What if they held back some of the arms? What if they just started with the center projection? Lots of options.
 
I see a lot of people complaining about the barges but I think people are forgetting this is Disney. I’m pretty sure they have huge maintenance costs and will definitely disappear after the 18th month celebration is over.
 
I see a lot of people complaining about the barges but I think people are forgetting this is Disney. I’m pretty sure they have huge maintenance costs and will definitely disappear after the 18th month celebration is over.
I feel they committed and the barges will be out there the next 10 years if Chapek gets his contract renewed
 
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The barges certainly. Doesn't mean Harmonious itself will be, but I certainly think that a show will be around for some time using that infrastructure.

Yeah those things are staying forever.

I'm watching the 50th special and they mention Harmonious is about telling one story and a story of love and cooperation. I don't see any of that in the final product.
 
Camped out for two hours to get a good view that allowed us to see the center water screen. Center water screen didn’t work tonight. Shame.

It's really poor design that that center screen can only be seen from two main areas instead of being a 360 degree screen or a rotating center that looks similar to the current one. It forces the majority of people to watch from either the North or South end of World Showcase to get the absolute best view, thus making it mandatory to camp out extra early if you want one of those prime spots.
 
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