When Disneyland decided to introduce a flying Dumbo elephant into the new Magical fireworks show, master puppeteer Michael Curry knew the success of the venture would come down to just one thing.
“It’s all about the ears,” said Curry, a longtime Disney collaborator. “I wanted it to look like he was flying.”
Rather than an audio-animatronic machine floating robotically above Sleeping Beauty Castle, Curry envisioned a dancer in space performing on a wire 65 feet above the ground.
“I knew I wanted to build it around a human,” Curry said.
Curry’s puppets have appeared in the opening ceremonies of the 1996 and 2002 Olympics, the Super Bowl XXXIV halftime show, the Broadway production of “The Lion King,” the Cirque du Soleil production of “Love” in Las Vegas, the “Aladdin” stage show at Disney’s California Adventure and countless parades at Disney theme parks.
At the beginning of the Dumbo brainstorming process, Curry set up a video projector aimed at a blank wall in his production facility outside Portland, Ore., in the shadow of Mt. St. Helens.
Curry “climbed inside” the projected Dumbo image and pretended to manipulate the ears with his arms. But how to move the head, trunk and legs at the same time? And then came Curry’s a-ha moment.
Within two days, his crew had crafted an aluminum frame attached to a flying harness that allowed a puppeteer hidden inside the elephant to create sympathetic motions — linking, say, a head tilt to a body twist with a simple hand movement.
Careful to minimize the overall weight of the Dumbo puppet, Curry’s crew crafted a lightweight frame with the puppeteer’s upper body positioned inside the elephant’s carbon-fiber head and the performer’s lower extremities inside the pachyderm’s inflatable body.
With an economy of motion, the puppeteer manipulates both ears with one hand and the head and trunk with the other hand. The puppeteer’s legs operate Dumbo’s front legs while the elephant’s rear legs remain motionless.
During the prototype phase, Curry’s crew simulated 15- to 18-mph winds that caused the elephant’s ears — each the size of a sheet of plywood — to turn into wind sails. Test puppeteers practiced for countless hours to master the art of flight.
The final challenge: making the relatively small blue-gray elephant pop out against the night sky under the glow of a spotlight. The solution: a green body and pink head that look hideous in the daylight but very much like the original Disney animation during the fireworks show.
“I was almost in tears at how good it looks,” Curry said.
The all-new Magical fireworks show, part of Disneyland’s Summer Nightastic promotion beginning June 12, makes it’s unofficial debut tonight (June 3). additional unannounced “soft opening” previews will occur on June 5, 6 and 8 at 9:15 p.m.
