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Nov 24, 2009
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I have to say illumiNights 2011 what a big hit and the improvement was amazing. Any ideas, hopes, dreams to bring next year? Anything you hate? Anything you love to death?
 
RE: illumiNights 2012

A few ideas. One thing I would like to see is stagger the showtimes in the different countries. Having each show at the same time is a little difficult to plan for to be in a certain area of the park at a certain time. Another would be come up with different fireworks displays for each night. It got to be repetitive when seeing the same fireworks display night after night.
 
RE: illumiNights 2012

Totally agree on staggering the show times. You should be able to enjoy more than one show during a visit, which is especially beneficial to those who can only come once a year. However, I disagree on the fireworks. Having a different display for each night is costly, and I'd rather the park put on a good fireworks show that's the same every night than waste money on changing up the fireworks all the time. That money can improve operations, maintenance, and bring new attractions. Plus, most guests don't visit the park enough in one year to really care about seeing different fireworks shows, so it's not worth the time or effort.
 
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RE: illumiNights 2012

1 - I'd like to see them drop all that tinsel and replace it with alternatives. Usually, some sort of light effect.

2 - I'd like to see a little more money invested in the costumes/props. Some of that stuff looked a little old and dusty.

3 - I'd like to see those random animal puppets in the Ireland show replaced with something relevant to the story. Like maybe three old leprechauns. Why is he consulting a chicken and a dog about magic?

4 - The fireworks could be improved without much of a fuss. Basically, just change the soundtrack so that you have a bit of music representing each of the various countries in the park, and you blast fireworks in colors/styles that loosely correspond to the country that's playing on the soundtrack. It doesn't have to be anything crazy...just some sort of theme is all.
 
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RE: illumiNights 2012

Staggered stage performances would be great, I was only able to catch two of them. I would say more special effects for the decoration, like lasers or something.
 
RE: illumiNights 2012

DoctorMoneyMD said:
4 - The fireworks could be improved without much of a fuss. Basically, just change the soundtrack so that you have a bit of music representing each of the various countries in the park, and you blast fireworks in colors/styles that loosely correspond to the country that's playing on the soundtrack. It doesn't have to be anything crazy...just some sort of theme is all.

I saw fireworks last year and this year that did exactly that. They play at least four different tracks that represent the four different "shows." Then the colors and fireworks go with those shows. I'm not sure what they're missing there.
 
RE: illumiNights 2012

the illuminights fireworks did exactly that....it went ireland, france, germany then italy....next time open your ears and listen....the music cues were right with the fireworks and you could tell quite easily which country they were corresponding to. *rolls eyes
 
RE: illumiNights 2012

ivybrit said:
the illuminights fireworks did exactly that....it went ireland, france, germany then italy....next time open your ears and listen....the music cues were right with the fireworks and you could tell quite easily which country they were corresponding to. *rolls eyes

Yeah, they played little snippets of the Illuminghts soundtrack for each country's show during the fireworks and the display highlighted the corresponding color palate.
 
RE: illumiNights 2012

HA! I didn't remember the music at all, and then people said they hated it, so I imagined that it just sucked really bad and came up with this as an answer. If they're already doing this, then nm.

No need to get hostile.
 
RE: IllumiNights 2012

I would love to see the parade come back in france if they could do something about widening the pathway. I do think lasers and more special effects need to be used along with props, add more color through the whole park, not just the countries with shows. Staggering the showtimes are a must do for next year. I would sorta like some kind of performance in England though.. But what? I agree with the farm animals in legend of killarny. Why is he talking to animals? I think the giant cuckoo clock will stay for sometime now since it's so unique in the world. Although I would love to see actual yellow feathers be shot out of the cannons and not yellow streamerfetti when we see the chicken, it would be so much cooler. I would LOVE to see an updated illumiNights soundtrack of the Maypole Music, Voila music (it does have all the annoying sounds like the parade music did although the same tune) and I would like to to include more of the teaser tunes that's played at 5:30, 7:30, 8:30 and the 2 announcements before the fireworks and the one after the fireworks is a must! (PLEASE UPDATE THE SOUNDTRACK) I loved how they stepped up the color in the park by adding LED lights in the countries. I would enjoy to see a big illuminights show come to the RPT like imaginique. I love illuminights and I hope it returns for any years to come!
 
RE: IllumiNights 2012

Personally, I'd rather see them scrap Illuminights all together and spend that money on adding a new show to RPT and just some general "street entertainment" in each country, throughout the whole season. Maybe fireworks on the weekends or something? I just don't think Illuminights is that powerful of a "draw" to the park and that money could be better spent on improving the overall entertainment experience throughout the park.
 
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RE: IllumiNights 2012

My only complaint with Illuminights, as a whole, is that it looks a little rag-tag. If they're going to try and use it as a "wow" type of thing, they ought to brush up some of the edges.
 
RE: IllumiNights 2012

The fireworks part is nice, but it seems as though the GP could care less about the shows. I wanted to see some of the shows and it seemed more like if people were in the area they would stop, but no one was really all about gathering to see the shows, especially the one in France. Now the one in Italy, a lot of people were at that one.

I don't know how I feel about it, but I'd rather see a parade instead of the shows, or just scrap the shows and do one awesome show that is more like Giardino Magico or maybe all four together. Then fireworks right after.
 
RE: IllumiNights 2012

The Italy show is by far the best thing at Illuminights. It reminds me of a magical time in Busch Gardens history, sometimes referred to by historians as simply "2002", when this amazing spectacle of sight and sound called Imaginique dominated the landscape of France and gave park goers something awesome to look forward to nightly.

That said, I'll say I absolutely agree that I'd rather have one "Imaginique" in the evenings to look forward to than 5 or 6 smaller things. BUT...I don't think the budgets of all the little shows combined could even scratch the surface of a major RPT show, and so maybe that's why they do it the way they do.

If nothing else, keep the fireworks. People love fireworks.
 
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RE: IllumiNights 2012

DoctorMoneyMD said:
That said, I'll say I absolutely agree that I'd rather have one "Imaginique" in the evenings to look forward to than 5 or 6 smaller things. BUT...I don't think the budgets of all the little shows combined could even scratch the surface of a major RPT show, and so maybe that's why they do it the way they do.

If nothing else, keep the fireworks. People love fireworks.

However, the cost of nightly fireworks could easily cover a major RPT show...
 
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RE: IllumiNights 2012

Haberdasher1973 said:
However, the cost of nightly fireworks could easily cover a major RPT show...

1 - Do you think? As I understood it, Neil Goldberg's show was VERY expensive, and the expense is what caused them to stop renewing it.

2 - As much as I'd rather watch Imaginique than fireworks, I don't know if that's true for the general populace. I feel like fireworks are a big sell to people. I don't know if that's true for a French circus (no matter how much better than everything else BG has ever done it was).
 
RE: IllumiNights 2012

pandorazboxx said:
The fireworks part is nice, but it seems as though the GP could care less about the shows. I wanted to see some of the shows and it seemed more like if people were in the area they would stop, but no one was really all about gathering to see the shows, especially the one in France. Now the one in Italy, a lot of people were at that one.


That's odd because Voila in France gathered crowd of people waiting specifically for the show at each of the three showings I saw. I did notice with all of the Illuminights shows that as the evenings went on, the crowds were progressively larger for each showing.

By the way, I really liked Voila and found it to be a huge improvement over the parade which was rather mundane to me. I really liked the character of the mime and how his personality made the show by intereacting with and reacting to the dancers and acrobat.
 
RE: IllumiNights 2012

With Voila it seemed like it was shoved in a corner. And I caught the second showing, but it was far less packed than Giardino Magico at the 3rd hour. Maybe it was just that one time I saw it, but not too many people were there to watch it. I sat over by that cafe and had a clear view of the show.

I still liked the parade better. The chair stacking was neat, but I guess it just wasn't my thing.
 
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