Credit: DisneyNo Disneyland day is truly complete until you squeeze between fellow parkgoers on Main Street, U.S.A., popcorn in hand, and spend 20 minutes staring up at the fireworks in awe.
Firework displays have been a part of the Disney park blueprint for decades, but, like everything else in the theme park industry, have shifted massively in terms of both technology and public perception over the past few years.
As the Disney parks have grown, so have their nighttime spectaculars, with some even daring to branch out beyond the world of pyrotechnics – something that could easily become a thing of the past at Disneyland, Disney World, and beyond.
What’s Happening with Disney’s Fireworks?
As of April 2025, you can find regular Disney fireworks shows across the globe (not including seasonal shows). Walt Disney World Resort has Happily Ever After at Magic Kingdom Park and Luminous The Symphony of Us above EPCOT’s World Showcase Lagoon. Disneyland Resort is set to welcome back Wondrous Journeys in May, Disneyland Paris has Disney Tales of Magic, Hong Kong Disneyland has “Momentous” Nighttime Spectacular, Shanghai Disneyland has ILLUMINATE! A Nighttime Celebration, and Tokyo Disney Resort has both Sky Full of Colors and Reach for the Stars (the latter of which is better described as a projections show with pyrotechnics than a full-blown fireworks display).
However, that doesn’t mean every park has a nighttime fireworks display. At Disneyland Resort, nighttime performances are regularly composed purely of projections, depending on the night of the week and time of year. Meanwhile, Disneyland Paris has dabbled in additional performances of its shows sans fireworks in the past.
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Even the shows that are performed nightly increasingly rely on alternatives to pyrotechnics throughout their duration. If you were to watch “Momentous” Nighttime Spectacular, for example, and compare it to a Disney fireworks display circa the early 2000s, you’d notice that projections and lights do much more of the heavy lifting today. That doesn’t necessarily negate the show’s overall impact (because, seriously, “Momentous” is stunning), but it’s still an interesting comparison point.
What Could Replace Fireworks?
That brings us to their most likely replacement: technology.
Drones are the talk of the town in the theme park industry lately, with Disneyland Paris really leading the charge. In 2024, it debuted the Disney Electrical Sky Parade – an homage to the iconic Main Street Electrical Parade – which proved massively popular with parkgoers and served as a massive step up from the resort’s 2023 drone show, Disney D-Light.
Next door, Walt Disney Studios Park previously had a nighttime spectacular that was almost entirely drones. Avengers: Power the Night is a striking ten-minute show in the skies above Avengers Campus, and was perhaps more impactful as a tribute to the Marvel Cinematic Universe than anything that could have been achieved with explosions and music alone.
Both shows may have since wrapped up, but the resort continues to embrace drone technology in its current nighttime spectacular, Disney Tales of Magic.
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Drones aren’t limited to Disney’s properties in France. In 2024, Walt Disney World Resort hosted a free drone show at Disney Springs throughout the summer. Steve Davison – Lead Creative Executive of Parades and Spectaculars for Disney Live Entertainment – also previously told reporters at a preview of Behind the Attraction that “[drones] are very cool,” he said. “They’re kind of a new thing. We’re doing a lot of work in that. So all I’m going to say is, there’s more to come.”
Over on the East Coast, Walt Disney World’s Happily Ever After also complements its fireworks with some impressive light work around the castle and buildings of Main Street, recently adding in even more effects. And at Hollywood Studios, where you could once find a minor fireworks display, parkgoers are now treated to the nightly projections show Wonderful World of Animation on the façade of the Chinese Theatre.
What Are Other Parks Doing?
Disney doesn’t always follow in the footsteps of other theme parks. In fact, that’s what made it so successful in the first place. However, it still seems significant that other parks have already started to lean away from straight-up pyrotechnics.
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Universal Orlando Resort’s nighttime spectacular, for example, mixes fireworks with projections, projection mapping, and an impressive array of over 120 fountains. Responses to the show have been generally very positive.
SeaWorld San Diego and Orlando do have fireworks – but only on special occasions. The likes of New Year’s Eve, Christmas, and summer vacation are the only times you’ll find nightly displays at the parks. Its latest park did away with fireworks, completely. SeaWorld Abu Dhabi is strictly a drone park, with an impressive indoor show that only gets more impressive with each visit.
Will Disney Get Rid of Its Fireworks For Good?
There’s no definite answer to this, but it seems like a safe bet to say that Disney will increasingly lean away from the nightly shows that have marked its past.
A huge factor in this decision could very well be cost. Fireworks displays are expensive at the best of times. When you’re striving for the same level of grandeur as Disney, however, they go from being pricy to extortionate. It was previously estimated that Magic Kingdom’s former fireworks show, Wishes, cost around $45,000 per night. Assuming it held one show a night per year, that’s $16,425,000 on fireworks alone a year.
Considering increasingly eco-conscious attitudes harbored by both guests and businesses, the environmental impact may also be a deciding factor. In 2004, Disneyland Resort tasked contractors and Disney Imagineers with pioneering fireworks that produce fewer emissions. The result was a patented method that uses pressured air, not black powder to shoot off fireworks, in turn reducing metal emissions and air pollution.
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However, no fireworks are still environmentally kinder than slightly-better-fireworks. Then there’s the issue of neighbors. Huge though it may be, Disney World still drives local complaints about the noise pollution caused by its nighttime spectaculars.
Disneyland also has an infamously contentious relationship with Anaheim residents when it comes to its fireworks. Neighbors have proclaimed both the noise and smoke caused by its nightly shows to be highly disruptive.
On the other hand, however, nostalgia is a powerful thing. Disney parks run on nostalgia – that’s where they make the big bucks. Replacing fireworks with technology, no matter how impressive, is only going to rile up an audience that Disney’s theme parks need to survive.
The most likely scenario here isn’t that fireworks totally disappear, but instead gradually become the supporting act to technology rather than vice versa. “Momentous” is probably the best example of how this would play out—keeping enough pyrotechnics to market itself as a fireworks show but reducing them to a point that’s more sustainable in every sense of the word.
In other words, we’re not predicting Disney fireworks to go out with a bang… but with a whimper strong enough to keep everyone happy.
Would you miss Disney fireworks? Let us know in the comments!