LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – A recently released video is giving Disney fanatics a glimpse into the technology, creativity and innovation that made the first-of-its-kind holiday drone show possible.
From now until Jan. 8, 300 drones will light up the sky above the Disney Springs nightly, syncing up to a soundtrack of original Disney arrangements of classic holiday songs to form Christmas trees, doves and other seasonal shapes.
Loyal Pyczynski, executive R&D Imagineer at Walt Disney Imagineering, said the inspiration behind “Starbright Holidays – An Intel Collaboration” came from a scene in the movie "Tangled."
"In that movie, there's now this iconic scene where we have thousands of floating lanterns flying above the Kingdom of Corona," Pyczynski said. "As soon as we saw that, our R&D imagineers were just trying to understand and ideate how we could bring that iconic scene to life.”
Walt Disney World Creative Entertainment paired with Intel to develop the Intel Shooting Star drone fleet. Animations were created to show how the drones could morph from one holiday image to the next seamlessly, then Intel loaded those sequences onto the aerial drones so they could be tested.
“This is an amazing collaboration, because Disney provides the magic in the storytelling and Intel provides the amazing technology and innovation for this,” Intel drone expert Natalie Cheung said.
“Starbright Holidays – An Intel Collaboration” can be seen at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. above the West Side of the Disney Springs waterfront.