Between fantasy and illusion, Fantillusion immerses you in a shower of glittering light, beautiful music and dazzling special effects… But the magic of Mickey Mouse can only stretch so far. In the first of two brand new, exclusive interviews from Jérémie Noyer, we talk to Christophe Leclercq as he reveals the secrets of the nighttime sparkle…

Christophe, please, tell us the full story: Once upon a time… Disney’s Fantillusion!

Once upon a time, there was a magical garden where Mickey had invited all of his friends for a one-of-a-kind party celebrating imagination and childhood.

Here were sparkling butterflies, dragonflies and mushrooms changing colours. It was truly an enchanted garden, an imaginary place he revealed to them. Then, Mickey brought the whole parade the magic of light as all the floats were illuminated by a shining glow.

Seeing that, the Disney Villains got evil ideas, ideas of darkness. They were not at all happy with all that light and they tried to change it into an Evil power using orange, red and green. The garden was then threatened by fire and lightning, as evil smoke darkened the land and evil creatures invaded it, appearing from nowhere.

Fortunately, the Disney Princes and Princesses had the power to create candlelight and sparkles appearing everywhere to restore imagination and fantasy…

So, as you can see, Disney’s Fantillusion is a story in three acts: the light of imagination, the power of light and the magic of light.

How did Disney’s Fantillusion come to Disneyland Resort Paris?

Originally, this parade was created for Tokyo Disneyland. After several years of good service there, we wanted to have a new electrical parade here, and the Tokyo Park was eager to change theirs. Luckily, the Disney Parks work hand in hand and it’s possible to exchange parades, while adapting them according to each location.

Some of the Tokyo floats were too big for Main Street in Disneyland Park, but most of them could fit. We made a selection of the floats we wanted according to the number of floats we could get and to the story we wanted to tell. From then on, with this new line-up, we had to put the floats on boats that sailed very gently across the oceans, to get to the French coasts, one month later. Then, we transported them by truck from Le Havre harbour to Paris.

We mapped out a convenient route avoiding highways, because of the size of the floats, that couldn’t pass the tollgates. The French police was very helpful as they had to organize the road in some places or close some roads temporarily to let the floats pass, but everything went according to plan! You have to realize that it took no less than two years from the decision to have Disney’s Fantillusion Parade come to us to the Premiere!

The floats were designed and made in Japan, so there were some technical issues to adapt them to France, notably from the electrical point of view. Our engineers had to fix the whole system of each float, lighting, power, batteries….because we don’t have the same system here.

The costumes also, are technological wonders!

A lot of the original costumes were worn-out, so it was up to Sue Lecash, our costume designer here, to try new things. Even recently, she still experiments new costumes, new dragonflies and spiders, and new butterflies for the dancers. In order to do that, we worked with a Scottish artisan living in Brittany, who specialized in fiber-optics. Because Sue wanted to work with that kind of material and the changes of colours it allows, we also had to work on the way our performers could carry the batteries on their back.

For the Princes and Princesses act, originally, the performers had crinoline petticoats set on wheels and the dancers opened them to light up their dresses. We couldn’t reproduce that because we have paving stones and streetcar rails and there was a risk of breaking the electrical part of the dresses and even a risk of getting stuck in the rails. That’s the reason why Sue imagined costumes that could actually be worn by our dancers, using a lot of transparent plastic and aluminium framework to lighten the whole thing, along with LEDs and fiber-optics.

We also changed the costumes of the main Disney Villains and Princesses because there were some technical and cleaning issues with the original models. For instance, for Jafar’s costume, we had to make it out of separated parts. Everything can be dismantled. In fact, there is a cloth on which there is a lining onto which hundred of little lights are sewn and connected to a battery. Over that, we had to build the character’s costume and make some little holes so that the lights could be passed through by our technicians. In brief, there are three parts.

There were also some musical changes.

Right! The music was already written by Bruce Healey, but our Director of Music, Vasile Sirli produced a new arrangement for that since we hadn’t all the Tokyo floats. So, he had to edit it to fit “our” Disney’s Fantillusion. It was all the more complicated since this parade is based on an “underliner”. It means that there is a global music (underliner) and that each float has its own music that comes in addition to the underliner.

How does the mixing of the two soundtracks occur?

In fact, the music of each float is transmitted to the park’s speakers through the Escon system. It means that it’s transmitted through the ground to Main Street’s speakers. Each time a float passes by a kind of a marker, it sends its music to the speakers of the street and the music is then combined with the underliner.

Everything is managed by a computer, at Parade Central. It is there that all the music and the announcements of the different parades are managed. Because of all that, we had to set “technical” rehearsals to determine a definite zone of broadcasting for each unit. It’s the same as The Wonderful World of Disney Parade, which I also directed.

When two floats follow each other, the first one pulls the music of the second one to it, and the second one pushes the music of the first one ahead of it to get into the broadcasting zone.

Vasile Sirli wrote and edited all the music bearing this in mind so that there is no cacophony. Everything happens harmoniously and each float has it own music. We had a huge rehearsal with the float drivers to have them drive their unit to the right place at the right time.

The Disney’s Fantillusion floats are technological wonders, indeed!

Absolutely. First, they are very manageable because of the steering and the breaking system. And then, from a technological point of view, everything is onboard: lights, effects and smoke machines. Each float is a kind of a technological unit of its own, and all the floats are managed from one central computer that sends the right signal at the right time for each float to broadcast the right music, activate the right lights, produce the right smoke, and activate the transformations of the floats during the show stops. And what’s magical is that it is Mickey’s voice saying “Starlight, starbright” that launches it all!

At that moment, all the “hero” floats become white light. But Mickey’s voice is also a signal for the Villains. Take the “push units”, these small units pushed by dark creatures. At Mickey’s signal, they take off their capes and the push unit automatically open to let their black light spread, reacting with the special painting of the floats and the costumes of the dancers around them. All is activated by magic!

If I remember properly, it was Kat de Blois who first directed Disney’s Fantillusion when it arrived in France.

It was Kat, exactly, who was in charge of adapting it to Disneyland Resort Paris. I took up the torch two years ago, keeping her original choreography. For the moment, nothing really changed, but I hope I’ll be able to imprint my own vision in the future.

Do you think all the technology involved in Disney’s Fantillusion may hold back creativity in some way?

Not really, all the more since I’ve already directed daily parades that used the Escon system. It’s a system I know well. And our sound engineers can explain things very clearly. For me, Disney’s Fantillusion was most of all a different parade.

The most complicated aspect of it was the technical rehearsals, the synchronisation of computers and lighting. There’s so much technology that you have to program each float one by one. I had some long periods of time just waiting for it to be done! Another difficulty is related to rehearsals. For example, we had to teach the “shadow” creatures how to operate the push units, and it wasn’t easy since, when you turn left, it goes right, and vice versa!

The Princes and Princesses had some issues adapting themselves to their floats, too. Because their platform goes up to 2 meters above the float, they had to be tied on. In addition to that, we had to deal with the electrical material of their costumes. And above all this, they have to both keep their foot on a pedal. If they didn’t, the animation of the float would immediately stop, for security reasons.

You have to realize how impressive it is to stand up there, and more than once, some princesses took their foot off the pedal! Which means that we had to wait for another musical show stop to be able to complete the rehearsal! But it all ended happily and the Princesses were the first ones to tell me that it was an unforgettable experience!

That’s what I felt once all the technical issues were resolved. I stood in the center of Central Plaza and I said to myself: “it’s sublime!” I was overwhelmed. I realized all that technology allows to do and how wonderful it is!

What is your favourite moment in the parade?

It’s when Mickey arrives on his float. I find it very majestic, with Mickey as our host wearing this amazing, multi-coloured- ever-changing fiber-optic cloak. For me, the first float is always to most magical: it announces Disney’s Fantillusion parade, the park is in darkness and suddenly it appears! It’s magical! I would even say that it’s even more beautiful when you see it from it’s a small world, when it’s all dark. The doors open and wow! Mickey appears in the light!

As you say it, it is magical. And we can really feel the guests’ emotion at that moment!

I just try to use simple tools to convey a message, to touch people. If it’s too complicated, it becomes boring. I do things as I feel them, with my heart. I say to myself: “what would I like to see?”. And if something makes me dream, I guess it will make our guests dream, too. At least, that’s my hope, and my reward!

• With thanks to Nathalie Pankowski and Julie McPartlin.