Disney’s First Winged Drone Expected To Land In This Theme Park Soon

Drone shows have opened up a whole new world for attractions. Unlike fireworks, the sparkling silent craft don’t disturb local residents, don’t pollute the atmosphere and can be scaled up. The more drones there are in a display, the more detailed the shapes they can create. It has sparked an arms race between operators which has left even the world’s biggest theme park operators behind. Except for Disney.

Instead of breaking records, Disney’s nightly drone displays break new ground and use every trick in their spell book to do it. The latest is due to debut at Disneyland Paris next month and won’t just introduce new drone shapes but new drones in a bid to become a dream ticket for the resort.

The drones used in professional displays aren’t the kind you can pick up in Toys R Us. Although they have rotors to fly, they don’t come with cameras. Instead, there’s typically a clear dome on the front of the drone and behind it is a circular array of LED lights which can show up to 16.7 million colors. The lights of all the drones in the show shine in synchronization in order to create colorful shapes high in the night sky and then turn off as they fly into new arrangements. As the drones can’t be seen when they aren’t illuminated, the shapes appear as if by magic and can even be animated if the lights flicker in a pattern.

As the worldwide leader in themed entertainment, it’s no surprise that Disney is a drone pioneer. Nevertheless, only two of its twelve parks are home to nightly shows and there is good reason for this.

The first public drone display took place in 2012 when art and technology group, Ars Electronica, programmed 49 tiny craft to to dance and form shapes during the Futurelab festival in the Austrian city of Linz. They remained a niche form of entertainment over the next three years as only a few shows took place. That all changed in 2015 when Intel set a new world record by flying 100 drones over Ahrenlohe Airfield near Hamburg in Germany. It had a helping hand.

During the development process, the technology titan turned to Disney’s Imagineering division which designs its spellbinding theme park shows and is named after its imaginative use of engineering. “We originally worked with Intel when they first brought the drones out,” said Imagineering’s vice president for parades and spectaculars, Steven Davison at Disney’s D23 event in Anaheim, California in 2024.

According to the Orange County Register, Disney originally intended to incorporate the drones in its World of Color lagoon show at Disneyland in Anaheim which opened in 2015 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the resort. However, Disney reportedly backed out of this after the United States government tightened regulations around the use of drones.

“They were supposed to premiere at this water thing across the street,” explained Davison. It was not to be and instead, Intel’s drones debuted in Germany even though Disney helped to develop them. As Davison explained, “there’s so many restrictions in America with the use of drones.” It’s not for the sake of it.

To observers, it may seem like drones in a display are all remotely-controlled from the ground but actually their flight path is automated and managed by a central computer system. The drones communicate with each other using Global Positioning System (GPS) signals so that they stay just the right distance apart and avoid collisions. Theme parks are crammed with avant-garde architecture which can interfere with the GPS signals bouncing between drones during a show. In turn this could cause drones to collide with each other and fall so the U.S. authorities limited their use over populated areas.

It explains why Disney’s first regular drone displays took place above a lake at the Disney Springs shopping and dining district in its Orlando resort rather than inside its theme parks there. The show at Disney Springs featured 300 drones and only ran for the holiday season in 2016.

As the area is open to the public, Disney couldn’t monetize the show which reduced its incentive to repeat and improve it. Accordingly, Disney’s display was soon eclipsed by others elsewhere which were held over fields and expanses of water where they are watched from the shore. Guests in these areas can be charged which generates revenue while the spectacular shapes drive exposure for the event. Both of these reasons give the operators a reason to increase the number of drones and improve the shows every year making it even harder for Disney to catch up.

Most of Disney’s international parks are stuck in the slow lane. Shanghai Disney and Tokyo Disney lack nightly drone displays whilst Hong Kong Disneyland only introduced them in regular performances as part of its 20th Anniversary celebrations, which began in June last year. It’s a different story at Disneyland Paris. Less restrictive regulations in France benefit the resort’s fairytale-themed flagship Disneyland Park and its neighboring Walt Disney Studios which began using drones back in 2018.

At the heart of its magic formula is a partnership with French company Dronisos which has carried out more than 100,000 drone flights since it was founded in 2016. They include spectaculars at the Dollywood theme park and the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Its origins at Disneyland Paris are much more modest.

Disneyland Paris show producer Ben Spalding told this author that in 2018 the resort “first worked with Dronisos on the Marvel: Super Heroes United show at Walt Disney Studios Park to produce an indoor drone effect on the stage.”

Despite its relatively small stage, the Marvel-themed stunt show was punchy and this was no coincidence. The year before it opened, Disney took full control of its French outpost as my colleague forecast in 2012.

Soon after the takeover, Disney began planning a $2.1 billion expansion in the resort and my colleague revealed this in the Daily Express in November 2017.

Three months later, Disney’s chief executive Bob Iger confirmed the news at a press conference with French president Emmanuel Macron where he announced that three new lands would be added to the Studios park with the first one themed to Marvel characters. The Marvel stunt show opened four months after the announcement so it was the first indication of what was in store for the park. In a first for Disney, it featured a drone-powered flying car and it took more than the wave of a wand to pull it off.

The show’s creative director Mark Huffman told my colleague that it took “a small army on the technical side” to develop the show. He explained that they included “the choreographic team, the drone flying team. You had experts coming into it and they all worked together. It was massive. Around 300 people.” It set the scene for a deeper partnership between Disneyland Paris and Dronisos.

This began when Disneyland Paris started searching for a way to celebrate its flagship park’s 30th anniversary in 2022 without making a bang. The park lies around 20 miles to the east of Paris and is nestled next to five villages. Out of respect to more than 30,000 local residents, its fireworks displays aren’t as noisy as their counterparts at Disney’s parks in the U.S. Instead, Disneyland Paris has had to think outside the box to make an impact and in 2012 its flagship park became the first in the Mouse’s portfolio to pioneer projection mapping in a fireworks show to make up for its more limited pyrotechnics.

Thanks to cutting-edge imaging software, Disney Dreams! featured scenes from classic cartoons which were beamed onto the castle from 12 4K projectors. The footage was timed to a stirring score as well as dancing lasers, flamethrowers, fireworks and further scenes shown on fountains at the foot of the castle which fanned out into a fine mist.

This format has since been refined at Disneyland Paris and replicated in shows at its sister parks around the world. The Disneyland Park in Paris needed to come up with something new for its 30th birthday as a louder and longer fireworks display wouldn’t fit the bill. Instead it turned to Dronisos to create something quieter and even more innovative. The park’s iconic castle had to be the backdrop which was far from child’s play given the risk of interference with the drones’ GPS signals.

As Spalding explained, it is “much more difficult” to ensure that these signals don’t get blocked in a drone show next to a physical structure than in clear air. Dronisos’ proprietary Symphony simulation software gave the magic touch that Disney needed as it ensures that the drones stay one meter apart in the air in order to prevent any interference between their GPS signals.

Even though the shows are computer-controlled, a pilot has to be present at all times to carry out technical checks, ensure the flight area is clear and give the final green light. Dronisos recruited four pilots who use a detailed dashboard display on a ground control station to prepare the drones for flight. Each drone receives a unique flight path from ground control and they are all monitored in flight over a local, encrypted network for maximum safety.

With this in place, Disney D-Light, the first drone show inside a Disney theme park, was cleared for take-off. It launched in the Disneyland Park in March 2022, just in time for its anniversary celebrations the following month. Disney D-Light featured 150 drones making basic, but ingenious shapes, including a number 30 which looked like a giant outline of Mickey Mouse’s famous ears peering round the centerpiece castle.

The show was named ‘Best Live Entertainment 2022’ at the Park World Excellence Awards and was such a success that it was extended with a sequence which saw Mickey’s ears magically duplicate themselves as the drones separated into two rows. “The initial plan was to create a special moment of 90 seconds, which grew to 6 minutes and 31 seconds. We always want to please and surprise our guests,” said Spalding.

He added that Disney D-Light only used 10% of what the drones were capable of and the first indication of this came to light in July 2022 when the doors swung open to the Marvel-themed Avengers Campus land at Walt Disney Studios.

Avengers Campus immerses guests in the worlds of Marvel’s movies and features fastidious attention to detail. The land looks like an avant-garde science park and was supposedly built on the site of old factories. Fake crumbling brickwork, complete with faded paint on it, can be seen behind the futuristic facades. The highlight is a Spider-Man simulator which uses motion-sensing cameras and 3D screens to give guests the impression that they are shooting virtual webs from their wrists.

To celebrate the opening of the land, Disney held a one-off Marvel-themed drone display. Even though the images in it were flat, the show was incredibly popular so Disney gave the green light to a dedicated Marvel drone show which debuted in 2023. The number of drones in it increased from 150 to 500 which enabled the floating images to be created in 3D as I reported.

It was so successful that it spurred Disneyland Paris to create dedicated facilities at the resort for recording and mixing drone show audio as Spalding told me in a report for AV Magazine. Disney didn’t stop there.

In 2022 Dronisos became the official technology provider of Disneyland Paris and since then, the resort has debuted several other drone shows including one which created shapes in the sky of floats from its iconic Main Street Electrical Parade. The show was well-received by fans as it stirred strong emotions even though the shapes were relatively rudimentary thanks to the use of only around 500 drones. Likewise, a revival of the Disney Springs show in Orlando used 800 drones in 2024 and the current Disney Tales of Magic at the Disneyland Park in Paris is understood to feature a similar number. Next month its neighbor will debut a show which uses even fewer drones but is set to cast an more powerful spell.

Called Disney Cascade of Lights, the son et lumière spectacular will debut on March 29 on a massive man-made lake known as Adventure Bay which has been built in the Studios park. Set to a sweeping score recorded by a 90-piece orchestra at London’s historic Abbey Road studios, the 16 minute show features classic Disney characters such as Mulan, Hercules and Moana in an inspirational story about becoming a hero.

Bespoke scenes have been created for the show and will be shown on 18 meter by 9 meter mist screens. The action will be timed to 16 flamethrowers and fireworks which will be launched from a 14 square meter 160 ton floating platform while the mist screens will sit on four supporting barges. The platform will also house lights and projectors and will be pushed out to the middle of the 3-hectare lake every evening by electric boats.

The show will be operated by 24 technicians, which is more than double the number involved with previous displays. Some of the most crucial roles are responsible for the drones as the show has been developed by Disney and Dronisos. The show will only feature 379 drones which is a drop in the ocean compared to the 22,580 world record at an event in China and the 1,571 that performed in the Disneyland Park’s one-off Bastille day celebration in 2024. However, around 100 of the fleet in Cascade of Lights have a trick up their sleeve which no one else can match.

Affectionately nicknamed ‘ducks’ by the production team, these 100 drones are a world-first in a theme park show. That’s because they float on the surface of the lake and can skim the water before soaring into the sky. Lighter than the others, the 100 ducks can fly through the mist screens and can even autonomously rejoin the formation if they fall or land in the water.

As they skim the surface of the water, they can be much closer to the guests than the drones in other shows. As times they are just 20 meters from the crowd and only soar to 45 meters in height compared to 120 meters for their counterparts in the castle show at the neighboring park.

Pulling it off isn’t a walk in the park as the closer proximity to the water and people means that the GPS signals can bounce making it harder to locate the drones precisely. It is understood that this hurdle has been overcome by using a combination of GPS and Ultra-Wideband short-range, wireless radio technology. Disney is making the most of it by using the ducks to create shapes of manta rays which seem to emerge from the water and fly into the sky. That’s not all.

The aerial and aquatic drones are expected to be joined by a bird-shaped drone which is being developed by Disney and Dronisos to make an even bigger splash. It would be the first time that an autonomous craft shaped like a creature has flown above a Disney park. When the New Fantasyland expansion opened in 2012 at Disney’s Magic Kingdom park in Orlando, dragon-shaped craft flew overhead but they were actually microlites with a pilot.

Similarly, Disney’s rival Universal Studios has been promising that robotic dragons would fly over its Epic Universe park since it opened in May last year but they still haven’t materialized. Disney has however operated drones shaped like the classic Star Wars X-Wing spaceship as they flew above its Hollywood Studios park in Orlando in 2019 for the opening of its Rise of the Resistance attraction.

Disneyland Paris needs the lake show to make a splash as it is the centerpiece of the new World of Frozen in the Studios park which will be re-branded to Disney Adventure World when the land opens next month. As I have reported, the land, which is themed to the eponymous animated movie, only has one ride which is a copy of an attraction in Orlando. In contrast, the Frozen land in Hong Kong has two rides but lacks the lake show. It puts a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the lake show in Paris.

What’s more, areas of the Disney Village shopping and dining district at Disneyland Paris recently began opening after a renovation which my colleague revealed in 2018. The more attention the lake show gets, the more traffic the resort will get though there are no guarantees.

In December the lake hosted a special show to promote Disney’s new Avatar: Fire and Ash film. Synchronized to the movie’s spooky score, the show featured 3,700 drones which formed the heads of the film’s characters and signature banshee creatures. The show was canceled due to heavy fog on one night though Disney points out that Cascade of Lights uses different drones which fly at a much lower altitude, allowing them to operate in fog. They are also more weather-resistant than previous models and can be operated in up to 21 mile per hour winds. Disney has nevertheless designed a version of Cascade of Lights without drones as a backup and time will tell how often it needs to be used.

Paris can be bitterly cold and foggy for several months of the year and it often snows there. In 2020 a nighttime show themed to Frozen was held on the lake next to the hotels at Disneyland Paris and could hardly be seen due to thick fog. It truly was frozen and even the fireworks were almost entirely obscured. Guests were also pelted with water droplets as the breeze blew over the water which is only a fraction of the size of the new lake.

In contrast, other areas of the parks in Paris have been deliberately designed with bad weather in mind. Covered arcades and indoor attractions abound. That said, fittingly, more than 240 floodlights around the new lake will ensure that guests get the best view possible of Cascade of Lights. If they like what they see then the park could be in for a happy ending.

Additional reporting by Chris Sylt