Glow with the Show Added to Fantasmic at Disneyland

Disney has added the Glow with the Show light up mouse ear technology to Fantasmic! at Disneyland. The venerable show along the Rivers of America is one of our favorites and it is great to see Disney freshen up the experience with this new tech toy.

During our last visit, we bought the Glow with the Show ears for our son to use during World of Color. There were a few plusses and minuses with the experience, but overall we thought it was a neat effect.

The ears change color on cue through a radio signal Disney sends during the show. When there are large groups of people all wearing the ears, the effect is dramatic and greatly enhances whatever show you’re viewing. But the reality is that only a few people are buying the ears due to the $25 price tag. The effect just isn’t the same when only a handful of people are wearing the hats.

The other tradeoff is with the design of the mouse ears themselves. We had to return our ears three times before we could get a pair that wasn’t broken. The battery and components for the light effect are housed at the top of the hat (with a large foam pad between the electronics and your head). This makes the ears top heavy and we had a very tough time keeping them on my 4-year-old son’s head. He ended up just carrying the hat for most of the time.

When the ears are not lighting up in sync with a show, they change colors in a random pattern. The effect is very neat and for this reason alone they are a very neat item. The connection with the Disney shows is just icing on the cake.

The Glow with the Show ears are a neat effect and look great when there are large groups of people wearing them at the same time. Our recommendation is to just enjoy watching the light show on someone else’s head (you can’t see the ears while wearing them anyway) and instead spend your money on a classic pair of Mickey ears.

Photo via Flickr