Flying Dumbo to Star in New Disneyland Fireworks Show

When Disneyland decided to introduce a flying Dumbo elephant into the new Magical fireworks show, master puppeteer Michael Curry knew the success of the venture would come down to just one thing.

“It’s all about the ears,” said Curry, a longtime Disney collaborator. “I wanted it to look like he was flying.”

Rather than an audio-animatronic machine floating robotically above Sleeping Beauty Castle, Curry envisioned a dancer in space performing on a wire 65 feet above the ground.

“I knew I wanted to build it around a human,” Curry said.

Curry’s puppets have appeared in the opening ceremonies of the 1996 and 2002 Olympics, the Super Bowl XXXIV halftime show, the Broadway production of “The Lion King,” the Cirque du Soleil production of “Love” in Las Vegas, the “Aladdin” stage show at Disney’s California Adventure and countless parades at Disney theme parks.

At the beginning of the Dumbo brainstorming process, Curry set up a video projector aimed at a blank wall in his production facility outside Portland, Ore., in the shadow of Mt. St. Helens.

Curry “climbed inside” the projected Dumbo image and pretended to manipulate the ears with his arms. But how to move the head, trunk and legs at the same time? And then came Curry’s a-ha moment.

Within two days, his crew had crafted an aluminum frame attached to a flying harness that allowed a puppeteer hidden inside the elephant to create sympathetic motions — linking, say, a head tilt to a body twist with a simple hand movement.

For the rest of Brady MacDonald’s article…please go to the Los Angeles Times