The final night of my Disney trip happened to align with the 20th-anniversary performance of Fantasmic. My friend and I attended this performance but had no idea at the time that it was the 20th-anniversary performance. We did, however, pick up on the fact that the overall vibe seemed to be very different from the past times we’ve seen the show, and that more people were in attendance than usual.

Once the show began (while neither of us could put our finger on exactly why) both my friend and I could tell that the show felt very different from the previous performances we had seen. For example, during the show, everyone around us was absolutely silent and fully engaged in every number, which is not usually the case for Fantasmic. After the show, we both noted that the show seemed even better than it has been the past few times we had seen it, and wondered if perhaps Disney had made recent changes to it.

A few hours after the show, I saw a post on the Disney Instagram that stated how the 20th-anniversary performance of Fantasmic had occurred earlier that night. I immediately showed the post to my friend, who responded “that makes so much sense!” I found this to be interesting, as we had both been able to detect that there was something different about this specific viewing of the show solely based on the audience’s reaction to the show that night.