Lighthouse Immersive Inc., a Canada-based company that specializes in incorporating art, music and technology made their Atlanta debut this week while simultaneously bringing a bit of Disney World to town.
The Immersive Disney Animation exhibition is taking place in the Armour-Ottley Loop at Armour Yards. The exhibition takes popular Disney animation footage and mixes clips from those films with Disney music and special effects.
The exhibition is immersive in more ways than just with the wall-to-wall film footage. At one point during a showing Tuesday night actual bubbles filled the air and stars could be seen from the ceiling to the floor.
“It pulls you even more into those worlds,” said Dorothy McKim, a producer with Walt Disney Animation for the past four decades said to The Atlanta Voice. “You actually feel like you’re there.”
Immersive Disney Animation takes place in a 44,000-square-foot warehouse space, which allows viewers more than enough room to experience the animation and listen to the music in a room full of other people, but with more than enough space to do so.
More than 45 Disney animated films, including The Princes and The Frog, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, Big Hero 6 and Frozen, to name a few, were used to create the Immersive Disney Animation exhibition. According to Kim that was the point of the collaboration between Disney and Lighthouse Immersive, Inc., they wanted to create something, well, immersive.
“It’s the first time we’re taking almost all of our content and putting it in one experience,” said Kim.
Songs such as “Try Everything,” “A Whole New World“, “Under the Sea“, and “Almost There” by Anika Noni Rose from The Princess and The Frog play a huge part in the entire exhibition. For fans of any and all of those animated movies the experience is all encompassing.
Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice
Atlanta is the 13th stop on Lighthouse Immersive’s tour of cities. Immersive Disney Animation began in Toronto December 2022 and has since made appearances in Boston, Columbus (OH), Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Nashville, and San Antonio.
The Immersive Disney Animation exhibition opened May 1 and will be at the Armour-Ottley Loop at Armour Yards through September 30.