Extinct Attractions - World of Color: Winter Dreams
Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, I took a look back at a Christmas attraction that had a lot in common with the one we discussed last week.
It’s crazy to think that 2025 is already coming to a close. It feels like it just started for me, but here we are just a week away from its end. Of course, that means that the holidays at the Disney parks will be coming to a close soon after a fun past couple of months. This year, I’ll be staying home in California for the holidays, so I decided it would be fitting to take a look at an attraction from the Disneyland Resort.
After a couple of years of World of Color, Disney decided to add in a holiday version for the 2013 season and what better franchise to use than Frozen? But had Frozen only been released that year you may be asking yourself. Why, yes, it had . . . which makes its use in World of Color: Winter Dreams all the more intriguing, especially when you consider that much of the animation for the show was created to be a part of World of Color and Disneyland Paris’ Disney Dreams of Christmas. With all the eggs in the basket, November 15, 2013 was the magical day when World of Color: Winter Dreams made its debut along with Olaf himself.
The show kicked off with a song called “Glow” sung by a choir who got to appear on the water screens inside of snowflakes that all came together in one beautiful image. It was a cool way to start the show, though it was only around for its first year.
The next group to show up was a gaggle of fairies, namely Tinker Bell and her friends. After flying around for a bit, it was time to move things along with Olaf showing up as the host and performing some fun tricks on and around the stage. Even before the movie was released, one could tell that Olaf was going to be a star.
As the show progressed, one element that stood out was how well the fountains worked into the mix. They would play around with each other throughout in a visually appealing way and even have “solo” moments without the water screens.
On the screen front, the scene from Bambi where he skated around on the ice was up next and added some perfect comic relief before Elsa appeared with “Let It Go.” It’s so interesting that Disney was willing to put their biggest song from the movie into a Disney Parks show almost two weeks before its release, but it clearly worked as Frozen became the smash hit that it did.
From this point on, Winter Dreams began to really fall in line with its Parisian counterpart with the same section relating to it’s a small world style art of children around the world. However, this version’s bookend was different (and a bit more fun) as it moved along to "I See the Light” with some romantic clips to bring on the tears.
Via Rockin' Mama
From there, it was Toy Story time with a claw pulling up a Christmas tree to showcase that the Toy Story gang would be putting on a performance of “The Nutcracker,” the highlight of which for me included a group of Little Green Men doing ballet while Rex pranced around in a tutu in the middle of them. Of course, Buzz got to perform his tango with Jessie to tie things in a nice little bow.
It was time to get back to Frozen next, with a rousing performance of "In Summer” by our host, but not before he referred to Woody as a “pull string captain.”
Olaf didn’t end his fun there, though, as we got to experience a California exclusive with a sing-along of some holiday classics like “Jingle Bells,” “I Have a Little Dreidel,” “Feliz Navidad” and "Joy to the World.” But because it was Olaf, we got to sing while following Olaf’s bouncing butt.
To close things out, we got a reprise of the opening song with some more awesome fountain work to help tie a nice bow on the whole situation. Winter Dreams was a perfect addition to the park for the holiday season and I have a specific memory of sprinting from a performance of Fantasmic at Disneyland over to California Adventure to catch a showing of World of Color: Winter Dreams when it first opened.
The show was popular enough to stick around for a few years, with 2014 leading to some trimming to bring in some more songs from Frozen. In 2015, they cut a bit more out to perform the show back to back with World of Color: Celebrate for the resort’s 60th anniversary. But that scaled back version was the final one with World of Color: Season of Light taking the mantle in 2016 and performing until this past year with the 70th anniversary version of the show. It’ll be interesting to see if they go back to Season of Light next year or move on to bigger and better things.
Via Disney Wiki
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!