Anyone who has seen Fantasmic in the past year is bound to remember the 45-foot-tall, 18,000-pound dragon that ominously breaths fire while swinging its head wildly over the Rivers of America stage. Sleeping Beauty’s notorious villain Maleficent transforms into the beast, but after an incident this past weekend the dragon may have been defeated by “technical difficulties” indefinitely. Disneyland officials are being vague about the malfunction but claim to be working on the issue.
“The dragon in Fantasmic experienced a technical issue last Saturday night,” wrote Disney spokeswoman Betsy Sanchez. “We are working to fix the problem. At this time we are not able to determine when the dragon will reappear in the show; however, it will continue to run at its scheduled times.” (-Los Angeles Times)
Internet rumors claim that the mighty dragon collapsed during Saturday’s show, but this wouldn’t be the first time Maleficent had problems. When the newly updated show was to debut in Disneyland last year it had to do so sans Maleficent. It took 3 months for the highly-anticipated mechanical dragon to join the show.
The Los Angeles Times posted a photo of the dragon taken by Richard Martin, reportedly after it collapsed this weekend:
