Good Day Atlanta viewer information: May 1, 2023

ATLANTA - It’s opening day for Immersive Disney Animation: 

You’ve wished upon a star to be part of that world…and now, the magic of Disney is opening a whole new world here in Atlanta.

It’s opening week for "Immersive Disney Animation," the acclaimed high-tech immersive experience taking over Atlanta’s Armour Yards. Developed by Lighthouse Immersive in collaboration with Walt Disney Animation Studios, the experience uses projection, sound, and interactive technology to allow visitors to literally step into the beloved worlds of famed Disney films, from "Snow White" to the recent Oscar-winning hit "Encanto."

"This is a way to get inside all of the Disney magic that you’ve come to know and love," says J. Miles Dale, Oscar-winning producer and one of the show’s creators. "It’s one thing to be in VR with goggles on, but this is goggles-off, and crazy magic."

"Immersive Disney Animation" made its world premiere in Toronto in December 2022, and has since opened in several U.S. cities including Cleveland, Nashville, and Las Vegas. Creating the experience meant going straight to the source, digging into the Walt Disney Animation Studios archives.

"It was a great privilege to be able to go to the Disney archives," he says. "They’re great preservationists. So, we were really inspired by what we saw."

Dale says the goal of the experience is to educate as well as entertain; to that end, the experience also illuminates the process by which talented artists begin with pencil sketches and eventually create some of the best-loved films in history. 

"It’s not just this projection show, but as you come in, you’ll see things about the beginnings of animation," says Dale. "The art of animation: storyboards, backgrounds and all of those things, and the artists that created them."

Tickets for the experience are available for purchase here. Armour Yards is located at 159 Armour Drive in Atlanta. 

After exclusively previewing the show with J. Miles Dale a month ago, we couldn’t wait to finally see it here in Atlanta. Click the video player in this article to check out our morning exploring "Immersive Disney Animation!"

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