New Steps for Dancing Waters : Fountain Show at Hotel Is Now Pure Disney

The lights dim, the music swells, and the booming voice of an announcer washes over hundreds of people assembled before a pool of water in a corner of the Disneyland Hotel grounds.

Mark Rubin’s eyes are on the water, not the people, as he listens for the opening strains of the theme music from “Steamboat Willie,” the 1928 cartoon that introduced Mickey Mouse to America. Hands dancing across a beat-up-looking control box, Rubin pushes the buttons and pulls the levers that bring 16 fountains to life, their spray bouncing up and down to match the tooting of the steamboat music.

“It’s like being an entertainer,” said Rubin, who has “played” the Dancing Waters for 10 years. “I take a lot of pride in the show.”

The popular free show has been performed nearly every night, weather permitting, since the production opened 19 years ago. But this summer, the waters are dancing to a new beat.

Disney Bought It Back

Familiar tunes from Broadway, classical composers and the pop music world have been left behind for a new show featuring all-Disney music and characters. The change came 18 months after the Walt Disney Co. bought the Disneyland Hotel, which had been owned by the Wrather Corp., according to Tony Peluso, director of entertainment for Disney properties.

The new show, officials said, has been enthusiastically received by the summer crowds, particularly children, who crowd to the edge of the water show and extend their small arms to try to touch the mist from the fountains.

“Oooh, that’s pretty,” declared a towheaded toddler sitting on his father’s shoulders as the show began.

Joanne Rogers, a visitor from Oklahoma who had seen the old Dancing Waters show, said she prefers the new version. “I like the characters and it seems like they put in more fountains.”

The 17-minute show traces the history of Disney productions through music and a narration, moving from cartoons to movies to television. Though “The Mickey Mouse Club” theme song draws the largest sing-along response from the audience, Dancing Waters creator Michael A. Berkus said the music from the movie “Fantasia” is the most challenging for the show’s operators.

“The swaying of the fountains is very difficult to do,” said Berkus, who learned to “play” the waters at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. “There’s an art to playing it. It has to be taught.”

Only 6 ‘Conductors’

In fact, just six people have played the waters at the hotel since 1970, Berkus added, and the operators are often asked if they are musicians.

Needs to Stay Ahead

“I’m not a musician,” Rubin said, “but if I were, I’d have to be an offbeat musician because I have to be about a half-second ahead of the beat.”

The show’s operators work at stage left, where control panels for the fountains, spotlights and a fiber-optic wall are located. Behind the control-panel area is a small room that houses the music on reel-to-reel tape and other maintenance equipment.

The Dancing Waters show area was designed by Berkus, and includes a semicircular pool measuring 80 by 40 feet in front of the 16 water jets housed in a separate shallow pool. The fountains are backlighted by spotlights that can create water colors from baby blue to fire engine red. Behind the water is a wall of fiber-optic panels that flash to the beat of the music; Disney cartoon characters that light up during the show are perched atop the wall.

In designing the show, Berkus said he envisions himself as a conductor and each fountain as a musical instrument. “My goal is to make people believe they are seeing music,” he said.

For instance, he translated the lyrical music of “Fantasia” into graceful fountains that arch and wave, while a gunshot in the Davy Crockett theme song is punctuated with one burst from a single fountain that shoots water 40 feet into the air. The “Electrical Parade” music features the light board, its panels flashing patterns of red, green, pink and blue.

The Dancing Waters show shut down for about two weeks to prepare for the new production. The operators rehearsed six hours a day for eight days to music blaring from a boom box sitting on the cement staging area.

Berkus is delighted to explain the machinery behind Dancing Waters, much of which is far from new. The control panel for the fountains was built in Germany in 1948, and part of the fountain area has been powered by a $6 motor from an Erector set since 1970, he said.

“I’ve always believed that if it works, don’t fix it,” said Berkus, who also owns an Anaheim market firm but has a car with license plates reading “H20 SHOW.”

The original show cost about $500,000 to build and design, and Disney poured another $120,000 into the new production, Berkus said.

Although the fiber-optic wall and lighting system are semi-automated, Berkus is reluctant to turn the fountains over to a computer.

“For one thing, how would we know when to automate when the show changes in subtle ways all the time?” Berkus mused. “At what point would we decide it was perfect?”

The Dancing Waters operators agree.

“We’re always learning,” Dave Hill said. “This way, we can still try something new, so the show gets better with age.”