Everybody has their favorite attractions at a Disney park, and while I enjoy a good roller coaster or immersive dark ride as much as the rest, my favorite part of any Disney day is usually the end, when the nighttime spectaculars come out to play. I’ve sung the praises of the Paint the Night parade at Disneyland before, and I love a good fireworks show. But there’s so much more than that that can go into a great nighttime show, and I’ve been waiting for Disneyland to add it for years.
Having seen the way drones can enhance fireworks at parks like Dollywood and Universal Studios Florida’s incredible Cinesational show, I’ve wanted to see drones appear at domestic Disney Parks, but thus far, all we've gotten is the fun but very limited Disney Dreams That Soar show at Disney Springs. But drones are coming to another Disney park, and there's reason to believe it could be Disneyland.
Disney Is Testing A New Drone Show Above Golden Oak Ranch
Some Southern California residents have been blessed with a free Disney nighttime spectacular over the last couple of nights. As was recently captured on Instagram, those in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles have been able to spy a Disney-themed drone show, and it looks absolutely beautiful.
This looks quite amazing. The images, like Captain Hook's pirate ship flying across the sky, are just the sort of thing you can't do with fireworks or projection mapping. It's real Disney magic.
The drones are flying above the Golden Oak Ranch. In the late 1950’s Walt Disney leased the ranch as a filming location, before purchasing it in 1959. Golden Oak has been used as the location for dozens of Disney films and TV shows, from The Mickey Mouse Club to Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was recently released on Disney+.
The fact that this testing is happening so close to Disneyland Resort makes a possible connection obvious. Could this be part of a new show planned for Walt’s original park? It’s certainly possible, though there are also other possibilities.
Which Disney Park Is This For?
The decision to use Golden Oak Ranch as the staging area could indicate plans to perform the show at Disneyland, though it honestly could be for just about any other park. Walt Disney World certainly has the space to do drone testing on site, but with Walt Disney Imagineering based in Southern California, it's likely easier for them to test shows at Golden Oak regardless of the park it's for.
IN 2026, Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Paris will be renamed Disney Adventure World, and the park will debut a new nighttime show over the park’s Central Lake. The show will use water screens similar to Disney California Adventure’s World of Color, along with drones, so that may be the show we’re getting a preview of here.
At this point, it’s unclear if a drone show at Disneyland Resort is even possible. Disneyland is subject to the various rules and regulations of Anaheim, CA, in a way that Walt Disney World isn’t. The park has to forego fireworks if the wind is too strong, and can’t run fireworks on most weekdays, all because it must abide by city ordinances.
While it’s certainly possible that Disneyland can run drones if it wants to, or might be able to make a deal with the city to allow that, we simply don’t know the possibility of that. I’ll certainly be crossing my fingers that what we see here is part of a not-yet-announced Disneyland Resort drone show. I would love to see this either at Disneyland or Disney California Adventure. If this is for Disneyland Paris, I guess I'll just need to make plans to go there.
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