When Fantasmic! first premiered at Disneyland, it was completely one of a kind. Suzanne Palmiter Campbell, who was then the Disneyland Ambassador, recalls, “It was a challenge to describe because no one knew what a mist screen was and very few knew what the show was going to look like so I had to try to explain it to people before even seeing it myself.” To this day, seeing the show for the first time remains one of Suzanne’s favorite memories. Jack Lindquist, the Disneyland president at the time, recalls sitting with then Disney President and CEO Michael Eisner and trying to come up with a name for the show just two months before opening. “We got a big dictionary down from Michael’s bookshelf and started going through it page by page. We both kept throwing out names and rejecting them. Finally we had reached the Ps and Michael threw out ‘phantasmagoria.’ It immediately intrigued us both. (Look it up.) The meaning related. It had the right feel. We liked it. I took it to Bob McTyre, Mike Davis and Henry Carroselli, the advertising art director, and a week later took the first logo concept for Fantasmic! back to Michael…and the rest is showbiz history.”
