| Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show | |
|---|---|
 | |
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Opened |
May 5, 2005 |
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Designers |
Walt Disney Imagineering & Walt Disney Creative Entertainment |
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Show length |
35 minutes |
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Site area |
177,000 sq ft |
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Sponsor |
Brawny/Georgia Pacific |
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Capacity |
5,000 |
The Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show is a performance show at the Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. It is based on the original show, Moteurs... Action! Stunt Show Spectacular at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Resort Paris, France, which premiered with the park's opening in March 2002.
Revolving around a series of energetic stunts featuring automobiles, the show had its soft opening on March 14, 2005, but had its grand opening on May 5, 2005, as part of the Happiest Celebration on Earth festival at the Walt Disney World Resort, in honor of the very first Disney park, Disneyland, celebrating its fiftieth birthday. One aspect of the festival was each of the four Walt Disney World theme parks receiving a new attraction cloned from another Disney resort; the show was one of the star attractions at the Walt Disney Studios theme park at the Disneyland Resort Paris in France.
The show runs for just under 40 minutes and includes pyrotechnics, jet ski chases, and physical stuntwork among the car work. The cars are followed by cameras, and the film shown to the audience on a billboard television screen is both shot during the show and pre-recorded; some shots are even from the Disneyland Resort Paris version of the show. This is to make the show appear as if it were a real movie shoot. Herbie, the Volkswagen from The Love Bug, makes an appearance in an intermission in the middle of the show.
The show arena features scenery from a Mediterranean village in the south of France. The arena's construction forced the Backlot Tour at the theme park to be almost halved in length, as the arena was built inside the tour's attraction footprint.
Vehicles[]
The show has more than 40 vehicles featured in the show and backstage in the maintenance garage. The hero car is a custom-built design for the show, while the pursuit cars are Opel Corsas. The three different hero cars are all painted red while the pursuit cars are black, to easily allow guests to tell the difference between them. The show also includes specially designed cars that look identical to the others used in the show, two of which are red "hero" cars. One has the interior situated backwards to allow the driver to appear as if he's driving in reverse, and the other has a seat and steering wheel bolted onto the side of the car, giving the appearance that the car has no driver in the driver's seat.
One of the black "pursuit" cars is cut in half behind the front doors to give it the appearance of exploding during a scene in the show. The cars, while they appear simple and plain, are reinforced with rally car roll cages for driver safety. The cars are powered with 1300 cc, 150 horsepower (110 kW) motorcycle engines mounted directly behind the driver's seat. The cars have four gears in forward drive and four gears in reverse, allowing the drivers to accelerate to high speed going backwards. The car has a bump shift for easier gear shifting.
The driver merely bumps the shifter forward to go up a gear, and back to go back a gear. In order to go in reverse, the driver twists the top of the shifter and bumps it forward, or backwards. The emergency brake automatically releases when the driver lets go. The show cars weigh just 1,322 pounds. The drivers can switch the cars from front wheel drive, to four wheel drive, to rear wheel drive to suit the slips and slides of the show. The drivers must wear heavy protective suits. A cooling system in the rear of the car pumps water through a series of tubes and into the driver's suit to keep him cool in the Florida heat. The show also features jet skis on the small canal at the front of the theater, and motorcycles which maneuver around the cars.