Fantasia 2006

Fantasia 2006 is a third movie in the Fantasia series of films. The film started development in 2002 and was released on April 18, 2006.

Conception
Fantasia 2006 started production in 2002. It was to be the first movie in the Fantasia series to feature music from all around the world, not just classical European pieces. It was also the first movie in the series to include singing, which was shown in several of the shorts. There was an unspecified number of shorts made, but it can be reasoned that it was probably six. A segment that was included was set inside of Australia. It was also heavily rumored that there is a British sequence sent in tone to music by The Beatles. The film was released on April 18, 2006.

Program
Although the film was made, all of the segments to be used in the film had been written and storyboarded.
 * 1) Destino
 * 2) Ride of the Valkyries
 * 3) Mickey and the Seagull
 * 4) One by One
 * 5) The Swan of Tuonela
 * 6) Dance of the Goofys
 * 7) Berceuse, Op. No 57 (Baby Ballet)
 * 8) The Pastoral Symphony
 * 9) Flight of the Bumblebee (Bumble Boogie)
 * 10) Donald's Valentine Dollar
 * 11) Lorenzo
 * 12) Claire De Lune
 * 13) Peter and the Wolf
 * 14) Adventures in a Perambulator (3 minute excerpt)
 * 15) Hansel and Gretel
 * 16) The Little Matchgirl

Fate and Legacy
The most celebrated of the four shorts produced is “Destino,” Walt Disney’s infamous collaboration with Salvador Dali from 1945 that was storyboarded. Test animation was produced and Mexican singer Dora Luz, who had appeared in The Three Caballeros, recorded the song, which was written for this project by Armando Dominguez. Believe it or not, “Destino” does have a story although it easily gets lost in all of the mind-tripping wonderment that appears on screen. If you pay extra close attention, you will understand that Chronos (time) has fallen in love with a human girl, a forbidden love that can never be. Destino was only released to home video once, on the limited Blu-Ray release of Fantasia in 2010. Between these four shorts, just 23-minutes of animated content was produced. Little has been revealed about what other segments were planned for Fantasia 2006. From a Roy Disney quote in 2002 about the project, we know that one of the planned segments was to be set in Australia. It is also heavily rumored that Disney had the idea of doing a British sequence set to music by The Beetles. That would bring us to six possible segments for Fantasia 2006.

Nobody knows what order the segments were intended to appear in, but it can be assumed the introductions would have been similar in tone and spirit to both previous films. But in terms of which legacy segment could have been used, I feel the most fitting would have been the “Pastoral Symphony” because of its Greek mythology inspirations, which would have leant itself to the worldly theme of Fantasia 2006. Also with the short run-time of these four shorts, that would have helped boost the project to feature length since that piece alone is 21-minutes long. We may never get to learn about what else would have been included in Fantasia 2006, but we can always dream that someday Disney will provide us with another concert feature to continue the Fantasia legacy.