Viewers entered the Imagination Institute's theater for the Inventor of the Year Award Ceremony, in which professor Wayne Szalinski was receiving the award. Attendees were asked to wear their "safety goggles" in preparation for the scientific demonstrations. The show opened with the crew of the show searching for Wayne, when he suddenly flew on stage miniaturized and in a transportation device called a Hoverpod.
He accidentally dropped the control box and sent the machine flying off behind the stage out of control. The Hoverpod came back and shorted out the neon Imagination Institute "Inventor of the Year Award" sign over the audience (at first only some letters are knocked out, leaving "NERD" spelled diagonally).
Wayne's son, Nick, demonstrates some of his father's other inventions to kill time while the crew searched for him. Wayne's youngest son, Adam, put a mouse in his father's copy machine and they quickly multiplied in hundreds of copies (in an animation designed by Curious Pictures). This did not go smoothly, and the audience ended up screaming with the loose mice running under their seats and a holographic "Holo-Pet" cat (which transforms into a lion) in their faces used to scare the mice away (designed by Kleiser-Walczak). While the demonstrations went awry, Wayne manages to use his new shrinking machine to return himself back to normal size. He brought out the machine to demonstrate its uses by shrinking a family's luggage, saving space and money when traveling.
Unfortunately, the machine went out of control and shrunk the audience (plus Nick, who pushes Dr. Channing out of the way of the machine's electrobeam just in the nick of time). Wayne inspected Nick and the audience and, after making sure they're okay, says he's got some spare parts to fix the machine (or so he hopes). The viewers are then intimidated by Wayne's worried and clumsy wife, Diane. Which tricked Nick and the audience into believing being in comfort and care with the gentle blonde haired mother. Which changed soon after, as the ground starts booming under her each footstep and become louder as she walks too close to take a better look desperately at her tiny son. She bends over, proceeds to motionlessly stare and releases her heavy breath down at her tiny son to analyse him, who is asking for help in finding his pet snake. Nick who is like a tiny walking toy figure asks for help. But his request is disregarded by the towering mother and she appears in shock at the sight of her mere inches tall son which made her woozy upon the thought of her fragile son's safety.
As to her shrunken son's point of view, Giant Diane Szalinski's height is now nearly 30 feet tall and her body gigantically weighs a very hefty 21.6 tons, or 43,200 pounds! Which transformed the caring mom's body into a giant crushing hazard of dense meat than the body being a place of love and embrace of a mother. Diane knew that if she even wanted to hug her tiny son then he will be squeezed to death brutally against her breast and would be sticking off her body like a bug as she would be too big and overwhelmingly heavy to be touching a shrunken Nick. When she regains her focus and arrives back to reality, her legs start shaking then suddenly the mother begins to lose her balance and moans to the beginning of her fainting state in front of Nick.
Unfortunately, Diane's terrifying fainting giant body begins falling towards Nick who luckily dodged away from being nearly crushed to a pulp and becoming a stain under the Diane's expensive beige suit as her heavy body collapsed just beside him. The impact of her sudden fall on the floor caused the ground to shake violently due to Diane's enormous size and mass from the point of view of the shrunken Nick and the audience (This triggered the seats to jerk as well which really simulates being small and how heavy Diane really is compared to the audience. Diane's finger began poking out of the screen as she laid unconscious on the floor and her giant finger was barely away from squashing the audience's faces). Soon after, Dr. Channing appears to make sure that no one from the audience members is stuck or crushed under the heaviness of Diane's giant body and after finding out that thankfully she hasn't landed on anybody, proceeds to order Wayne's team to quickly carry her away from the stage to her safety. Nick scared for his life from Diane falling onto him again and flattening him as they carry her over him, begs them please not to drop her again.
Adam begins taking a picture of them (audience) with a blinding flash and picking up the theater to "show the little people to Mommy." The whole room was lifted right off its construction for a minute or two before Diane (who regained consciousness) and Channing persuade Adam to put the theater back where he found it. Then Nick's snake, Gigabyte, much larger than the miniature audience, nearly ate them (as he had not yet been fed that day). Quark, the Szalinski's dog, then chased him away with a few barks. Luckily, Wayne fixed the machine just in the nick of time and returned the audience and Nick back to normal size, but Quark was momentarily affected by the beam and then ran backstage out of sight.
Near the end, the floor begins shaking as Diane appears yet again with her final appearance to help Nick feel at peace as she crawls on her knees towards her son without hurting him and jokingly says if he keeps shrinking then no one is going to invite a Giant mother and a shrunken son anywhere to lighten his mood. Nick, who is getting more anxious due to his Giant clumsy mother being way too close to him again proceeds to yell that Dad needs to hurry up before he is swept away by the Disney people or (Getting crushed for real under his clumsy mother). Diane says "Okay.." with an assured tone. Wayne announces the machine is ready which made Diane to walk far away from Nick to avoid anymore mistakes on her behalf of accidentally crushing her shrunken son under her weight again due to her own clumsiness
Wayne accepted his award and began his speech, but he was interrupted by Nick warning of a "big, humongous problem." The now giant Quark walked out onto the stage and the curtain closed while viewers heard the Imagination Institute's crew trying to stop him from crushing the place. He then found his way through the curtain and sneezed on the audience for the finale. As they left, the audience could hear the commotion from backstage continue in the background.
Production[]
The show was sponsored by Kodak.
The movie was presented in 3D by using polarized glasses and projectors.
The entire theater was on a platform that moved up to four inches high during the show to simulate the theater moving.
The platform was installed with vibrations to simulate loud and violent ground shakes.
The song True Colors was played as part of the pre-show film as an advertisement for Kodak. In Disneyland & EPCOT, the song was sung by two unknown artists. In the Disneyland Resort Paris version, it was sung by Cyndi Lauper.[1]
