The Main Street Electrical Parade (1977)
Between Dorsey’s swirling symphonic introduction and Wagner’s electronically-manipulated proclamation, the first fifteen seconds of 1977’s Main Street Electrical Parade was a legend unto itself; a glorious provocation to witness the enchantment. Fittingly, Wagner’s very own in park announcement prior to the parade’s start said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, in just a few minutes, you will experience one of the most unique pageants presented anywhere in the world: The Main Street Electrical Parade. This sparkling fantasy recreates scenes from many of Walt Disney’s memorable film classics in over half a million colorful, twinkling lights!
Powered entirely by batteries, some of the brilliant parade floats measure up to 23 feet in hight and up to 100 feet in length and altogether stretch for almost a quarter mile.
Each parade unit sets its own musical atmosphere by interweaving synchronized, electronically synthesized familiar Disney music with the continuous Electrical Parade theme in electro-syntho-magnetic musical sound.
Through the magic of light and sound, you will see Alice in Wonderland, attend Cinderella’s ball, and relive the exciting adventures of Pinocchio. You’ll view many members of the famous Disney Character family, including the Seven Dwarfs, Goofy, and of course, Mickey Mouse. You’ll even meet Elliot, a 40-foot dragon from Walt Disney’s musical film Pete’s Dragon.
We hope you’ll enjoy the unusual electrifying magic and exciting fantasy of the Main Street Electrical Parade beginning in just a few minutes. Thank you.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Now we invite you to sit back, relax, and take Jack’s advice: enjoy the magic and excitement of the Main Street Electrical Parade as it appeared at the end of its Magic Kingdom run in 2016 – with plenty of embellished and added floats in the forty years since its initial debut:
But our story isn’t quite over. After all, the Main Street Electrical Parade is a Lost Legend for a reason. Still, the Electrical Parade’s “glowing away” still hasn’t stopped this ’70s classic from dazzling guests… at least, not for very long.
“Stop and Glow”
At Disneyland, the Main Street Electrical Parade (“Version A”) launched in 1972, overcoming its fast-tracked design and rocky development to instantly become the fan-favorite Disneyland and its Cast needed.
At Magic Kingdom, a custom-built and expanded copy (“Version B”) of the Main Street Electrical Parade debuted in 1977. Its re-orchestrated score and refreshed float lineup (both copied back to Disneyland) became the de facto, iconic versions of the show.
Finally, Tokyo Disneyland opened its own Main Street Electrical Parade (“Version C”) just two years after the park’s opening, in 1985.
That means that for the better part of a decade, three copies of the Main Street Electrical Parades made nightly processions down three Main Streets in three cities on two continents. Think about it: through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, tastes had certainly changed; music had changed; popular characters had changed; Disney had changed. But the Main Street Electrical Parade stayed. And more importantly, it stayed a fan favorite.
In that way, you could argue that the parade was ageless. Like the best EPCOT classics or Fantasyland favorites, it had transcended into timelessness. Its flaws became nostalgic; its simplicity became its hallmark; its lack of modernity became its selling point. It was a cross-generational treasure. But it didn’t last forever… The landmark parade had created a new genre of nighttime entertainment, and one by one, resorts decided to upgrade.
SpectroMagic Kingdom (1991) (“Version B”)
On September 14, 1991, Magic Kingdom’s Main Street Electrical Parade (“Version B”) was powered down after a 14-year run as part of the park’s 20th Anniversary celebration. (It wouldn’t be the last time that the parade would “glow away forever.”) Two weeks later on October 1, 1991, the park launched SpectroMagic.
Just as the Electrical Parade had been a glowing reinvention whose style and sounds were quintessentially ’70s, SpectroMagic was a ’90s masterpiece. Comprised of an unbelievable 39 individual units together creating 23 show pieces, SpectroMagic banked on a modern, luminscent upgrade: the sparkling, vivid, color-changing, dazzling elegance of Fiber Optics.
In retrospect, SpectroMagic also came about at a pivotal time in the Disney Parks story… One of the parade’s five sections was dedicated to The Little Mermaid, the hit 1989 film that’s today remembered as the start of the Disney Renaissance. SpectroMagic, then, is one of the first Disney Parks productions with the audacity to mix Disney’s newest generation of stories and characters with the classics of yesteryear. To that end, the new parade also replaced the electronic, ’70s score of the “Baroque Hoedown” with a more orchestral soundtrack interpolating Disney songs both classic and contemporary…
That’s probably part of why, for a generation of Millennials and Gen Zers, SpectroMagic is the Electrical Parade; the formative, glowing procession that forever defined their childhoods. To this day, many twenty-something still daydream of lighted Whirly-Balls, glittering schools of fish, luminous silly symphonies, and an otherworldly Ursula.
SpectroMagic had a legendary run of its own, playing from 1991 to 1999. The parade went dark in May 1999, but only because the approaching Millennium Celebration meant Disney needed to pull out the big guns. Would they develop a new, 21st century nighttime parade for Magic Kingdom? Plus SpectroMagic with more Renaissance floats? Nope.
Instead, 1999 saw the auspicious return of… you guessed it… the Main Street Electrical Parade! The only thing that could match the marketing campaign of the parade’s “glowing away” in 1991 was the campaign around its return in 1999 (above). The beloved show arrived for a limited run, lasting the duration of the resort’s 18-month Millennium Celebration. Then, as mysteriously as it had arrived, it vanished again.
SpectroMagic reclaimed the parade route in 2001 and played for nearly another decade. It closed forever in 2010, and unlike its predecessor’s “glowing away,” SpectroMagic was well and truly powered off. After reports of the floats’ destruction were reported online, a Walt Disney World spokesperson confirmed to Inside the Magic in 2013 that the parade had been fully and officially “retired.”
With SpectroMagic having ended its run for good in 2010, the streets of Magic Kingdom were vacant once more. But not for long. In June 2010, The Main Street Electrical Parade returned again – its third run in Magic Kingdom, and its second return from the dead. The “limited engagement” ended up being not-so-limited. It stuck around until 2016 before “glowing away” for a third – and to date, final – time in Florida.
Californian flops (1997 – 2001) (“Version A”)
Back at Disneyland, the original Main Street Electrical Parade had run its course. Delighting audiences for well over twenty years, the tried-and-true classic was ready for its retirement, even if the park’s generations-long Southern Californian audiences weren’t. Whereas some attractions are quietly closed or have their demise half-heartedly announced in a Disney Parks Blog post, the 1996 end of the Main Street Electrical Parade was practically a nationwide celebration, inviting guests to see the parade before its “glowing away” for good.
(In a story mostly relegated to trivia books, Disneyland’s retired parade did have one more run. On June 14, 1997, the parade – plussed with one new custom float – popped up in New York City for a one-time ride along Broadway as the “Hercules Electrical Parade.” The televised showing simultaneously promoted Disney’s 1997 film Hercules and the opening of Disney’s renovated New Amsterdam Theater, where The Lion King was staged. Disney even managed to cajole eight blocks of Broadway to go dark for the event, except studio competitors Warner Bros., who refused to shut off their lighted marquee.)
Disney had big plans for a much more modern replacement: Light Magic. In fact, much of Disneyland’s 1997 promotion revolved around the surefire hit, which would reinvent nighttime entertainment the same way its predecessor had two decades earlier. Light Magic wouldn’t be a “traditional” nighttime parade, but a “streetacular.” Instead of typical floats, it was comprised of four massive 80-foot long rolling stages.
In a unique twist on nighttime entertainment, Light Magic would roll down the parade route in darkness, springing to life at key “show stop” moments along the course. Unfortunately for guests, that meant that picking the wrong spot meant a parade of unlit, silent stages rolling by in the dark. And once the lights did pop on, characters in Pixie masks scared children, and guests reception to the odd performance was lukewarm at best as chronicled by the incomparable Yesterland.
Light Magic ran only for the summer of 1997 – about four months. Disney’s big budget, $20 million replacement for the Main Street Electrical Parade was a dud.
Speaking of duds, just four years later, the Declassified Disaster: Disney’s California Adventure made its shockingly-troubled debut, threatening to plunge the resort into a financial meltdown. Thinking quickly, Disney decided to super-charge the underbuilt park with a surefire, quick-fix hit of its own. The Main Street Electrical Parade was back from the dead! It wouldn’t be the first or last time that the Electrical Parade was used as a clever (and reportedly, successful) tactic for drawing guests to underperforming parks…
On July 1, 2001 – five months after California Adventure’s opening and five years after ending its auspicious run at Disneyland – the classic Electrical Parade found itself just a few hundred feet away from its Main Street namesake. The renamed Disney’s Electrical Parade ran at Disney’s California Adventure for nearly a decade, ceasing only in 2010 when – in the midst of the park’s billion-dollar reimagining – the park’s custom-made, permanent nighttime spectacular – World of Color – was ready for showtime.
Speaking of showtime, Disney’s two newest nighttime parades don’t just owe their existence to the Main Street Electrical Parade… they’ve borrowed its floats and music! Read on and we explore the last two must-see masterpiece productions dancing down Main Streets around the world…