Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls… Disneyland proudly presents our spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination in thousands of sparkling lights and electro-syntho-magnetic musical sounds… The Main Street Electrical Parade!”
For generations of Disney Parks guests, that triumphant, electronic, vocoded fanfare was far more than an announcement; it was a prelude to a dream. Dazzling sights set aglow in the darkness of Disneyland; infectious, joyful music bounding throughout Magic Kingdom; a dreamscape of hundreds of thousands of lightbulbs reflecting in the eyes of young and old… This was peak Disney.
For fifty years, the Main Street Electrical Parade was a synthesized, symphonic, mobile masterpiece, elevated to stand among classic attractions like very few entertainment offerings can. It was an icon of the era; a masterwork of engineering, audio production, design, and marketing… and then, it was gone. At least, for a while.
Today, we induct the Main Street Electrical Parade into our catalog of Lost Legends – the in-depth stories behind loved-and-lost theme park classics from around the globe. We’ll trace the development of this sensational cross-generational fan favorite, follow its many rebirths, and see how the concept has been often imitated (but never quite duplicated!) in an array of dance-along nighttime parades that have come since.
And before we head off, remember that you can unlock rare concept art and audio streams in this story, access over 100 Extra Features, and recieve an annual Membership card and postcard art set in the mail by supporting this clickbait-free, in-depth, ad-free theme park storytelling site for as little as $2 / month! Become a Park Lore Member to join the story! Until then, let’s start at the beginning…
Disneyland After Dark
“You know, this is one of my favorite times of the day here… Just about sundown. I like to be here when the lights come on. Seems like a new kind of magic takes over in Disneyland after dark.”
Take it from Walt himself – who dedicated a whole 1962 episode of The Wonderful World of Color to “Disneyland After Dark”: you haven’t seen Disneyland until you’ve seen it at night. There’s just something about the way the roaring Tiki torches of Adventureland cast frenetic shadows in the dense jungle underbrush; how the filaments of Main Street’s bulbs hum to life, dancing in patterns across storefronts; how the otherworldly, neon glow of purple and blue turns Tomorrowland into a science fiction dreamscape; and, quite appropriately, the infinite darkness of the unknown adding new nuance to the Jungle Cruise or to the furthest bends of the Rivers of America…
Darkness and light have been integral elements of Disney Parks from day one… And even as far back as Disneyland’s first years, Walt and his early designers recognized just how sensational the shift to nighttime would be. In May 1957, Disneyland shifted its operating day to 10 AM to 10 PM. A month later, “Date Nite at Disneyland” became one of the park’s first ever nighttime events. Back then, lessees owned and operated many shops and restaurants in the park, but Walt insisted that each one stay open into the night. In fact, he famously stated that popcorn ought to be popped right up until closing; that each and every guest should get the full Disneyland show, whether first to arrive or last to leave.
That year also saw the completion of the Carnation Plaza Gardens – a quaint wooded courtyard tucked into an alcove just west of Sleeping Beauty Castle. There, beneath a tented pavilion, guests would dance into the night to the tunes of local swing bands like the Elliot Brothers Orchestra. Disneyland became one of the premier places in Southern California for big band music – a perfect date night for locals… including Walt and Lillian themselves! (In the years that followed, some of the biggest names in music swung by the Carnation Plaza Gardens stage, including Count Basie, Frank Sinatra Jr., Duke Ellington, Mel Torme, Lionel Hampton and the Osmond Brothers.)
Yes indeed, Disneyland was a whole new park after dark… And with Date Nites in full swing, Walt began to experiment with new ways to lure locals to Disneyland for a night out. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Walt had a vested interest in convincing guests to enjoy a torch-lit luau at the Tahitian Terrace; to relax at the Red Wagon Inn beneath strung popcorn lights on Main Street; to hand over a D-Ticket for a moonlit ride on the Lost Legend: The Skyway.
In 1958, Disneyland debuted its first ever fireworks program, Fantasy in the Sky. Unbelievably, Tinker Bell’s fanciful flight over Sleeping Beauty Castle as part of the show would continue for nearly forty years, with Fantasy in the Sky cemented as its own Southern California tradition for generations of the park’s neighbors and guests.
But as with all things that had been learned by way of the school of hard knocks at Disneyland, the company’s next entertainment project would have nighttime entertainment built in from the start. Over 2,000 miles away in the vast, remote expanse of swamp and scrub pine of Central Florida, Disney World was taking shape… and it would open with a bit of night magic all its own…
An unplanned asset
Construction on what would become Walt Disney World officially kicked off in October 1965. In fact, the first feature constructed for the new “Florida Project” wasn’t a castle; it wasn’t a monorail line; it wasn’t not even hotel. In fact, the first earth to move during site prep was what would become the Seven Seas Lagoon.
Florida’s high water table and fragile environment demanded an enormous infrastructural preparation for the resort, including 55 miles of canals and levees for flood control and to manage and exchange water levels without depleting the overall reserve. Initial plans for the project had called only for a southward expansion of the existing, natural Bay Lake toward where Walt’s E.P.C.O.T. city would rise.
But given that the site southwest of Bay Lake was deemed unsuitable for construction, it was cleverly dug away to create the Seven Seas Lagoon we know today. As the Passholder-exclusive construction photo above shows, Disney’s decision to carve out the Seven Seas Lagoon was a massive undertaking… But it also proved to be a smart one. The resulting man-made Lagoon would not only serve as a “red carpet” entry experience for Magic Kingdom, but the soil and sediment collected from its excavation was used to cover the ground-level Cast access “Utilidors” that the theme park itself was built on top!
And more to the point, the finished product – the sunbathing, water-skiing, sail-boating Lagoon criss-crossed by launches, paddlewheelers, and ferries – served as a recreational centerpiece to the “Vacation Kingdom” and its nautical embellishments… not to mention a centralized hub for the resort’s two opening day hotels, the Contemporary and the Polynesian Village.
Which brings us to the unlikely prologue to Disney’s most well-known, well-loved, and well-traveled parade…
Night Magic
Just a few weeks before the Walt Disney World’s official opening on October 1, 1971, then-CEO of Walt Disney Productions Card Walker allegedly tasked the team in Orlando with creating a last-minute “kiss goodnight” for the resort – some piece of nighttime entertainment that could thrill guests exiting the Magic Kingdom and returning to their hotels for the evening.
What came next is often described as the brainchild of Disney executive Bob Jani (YAH-nee) – an Opening Day lead at Disneyland’s Guest Relations department, by then head of Entertainment. Having been on-site for much of Magic Kingdom’s late development, Jani had an idea. He recalled in a 1988 Disney Channel documentary on the resort’s creation: “As we were building Walt Disney World, I kept looking out at Bay Lake. […] The property was so vast, there were no horizon lights or any city lights, which meant we had perfect black, or perfect darkness. I started fantasizing about what we could do with all that darkness.”
Given that exiting park visitors and hotel guests alike either encircled, crossed, passed along, or overlooked the Seven Seas Lagoon, the answer was obvious: use it as a stage for a “kiss goodnight.” In early 1971, Jani had a simple whale silhouette rigged out of wire mesh, wrapped with Christmas lights, and moved out into the Seven Seas Lagoon. With executives in attendance, Jani flipped the switch as the spouting whale suddenly appeared in the inky blackness of the water. Voila. At once, designers sketched up the Passholder-exclusive concept art below for a nightly nautical procession.
According to Ted Kellogg – Disney World’s watercraft expert at the time, speaking to All Ears – the company custom-ordered 33 pontoon boats with the strangest dimensions imaginable (30 feet long, 3½ feet wide) from Harris Float Boats of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Each was fitted with an aluminum wire shape, strung with simple lights, and equipped with its own on-board generator to power not only the lights, but enormous, high-powered speakers, aimed to either shore – both to drown out the generators’ hum and to broadcast an era-appropriate, celebratory score…
In fact, the music Disney selected to narrate Walt Disney World’s Electrical Water Pageant brings us one step closer to an electrical procession stepping off on Main Street… Read on…