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‘Main Street Electrical Parade’ Leaves Magic Kingdom, Returns To Disneyland

By Jeffrey Totey
Published on: 08:39 PST, Aug 11, 2016

Disney’s favorite “Electrical Parade” is on the move again. “The Main Street Electrical Parade” will perform its last show at the Magic Kingdom in Florida on October 9 of this year. It will then be packed up and shipped to Disneyland in Anaheim, California, for a return appearance in early 2017.

Originally, the presentation was the first nighttime parade for Disneyland when it made its debut on June 17, 1972. Featuring half a million lights, the parade was a huge hit for the park during its initial 24-year run. Today, Disney Parks Blog reports that “spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination” will return for a brief stay. Unfortunately, that means Disneyland’s current “Paint the Night” parade will come to an end on September 5 with a few repeating performances on select evenings during the holiday season.

While some are happy about the news, others have been quite vocal about their displeasure.

“No more Paint the Night?! NOOOOOOOOOOO! Oh man this is the saddest news! I hope it is brought back somewhere somehow!” said one poster earlier today on the blog’s website.

Another said, “Please do NOT tell me this means WDW will be losing the Main Street Electrical again? This is my absolute favorite nighttime parade and I will be heartbroken if it goes away again!!!”

Needless to say, they will be heartbroken.

The “Main Street Electrical Parade,” which features electronic stylings of Disney favorite tunes, first closed in 1996 in order to present the new “Light Magic” show that was a complete and utter failure for Disneyland (more on that below). The Magic Kingdom had their own version of the parade that appeared from 1977 to 1991.

To help boost attendance at Disney’s California Adventure, which sits across the street from Disneyland, the parade was brought back to California and renamed “Disney’s Electrical Parade.” It played at DCA from 2001 to 2010, and then it was sent back to Florida.

Around the mid-90s, Disneyland officials began to feel that the electrical parade had become stale and needed a makeover. In 1997, the park unveiled what was to be a bigger and better nighttime spectacular, but it ended up a spectacular failure and lasted only 15 weeks.

“Light Magic” was less of a parade and more of a street show that featured many clownish-looking pixies, which looked nothing like Tinker Bell and friends, and only a few favorite Disney characters. The floats featured large screens and would play various scenes of Disney movies while the pixies danced for about 15 minutes. Critics called the show, “Light Tragic.” Disneyland quietly canceled the show. Fortunately for the park, Disneyland still had its other popular nighttime show “Fantasmic!” playing on the Rivers of America to keep guests entertained.

However, Disneyland fans of “Fantasmic!” will be disappointed to learn that will have to travel to Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida to see the show as it was closed temporarily at Disneyland in January of this year to allow for the construction of the new Star Wars-themed area. It will re-open next summer.

After many performances with a malfunctioning dragon featured in the “Fantasmic!” show, today it usually runs flawlessly at both parks. However, a new video went viral this week of a recent performance of the water show where Dopey (one of the Dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) took a tumble off one floor and almost fell into the water but landed on Goofy instead. No Disney characters were seriously hurt in the incident.

https://youtu.be/3JX4MNRoFUU

[Photo by AP Images]

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