I was talking to a parade CM online the other and she said Pinocchio's float from the PI section went the way of Disneylsnd's "Return To Oz" floats. not sure if the incident happened after the floats came back because all 23 floats were in the October 9th performances in Florida.
Have you seen the promo spot yet? With the woman in bib overalls carrying a glowing green bulb through a warehouse, as a man in suspenders and a tie looks on approvingly? It wasn't until about the third time (watching Saturday evening's Jeopardy rerun) that I actually got a good look at it. It wasn't too difficult to find it on YouTube. Or a version, from the same source, with the "easter eggs" highlighted. A trip through Yesterland.
And a couple of analyses of the spot, from two different sources One from "mrcheezypop" and one from "DisneyTilYourDizzy" (who seems to have kept a cooler head).
Last night, for the first time, I saw a "short" version of the spot, which cut directly from the establishing shot of the warehouse to the two-shot of the woman brandishing the bulb and her colleague looking on approvingly.
My family and I went to the Resort on the weekend the MSEP returned. My wife loved the parade way back when, but she wasn't as enthused about it this time - she noticed the units that didn't come back, as well as a couple of floats that had lights that weren't working (not individual bulbs, mind you, but small patches where the lights were either dim or out. She believes that the DLR folks who got the parade back were probably ticked at the WDW people for not maintaining the parade floats as well as they did! As for me, I love the parade, but I was a little "meh" about it - it's as fun as ever, but after seeing PTN last year and Dreamlights in Tokyo a few months ago, it seems a little dated.
I'm just glad they didn't swap out the "Peter Pan" music for what Tokyo uses now (the new music for Tokyo's Peter Pan float sounds weird while the float makes our nearly 32 year old version outdated
Hmm. Ends June 18. Which is more-or-less the beginning of the summer vacation season. There must be something else scheduled to start right after that. But what? Not a return to pain-in-the-night, I hope. (As far as I'm concerned, even Light Magic was better than PTN.)
I don't know about that. Do you remember Light Magic? Let's stop the parade and Riverdance for a half hour with creepy faeries.
As far as I'm concerned, an impacted tooth extraction, or a thrombosed hemorrhoid, was better than PTN. Note, however, that I have most of Wendy Carlos's recordings, and a Perrey-Kingsley CD that includes the original version of Baroque Hoedown (as well as the original version of the open music from "The Joker's Wild"). And I regard the Daft Punk score to be the biggest of Tron:Legacy's many mistakes. And that every single FM preset on my car radio is set to KUSC. And that my favorite female vocalist (Hell, my favorite vocalist period) is Joan Morris.
Probably a really out-of-the-park wild crazy idea, but what if they extended the run of the Electrical Parade to last through the summer? When the park is most popular? Hmmmm? Oh, and did I mention that it would be really nice to have the Parade still there when the train and the river come back, which, from what I've learned from MiceChat, won't happen until July? One would think that they'd want to reopen those attractions as soon as possible before peak season. But instead they have to focus all their construction on attractions that won't open for another 2 years anyway. So that means in order to see both, separate trips will be necessary, which seems a bit profligate. Especially when all the walkways will be jam-packed since no one can just ride the train to wherever they need to go.
The park is busy during summer, but it tends to be more infrequent visitors. MSEP really appeals to an audience who is familiar with the parade's history, which tends to be APers; infrequent visitors tend to prefer the latest and greatest, without much regard for sentimentality. It's also a great way to draw people in during the off-season; people will visit during summer regardless of what's there, because that's when families are able to travel If anything, there's a strong argument to not run anything during the peak summer crowds. The guests will be there regardless, and parades really only create crowdflow problems; DL managed without a nighttime parade for 17 years I sometimes find MiceChat's accuracy to be questionable, but DL always seems to start "summer" late. To me, the summer season should start on Memorial Day weekend, or shortly after; that's how most school calendars in my area work, and that's the schedule WDW uses. For several years DL has waited to start their summer events until mid-to-late June, which just seems crazy to me That said, considering the amount of work that needed to be done, having it open this summer always seemed like an aggressive schedule. They had to do major changes to the river and railroad tracks, including a new storage bunker for Fantasmic!, lots of retaining walls, and extensive landscaping. Heavy civil work always takes comparably longer than structural work (like installing the new ride building steel), so I'm not surprised that it's running a little behind schedule
That's an interesting thought. Could be! But Grad Nights are just once or twice a week, right? Seems like they could start their "summer" stuff and still close early-ish on a weeknight or two for the first few weeks. Or if kids really are in school that late (hence Grade Nights running that late), perhaps it's fine for them to not start the big events until later. It just seems strange to me, and very different from schedules in my area
DL managed without a nighttime parade for 17 years because for the first 17 years, it closed shortly after dusk (only a little later on fireworks nights), like every other amusement facility. And for about the first 25 years, except during the peak season, it closed 1-2 days a week, so that heavy maintenance could be done without having to pay the crews at graveyard shift rates. I was there in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I clearly remember "Disneyland After Dark" as a NEW advertising catchphrase, at a time when most people left theme parks around dinnertime. (I remember, back when Knotts didn't try to compete with DL, but was content to be a place where locals could go for an inexpensive weekend afternoon, followed by a chicken dinner cooked to Cordelia Knott's recipe [or a dinner at the Van de Kamps coffee shop that was about 2 blocks south on Beach Blvd]. And I likewise remember that it was only after the MSEP's debut that we ever stayed much past dark at DL.) I've said this before, and I'll likely say it again: What parades in Disneyland history are still remembered, and still talked about, over a decade after they ended their run? Who still remembers that the original MSEP ended its run by 1975, to make way for America On Parade? Who still remembers America On Parade? Who remembers Party Gras? Flights of Fantasy? The Lion King Celebration? And yet, the MSEP kept coming back from hiatus after hiatus, and got exported to Disney's other Magic Kingdoms around the world, made appearances outside of Disney venues, kept (as DEP) DCA viable long enough for it to weed out most of the bad ideas, and put in enough E-tickets to make it truly viable. I have serious doubts that PTN will still be remembered in two years, let alone seven. Yesterday, I had my Essential Perrey-Kingsley CD playing in my car. Hearing The Savers brought back memories of the classic game show, The Joker's Wild. And hearing the composers' original 1967 version of Baroque Hoedown (which is pretty close to what was heard with the 1972 MSEP) brought a lump to my throat, and brought to mind just how much the orchestration of that tune has evolved over the past five decades.
I was there in the 60's and 70's too, and while what you say is almost true, they did run DL with even longer hours in the summer (8 AM to 1 AM!) even before the MSEP debuted (I have the Disney News magazines to confirm it). But during non-summer and Christmas times, it did indeed often close as early as 6, and was closed Mondays and Tuesdays. I was never much of a parade guy, even as a kid, and to this day I don't quite understand the appeal of the MSEP. I'm just of the right age where it ought to tug my nostalgia strings big time, and yet it doesn't. Whereas if I could magically see ATIS, CofP, the original AtB or GHR, the Mine Train/Pack Mules, or the original versions of the FaL dark rides, I'd jump at the chance. But like I said, I was never much of a parade guy.
Although coincidentally it was 17 years from when the park opened until MSEP debuted, I was referring to the more recent 17 years between when Light Magic was canned Paint the Night debuted. Yes, they had daytime parades that occasionally ran during the evenings, but there was no real nighttime parade during that period. And everything worked just fine. Guests watched the fireworks and Fantasmic!; having 3 major nighttime productions running concurrently in a single park is pretty rare Also, although MSEP ran until 1996, it was really only running during summer and occasionally other busy periods like Christmas and spring break. It wasn't a nightly event year-round. Although DL fans love to deride WDW for the bad shape MSEP fell into after 6 years of nightly performances, the parade just wasn't built for that kind of continual heavy usage (especially all these years later). Even the brand-new Paint the Night had lots of technical issues that needed to be resolved after its initial 18 month run. Regardless of what the nighttime parade ends up bein in the future, I would be very surprised if it ran nightly throughout the year
