Originally Posted By sjdimon ALL: <Some Minor Spoilers ahead - don't view if you want to be totally surprised by this parade> Had a chance to view the You-Tube video of the "Disney Paint the Night Parade" at HKDL. I think it looks (and SOUNDS!) really good. Just wondering a few things: o Is the SAME version of this what we will see at DL for the 60th (it seems that they are missing a real opportunity to have a Tangled and/or Frozen Section of the parade)? o I know this was at HKDL - do you think there might be a "Tribute to America" Section (like in the old MSEP)? Overall, I was really impressed with this - I like the them music used (though it was funny there was no "Wreck it Ralph" section of the parade either). Thanks! Stew
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt Hi Sjdimon. A few people have already weighed in on the parade and their opinions about it coming to DL: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://mb.laughingplace.com/MsgBoard-T-129693-P-1.asp?c=1">http://mb.laughingplace.com/Ms....asp?c=1</a> I'm personally not a fan. I love the look of the parade - it's beautiful - but the music feels kind of forced. Overall I don't think it's bad, but I'd prefer to see something a little grander and classier at DL.
Originally Posted By monorailblue I was on a small device last night, but this morning have a keyboard. I really like the incorporation of the Electrical Parade tribute elements--although the opening narration-singing was a bit much. But the dance club vibe is so intense! MSEP was catchy and upbeat--not pounding and manic. I have to go back to the word garish--every set was too bright, too busy, too frenetic and, I am certain, too loud. (I am actually appalled at the general level of most Disneyland live shows. I can hardly stand to watch Fantasmic! near the river's edge any more, as the sheer loudness hurts my ears. I'm sure this parade is the same--or would be if recreated / transplanted to Anaheim.) That level of intensity is not heartwarming and is, to me, exhausting after a long day. What MSEP had in spades and this parade has none of is delightful charm. It is entirely in-your-face, over-the-top. Compare the color changing dancers in this parade to the bug floats in MSEP. Everyone loves the bug floats--simple, cute; I hated the dancers' endlessly flickering and changing costumes. Headache! I have never understood why Disney didn't take the technological marvels of LightMagic, the bubbling (but not panicky) charm of MSEP, the equally proven success of SpectroMagic, and the heartwarming wonder of Believe . . . There's Magic in the Stars and come up with a night parade that could last as long as Fantasmic! I really believe that could be done. This parade definitely is not it.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros ^^Sounds like you just described Dreamlights at TDL. It retains the same basic structure as MSEP, but with updated technology (circa 2001, with a handful of newer floats since then) and a much grander scale
Originally Posted By doombuggy I don't see how a night parade could work at DL these days. It was a miserable time trying to get around and be pretty much stuck in one area when they had 3 night shows going on. Now with WOC that's just more people trying to switch parks clogging up main street, a parade just wouldn't work today.
Originally Posted By monorailblue I agree with that sentiment. Even with corridor(s) adjacent to Main Street, you still have the horrendous problem of Central Plaza ever since Remember started (prior to that, nothing was so hub-centric). Adding a parade to that mess would be exceptionally problematic. It would cut off the east-side corridor at its beginning and ending--not great for Guest flow.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I wonder if they will have a new fireworks show to accompany the parade. The shows they've had for the last decade (Believe, Remember, Magical, holiday shows) have all been built around watching from the hub, with a castle-centric view. Back in the 90's when DL had MSEP, Fantasmic!, and fireworks running on the same night, the fireworks were the much more simple Fantasy in the Sky, which could be seen more-or-less from anywhere in the park. That would clear out the hub and distribute crowds more evenly; even crowds along the parade route are easier to navigate than the horde of people in the center of the park
Originally Posted By monorailblue I watched Believe from the Monorail platform in Tomorrowland quite a few times. Viewing was great--it was just too bad we couldn't get the sound for it.
Originally Posted By Daannzzz Looks like Las Vegas Blvd! I like some of the lighting effects but some of it just looks like advertising boards.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "I wonder if they will have a new fireworks show to accompany the parade." From MiceAge, FWIW: >>After the holidays, Disneyland’s pyrotechnics team will begin installing all new special effects equipment on the rooftops around the central Hub of Disneyland. The work is in preparation for the 60th Anniversary mega-show coming next May. The old Fantasy In The Sky fireworks show will return to Disneyland on weekends this winter, beginning January 9th, while technical work for the 60th Anniversary spectaculars are underway.<<
Originally Posted By FerretAfros If they need to install tons of special effects on and around the castle, it sounds like it will be another show that needs to be viewed from the hub. It will be interesting to see how they work out the crowd control for all this, since it seemed to take them a few months (well after summer 2005) to really get the traffic flow for Remember to work nicely
Finally saw the thing last night. Visually stunning. Musically, meh. Soundtrack is definitely NOT in the same league with MSEP, Spectro, or Fantasmic. Indeed, I'd say that Light Magic's soundtrack, as sappy as it was, was better than this.
Funny. I can't remember a single thing about the soundtrack, which I saw 7 months ago. So "unmemorable" would seem apt. Yet, I enjoyed that parade, and I'm not much of a parade guy.
It's a sort of a mashup between the big song from Wreck-It Ralph, and a not-thrilling dance club arrangement of Baroque Hoedown. And unless you're really close, it's hard to hear anything other than the pounding drum track. From close range, the soundtrack is not as boring as it is from a distance, but on the other hand, when you're that close, the drum track is almost painful. Something came to mind almost immediately: back in the early 1990s, Dorothy Hamill bought the shows division of the ailing Ice Capades (would that she'd bought the whole company, including the Ice Capades Chalets chain of ice rinks). When she took over, she recognized that the old format was no longer viable: recent Olympic and World Champions would rather headline the newer shows, like Scott Hamilton's Stars on Ice. So she looked to Disney on Ice (which had taken over the ailing Follies/Holiday), and her own small-scale ice ballet productions of The Nutcracker, for inspiration, and turned Capades into a plot-driven show, opening in 1994 with a show called Cinderella: Frozen in Time, starring Hamill herself in the title role. It was a pleasant enough show, but the score (by Michael Conway Baker) sounded, to my ear, like he was trying to make a very few themes (none of which belonged in the same league with John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, or Leonard Rosenman, or even Dennis McCarthy) do far too much. And so it ended up sounding repetitive, boring, and unmemorable. Likewise, "dance club" (which, as a genre, sounds to me like just a newer, less-stringy version of disco) is boring enough as it is, with that <censored> drum track drowning out any subtlety, and overall, the whole thing just doesn't have much variety. I also thought about how the folks who made Tron: Legacy went with Daft Punk, instead of bringing back Wendy Carlos (whose sound was as important to the look and feel of the original film as the backlit animation).
