Thanks for the link to that article. There are lots of neat old photos of the parade in there! It seems like there are very few early photos, due to the less than ideal conditions for film photography, but it was great to see some of the earliest floats that got revised through the years I also can't help but think that the float for Mickey's 50th may have served as inspiration for Disneyland's 50th logo. There are obviously some differences, but they're similar enough that I doubt it was just a coincidence (especially considering how often Disney re-uses concepts for special events in the parks) I'll have to give my soundtracks another listen to see if they have the music for it. I know the WDW Fantasmic! CD included some lesser-known MSEP tracks, so it may be on that one
Back in November of (I think) 2001, my first trip to WDW, I saw The Parade 5 times. Always wearing my October 17th t-shirt. And at least the first time, I watched the entire Parade through freely-flowing tears. And I already mentioned that prior to even purchasing my "$149 special" ticket, I got out my Perrey/Kingsley CD, and promptly developed a large lump in the throat on once again hearing the composers' version of Baroque Hoedown. I have a set of 5 PanaVue superslides of the original 1972 Parade, somewhere. As well as (if I remember right) 2 superslides I shot myself (on 127 Ektachrome X, with a Brownie Starflash). I may, incidentally, be mistaken about "Electric Fanfare" originating as a unit cue for the "Mickey's 50th" float: it may have originated as the unit cue for the "Disneyland 25th" float in 1980. But either way, it originated as a unit cue, at a time when the Parade didn't have a closing fanfare, and the music simply faded out as the last float receded into the distance. I do think, though, that there is a major design flaw in the new LED-lit banner on the "To Honor America" unit: when you put intense red and intense blue together, without anything to separate them, the eye has trouble focusing, making them seem to blur and/or vibrate, often to the point of being physically painful to look at. They should have separated the red and blue LED lines outlining the banner with a white one.
I don't recall ever having issues with those LEDs specifically, but I have had a lot of issues with ones in other places (an old GSO airport arrival/departure board used to drive me crazy). It seems to be something about the diodes themselves and the speed of the oh-so-minimal flicker in the light, which reacts differently for each person's eyes. Given how inconsistent these can be from one person to the next, and just how terrible they look when they're "bad" for you, it's one of the reasons I'm very skeptical of using LEDs widely in the parks Another problem specific to MSEP is how bright the LEDs are in comparison to the incandescent bulbs on the rest of the floats. This was especially bad with the pixie dust swirls that were added in 2009, since they were entirely LED, but everything else remained the old style. When the pixie dust animation played, it was almost blindingly bright in comparison to everything else in the parade All that said, I'm always looking for a reason to use this "photo"
Actually, what's REALLY painful to look at are those verstinken (I'd use a stronger word, but this is a family board) "blue dot taillights." Worse than the very worst first-generation LED Christmas lights.
Wasn't the float for Mickey's 50thy unique to Florida's version of the parade (I know California did one I '88 for his 60th )
watched both performances on Thursday night and the 1st yesterday. heard an announcement I'd NEVER heard before "all parade viewing areas are full" heard that at the 1st performance both nights.
Thanks to LiceRat, we now know the real reason why the run was extended to August 20. That is the date that a "web designer" mistakenly put on a disneyland.com web page.
After a false-start this past Saturday evening (DL was in overcrowding lockdown when I arrived, so I found out what an exit tag for the M&F parking structure looks like), I finally used the last day of my "3-day special" ticket last night (naturally arriving nearly an hour later than I'd planned). The Parade has actually steadily improved over the course of my three visits this Spring, and is looking better than it has since the late 1980s/early 1990s. I was reminiscing with a CM in Disneyana, shortly before the second Parade, and mentioned that "I miss the Blue Fairy"; she replied that she'd heard rumors to the effect of a possible return. Of course, a return of the Blue Fairy, if it actually did happen, would also imply a very real possibility that The Parade might be back next year: it wouldn't be very cost-effective otherwise. At any rate, I saw plenty of kids who weren't born yet in October of 1998 (and who were too young to have any memory of seeing The Parade in DCA, if they'd seen it there at all), who were totally spellbound; moreover the first Parade of the evening had, by the time it passed the Plaza Hub, picked up the longest "tail" of guests I'd seen on any parade, in any Disney park, since 1998 (yes, it was a night without fireworks, and yes, they were all headed in the same general direction as the exit, but still . . .). Last year, I didn't see nearly such enthusiasm over "pain in the night." So much for the notion that it's nothing but nostalgia for a hopelessly out-of-date parade. Some things are timeless.
I agree. Some things are timeless. My 44yo daughter is so excited to see it back on Main Street with her kids next month.
It sounds like the newest rumor from a mostly-reliable source is that they're considering moving Paint the Night to DCA, and running MSEP seasonally (if at all) in DL Of course this brings some logistical issues, like fitting the PTN floats under the trolley wires on Buena Vista Street and dealing with crowd control and scheduling coordination for World of Color. That said, I think PTN matches the overall atmosphere of DCA much better, and the longer parade route will ease some of the crowding problems The person who originally posted this is pretty reliable, but they didn't seem entirely confident it would happen. It's just what they're currently considering, which is always subject to change
Well, yesterday, I "lit the fuse" on the 2-day hopper I got for my birthday. And I'll be using the second day of it next Sunday. Had to park clear out in Simba, with the result that I missed my only chance to see Soarin', in order to go out and change into my October 17th passholder party t-shirt, but at least DL never went into an overcrowding lockdown. The MSEP still hasn't been restored to its 1980s glory, but it does keep getting better. During the first run of the evening, I stood in a crowd along Main Street, right by the clothing store, and there were plenty of people who were clearly too young to have seen it in the 1980s, or even the early 1990s, but were going wild over it nonetheless, so it's not all nostalgia. And a few minutes before the second run, I spoke with a CM, who took note of the faces of guests seeing it for the first time. Hopefully it will be back next summer (maybe even with the Blue Fairy back, in some form), and the summer after that (and we will have seen the last of pain-in-the-night).
Well, tonight is the parade's final performance. The marketing push hasn't been as "final" as for previous runs of the parade, but I really hope this is the end for it. It's been running on and off for 45 years, has spawned many follow-up parades, and it's just time for it to be retired And for what it's worth, I still think it's strange that they're not running it through Labor Day. It seems like Disney's definition of summer shrinks more and more each year. Instead of being the traditional Memorial Day to Labor Day period that the general public calls "summer", it been shortened to late June to mid-August. At the rate they're going, there's not going to be any summer left in a couple years
I don't think that they pushed the "final" because who knows when it will be back again. Labor Day is no longer the end of summer the way it use to be. Many school districts started school last week and other are following this week. This shift has been going on for the past few years and I'm sure that Disney has been tracking it which is why there are less black out dates for Annual pass holders before Labor Day.
Well, that fits with what is happening at public schools. The summers are getting shorter every year. And Disney probably doesn't like the summer as much because the crowds are lighter than other times of the year.
Idono, I went to public school and we were always back in session 2-3 weeks before Labor Day; I really don't think the school schedules are that different than they've always been, it's more Disney's schedules. It's also dependent on the AP blackout dates, which seem to have more influence on crowd levels than any real-world holidays or schedules
Funny thing about The Main Street Electrical Parade: It was the pioneer in which the uniquely Disney concept of a parade with a pre-recorded score, with individual unit cues synchronized with an overall score, and broadcast to speakers along the route and aboard the floats, was first developed. It's a concept that was expanded upon with America On Parade, and was further refined when the MSEP returned in 1977, and it's been a ubiquitous part of all but the smallest and most basic of Disney theme park parades ever since. Likewise, the decision to use an all-electronic score, based on Gershon Kingsley and Jean-Jacques Perrey's Baroque Hoedown, was a daring move that paid off beautifully, producing, in essence, a musical depiction of what the Parade looked like (and probably contributing to the mainstreaming of electronic music in general). Back in 1972, when it was little more than a stepchild of WDW's EWP, nobody really expected it to take on a life of its own. And yet it survived longer than any other single Disney parade, has gone through more evolution, without losing its identity, than any other single Disney parade, and has spawned multiple spinoffs, one of which (SpectroMagic) matched or even exceeded its progenitor for sheer spectacle, and seemed set to rival its longevity when it was rather abruptly removed. Light Magic actually wasn't a bad show. (Quite frankly, I liked it better than The Lion King Celebration or Party Gras and regard it as vastly superior to Flights of Fantasy or Paint the Night.) The music was good, the overall concept was good. It was the combination of too much unreliable "bleeding edge" technology, the logistical nightmare of a street show that only had two viewing areas, one of which blocked guests from exiting the Park, in a Park where all but the smallest parades HAD to run in alternating directions, and the fact that the MSEP was a downright impossible act to follow, that killed it. When DCA, with its shortage of true E-ticket attractions and its abundance of disappointments (I expected SuperStar Limo to be "GMR-Lite," and instead got "inside [and frequently tasteless] jokes on parade") seemed poised to be the first total flop in Disney theme park history, the Parade's return to California bought the troubled Park enough time to work through its problems. Seeing the proverbial plugs pulled on The Great Movie Ride and Ellen's Energy Adventure this year, and remembering the loss of the CircleVision theatres in both Disneyland and WDW-MK, and the occasional threats to Carousel of Progress's continued existence, I realize that anything can be relegated to Yesterland, at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. But we also saw Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln return to something a bit more respectful, after its "Sounds Dangerous" version flopped, so we also know that Disney management is capable of learning. I sincerely hope that The Walt Disney Company has learned the right lesson from this whole affair: it's simply not possible to capture lightning in a bottle on a regular or predictable basis, and if you've managed to do so, you don't want to let it go until and unless you know you really do have something better.
