Main Street Electrical Parade
| Main Street Electrical Parade | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disneyland Park / Magic Kingdom |
| Land / area | Parade route |
| Type | Nighttime electrical parade |
| Opened | June 17, 1972 |
| Designer | Bob Jani / Ron Miziker
|
| Status | Closed |
The Main Street Electrical Parade is a nighttime parade created for Disneyland Park in California, where it first ran on June 17, 1972, and later performed for long periods at Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World and at other Disney parks worldwide. Its floats and performers are covered in thousands of individually controlled electric lights, and its synthesised soundtrack is built around the electronic piece "Baroque Hoedown". Across multiple runs spanning five decades, it became the model for Disney's nighttime parades, including its eventual successor, Paint the Night.
Creation
The parade's direct ancestor was the Electrical Water Pageant, a procession of illuminated screens on barges that began circling the Seven Seas Lagoon at Walt Disney World in October 1971. Entertainment executive Bob Jani, with project director Ron Miziker, adapted the idea for land at Disneyland, which had no equivalent nighttime draw. Designer Hub Braden, a television art director, shaped the original units, and the Chicago display firm Silvestri — known for holiday lighting on Michigan Avenue — supplied the miniature bulbs and built the first floats, using battery technology borrowed from the film studio.
The first floats were largely flat light screens resembling the water pageant's. Rehearsals were troubled, with electrical faults and at least one float striking a building, and electricians were still adjusting lights as the parade stepped off on opening night. The engineers also produced an early automated show-control system, using radio-activated zones along the route so music and lighting stayed synchronised. Intended only for summer 1972, the parade instead ran through 1974, paused for the Bicentennial's America on Parade, and returned in 1977 in fully three-dimensional form, with Don Dorsey reworking the score.
Music
"Baroque Hoedown" was written in 1967 by Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley, pioneers of electronic music, and was adapted for the parade with Disney melodies woven through it. The announcement that opens the show, delivered through a vocoder-like effect, promises a "spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination in thousands of sparkling lights and electro-syntho-magnetic musical sounds" — phrasing that entered the parade's identity and has been quoted by its successors ever since.
Runs and versions
A near-copy opened at Magic Kingdom on June 11, 1977, and ran until September 14, 1991, when it was replaced by SpectroMagic and its floats were sent to Disneyland Paris. The Disneyland original closed on November 25, 1996, after a promoted farewell season; souvenir bulbs from the floats were sold for charity. Refurbished Disneyland floats then played Magic Kingdom from 1999 to 2001, and again from June 5, 2010 until October 9, 2016.
At Disneyland, the parade returned from January to June 2017, and again on April 22, 2022, for its 50th anniversary. For that run the long-standing "To Honor America" finale was replaced with a new seven-segment finale float, 118 feet long, styled after Mary Blair's artwork for It's a small world and led by the Blue Fairy. Its scenes represent more than a dozen films, from Pinocchio to Encanto, Coco and Frozen. Versions have also played at Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Paris.
Floats
The classic line-up opens with a train and drum unit carrying Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, followed by units for Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella — including the clock striking midnight — Peter Pan, with Captain Hook's ship and a smoking dragon for Pete's Dragon in the form of Elliott, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. Performers in illuminated costumes, including snails and turtles whose lights ripple as they move, fill the gaps between floats.
Legacy
The Electrical Parade established the template of the nighttime light parade: a synthesised score, floats readable purely as outlines of light, and show control triggered along the route. SpectroMagic, Tokyo's DreamLights and Paint the Night all descend from it directly.