Electrical Water Pageant
Electrical Water Pageant is a nighttime water parade performed nightly on Seven Seas Lagoon and Bay Lake at Walt Disney World in Florida. A procession of illuminated barges towed past the Magic Kingdom resort hotels, it is one of the few Walt Disney World entertainments from the resort's opening month of October 1971 still performed today, and it is widely regarded as the direct forerunner of the Main Street Electrical Parade.
History
In the weeks before Walt Disney World opened on October 1, 1971, Disney entertainment vice president Bob Jani and his team considered how to entertain guests staying at the new lagoon-side hotels after dark. Their answer was a "kiss goodnight" of light and music on the water: thousands of bulbs fixed to wire-mesh screens mounted on barges, forming sea creatures and, in the finale, patriotic American imagery.[1]
The pageant premiered during the resort's dedication weekend in late October 1971. Most accounts date the first performance to October 25, 1971 — Walt Disney World's official Dedication Day, when Roy O. Disney dedicated the resort — while some Disney accounts describe guests watching from the beach of Disney's Polynesian Village Resort on October 24, and published sources have variously given October 24, 25 or 26.[2][3] The show was created in part as evening entertainment for resort guests, including those attending the Polynesian luau dinner show.[4]
The concept proved so successful that Disney developed a land-based version: the Main Street Electrical Parade, which debuted at Disneyland on June 17, 1972.[1]
The pageant received a new musical treatment in 1977, built around synthesised arrangements of George Frideric Handel's Water Music, and a further new opening and closing score in 1996, while its float line-up remained broadly the form established in 1977.[5]
For Walt Disney World's 50th anniversary in 2021, new celebratory scenes bookended the traditional show, including a Cinderella Castle float bearing a sparkling "50" and a version of the anniversary anthem "The Magic Is Calling" performed in the pageant's electronic style.[6][7]
Show
The pageant consists of two strings of seven barges each — fourteen barges in total, stretching about 456 feet — each carrying a light screen roughly 25 feet tall.[3] A small crew of Disney Transportation cast members tows the strings across the two lakes each night, pausing off each resort in turn. The typical circuit serves Disney's Polynesian Village Resort, Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, Disney's Wilderness Lodge, Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground and Disney's Contemporary Resort, and the Magic Kingdom entrance, with performances roughly fifteen minutes apart, weather permitting.[8]
The illuminated figures include a sea serpent, a whale, a turtle, an octopus, dolphins, sea lions and King Neptune, closing with a patriotic stars-and-stripes salute added in 1977.[3]
Music has always been central to the pageant. Its original score, used from 1971 to 1977, was Paul Beaver's looping arrangement of "Baroque Hoedown", the 1967 electronic composition by Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley, created specially for the pageant. The same Beaver arrangement was carried over to Disneyland's original Main Street Electrical Parade from 1972 to 1974, before Don Dorsey's updated version became the parade's famous theme in 1977 — the year the water pageant moved on to its Handel-based score.[5]