The Main Street Electrical Parade is again lighting up the night at Disneyland. This classic Disneyland parade is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Guests lined the parade route very early on April 22nd to experience the first showing of the parade. Hours before it began, announcements were being made that the first showing was already full. When it did make its way down the parade route, cheers erupted and this classic Disneyland parade was once again making magic for thousands.
With its return, Disneyland released some fun facts about the Main Street Electrical Parade. Check out the details below about this parade. Some of these facts are new, some are old. Which one do you think is the most fun?
New in 2022: An enchanted grand finale celebrating togetherness
To honor the milestone 50th anniversary of “Main Street Electrical Parade,” Disney Live Entertainment will introduce a magnificent grand finale that celebrates the theme of togetherness in an all-new float. This universal theme is reflected in the creative concept of the grand finale sequence, drawing inspiration from the original design of classic “Main Street Electrical Parade” floats and Mary Blair’s iconic art style on “it’s a small world.” The seven-segment float stretches 118 feet in length and brings to life more than a dozen Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios stories, making it one of the longest and grandest sequences in the parade’s history. These stories will be interpreted in thousands of sparkling lights and electro-synthe-magnetic musical sound, with unique representations of beloved characters as animated dolls.
Guests along each side of the parade route will see different stylized scenes from classic and contemporary favorite stories such as “Encanto,” “The Jungle Book,” “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “Aladdin,” “Coco,” “Mulan,” “Brave,” “The Princess and the Frog” and more. The finale also pays tribute to the parade’s heritage with the return of the Blue Fairy character from “Pinocchio” and a unique, 19-foot-tall representation of Sleeping Beauty Castle.
New music was composed to accompany the all-new grand finale float, weaving together arrangements of favorite songs from the represented stories – all performed in the original musical style of the “Main Street Electrical Parade.”
Fun facts: A legacy of nighttime magic and imagination
The original “Main Street Electrical Parade” made its world debut at Disneyland on June 17, 1972, and since then, evolving versions of the parade have appeared at Disney parks around the world. Here’s a closer look at this “spectacular festival pageant”:
- Approximately 500,000 lights sparkle in the parade’s nighttime journey from “it’s a small world” mall in Fantasyland to Town Square on Main Street, U.S.A.
- 22 floats illuminate the parade route at Disneyland, nearly doubling the number of floats from the parade’s debut (12) in 1972.
- Two composers, Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley, wrote the iconic synthesizer piece known as “Baroque Hoedown” in 1967, and the song was adapted for the “Main Street Electrical Parade” in 1972, interwoven with classic Disney themes to create the now iconic parade soundtrack.
- This was the first parade to feature unique musical arrangements synchronized to each float unit as it moved along the parade route.
- 18 stories are represented across the parade floats and the grand finale: “Alice in Wonderland,” “Cinderella,” “Peter Pan,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Pinocchio,” “Pete’s Dragon,” “Hercules,” “Brave,” “Coco,” “The Princess and the Frog,” “Moana,” “Mulan,” “Pocahontas,” “Frozen 2,” “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “The Jungle Book,” “Aladdin” and “Encanto.”
- Performers throughout the parade wear dazzling costumes created with special, shimmering fabrics and built-in lighting.
- Five miles of electrical wiring is used in the parade.
- With a height of 23 feet, the Cinderella clock tower is the tallest float in the “Main Street Electrical Parade.”
- At 5,600 pounds, the massive Elliott float, added in 1977 for the release of “Pete’s Dragon,” measures 16 feet tall, 10 feet wide and 38 feet long.
- Six different colors of light bulbs flash throughout the parade, in amber, blue, green, chartreuse, red and pink. 150,000 glowing amber lights are used in the production, the most of any color.
- Five Disney parks have presented versions of the “Main Street Electrical Parade” including Disneyland Park, Disney California Adventure Park, Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort, Tokyo Disneyland Park and Disneyland Park at Disneyland Paris.
- In 2005, “Main Street Electrical Parade” creator and former director of entertainment Robert Jani was inducted as a Disney Legend.
