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Realityland's David Koenig

Light Tragic 2.0?

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Early reviews by guests and cast members of Disneyland’s new Celebrate: A Street Party appear to be running negative by about three-to-one.

Offered one cast member: “Parade, show, street festival, whatever you want to call it… it’s a disaster.”

Others have described it as “Light Tragic 2.0,” “Block Party Bash, Part Deux,” and “High School Musical: Repeat a Year.”

“Of those three, the last one is the closest,” noted another cast member. “At least with Light Tragic and Block Party Bash, it looked like money was spent. This new parade just screams cheap. Whatever inadequacies, Entertainment tries to hide them with loud music and lots and lots of confetti. You realize it is that bad when Entertainment hourly cast members who saw it criticized it as one of the worst parades they have seen in recent memory. I say it is the Recession-Era version of Party Gras.”

So will the underwhelming new Street Party, which offers nothing unique, but several Light Magic-style blunders (such as restrictive viewing areas and clogged traffic lanes) suffer a similar fate to its short-lived predecessor. Will it be quickly pulled and retooled, only for Entertainment to discover that its concept is inherently flawed and have to kill it entirely after one summer?

Personally, I fear it will stick around longer. It has a few advantages over Light Magic: (1) It was less expensive to throw together and is easier to run. (2) A lot of kids are invited to dance around and seem to actually enjoy it—rather than recoil from it. (3) No one had any expectations that it would be any good. Light Magic, you’ll recall, was supposed to be an upgrade to the Electrical Parade.

Also keep in mind that Disneyland’s most lackluster parade since Light Magic—Parade of Stars—stuck around for five, long years.

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  1. olegc's Avatar
    maybe it should be “High School Musical: Held Back.” BWAA HAAA... sorry, had to do it.. :-)
  2. RStar's Avatar
    Back in the 1990's as a new movie would come out, there would be a great entertainment offering at the parks. My family would rush over to the parks to see what was added to Disneyland after we saw the movie. The Lion King parade was one of the best, IMHO. I also remember greats like The Hunchback Festival (the reason the Festival Arena was built), Pochahontas and Beauty and the Beast on the Fantasyland stage, and even the Hercules Parade was fun. And the window displays would change along with these new entertainment offerings.

    So what changed? The quality of the movies? The entertainment bugets? The people in charge of entertainment?

    I miss those days.......