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lagunachadling
01-19-2007, 02:37 PM
Me: Main Street Electrical Parade, Party Gras and Lion King

MollyTrolly
01-19-2007, 02:38 PM
Me: Main Street Electrical Parade, and Lion King

I totally agree, I LOVED the Main Street Electrical Parade as a child!

DangerMouse
01-19-2007, 02:39 PM
There is only ONE Disneyland parade, and that's the MSEP! :D

lagunachadling
01-19-2007, 02:43 PM
There is only ONE Disneyland parade, and that's the MSEP! :D
I would have to agree with you, but I did see it over at DCA, and it just did not have that magic it did when you would see it coming down Main Street.

Andrew
01-19-2007, 02:45 PM
From high to low.

Day, Jan-Oct: Lion King Celebration, Hercules Victory Parade.
Night: Jan-Oct: MSEP, Mulan Parade.
Nov-Dec: Very Merry Christmas Parade, Christmas Fantasy Parade.

hbquikcomjamesl
01-19-2007, 02:53 PM
As far as I'm concerned, The Main Street Electrical Parade is THE PARADE. I go out of my way to ignore the Rose Parade, the Macy's Parade, &c. and even most Disney parades don't do that much for me, but during the summer and early fall of 1996, I sometimes visited DL two or three nights per week, just to see The Parade. I don't recall off-hand whether I was there for the originally planned public closing night, but I was there for the Passholder Party on October 17th (and still have my October 17th T-shirt). I was also there for nearly the entire "November Encore," and wore my October 17th T-shirt for the final DL performance (which several parade CMs noticed and acknowledged).

One of the primary objectives of my first trip to WDW in 2000 was to see what I thought would be the last 5 performances of The Parade I'd ever see, during the almost-2-year WDW encore (with cameo appearances by butterflies and dragonflies from SpectroMagic). The first of those 5 performances, I was constantly having to remove my glasses, to wipe away tears that were blinding me; I wore my October 17th T-shirt for at least one of those performances (the one or two WDW CMs who realized the significance were impressed).

I was also there (again, with my October 17th T-shirt) for the first public performance in DCA.

As far as other Disney parades, I liked "Christmas Fantasy" until they dropped the "Edwardian Carolers" unit, and in WDW, I love Spectro.

ScottDisneyFan
01-19-2007, 03:43 PM
The only parade I really care about is this...

"Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, Disneyland proudly presents our spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination, in thousands of sparkling lights, and electro-syntho-magnetic musical sounds. The Main Street Electrical Parade!"

rentayenta
01-19-2007, 04:09 PM
There is only ONE Disneyland parade, and that's the MSEP! :D

Ditto!

raediance
01-19-2007, 05:21 PM
I just watched the Electrical Parade for the first time since I was little. I still love it. x)

DisneyMa
01-19-2007, 05:32 PM
The Electrical Parade :) I LOVE IT!:)

lilfaeriebrat
01-19-2007, 06:13 PM
MSEP, hands down. No doubt. Took my grandma to see it in DCA on the 7th, she hadn't seen it since I was a child. Mr. Smee is now her new boyfriend. All I need now is to find a ring tone for my cell phone of the opening music.

spectromen
01-19-2007, 06:30 PM
Nov-Dec: Very Merry Christmas Parade, Christmas Fantasy Parade.

Thank you for putting Very Merry before ACF! :)

DizneyMommy
01-19-2007, 07:27 PM
I would have to agree with you, but I did see it over at DCA, and it just did not have that magic it did when you would see it coming down Main Street.

I'm with you on that... just didn't do it for me over at CA. So not the same (and I hate that there is no curb to sit on over there!) I used to love it as a kid on Main St and I even got one of the little bulbs they sold when it ended... if only I could find the darned thing.

Oh, but I also LOVE ACF... really I just love Xmas in general, but I have to see that parade at least a dozen times each year before I am satisfied! I am such a dork, but I love the music, I could sing that song all year :-)

MadasaHatter
01-19-2007, 10:14 PM
No one denies that the ELECTRICAL PARADE is awesome but it is sort of into a category all of itself.

THE LION KING PARADE was the most awesome parade I have EVER seen at Disneyland (the 50th was just ok and the XMAS parades are festive but kind of boring to me.) I think it was so much better when they had movie parade themes. Aladdin was great and HERCULES rocked!!!! The FIVE MUSES wailing that GOSPEL INFUSED theme song live was amazing. LOoooooooved that.

FantasmicFan82
01-20-2007, 06:52 AM
Light Magic... :| wait, that wasn't a parade.

MSEP, of course.

(i'm off to find my LM promo DVD and watch it)

nvmom
01-20-2007, 07:07 AM
Well I never MSEP when it was in DL but my family loved it at DCA in March 05. I just wish they'd keep in running thru the year even if it was only once a week or something.

Otherwise I've only seen Parade of Dreams...

nvmom

Mickeygirlforever
01-20-2007, 08:13 AM
Of course my family LOVES the MSEP, but the close second to us would have been the Lion King. We still to this day talk about how awesome it was.
Sadly, I was actually really disappointed in the 50th parade, I think my expectations were really high. :(

IdahoMike
01-20-2007, 09:32 AM
Casting another vote for the Lion King parade, we saw it on our honeymoon, and it was simply awesome, even if it was unbearably hot when we were there. I felt so bad for the performers, they were sweating so profusely, but put on a great show!

jcruise86
01-20-2007, 10:13 AM
MSEP,
but I never saw the Lion King Parade.
Of course, the daytime parades will never = the Rose Parade,
but the MSEP is unique and wonderful. With it's (hopefully:D ) synchronized music it is my favorite parade ever.

I understand the old USSR and N. Korea have presented some pretty impressive displays of big brother militarism.

hbquikcomjamesl
01-20-2007, 11:24 AM
For my part, I'd say that the first few years in DCA suffered from the same thing that was a problem during the WDW encore: lack of continuity of cast experience. By the 1990s, The princpal Parade CMs were all either multi-year veterans of The Parade themselves, or were trained by multi-year veterans, or had at least been watching The Parade for many years. So they could really get into their roles. It took a few years, but it seems like the new Parade CMs in DCA are finally getting into their roles to nearly that degree again.

I actually thought LightMagic had some potential. It just had too many problems, ranging from guest hostility to bleeding-edge technology, to poorly-thought-out stops, that created huge bottlenecks.

raediance
01-20-2007, 03:21 PM
I'm with you on that... just didn't do it for me over at CA. So not the same (and I hate that there is no curb to sit on over there!) I used to love it as a kid on Main St and I even got one of the little bulbs they sold when it ended... if only I could find the darned thing.

Oh, but I also LOVE ACF... really I just love Xmas in general, but I have to see that parade at least a dozen times each year before I am satisfied! I am such a dork, but I love the music, I could sing that song all year :-)
yeah, i was sad when the music didn't say "THE MAIN STREET. ELECTRICAL. PARADE." lol.

Photographer
01-20-2007, 04:11 PM
My favorite parade?
Parade of Dreams. I love the floats, the music, everything was fabulous!

hawaiimom
01-21-2007, 10:10 AM
I'm a little confused with the names of the parades. Is MSEP the parade that happens at 3.30pm (IASW->MS) and 6.30pm (MS->IASW)? We went in Oct around Halloween and there were various floats and characters. Then in Dec there was the Christmas parade. So the names - Parade of Dreams, Lion King Parade, Hercules - are all different versions of this parade? Does this repeat in DCA? We were there one night and I thought the parade was the Block Party? And on a side note, how often do they change the parade?

potzbie
01-21-2007, 11:01 AM
I first saw the Main Street Electrical Parade in 1974.

It was the most facinating thing in Disneyland I had ever seen.
The music was outstanding. The stereo was astounding. The frequencies used were surprising.

It was a jaw-dropping experience.

hbquikcomjamesl
01-21-2007, 11:12 AM
I'm a little confused with the names of the parades. Uh, no, I'm afraid you sound more like you're a lot confused.
The Main Street Electrical Parade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Street_Electrical_Parade) is a tradition that has endured, albeit not continuously, for the past 35 years. It began in 1972, at a time when most families with children were leaving DL by dinner time, as yet another incentive for them to stay, dine at a Park restaurant, and continue using up their ticket books. (Part of what was once formally called "Disneyland After Dark".) Inspired by Walt Disney World's Electrical Water Pageant, it was the first parade that was specifically designed to run only at night, consisting of a series of simple floats decorated in large numbers of lights. Rumor has it that the original plan was for it to be accompanied by an orchestral score, possibly inspired by Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, but instead, the Imagineers discovered that people like Wendy (at the time, still Walter) Carlos, Gershon Kingsley, and Jean-Jacques Perrey were taking the (then new) art of electronic music in directions that were completely new to electronic sounds, and yet as old, and as universally appealing, as Bach. And in particularly, they found Perrey and Kingsley's Baroque Hoedown had a combination of a catchy tune with the sort of glittery sound that was the perfect accompaniment to their glittery new Parade.

The Main Street Electrical Parade wasn't expected to last very long. By 1975, it had been replaced by Disney's tribute to the Bicentennial, America On Parade, which used much of the technology developed for the MSEP, only it could run both during the day, and (with lighting installed along the route) in the evening. But as soon as it had run its course, an updated Main Street Electrical Parade was back for the summer of 1977, this time with a duplicate Parade running in WDW's MK.

From 1977 to 1996, The Parade continued to run in Disneyland, slowly evolving and improving each year. Some years, it went on hiatus (as during Donald Duck's 50th birthday celebration, and also for the "Flights of Fantasy" parade that celebrated the grand re-opening of Fantasyland), and most years, it had some noticeable change (e.g., the year Return to Oz was in theatres, there was a float promoting the film; this float was eventually redressed as the Seven Dwarfs' mine, for the Snow White unit). Then, in 1996, it was announced that The Parade would be permanently replaced the following year, by a new street show called Light Magic.

The Main Street Electrical Parade still could not be killed. First, it was taken on the road, in connection with the premiere of an animated feature (Hercules, if I remember right). Then, it was sent to WDW (whose MSEP had been sent to Disneyland Paris), for an encore run (putting WDW-MK's own SpectroMagic on hiatus) that lasted 2 years.

Then, about the time everybody was resigned to The Parade meeting the scrapper's torch, DCA was found to be experiencing the most difficult infancy of any Disney theme park ever built, and it was saved yet again, making a triumphant return to Anaheim, as "Disney's Electrical Parade," running in DCA, and it has survived there (albeit short an entire multi-float unit themed to Pinocchio) ever since.