Recently it has been announced that a spectacular new parade, called the Festival of Fantasy Parade, will be replacing the Celebrate a Dream Come True Parade at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.
I'm not a parade kind of person. The floats and choreography have to be amazing for me to be impressed. Aside from the Boo to You! parade and the Main Street Electrical Parade, I haven't liked WDW parades in nearly about a decade. Hearing news about a new parade reminded be that "New Parade" was WDW's of saying that it's really the same parade with a new name, same floats, only older and same choreography, only less complicated.
Then I saw the official blog release with the photos. Things started looking better.
Then my friend, who works on the upper end of the ladder at Main Street Ops, told me that there will be 26 (that's no typo: 26) floats. And the floats will be so massive that new housing structures will be built and that lovely Christmas garland that hangs across Main Street will have to go or be raised. Now I'm sold.
The time frame for the parade is interesting. Since there isn't room for three parades back stage, there will be a three month period in the park where the day parade will not exist at all starting next January.
On the note of storing parades. The somewhat missed Spectromagic has been left out in the rain to rust. Literally. The parade is largely beyond repair and deemed unworthy of the continual cost of storage so within the next few days it will be destroyed.
As night parades go, it was well below the satisfaction levels of Main Street Electrical Parade, which ranks much higher in all levels on guest surveys. As of now, it looks like Disney is hoping that Spectromagic quietly dies...out of sight, out of mind.
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Now back to our topic of parades....
As far as Spectromagic goes, I will not miss the parade as much as I will miss the soundtrack. I loved every second of that parade's score, Electric Parade's Baroque Hoedown is fun, but it tries my patience after a little bit. I also think I like Electric Parade for the nostalgia of it, but it looks a bit dated to me. I'm not sure if I'd notice the older pieces in the parade showing their age as much if they didn't put the brand new Tinkerbell float at the very beginning of it.
But overall I'm excited as a parade fan! Looks like Disney World is finally stepping up it's game and trying to show Disneyland we can have nice parades too!
Great article Adam! Congrats!
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Sidenote: I had to scan the page for a few seconds to figure out how to comment on the article. The "What do you think?" button didn't stand out as an obvious way to comment (Perhaps I'm use to a regular comment setup or the grey color didn't stick out?). I mean this only as a constructive comment, as I love, love your blog and love how you updated the format! (Yes throwing three loves out to Theme Park Insider!)