Still Glowing Strong

It all started with the grand opening of Walt Disney World. For October 24, 1971, the night before the official dedication of the Magic Kingdom park, an Electrical Water Pageant was created to parade across the Seven Seas Lagoon for the press and invited Guests. The show was such a hit, it continued night after night (right to this day), and work soon began on bringing a similar production into the park.

The original iteration of the Main Street Electrical Parade (commonly known as the ELP) ran at Disneyland from 1972 to 1974. It was much more like the Water Pageant, with flat tableaux created in lights and pulled down the parade route. After a hiatus for the Bicentennial-inspired America on Parade, the ELP returned to the park in 1977, enhanced with the fully-dimensional floats that we've come to know and love.

That same year, a second version of the parade opened in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. The ELP played there until 1991, when it was replaced by SpectroMagic for that park's 20th anniversary. The Florida parade was then packed up and shipped to France, where it played at Disneyland Paris from its 1992 opening through 2003. It has since been retired in favor of Disney's Fantillusion.

A third Electrical Parade made its debut at Tokyo Disneyland in 1985 and played for ten years. Disney's Fantillusion replaced the ELP in Tokyo from 1995 to 2001, before finding a new home in Paris. Today, Tokyo Disneyland Guests enjoy the updated Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade: Dreamlights, featuring new versions of classic ELP floats along with units inspired by Winnie the Pooh, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo and Beauty and the Beast.

While the original parade at Disneyland remained the same over the years, a number of promotional units joined the procession at different times, celebrating everything from the release of The Fox and the Hound in 1980 to Return to Oz in 1985. There were even floats created in honor of Mickey's 60th birthday (1988) and Disneyland's 25th and 35th anniversaries (1980 & 1990).

Some of the classic units that remain part of the ELP today were originally created to promote Disney's "newest" productions. King Leonidas, playing the circus calliope, is from Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and Elliot is the oversize star of Pete's Dragon (1977), the Walt Disney Studio's big release for the summer of the parade's debut.

The Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade was retired from the park in 1996, making a one-night-only appearance a year later in New York City for the world premiere of Hercules (complete with a custom-built lead unit featuring Pegasus). It was also the Disneyland version of the parade that played the Magic Kingdom during a special engagement from May 1999 to April 2001 and returned to the Disneyland Resort (this time at Disney's California Adventure) that July.

As part of the Summer Nightastic! promotion in 2009, the parade received a pixie-dusted facelift and a new lead unit featuring Tinker Bell. With Summer Nightastic! being celebrated at Walt Disney World starting June 6, the Main Street Electrical Parade is once again making the journey east to march through the Magic Kingdom.

As it approaches its 40th anniversary, this "spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination" is still glowing strong "with thousands of sparkling lights and electro-synthe-magnetic musical sounds!"