Yesterday, Disneyland made news by raising prices on the resort, both when it comes to tickets and parking. However, Disneyland may have just found a way to convince a lot of fans to pay whatever it takes to visit the parks, as it is teasing the return of what maybe the park’s most iconic event, the Main Street Electrical Parade.
Rumors had been circulating that the Main Street Electrical Parade might be making a return to Disneyland and in a new video posted to the Disney Parks TikTok, it is being strongly indicated that exactly that is happening.
@disneyparks Thousands of sparkling lights ✨ ##ToBeContinued ##Disney ##DisneyParks ##Disneyland ##Magic ##Lights
♬ original sound - Disney Parks
The video teases fans with a To Be Continued, and so it stops short of saying, yes the Main Street Electrical Parade is coming back, but between the video itself, showing one of the parade’s floats, the “Baroque Hoedown” music, and the Disneyland truck, the video is all but a confirmation. That truck is getting ready to deliver the parade to the happiest place on earth.
Clearly the plan is to draw out the official confirmation. We’ll see at least one more video like this, perhaps more than one, showing the trucks arriving at the park and heading down Main Street U.S.A. once again. Honestly, the video itself is really well put together. Disney is good at a lot of things but perhaps none better than promoting itself.
Disneyland is all about nostalgia, not simply for an earlier time in history, but nostalgia for the park itself, and the Main Street Electrical Parade is a big part of that. Even with the recent price increases there will be people willing to pay to see this iconic parade.
The only remaining detail we really need here is when the parade will be back. Could it be arriving in the next couple of months, or will it wait until 2022, after the holiday season is over? The latter seems more likely. The holiday season is always a popular time at Disney Parks and with Disneyland having an after hours Christmas Party event, that will have its own nighttime parade, trying to manage two is likely more trouble than its worth.
Attendance usually slows after the holiday season and so dropping the Main Street Electrical Parade in January as a way to try to entice people into the parks makes a lot of sense.
Assuming this is arriving in the next two or three months it will be the first parade to run at Disneyland for general audiences since the park reopened. It's maybe the best choice for that role for symbolic reasons. Although, a brand new daytime parade Magic Happens, had only opened about a month before Disneyland closed for the pandemic, and there's no word on what's going on with that one.
Of course, the other, very important question, is how long the parade will last. This almost certainly won't be a multi-year engagement, but hopefully it will still last several months, giving a lot of people a chance to see it.
The Main Street Electrical Parade was born at Disneyland in 1972 and has been a recurring nighttime parade at both Disneyland and Magic Kingdom through the decades. It's last appearance was a brief summer run at Disneyland in 2019. The parade actually had its longest run at Disney World's Magic Kingdom, but it hasn't been seen there since 2016.
