Disneyland will never be finished. It’s an often repeated statement that was first uttered by Walt Disney himself. Things are always changing, and while that means there will always be something new around the corner, it often means the end of something else to make room for that new stuff.
If you were planning to catch the Disneyland classic Main Street Electrical Parade, and you should, which made its return to the park a few months back, you’ll only have until September 1. At that point the iconic parade, which has disappeared several times before, will go away again, until the next time. Disneyland Forever fireworks will also put on their last show on the same night.
This won’t exactly be the first time that fans have said goodbye to the Main Street Electrical Parade. The parade originally ran basically continuously from 1972 until 1996, at which point it moved to Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. However, since ending its run at Magic Kingdom in 2016, the Electrical Parade has returned to Disneyland no fewer than three times in the last five years. We will almost certainly see it again at Disneyland and/or Walt Disney World eventually.
Four big Disneyland nighttime spectaculars were brought back in April and May of this year, and while Fantasmic! at Disneyland and World of Color at Disney California Adventure are permanent shows, we knew that the Main Street Electrical Parade and Disneyland Forever were only temporary, though Disneyland had not specified an end date until now.
It’s already been confirmed that Disneyland will be shifting into the spooky season, with the Halloween Screams fireworks show set to take over from Disneyland Forever on September 2 and to run through Halloween. The Believe...In Holiday Magic fireworks show has already been confirmed for the holiday season, likely to start on November 1 once the Halloween show is done.
What will be replacing the Main Street Electrical Parade once it comes to an end is less clear. Disneyland Resort’s big Halloween parade is part of the after hours Oogie Boogie Bash, but that’s at Disney California Adventure, and also not available to the general public. The Electrical Parade was the first parade to run during normal park hours since Disneyland Resort reopened. Parades used to be a normal part of operating, and now that we’ve had the first one, we’d certainly hope they will be again.
I for one will be rooting for the return of Magic Happens. The parade was brand new at the end of February 2020, and only ran for a couple of weeks before the global pandemic closed the park for over a year. It’s been hinted by Disneyland that Magic Happens probably isn’t gone forever.
Magic Happens had some really unique elements that are worth celebrating and seeing again. It marked the Disneyland debut of one classic Disney character and also included some incredible technical elements we had not seen in previous Disneyland parades. The return of an older parade seems far more likely than something entirely new, and so the return of a parade that most people have still never seen feels like a win.
