Main Street Electrical Parade – What’s New & Fun Facts

The beloved “Main Street Electrical Parade” has returned to Disneyland Resort for a limited time beginning, once again bringing guests of multiple generations a sense of wonder, joy and – for some – warm nostalgia. In celebration of its milestone 50^th anniversary in 2022, the parade travels across Disneyland Park with an all-new grand finale that continues the enchantment for a new generation of dreamers. Learn more below.

New in 2022: An Enchanted Grand Finale Celebrating Togetherness

To honor the milestone 50th anniversary of “Main Street Electrical Parade,” Disney Live Entertainment has introduced a magnificent grand finale that celebrates the theme of togetherness in an all-new float. This universal theme is reflected in the creative concept of the grand finale sequence, drawing inspiration from the original design of classic “Main Street Electrical Parade” floats and Mary Blair’s iconic art style on “it’s a small world.” The seven-segment float stretches 118 feet in length and brings to life more than a dozen Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios stories, making it one of the longest and grandest sequences in the parade’s history. These stories will be interpreted in thousands of sparkling lights and electro-synthe-magnetic musical sound, with unique representations of beloved characters as animated dolls.

Guests along each side of the parade route can see different stylized scenes from classic and contemporary favorite stories such as “Encanto,” “The Jungle Book,” “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “Aladdin,” “Coco,” “Mulan,” “Brave,” “The Princess and the Frog” and more. The finale also pays tribute to the parade’s heritage with the return of the Blue Fairy character from “Pinocchio” and a unique, 19-foot-tall representation of Sleeping Beauty Castle.

New music was composed to accompany the all-new grand finale float, weaving together arrangements of favorite songs from the represented stories – all performed in the original musical style of the “Main Street Electrical Parade.”

Fun Facts: A Legacy of Nighttime Magic and Imagination

The original “Main Street Electrical Parade” made its world debut at Disneyland on June 17, 1972, and since then, evolving versions of the parade have appeared at Disney parks around the world.

Here’s a closer look at this “spectacular festival pageant”:

• Approximately 500,000 lights sparkle in the parade’s nighttime journey from “it’s a small world” mall in Fantasyland to Town Square on Main Street, U.S.A.
• 22 floats illuminate the parade route at Disneyland, nearly doubling the number of floats from the parade’s debut (12) in 1972.
• Two composers, Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley, wrote the iconic synthesizer piece known as “Baroque Hoedown” in 1967, and the song was adapted for the “Main Street Electrical Parade” in 1972, interwoven with classic Disney themes to create the now iconic parade soundtrack.
• This was the first parade to feature unique musical arrangements synchronized to each float unit as it moved along the parade route.
• 18 stories are represented across the parade floats and the grand finale: “Alice in Wonderland,” “Cinderella,” “Peter Pan,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Pinocchio,” “Pete’s Dragon,” “Hercules,” “Brave,” “Coco,” “The Princess and the Frog,” “Moana,” “Mulan,” “Pocahontas,” “Frozen 2,” “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “The Jungle Book,” “Aladdin” and “Encanto.”
• Performers throughout the parade wear dazzling costumes created with special, shimmering fabrics and built-in lighting.
• Five miles of electrical wiring is used in the parade.
• With a height of 23 feet, the Cinderella clock tower is the tallest float in the “Main Street Electrical Parade.”
• At 5,600 pounds, the massive Elliott float, added in 1977 for the release of “Pete’s Dragon,” measures 16 feet tall, 10 feet wide and 38 feet long.
• Six different colors of light bulbs flash throughout the parade, in amber, blue, green, chartreuse, red and pink. 150,000 glowing amber lights are used in the production, the most of any color.
• Five Disney parks have presented versions of the “Main Street Electrical Parade” including Disneyland Park, Disney California Adventure Park, Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort, Tokyo Disneyland Park and Disneyland Park at Disneyland Paris.
• In 2005, “Main Street Electrical Parade” creator and former director of entertainment Robert Jani was inducted as a Disney Legend.