10 fun facts about the 50th anniversary Main Street Electrical Parade

The “Main Street Electrical Parade” returns to Disneyland Resort for a limited time starting today, April 22.

The original “Main Street Electrical Parade” made its world debut at Disneyland on June 17, 1972. In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the parade will travel across Disneyland with a new grand finale.

The finale sequence draws its inspiration from the original design of the 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 making it one of the longest sequences in the parade’s history.

Guests along each side of the parade route will 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 19-foot-tall representation of Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Here’s a closer look at the return of the “Main Street Electrical Parade:”

1. About 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.

2. The 22 floats illuminate the parade route at Disneyland, nearly double the number of floats from the parade’s debut -12 – in 1972.

3. Five miles of electrical wiring is used in the parade.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. This was the first parade to feature unique musical arrangements synchronized to each float unit as it moved along the parade route.

7. There are 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.”

8. Performers throughout the parade wear dazzling costumes created with special, shimmering fabrics and built-in lighting.

9. With a height of 23 feet, the Cinderella clock tower is the tallest float in the “Main Street Electrical Parade.”

10. 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.

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