MK All-New Nighttime Parade Disney Starlight Set to Debut at Magic Kingdom in 2025

[MerlinTheGoat]

Wasn’t the Spectro title float entirely behind the trumpeters and Mickey?

Originally yes during its early years. Though later on they would sometimes put it before Mickey. There are 2000s era videos of this.

Along with the other stuff that we've all mentioned, why is the TITLE float at the very end of the parade? Is it because the current first float is so ridiculously massive that it would be dwarfed in comparison?

Probably the size yeah. It's extremely small even by the standards of traditional "filler" floats, not even motorized AFAIK as the cast members seem to be pushing it along. As far as i'm aware, all other night parades that have title floats have always had them close to the beginning. And they have always been large headliner units. As I noted, they shifted Spectro's title float around in later years. But it was always at least part of the first group.

I'll note that Hong Kong's original version of Paint the Night broke tradition and didn't even have a title float at all. When they cloned it for California, they added one (again a headliner near the beginning)

 

[EricsBiscuit]

Now, if they really wanted to enhance this parade, they would add a special float next year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence. That would be a beautiful callback to the MSEP and would do wonders to improve Disney’s image.

 

[Ayla]

Now, if they really wanted to enhance this parade, they would add a special float next year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence. That would be a beautiful callback to the MSEP and would do wonders to improve Disney’s image.

Nah.

 

[ToTBellHop]

Now, if they really wanted to enhance this parade, they would add a special float next year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence. That would be a beautiful callback to the MSEP and would do wonders to improve Disney’s image.

That would clash horribly with the rest of the parade.

More likely to see a Toy Story float. You can add Toy Story to anything.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Look man, photon poisoning is the risk of doing business and giving crowds great night time entertainment! (Gene Roddenberry wisely predicted this risk when he used photon torpedoes as weapons in the original Star Trek!)
They've greatly reduced the dangers by going to LEDs which emit safer photons and I think that's commendable!

I've seen photon poisoning get up to orange or even red levels!!

 

[MisterPenguin]

That would clash horribly with the rest of the parade.

More likely to see a Toy Story float. You can add Toy Story to anything.

How about a Muppet 250 float dressed up like when they did that Liberty Square show?

Miss Piggy as the Statue of Liberty, of course.

 

[brb1006]

Originally yes during its early years. Though later on they would sometimes put it before Mickey. There are 2000s era videos of this.


Probably the size yeah. It's extremely small even by the standards of traditional "filler" floats, not even motorized AFAIK as the cast members seem to be pushing it along. As far as i'm aware, all other night parades that have title floats have always had them close to the beginning. And they have always been large headliner units. As I noted, they shifted Spectro's title float around in later years. But it was always at least part of the first group.

I'll note that Hong Kong's original version of Paint the Night broke tradition and didn't even have a title float at all. When they cloned it for California, they added one (again a headliner near the beginning)

I believe the title float was moved in front of Mickey in 1997. Around the same time the Spectromen audio was updated to sound more audible.

 

[Jedi14]

Now, if they really wanted to enhance this parade, they would add a special float next year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence. That would be a beautiful callback to the MSEP and would do wonders to improve Disney’s image.

No

 

[aladdin2007]

Now, if they really wanted to enhance this parade, they would add a special float next year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence. That would be a beautiful callback to the MSEP and would do wonders to improve Disney’s image.

Would love it as well, but reality is not with today's IP only company.

If they would just get characters into this parade in-between interacting with guests (obviously filler small floats aren't happening) I think there would be little complaint. It was created for the rubes, not the fans or locals. Rubes are happy with anything, but even they are noticing the lack of characters. Fans and locals are happy just to have a night parade to go to but it certainly wasn't created with us in mind, except for some of the soundtrack.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

For fun, I made this little timeline collage of the butterfly costumes from past light parades. From left to right it's MSEP 1972, Spectromagic, Fantillusion, and Dreamlights 2001-

They're all really pretty in their own way, ranging from good to excellent. Even that ancient 1972 one still looks surprisingly nice (actually my first time seeing it as the newer variants of MSEP I've seen did not have a butterfly performer AFAIK). I think Spectro and Fantillusion look the best and Dreamlights was arguably a slight regression in some ways from those (though there may be better patterns it could show), but still all very good costumes. Again even the oldest. And they were respectful of the original concept whenever they modernized the lighting tech. Until now anyway.

Which brings us to "until now", here's Starlight's butterfly costume...

Not even going to pretend to be nice about this. Terrible. Every single one of those older designs, yes including that 1972 one, is infinitely better than this trash. Whoever looked at these and thought they were acceptable needs to be fired.

While Paint the Night doesn't contain butterfly costumes specifically, it does have multiple different fairy variations. Which for the purposes of comparison i'm laying out here, i'm going to deem.... let's say "close enough?" in this instance-

Basically Starlight should have taken that lighting tech and adapt it to the traditional old school butterfly costume structure. We'd have gotten something that actually looks good. These are also over a decade old now, so they're technically "older" tech now and could likely be further improved.

Of course the other Starlight costumes are also very poor and need to be scrapped and redesigned as well. But the reason I focused on this group in particular is because butterfly costumes have been a recurring staple of light parades since their inception. You can tell Starlight's costumes are poor even without this comparison. But with these, there's 50+ years and numerous iterative variants of this specific type of costume. All of which prior to now have been done extremely well. The contrast makes it all the more embarrassing.

 

[EricsBiscuit]

Now, if they really wanted to enhance this parade, they would add a special float next year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence. That would be a beautiful callback to the MSEP and would do wonders to improve Disney’s image.

People are seriously underestimating how big of an event the 250th is going to be. Disney can cash in and print money if they are open to it. They went big in 1976 and it paid off. They should do so again. America sells. People love it (especially foreign tourists!).

 

[phillip9698]

I believe Ron's number for a nighttime parade was less, mainly because with the darkness you don't have to fill the voids you can naturally see in the parade (along with the fact that if you look at what he produced for nighttime parades those were 25-40 float parades in MSEP, SpectroMagic, and Fantillusion) but still, imagine this with 10-15 more floats and 75 performers? It would be fantastic.

Part of me almost feels like this was forced upon WDW Management and they said "okay we'll do it but what's the absolute cheapest way we can do it?" It's pretty well documented that Park Ops fought this decision tooth and nail and it was forced upon them by Burbank (if I remember the discussion correctly) so for them to end up with this as the final product it shouldn't surprise anyone. We booked a trip specifically to see this and frankly, I'm somewhat regretting that at this point.

Why would Orlando ops not want a night parade?

 

[Squishy]

I believe Ron's number for a nighttime parade was less, mainly because with the darkness you don't have to fill the voids you can naturally see in the parade (along with the fact that if you look at what he produced for nighttime parades those were 25-40 float parades in MSEP, SpectroMagic, and Fantillusion) but still, imagine this with 10-15 more floats and 75 performers? It would be fantastic.

Part of me almost feels like this was forced upon WDW Management and they said "okay we'll do it but what's the absolute cheapest way we can do it?" It's pretty well documented that Park Ops fought this decision tooth and nail and it was forced upon them by Burbank (if I remember the discussion correctly) so for them to end up with this as the final product it shouldn't surprise anyone. We booked a trip specifically to see this and frankly, I'm somewhat regretting that at this point.

I remember watching a podcast somewhere where Ron explained park ops would always try to cheap out by removing dancers and floats time to time with spectro so he had to keep them in check, he did not allow them to run a cheaped out parade of his. Looks like the park ops ended up winning cause no one is able to keep them in check anymore.

 

[jpeden]

Why would Orlando ops not want a night parade?

Live Entertainment used to be its own division and their budget was considered relatively untouchable, especially when Ron was in charge. They made all the creative calls and decisions. In the early 2000’s after Ron retired the budget for live entertainment was folded into park ops. They resisted a night parade for two main reasons from what I remember:

A. The operational nightmare of a 9PM parade, 10PM HEA, and 11PM parade, especially with how hub-centric the fireworks have become since HEA

B. The cost/hit to the park ops budget. These things are not cheap to run and when you start talking about the increased staffing for ops/crowd control along with the cost of the actual parade performance and maintenance, it adds up quickly.

I remember watching a podcast somewhere where Ron explained park ops would always try to cheap out by removing dancers and floats time to time with spectro so he had to keep them in check, he did not allow them to run a cheaped out parade of his. Looks like the park ops ended up winning cause no one is able to keep them in check anymore.

It’s because the budget for live entertainment lives in Ops now from my understanding and not in DLE.

 

[TTA94]

Live Entertainment used to be its own division and their budget was considered relatively untouchable, especially when Ron was in charge. They made all the creative calls and decisions. In the early 2000’s after Ron retired the budget for live entertainment was folded into park ops. They resisted a night parade for two main reasons from what I remember:

A. The operational nightmare of a 9PM parade, 10PM HEA, and 11PM parade, especially with how hub-centric the fireworks have become since HEA

B. The cost/hit to the park ops budget. These things are not cheap to run and when you start talking about the increased staffing for ops/crowd control along with the cost of the actual parade performance and maintenance, it adds up quickly.




It’s because the budget for live entertainment lives in Ops now from my understanding and not in DLE.

Question is will Ops jump at the opportunity in the future, whatever the reason may be, to once again not have a nighttime parade. Hopefully it becomes, as it should have after MSEP left, a requirement for there to be a nighttime parade.

I think WDW Ops would love it if they had the option to run Starlight off and on like Disneyland does with PTN.

 

[jpeden]

Question is will Ops jump at the opportunity in the future, whatever the reason may be, to once again not have a nighttime parade. Hopefully it becomes, as it should have after MSEP left, a requirement for there to be a nighttime parade.

I think WDW Ops would love it if they had the option to run Starlight off and on like Disneyland does with PTN.

No doubt they’d love to run it seasonly and maybe a few nights a week during the slower seasons and once or twice nightly during peak times. I don’t think outside financial crisis though that will happen mainly because of how 1st time/only trip visitors skew to WDW.

 

[AxolotlTales]

Disney loves to copy attractions to save money… why didn’t they just copy the parade in Tokyo?

That would be spending more money. Tokyo doesn't hold back on budgets.

 

[thundermtnGOAT]

Wasn’t the Spectro title float entirely behind the trumpeters and Mickey?

Correct! It was part of the 3-float opening unit - it was at the front of the parade rather than the rear. Same for MSEP. The title unit was technically the 2nd float originally. I think it makes way more sense to have title units at the front than the back.

Tbh I don’t know of a single parade performed outside of MK that sticks title unit at the back.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

they really need to step up custodial - crazy amounts of trash after the 11:00 parade as people are exiting the park. I saw 2 managers trying but no custodial in sight.

That’s people’s last memories of the magic kingdom - it’s important.

After paint the night.. there’s an army of custodial.

 

[Squishy]

they really need to step up custodial - crazy amounts of trash after the 11:00 parade as people are exiting the park. I saw 2 managers trying but no custodial in sight.

That’s people’s last memories of the magic kingdom - it’s important.

After paint the night.. there’s an army of custodial.

They have a vacuum that goes around a few minutes after the parade vacuuming up most of the trash left on the street