Some people claim Spectromagic doesn't have a story. Besides the Imagineers, the parade relied more on visual storytelling giving guests their own interpretation of what's going in in certain sections. Similar to how Fantasia relied on music and animation to give viewers a sense of what's going on.
Spectro has a story 100%, and even if you don't say it has one it at least has an extremely cohesive theme that is represented and reinforced throughout by a combination of factors.
Blue Fairy: “Come with me, on a magical journey kissed by starlight.”
I feel like this is enough for people to get the premise. I don’t know what you were expecting.
At best it's a vague theme, which doesn't really hold up. There's no payoff to it, just don't even bother saying anything unless there is some level of reference beyond dialogue through float design, characters theming... At best you can say the lights could contribute, but that's relatively weak.
Fantillusion does a better job at selling a parade's plot and premise than Starlight. It's a simple story of Good vs Evil and loosely inspired by Fantasmic.
And there's a reason why it was so good, The people who produced it had experience designing and producing nighttime parades.
Fantillusion has a plot, Starlight has a premise.
It doesn't even have a premise, it has a vague theme.
I don't think I have ever though about a parade having, or needing, a story beyond the overall theme ... It's a collection of floats and characters that, hopefully, provide an enjoyable time.
I come from a particular school of entertainment design, which definitely definitely does not skimp on story if at all possible.
Good review and valid points. I have said elsewhere that this feels more like a procession and not a parade.
Last night I hardened my views and have really come around to the idea that this is a joke of a nighttime parade. Light Magic for all of its faults, at least was something different and tried (even if it failed spectacularly). This... I'm not really sure what happened except an attempt at managed mediocrity. Which somehow hurts more than swinging and failing.
If you remember Ron Logan (who used to lead Disney Live Entertainment when it was its own thing and wasn't just dumped into Park Ops) - he had a bare minimum of performers that he would agree to put in a parade. Just to understand how Disney used to think this was important, Ron's minimum number for a daytime parade?
125
Let that sink in.
That's the mind that gave us Fantasmic, SpectroMagic, IllumiNations: Relflections of Earth, Tapestry of Nations, Sorcery in the Sky, Fantillusion (the TDL version), Tokyo Disney Electrical Parade, and a score of other entertainment options. The gold standard will never be beaten with the management team in 2025, and it's a shame.
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 knew Ron well (as a mentor, confidant, professor, and friend, of mine). To the point I remember sitting with him and discussing the possibility of this happening, probably God, September or October of 2020. He laughed and said it wasn't going to happen because WDW management was not interested in a nighttime parade anymore. Too much money for not enough in return because they don't consider paper money (revenue attributed to people staying for the show, like dinner reservations or additional merch or snacks buys) valid revenue for a show. So entertainment was just an expense. ROE made something like $6 million a year off of that principle. That and he also had no faith in his successors, at least domestically. And he really wasn't wrong. Nothing has come close since, mostly because of what happened after he retired. I know what he would think of this parade. He'd use words not appropriate in polite company (and easily censored by this board), and then get on the phone to yell at whoever thought this parade was a good idea. He certainly would never have approved it. And I know he would have pushed for a parade that made Dreamlights look cheap, and if he was still in his job, probably would have gotten it too.
Not many people know how DLE came to be - Ron retired in 2001 (although he claimed to me that if he had wanted to he'd probably still be there, at that point nearly 20 years later), and Eisner decided WDE (Walt Disney Entertainment) was far too powerful. Now, the way Ron told it, Eisner was a wee bit jealous of him, how much Ron's reports loved him, and how much power WDE had in the company. After all, WDE didn't report to the parks president, or any of the various parks presidents, just Eisner. Which meant there were a ton of people in operations at individual parks who wanted WDE's warchest for themselves. Some of them at the higher levels got into Eisner's ear, and that's how we started the breakup of WDE. Add in that WDE were literally the only people in charge of any matter of live entertainment in the company besides Eisner (and Eisner relied on Ron and co for a ton of stuff as a result), power naturally flowed to them quite quickly once they started to deliver results. And naturally Ron and his underlings had power, because if you wanted Mickey to show up to an opening of an attraction or something, or somebody wanted appearances to promote the parks in a foreign market, or DL wanted a new show, among many other things, you had to go through them. People were not always happy about that, but the structure was created for a reason, and it darn well worked. Add to that Ron had a habit of going to bat for many of the best and brightest under him (which resulted in scores of loyalists promoted throughout the company in various positions some still to this very day), and how much he emphasized quality work. More than perhaps some of his colleagues. Was Eisner justified in killing WDE because of this? Justifiably not, and we've been reaping the "rewards" of giving park ops control over entertainment ever since.
It's funny because I've searched my notes, videos of him talking about parades, and even his book (excellent although apparently out of print), and I cannot find him saying those numbers of performers are needed in a parade. The Aladdin parade was created with a fraction of that amount, and was ported world-wide. He HATED thate movie - "who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to make a thief the star of a Disney movie and make him the hero? And get that hussy too?" Yes. A Disney Legend referred to Jasmine as a hussy. The only redeeming point? Genie. Which is how the parade is almost entirely focused on him. He was ordered to produce a parade based on the film (thanks Michael), and made it about the comic relief - Aladdin barely comes into the parade! Most of the soldiers are played by inflatable dolls, walked around by showgirls wearing beards... It was designed to use as few real performers as possible, and arguably succeeded. Of course, normal parades had anywhere from 100 to way more than that in terms of performers, but I never knew he had an exact minimum! (Absolutely kills me I can't drop him an email or a phone call to ask him.) Makes sense though. So many little things like that, or maintenance and upkeep (rerecording a few bars of music because it had some kind of barely perceivable defect (think it was in RoE but I'm not entirely sure, recording as many soundtracks as he could in London with a full professional orchestra, getting duped into traveling to Tokyo because Eisner thought they use different lightbulbs on their MSEP - only to find they replaced them when dim frequently, unlike domestically - which was quickly adopted as standard), or even dedicating space in parades to more obscure properties, that would never happen today because entertainment is not valued as much.
Probably the craziest thing to me is that Disney didn't really care much about him. As time went on he was one of the few Disney employees who worked with Walt and Roy left alive. Marty gave him a window at MK as a retirement gift, and Iger was effectively browbeat by a mixture of big name celebrities who worked with Ron (led by Robin but there's a bunch of names involved I'm sure you'd recognize) and his former colleagues, to make him a Legend after Eisner refused. Neither were assured, and I know there was a list of other dudes who were supposed to get that window (none of whom have gotten one since), but Marty pushed it through. It's pretty telling that Disney never really had Ron back in those later years - he appeared at tons of events run by fans, podcasts, and gave talks at senior homes and wherever he could, but Disney never invited him to do a D23 panel or anything like that. I do believe that if Ron was still alive, they may have thrown him a bone and put him in Don Dorsey's place on the spectacular panel from a while back, but that's about it.
Maybe that's because Eisner worked to bury his contributions to the company, maybe it's because Iger (and Chapek) simply had no idea who he was (or care). Hell, I've met current DLE execs and director-level folks who stare at me blankly when I mention Ron like I had just asked Sean Bailey when we were going to see the Medfield College Cinematic Universe return. Most of these happened at company events while I was a CM. Nobody gives a darn (I would use stronger language but the board censors it unfortunately). And it angers me. The man literally was the only person outside of the Disney family (although according to him even they didn't know), Walt's actual last words as his mother was the last person outside to Disney family to see Walt before he died (the only nurse that Lillian trusted not to sell the story to tabloids apparently). (I will leave it ambigious as to if he ever told me.) He did so much for the community, for Disney history (begged Dick Nunis and other colleagues of his to write books, finished one of his own and was in the middle of at least one more, and did tons of interviews about his career, among others), and for his students, that it's kind of odd he's not held in as high of regard as many of his conteporaries. The Disney family loved him, but the company didn't.
I have probably 10 or 12 hours of unreleased recordings of him telling stories from his career and on his views on designing/producing live entertainment, plus dozens more pages of notes from my discussions with him, that I still go through at least once a year. Particularly for the recordings, I truly believe I'm the only one to have them, including stories I know for a fact he never talked about in public (like his attempted "conquest" of a certain Mouseketeer in the 60's, or dealing with "gifts" from Christina Aguilera's mother that threatened to disrupt the 2000 Super Bowl Halftime Show), and I know both the Archives and UCF have expressed interest in them at some point. Not terribly interested in giving them up (despite offers) though I may digitize the notes and upload the videos to YT at some point and the notes somewhere else.
