Pardon me while I chuckle at the thought that a six month seasonal hiatus for a parade means that it's "being sent somewhere else", or being chopped apart in a wartime scrap metal drive, or some such bizarre scenario.
For decades at Disneyland,
decades, the MSEP would be put into storage for nine months of the year. In the 1970's into the 1990's the MSEP was a summertime only offering, early June through Labor Day, and then it would disappear for nine months just like your naughty niece who needed to go live in Arizona for the rest of the year for a mystery reason. Families probably don't do that to wayward daughters anymore, do they?
Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, the parade.
In 1993 I noticed they started offering the MSEP for two weeks at Easter Vacation too, I assume as a way to balance the crowds for Fantasmic! and pull people away from the west side of the park at night. That continued through 1995, and then in 1996 for it's "Farewell Season" they went big and did the MSEP nightly from spring until Labor Day, which was famously extended into November when the crowds turned out en masse.
The point is that having Paint The Night go seasonal, especially in a park like DCA that uses their parade route for swap meets and snack bars four months out of the year (November/December and March/April), is nothing new and nothing to be alarmed about. I know there's a gaggle of college program churro salesmen and parking lot attendants out in Orlando who want to wish Paint The Night into existence for one of their forlorn parks out there, but that's just not a thing.
Paint The Night has closed for the season so TDA may present Festival of Snack Shacks, and then it will return to DCA next Memorial Day weekend in a lame attempt by TDA to prevent civil disturbances from breaking out on the Big Thunder Trail when 10,000 paying customers try to get in to a Star Wars Land that has been closed for hours due to being way overcapacity. Paint The Night will be back in '19.
