I'm aware Christmas is long over. But I felt like sharing this video of the Disneyland Christmas Parade from 1983 titled "Disney's Christmas Fantasy" taken sometime in 1983-ish.
This video is worth watching alone, because it not only contains a section for the then new "Mickey's Christmas Carol". But it also shows a lot of Disney Characters that you no longer seen around the parks.
Examples include; Gus Gus and Jack Jack (they show up occasionally at Disneyland Paris), Dumbo and the Ringmaster, Buzzie, Flaps, Ziggy, and Dizzy and The Elephants from The Jungle Book, technically Stromboli (he currently makes rare appearances), a good chunk of the Robin Hood cast (especially Maid Marian), The March hare (currently at Disneyland Paris) and The Walrus from Alice In Wonderland. If only I could find some older DL/WDW parade footage of Flower from Bambi.
Since this was shot in 1983, looks like some of the floats were from for the "Flights Of Fantasy Parade" in early 1983. Since New Fantasyland just opened that year.
Seeing old Disneyland and Walt Disney World Parades of the past really makes miss the "pre-Disney Princess" era of Disney and it's theme parks. These days parades at the Disney Theme Parks are mainly focused on the Disney Renaissance era with a sprinkle of old school days (films and animation made between the 1930s up till the mid 1960s and occasionally the 1970s), or parades with a bit of Pixar characters in the mix.
Side Note: Surprised they hadn't updated the designs for The Hippos (since when were the Hippos pink and had lipstick?) from Fantasia, alongside The Tweedles, and Chip N Dale (who hadn't changed since 1981) yet. Considering the Disney Parks has slowly started giving their characters a makeover/redesigns to look closer to their animated counterparts. First was Smee in late 2009 or early 2010, Marie from The Aristocats in 2013 (2014 for the other parks), Mickey and Minnie starting in mid 2016, and most recently Horace and Clarabelle.
