Do
you remember what Christmas was like when you were little? About
seven or so? When snow was only for playing in (and not shoveling),
when you could not imagine ever getting tired of eating cookies, when
new toys were intoxicating? Do you remember when you wrote actual letters to Santa Claus and then lay awake at
night on Christmas Eve to see if you could catch him in the
act?
Do
you remember?
Someone
obviously does...because someone distilled those memories, that
feeling, and used the concentrate as the basis for “A Christmas
Fantasy,” Disneyland's seasonal parade since 1994.
I
was a relative latecomer to the wide world of Disneyland parades. We
never watched many of them while I was growing up—I seem to
remember my parents saying things like “You can watch a parade
anywhere,” and urging more rides. The one big exception was the
Electrical Parade, which even they couldn't deny was completely
unique. (Besides, by that point in the evening, our feet needed the
break.) It wasn't until I was an adult and in control of my own
Disneyland schedule that parade-viewing became a regular part of my
trips and I learned that my parents' argument was invalid pretty much
across the board. As with so many things in the entertainment world,
nobody does parades
like Disney. Imagineering applies the same principles to parades that
it does to other large-scale live entertainment offerings, and even
rides; as a result, the average Disneyland parade combines the
technical expertise of Macy's or the Rose Parade, the projected
warmth of a simple neighborhood event, and way more coherence than
either.
The
various Christmas parades are no exception, and from what I've
seen—which admittedly is not as much as some (see above)—“A
Christmas Fantasy” is the best of the lot. The concept, music, the
floats, the costumes, the roles taken by Disney characters...it all
comes together into something extraordinary. Something larger than
life. Something for the seven-year-old in all of us.*
Concept
Outside
of Disney parks, Christmas parades probably outnumber all the others
put together. It's
the
big holiday of the year and all that's really required to hold a
parade in its honor is a high school marching band, a Scout troop, a
couple of pickup trucks with tinsel on, a rental Santa suit, and
someone willing to loan one or two classic cars to the Chamber of
Commerce. (I'm going by the handful of small-town Christmas parades
I've witnessed.) My point is that “Christmas parade,” of itself,
is a fairly generic idea. It takes Disney-caliber showmanship to make
more of it.
This
is where I think “A Christmas Fantasy” really shines even
compared to other Christmas parades in the parks, which tend to be no
more conceptually elaborate than “Disney characters in Santa hats.”
ACF presents eight individual units, each themed to a specific aspect
of Christmas—letters to Santa, baking cookies, outdoor winter
activities, etc. Disney characters are present, of course, but what
they're doing
is more relevant to the parade than who
they are...or
rather, what they're doing follows naturally from who they are and
what time of year it is. More on this later...
Music
I
love music—obviously enough, since I devoted an entire category of
blog posts to it. I've never completed a Music Appreciation course or
learned to play an instrument well, but...well, I'm the sort of
person who unironically listens to film scores and video game
soundtracks—all the way through, not just the one or two bits that
everyone remembers. I love
music. The fastest way to ruin any sort of entertainment experience
for me is to give it lackluster music.
Fortunately,
“A Christmas Fantasy” does music right. I've always thought that
Disney parades are at their best when they have a soundtrack based on
an original theme tune.** ACF certainly has that, opening with a
swooping fanfare that leads into a charming ditty about the magic of
the holiday. Each unit plays the main chorus and a unique verse of
this song before moving on to a medley of familiar Christmas songs
relating to its subject matter. It finishes with another round of the
chorus, and the cycle continues into the next unit. As usual with
Disney parades, the individual unit soundtracks are all precisely the
same length and synchronized in order to allow seamless transitions.
It's pretty much a textbook case of variations on a theme, and it
hits just the right level of energy for Christmas.
Characters
The
use of Disney characters in this parade is fairly unusual as these
things go. I think it's safe to say that most Disney parades are
planned entirely around which characters and movies to feature (which
in turn often reflects what the Marketing Department wants to promote
at the time). Even Mickey's Soundsational Parade, which I absolutely
love, follows this pattern...it's just that characters and movies
associated with interesting music take top priority. But as I
mentioned above, “A Christmas Fantasy” is built around Christmas
activities, with suitable characters attached. The obligatory
appearance by the Princesses is in the context of a Candlelight Ball,
Goofy gets to be his disaster-prone self in a bakery, and the Toy
Factory features not just Woody and Buzz, but also Geppetto and
Pinocchio.
Needless
to say, I really like this approach. Seeing the characters partake in
holiday activities that fit them as individuals makes them feel more
real, and the park more like a window on their world, than when they
are simply put on display for their own sake. Would that Disney
treated their characters this way more often—not just in the parks,
but in general.
And
then there are the “characters” specific to this parade (or held
over from previous Christmas parades), who are worth addressing in
some detail because their costumes are just so fantastic. I can't
think of another production anywhere in the world that brings so many
Christmas/winter icons to life in such imaginative detail. The parade
opens with a live music-box ballerina and teddy bear:
The
marching band dresses up as wooden soldiers, with specially made
trumpets that they can play right through their big round costume
heads:
The
Bakery unit features amazingly convincing gingerbread men (look
closely and you'll see that the flat backs of their costumes look a
bit singed) and a troupe of bakers who might just be part pastry
themselves:
Santa's
reindeer strike a good balance between being majestic creatures of
the tundra and friendly performers:
But
the best unit for this stuff has to be the Winter Wonderland segment,
which includes three
separate dance troupes of delightfully on-point characters. There are
these chubby, cheerful snowmen and snow-women:
The
skating snowflakes inescapably invite comparison with the winter
pixies from Fantasia:
And,
added in the last few years, a quartet of “skiers” (on extra-long
inline skates) who zip up and down along the entire length of the
unit:
(Gotta love the Nordic-style knitted hats!)
In
addition to these outstanding extras, Winter Wonderland offers the
liveliest and most complex musical medley in the parade, as well as
the enticing appeal of a snowy landscape for those of us who rarely
experience one in real life. If I had to pick a favorite unit in the
parade, this one would probably be it.
Floats
Does
“A Christmas Fantasy” have the best floats of any parade in
Disneyland history? Nah—even just taking the current era into
consideration, Soundsational has it beat. But they're still
highly imaginative renditions of standard Christmas-related concepts.
Mrs. Claus's Mailroom has separate receiving stations for each
continent. Goofy uses a small cement mixer to create frosting for a
gingerbread house the size of a family tent. But the most fascinating
float is surely the main one from the Toy Factory unit:
The
idea is that this is a fantastic, mobile machine that makes and wraps
toys for Santa to deliver. The structure of the float includes lots
of gears and pistons and spinning drums and squishy noises to suggest
three processes, labeled with giant letter blocks. BUILD shows blocks
of raw wood moving into the machine on a conveyor belt, and assembled
toys coming out. PAINT applies bright colors, and WRAP takes in the
finished toys and spits out paper-covered boxes. It's utterly
whimsical, mechanized without being devoid of personality, and even
gives the impression of being an experimental prototype.
I'm
also fond of the use of books as a consistent motif throughout the
parade. Most of the units are introduced with a mini-float in the
shape of a giant book—be it a storybook, a songbook, or even a
cookbook. This calls to mind the numerous classic Disney animated
films that open with a literal book containing the story we are about
to be told, which in turn gives the parade even more of a
fantastical, fairy-tale feel. “A Christmas Fantasy” indeed!
Conclusion
“A
Christmas Fantasy” is over 20 years old at this point and shows no
signs of being retired—the greatest longevity for any parade since
the Electrical Parade itself.*** It must be doing something right.
Should you decide to brave the hordes this holiday season, make sure
to give this parade some of your time. You can't get entertainment
like this just anywhere.
*
And in my case, the alternate-universe seven-year-old who grew up
somewhere that actually gets snow in the winter.
**
Or at least a highly distinctive one. “Baroque Hoedown” was not
written for the Electrical Parade, but few people would associate it
with anything else.
***
And actually, when you consider how drastically the Electrical Parade
was retooled from its original form in 1977, ACF might be considered
to have surpassed it at this point.
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