Remember
when Disneyland used to run parades based on a single movie? It was a
Nineties phenomenon—the Disney Renaissance was redefining
theatrical animation, but the suits weren't quite ready to devote
permanent theme park real estate to new films yet, so they went
all-in on live entertainment. Some of the Renaissance movies were
honored with summary stage adaptations (leaning heavily on the
musical numbers, natch), others with parades, but one way or another,
nearly every one of them got some sort of show all to itself.
I
kinda miss that. Not just the creativity that went into spinning an
entire full-length parade concept out of the imagery of just one
film, but the frequency with which the parades were rotated as new
movies were released. We had an average of about one new daytime
parade every two years throughout the Nineties, whereas now? The last
new daytime parade was rolled out in 2011—and
granted, said parade is Mickey's
Soundsational and I don't exactly have anything to complain
about, and we've also gotten Paint the Night in the meantime, but
that's still eight years
without anything fresh for the daylight hours.
I
sometimes think about what it would have been like if the single-film
parade tradition had been maintained, or at least revived once Disney
regained confidence in its animated features. It almost
was—a parade was planned for The Princess and the Frog
before being scaled back to just one unit* of Soundsational—and I
can drive myself to distraction wondering what a Tangled
parade would look like. Or a Wreck-it Ralph
parade.
But
by far the best 2010s candidate for adaptation into a parade is
Moana. Disney
Renaissance parades grew out of movies where it made some amount of
sense in-universe to hold a parade or similar event. Aladdin's Royal
Caravan was basically a fifteen-minute expansion of the Prince Ali
sequence, the Mulan Parade was very much like a Chinese New Year
parade with lion dancers, acrobats, and jugglers. Moana
is a film about a personal journey wrapped up in a physical
journey—how better to represent that than with an attraction that
literally moves from one end of Disneyland to the other?
Board
my boat and strap in while I take you through the Moana's Grand
Voyage Parade!
