Nostalgia for a Past Futurism: The Main Street Electrical Parade

Upton examines the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland. The parade, introduced on the evening of June 17, 1972, was the first nighttime parade at Disneyland. With all the lights on Main Street turned off, twenty-two individual floats covered in six hundred thousand colored light bulbs create a dazzling and glittering effect. An important element of the parade's longtime popularity has been its memorable music: while each individual float provides its own particular music, chiefly melodies from Disney films, the parade as a whole begins with another piece of music that is heard throughout the whole parade, with which the individual float tunes combine contrapuntally as a quodlibet.