Disneyland Shuts Doors as Parade-Lovers Swamp Park

For only the second time in its 41-year history, a jampacked Disneyland shut its doors for more than four hours Saturday, causing widespread confusion and renewing concern about the theme park’s ability to handle growing public demand.

Hoping to see the farewell performance of Disneyland’s beloved Main Street Electrical Parade--which ends next month after a 24-year run--thousands swamped the park when its doors opened at 9 a.m., quickly filling the 15,000-space parking lot and creating heavy traffic on surrounding roadways.

When park officials made the decision to stop selling tickets at 2:15 p.m., guards began turning cars away and traffic from the north eventually backed up into Los Angeles County. The park eventually reopened after 6:30 p.m.

“The only other time we see traffic like that is Knott’s Berry Farm at Halloween time,” said California Highway Patrol spokeswoman Angel Johnson. “As far as Disneyland goes, I’ve never seen it this bad.”

The only other time Disneyland stopped selling tickets due to overcrowding was Dec. 28, 1984, according to Casi Smith, a Disneyland spokeswoman. The cause back then was a widely publicized New Year’s event.

This time, the reason could be epidemic nostalgia, as hard-core Disney fans--fueled by a massive advertising blitz--seem desperate to get one last look at the glittery march down Main Street, which includes characters like the Blue Fairy and Pete’s Dragon.

“People love this parade,” Smith said. “A lot of these people come to the park saying they saw it when they were children, and the big thing with them is they’d like to bring their children, make it a family tradition.”

But time is running out on tradition. Disneyland plans to scrap the parade, introducing a new parade next spring with fiber optics and other modern technological doo-dads.

“This is the end,” Smith said. “[The parade] is very popular, but it’s been around so long, we feel it’s time to upgrade.”

Anaheim City Councilman Lou Lopez said he thought Disneyland officials may have been prompted to close the park’s ticket windows Saturday because visitors and public officials voiced some alarm at last weekend’s unusually large throngs.

Informed of the latest incident of overcrowding, Lopez repeated his opinion that Disneyland should be rigorously questioned about safety and security.

“We need to discuss this with Disneyland,” he said. “We definitely need to ask some hard questions to make sure it’s safe for all visitors.”

Anaheim’s fire code lets the city set and enforce occupancy limits for all buildings on the 136-acre Disneyland property. But the code says nothing about how many people may legally circulate through the park’s outdoor area, and planning regulations seem not to address the maximum park capacity.

Disneyland officials refuse to release attendance figures, but sources estimated last Saturday that the park admitted 80,000 visitors, the third largest crowd ever, exceeded only by July 4 crowds in 1986 and 1987.

On a typically busy summer day, sources say, Disneyland sees 50,000 to 60,000 visitors.

After last weekend’s massive turnout, park officials tried to dispel concerns and thin congestion by prolonging the Main Street Electrical Parade for a few more weeks.

Originally scheduled to end Oct. 15, the parade was granted a 25-day reprise run, from Nov. 1. through Nov. 25.

“But I guess a lot of people didn’t get the message,” said park spokesman Tom Brocato. “I think it surprised everyone how passionate our guests are about the Main Street Electrical Parade. We expected to have crowds, but I think it really surprised all of us how big it became.”

“It exploded on us, to be honest,” Smith said. “Of course, we wanted to promote the fact that it was ending. We just didn’t anticipate this high volume. We’re as surprised as anyone else.”