Electrical Parade Flickers to Life

Old parades don’t die. They don’t even fade away.

Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade, the blinking 24-year-old night owl whose farewell season helped attract record crowds to the Anaheim park last year, is recharging its batteries for yet another encore performance--this time in New York City.

The nighttime parade that park officials had hyped as disappearing forever has been resurrected to plug the world premiere of “Hercules,” Walt Disney Co’s. new animated feature.

The film premieres at Disney’s newly renovated Amsterdam Theatre on June 14 and will be accompanied by a weekend of festivities, including a run of the Electrical Parade down 5th Avenue on opening night.

The procession will be shipped straight from Anaheim and will feature all the familiar floats known to Disneyland fans, plus a new Hercules float to lead the parade, which has been renamed Disney’s Hercules Electrical Parade for the occasion.

“We thought the parade would be a dramatic way to launch ‘Hercules,’ ” said Disney spokesman Howard Green.

Although the Electrical Parade has emerged from retirement quicker than the average heavyweight boxer, Green said the encore is a one-time special event that’s definitely the Electrical Parade’s final hurrah.

But skeptical fans have heard that before.

The Disneyland parade was originally supposed to have ended in mid-October. But near the eve of the closing, park officials extended the run through late November, citing the “overwhelming demand” they’d helped create with a marketing blitz.

Disgruntled Disneyland patron Jim Wiedemann of Eagle Rock said parade fans have been duped again.

“If they were going to cancel it forever, they shouldn’t be bringing it back,” Wiedemann said. “They are milking it for everything they can get out of it.”

Likewise, some Disney fans on the Internet are questioning the authenticity of the Electrical Parade light bulbs they purchased as part of a fund-raiser for children’s charities.

Disneyland touted the $10 souvenirs as a way for fans to own a piece of Disneyland history, claiming that the bulbs would be salvaged from the floats once the parade ended its run. More than 100,000 were sold.

But Green said the floats have been restrung with more than 500,000 new lights for the Hercules parade and assured collectors that their parade bulbs are authentic.

“I’m sure they came off the floats,” Green said. “They had to come from somewhere.”