Marketing Muscle : Disneyland Makes Heroic Effort Playing Up Hercules’ Popularity

He vanquished a multi-headed Hydra, the Ice Titan and the Lord of the Underworld. Now he’s putting the muscle on a gang of pixies.

In a summer season that was supposed to belong to Disneyland’s new megabucks nighttime street show, Light Magic, the Walt Disney Co.’s new hit movie “Hercules” has inspired the hottest new parade at the Magic Kingdom.

On the Internet and through word of mouth, the Hercules Victory Parade is collecting garlands for its foot-tapping score and campy toga party style. Meanwhile, the ultra-high-tech Light Magic and its gaggle of sprites have shown some bright spots, but haven’t exactly electrified the crowds.

“I saw Light Magic last night and it was OK, but Hercules is a lot more fun,” said Leah Smith, a Disneyland visitor from Colorado enjoying the Greek revival on a recent sunny afternoon. “I loved the music, the floats. I laughed the whole time.”

Everyone loves a winner, it seems, including Disneyland’s marketing team. It’s no coincidence that heading into the critical July 4 weekend, Hercules is the new hero of the park’s print, television and radio spots.

“You gotta go with the hot hand,” said one insider. “And right now that’s Hercules.”

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It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Billed as the most technologically sophisticated live show ever performed at Disneyland, Light Magic was projected to blow the chicken wire and Christmas tree bulbs right off the lumbering Main Street Electrical Parade, which was retired last year after 25 seasons to make way for the splashy newcomer.

Disney has spent an estimated $20 million to create the hybrid parade and street show about the magic of dreams. In addition to more than 100 performers, including dancing pixies and pajama-clad Disney characters, the show boasts 2,500 miles of fiber-optic cable and four gigantic rolling stages rigged with projection screens, computerized moving lights, smoke effects and confetti blasts.

Light Magic was intended to be Disneyland’s heavyweight entry to lure the high-season crowds, with Herc on the undercard to plug the movie and its merchandise. But as Hades finds out in Disney’s new animated feature, messing with a legend can be tricky business.

“The Hercules movie has stoked an incredible fire to see the Hercules parade,” said theme park consultant Jim Harmon of Management Resources in Tustin. “But when something with the history and mystique of the Electrical Parade gets replaced, it’s like following [football coaching giant] Woody Hayes’ footsteps at Ohio State. You kind of feel sorry for whoever comes afterward because expectations are so high.”

Indeed, Disneyland executives looked like geniuses last year when the going-away party for the geriatric Electrical Parade became the must-see event in the industry. Smitten with Blue Fairy mania, a record 15 million guests were estimated to have streamed through the turnstiles in 1996.

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It would be a tough act to follow under the best of circumstances, since some fans considered the Electrical Parade an untouchable Disneyland icon on par with the Matterhorn or Sleeping Beauty Castle. But management’s decision to extend the parade’s run past its originally scheduled going-away date infuriated many hard-core fans who felt manipulated by all the hype.

Disney reopened that wound earlier this year when the parade that was allegedly “glowing away” forever turned up in New York City to plug the opening of “Hercules.”

That pent-up resentment, combined with a badly bungled preview of Light Magic before 20,000 annual passholders--the park’s most sophisticated fans and vocal critics--turned the early buzz into a seething hornet’s nest.

The show was dubbed “Light Tragic” on Internet bulletin boards, and lambasted for everything from its mechanical hiccups to its homely pixies. In a business where perception is reality, even Disney brass admit the early miscues hurt.

“We don’t get to open out of town. [Disneyland] is our Broadway,” said Mike E. Davis, the park’s vice president of entertainment. “Unfortunately, we opened before we were ready, before a very tough crowd.”

Most of those early technical glitches have been fixed, and Davis contends that former Electrical Parade fans are beginning to embrace Light Magic in its own right. Indeed, crowds line up faithfully on Disneyland’s Main Street for the two nightly performances.

But logistical and creative hurdles remain. The stationary street show has created crowd-flow problems and spawned a custodial nightmare with its barrels of “pixie dust” confetti.

What’s more, despite Disneyland’s efforts to promote Light Magic as a “streetacular” and not a parade, a moving procession is precisely what many fans want and expect.

Insiders say park officials are already planning big changes to next year’s show and are considering ways to turn it into more of a true parade.

“That’s a possibility,” Davis said. “We’ll be looking at things come September.”

But right now, with attendance running behind last year’s phenomenal showing, Disneyland is banking on Hercules to help lift the crucial summer numbers and has retooled its marketing efforts accordingly. Promotion of Light Magic continues, but the park is pumping up Herc like his movie trainer Philoctetes.

Although industry observers credit Disneyland with attempting an original story and groundbreaking technology with Light Magic, a hit movie based on a familiar myth gives the Hercules Victory Parade instant audience acceptance, said Cincinnati consultant Dennis Speigel.

“Theme park patrons are becoming less enthralled with technology for technology’s sake. Technology is only the medium, not the message,” said Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services Inc. “People get the message of Hercules.”

Stripped of schmaltz and technical wizardry, drenched with satire and Hellenic kitsch, the Hercules Victory Parade is the antithesis of Light Magic--which is precisely why many fans seem to like it.

Motown Muses, a pompadoured Narcissus, a P.T. Barnum-like satyr, and of course the bicep-blessed prince of Thebes himself all make for a wickedly fun and funny addition to Main Street, judging from the smile on Jason Thomas’ face.

“Herc is the man,” pronounced the freckled 10-year-old Arizonan.

He is for this summer, anyway--or until the Main Street Electrical Parade makes its own triumphant return.