Disneyland Sidelines Its New Parade for a Rush Tuneup

Just days before debuting its 45 Years of Magic parade, Disneyland scrapped two public rehearsals and worked through the night this week trying to improve it, according to sources at the Anaheim amusement park.

Recalling how the park’s Light Magic parade misfired in 1997, sources said officials had serious misgivings when they saw the new show at a trial run Sunday. However, a Walt Disney Co. spokesman downplayed the revisions being made, characterizing them as “fine-tuning.”

The parade is the park’s new top draw this year--the main effort to attract patrons. Attendance has been down partly because visitors must pass through a labyrinth of construction work to get inside. Many tourists also want to wait until next year when road work is done and Disney’s second theme park, the $1.4-billion California Adventure, opens next door.

Celebrating Disneyland’s 45th anniversary, the parade will be previewed for the media today and is expected to open to the public Friday.

The parade, a new fireworks show that also debuts this week, and a remodeled Autopia attraction that reopens this summer are modest additions that reflect Disney chairman Michael D. Eisner’s push to cut theme park expenses. Eisner, for example, has praised last year’s conversion of the Swiss Family Treehouse into Tarzan’s Treehouse as an example of how creativity can flourish on a tight budget.

Still, to keep customers buying increasingly expensive tickets--Disneyland recently raised a full-priced adult admission by $2 to $41--all amusement parks need novel attractions. In Anaheim this year, that means the 45 Years of Magic parade.

As seen in previews, the parade floats carry Disney characters on “cloud banks,” accompanied on the ground by dancing mushrooms, flamingos, ballerinas and other characters. The parade also is designed for audience participation: The park will invite 45 spectators to don tutus and dance along during each performance.

But sources said some park officials who watched the parade during a test run Sunday were unimpressed, as were many patrons.

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“I heard four different conversations [by customers] along the lines of ‘What the hell was that?’ ” said one well-connected park employee who stood in the crowd watching the test run.

The employee said some customers found the music to the parade confusing and thought it might have been accidentally piped in from an elevator at the Disneyland Hotel.

The music, “Pomp and Circumstance,” is familiar mainly as a graduation processional. But it also was featured, at Eisner’s request, in one of the segments of Disney’s recent animated feature, “Fantasia 2000.” It repeats itself on a tape loop several times during the new parade.

Sources earlier said the park has a more up-tempo backup music in reserve should “Pomp” prove too pompous for a theme park. There was no immediate move to switch, however: The reworking was described more as an attempt to refocus the timing with the existing music.

The parade was to have been performed at dry runs Monday and Tuesday, but both those were scrapped. Park entertainment crews were working long into the night after closing to polish the parade, a source said.

“It’s a 9 [p.m.] to 9 [a.m.] type of thing” for workers, the source said. “As long as guests aren’t there, that’s what they’re doing.”

The rains also have complicated rehearsals. More rain was forecast for today when reporters from around the world were to arrive for a preview of the new parade and fireworks.

“We are doing a non-rain dance right now,” said Disneyland spokesman Tom Brocato. “We’re tracking the rain on an hour-to-hour basis. But the show will go on.”

Brocato said he didn’t know why the Monday and Tuesday dress rehearsals, which were to have taken place with patrons present, were canceled. As with other live shows, “we’re constantly fine-tuning the parade,” Brocato said.

“We are making refinements to it,” he said, “and the refinements are modest.”

The history of parades at Disneyland is checkered. Light Magic, a pricey, high-tech, 1997 street show, bombed as a replacement to Disneyland’s long-running and much-loved Main Street Electrical Parade. The Electrical Parade since has been resurrected at the Magic Kingdom park at Florida’s Walt Disney World.

The new parade is designed by Jean-Luc Choplin, who created a more traditional and generally well-received parade two years ago based on Disney’s movie “Mulan,” which replaced Light Magic.