Magic Kingdom Files Permit for Parade Storage: Preparing for Disney Starlight?

jrhwdw3 days ago

Amen!!!

Disstevefan13 days ago

This is one permit I hope goes through quick with no delays. WDW needs its nighttime parade back!

joanna719857 days ago

Same! I loved that parade (it was the first night parade I saw at WDW)

TTA947 days ago

Don’t want to get my hopes up but I am wondering if Starlight will have similar fog effects that Mickeys float did in Spectro. In the concept art with the Blue Fairy it does show a fog like cloud in front of her and they have mentioned stars and clouds for the princess float. Paint The Night lacks any fog effects so I hope they do include it somewhere in Starlight.

MerlinTheGoat7 days ago

They've probably hit a sort of stagnation point of how far they can continue to advance the lighting tech. I assume it should at least hold up to Dreamlights and PtN in terms of raw tech. If anything, it's possible to go way too far with technology while neglecting other important elements. Some of PtN's floats, particularly the Monsters Inc one, felt like literal flat video screens on wheels. I appreciate Dreamlights for using modern lighting tech in a much more tasteful and artistic manner. I'd also much rather the parade be significantly longer with a greater quantity of floats (and ones that are more elegantly designed) rather than push harder and harder to advance tech into infinity. Spectromagic was a tad bit hard to gauge since it had a handful of floats were sort of trailer hitched together, but they were also large and separate enough to consider their own individual floats. The float count was comfortably in the 30s during its heyday when all original floats were operating. There were a ton of street performers too. Dreamlights in its present state is operating 22 floats. Paint the Night has about half as many as Dreamlights (Hong Kong's was even worse when it first debuted as they actually added a float to CA's I believe). A handful are also more glorified puppets than proper floats, lesser than even the small spherical globes ridden by the spectromen. It does have quite a number of street performers with again some admittedly very impressive costumes (Spectromagic had a ton of these performers in its early years too). Fantillusion I'll need to watch again to do a proper count, but internet says over 30 when it debuted in Tokyo (they removed around half of them when shipped to Paris). So we've really been losing out on a lot of content over the years. It doesn't help that they also often run these already short parades missing a number of the floats (common among day parades like Festival of Fantasy). Again probably setting myself up for failure in this, but I really wish Starlight would at least push for 20+ proper floats again...

aladdin20077 days ago

My concern is they will try to be too geeky again with tech and it be something that doesn't operate right half the time because of too much tech and or fails or what have you. Sometimes less really is more, they reach for those stars too much and it can hinder it. But still have good vibes on the direction of this.

Starship8247 days ago

Considering paint the night came out 10 years ago I sure hope Starlight is more advanced.

brb10067 days ago

I love how the current incarnation of the Drum Float is now able to alternate between normal colors to going dark with twinkling white lights for a few seconds. This upgrade makes The Blue Fairy using her magic wand to alternate the parade's lights make sense and a perfect set up for the Small World finale. That concept reminds me of promotional material for MSEP's return in 2009 for Disneyland's "Summer Nighttastic" where the entire parade used to have a trail of pixie dust that started from Tinker Bell up to The Bald Eagle finale.

MerlinTheGoat8 days ago

If i'm not mistaken, there's probably little to nothing remaining of the original Dreamlights from when it first debuted. Not only are the new floats using the same kind of tech as PtN, but all of the originals have been either retrofitted or scrapped/replaced entirely with new iterations of the modern lighting tech as well. Most of these changes were made after Paint the Night was created too. As a whole, it's probably at least relative to and perhaps now more technically advanced than PtN. The elaborate synchronized light choreography PtN can do, Dreamlights can also do. Prime examples are the Genie, Elliot and Cheshire Cat floats. Though the others again have the same capabilities as well. It's certainly a far better usage of the tech than PtN as well, especially in terms of artistry. Most of PtN's floats have a very modern look to them. The floats are of block and/or abstract shapes. Same goes for the light placement, which often adheres to very straight gridlike patterns. The Monsters Inc and Cars floats are especially glaring examples. Dreamlights and other parades of its kind were the opposite. Float design had a lot of organic looking shapes and details, including the light pattern. And this philosophy was pretty faithfully adapted even when rebuilding old floats with the new lighting tech. The only element in which i'd say PtN still arguably has any sort of tech advantage are some of the costumes of secondary walking performers like fairies, candelabras etc. They're also some of the best parts of the parade and would fit better with more classical and less modern looking float shapes. As you may have surmised (and i've said this before), I do not like Paint the Night. I kind of hate it in fact. It's mostly an artistically poor, inappropriate and obnoxious parade. But with some very cool technology that was squandered and later used for far better purposes elsewhere. Probably too much to hope that Starlight will have Spectromagic-like music, but hopefully it at least takes far more overall cues from Dreamlights than PtN. The concept art so far seems to be pointing towards a promising direction, but we'll see...

jrhwdw8 days ago

MK should be able to care for 1 Nighttime Parade. Why 2010 was so different than MSEP'S 1999 Run when Mk had to juggle more Parades than now IDK!

TTA948 days ago

Or unexpectedly rained on durning performances. Shouldn’t happen though as much at FoF.

jrhwdw8 days ago

I would imagine Starlight is using 2025 Technology so Starlight might have the most impressive hardware.

MerlinTheGoat8 days ago

Silver lining- At least these lights won't be embedded into a surface that people walk over, or that gets rained on and pressure washed? Then again, given that there's a precedent of storing their parade floats improperly and in non-climate controlled locations...

TTA948 days ago

From a technology standpoint I wonder what parade is more advanced Paint The Night or Dreamlights? And where might Starlight fit in to this?