The Main Street Electrical Parade is without a doubt a classic staple of the Disney parks.
Many fans from all walks of life have fond memories of seeing those iconic floats roll
by in Disneyland, Disney World, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and…
Manhattan?
That’s right.
In the summer of 1997, for one special night, the Main Street Electrical Parade made its
way down 42nd street in New York City.
Just three years earlier, Disney released The Lion King, and it was a box office titan.
Flying past expectations, the film would end up grossing over 300 million dollars
domestically, and with CEO Michael Eisner focused on keeping the company in a state
of growth, the film became the new bar for future animated films to aspire towards.
Unfortunately the following film, Pocahontas, would only gross 140 million
dollars domestically, and the film after that, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, would barely
break the 100 million mark.
It was clear that the momentum that was the Disney Renaissance of the early 1990s was
running out of steam.
So in 1997, with hopes of creating another box office hit, Disney doubled down on the
marketing campaign for their next film, Hercules.
Disney ended up licensing Hercules to 85 companies, resulting in over 7,000 Hercules branded items
to cross promote the film.
However the real spectacle was in it’s New York City premier.
Why New York?
Well if Disney loved one thing back then, it was synergy, and it just so happened that
beyond a new animated film, Disney was getting ready to promote their first steps into the
world of Broadway.
As a part of the 42nd Street revitalization effort, Disney had signed a 49 year lease
on the New Amsterdam Theater and restored it, with a price tag of 34 million dollars.
They had run a limited engagement of King David, but the real big premiere of the theater
was going to be a stage adaptation of that earlier box office titan, The Lion King.
So in an effort to both promote Hercules as well as to raise awareness of the theater,
it was chosen as the location for the film’s big opening.
The weekend would involve free events hosted at Chelsea Piers for families, and a limited
event at the theater called “The Hercules Summer Spectacular” which included a screening
of the film along with two short bonus shows.
The real crowd magnet though would be The Hercules Electrical Parade.
"Talk about a party.
No question, Disney knows how to throw one and get New York City to march in right step.
Midtown was virtually shut down tonight for this Herculean event.”
The original Main Street Electrical Parade had just finished it’s 24 year run at Disneyland
that previous fall.
The floats were refurbished, with over 100,000 lights reportedly being replaced, and a new
Hercules themed float was built and added to the front of the lineup.
Disney claimed that the one night only event would mark a “last farewell” for the classic
parade, and it was a farewell that would require months of planning and a whole lot of money.
Disney paid the city of New York a reported $500,000 to run the parade.
Helping out, the city had potholes filled along the proposed route, which ran across
42nd street from 7th avenue to 5th avenue, before turning up 5th avenue and running to
66th street.
That made for a parade route over four times the length of the original Disneyland parade!
The city hired a pair of electricians who would work on a total of 130 street lamps
Turning them off before the parade arrived to an area and then turning them back on as the parade left.
Lastly, they’d end up assigning 2,000 NYPD officers to the parade route for the event,
which was about normal for a parade in the city at that time.
In order to provide the proper soundtrack for the parade, Disney had over 300 speakers
installed along the route.
But that wasn’t the end of Disney’s planning.
As early as that February, Disney began to reach out to over five thousand local businesses
along the 1.6 mile path to ask them to temporarily turn off their lights for the festivities.
Most of the businesses were on board with the idea and found it to be fun.
There was some resistance by owners of the famous Times Square billboards who felt it
went against their best interests.
One of the presidents of one of the companies who owned said billboards, Tama Starr, was
quoted saying “People will be taking snapshots home with them.
We want the billboards in that landscape.”
With all of the planning and build up, Disney expected a turnout of nearly two million people
for the parade, however the city offered up a more realistic estimate of several hundred
thousand and perhaps up to one million.
The MTA would run extra trains to and from midtown to accommodate the crowds, whatever
size they’d end up being.
All in the all the parade was a hit, and Variety would later report that nearly one million
people ended up attending the event.
The whole thing was filmed by Disney and later added to a one hour television special called
“Hercules Strikes Manhattan”.
Unfortunately for as much as the parade was a hit, Hercules was not.
While it did OK critically, it not only failed to achieve the heights that The Lion King
reached years before, but it didn’t even manage to achieve the box office disappointments
that followed.
Coming in at $99.1 million, Hercules didn’t even hit the coveted 100 million dollar mark.
It would take far more than amped up marketing to recapture the success of the Disney Renaissance,
but that’s another story for another video.
As for the parade, it ultimately wouldn’t be the farewell that Disney hoped it would
be because the Main Street Electrical Parade would make a return to not only Walt Disney
World but to Disneyland as well.
And while the parade will forever be associated with the two parks, as it should be, there
will always be that one night that it was a New York City parade.