Disney Extinct Attractions: Mickey Mania, Remember the Magic and Parade of Dreams

Welcome to Disney Extinct Attractions. My name is Cole, and today I’ll be your band leader on our journey through some Disney parades of yesteryear.

This past week, Disney announced that a plethora of new attractions would be coming to Walt Disney World, including Move It! Shake It! MousekeDance It! This mini-parade will be coming to the Magic Kingdom, following a long line of similar type attractions to grace the park.

In 1994, the Magic Kingdom decided to honor the main mouse, just like in MousekeDance It, with a parade called Mickey Mania. Interestingly, that wasn’t an anniversary year for Mickey, so it’s unclear as to the inspiration for the parade. In fact, there is very little information about the parade at all, even from the Disney Parks Blog.

One of the most unusual parts of the parade was the usage of extreme sports like BMX and skateboards. I would understand it if it was an Extremely Goofy Movie parade, but it didn’t quite fit in with the theme of Mickey Mouse.

I mean, I never thought that I would be able to say that I’ve seen Peter Pan and Alice riding around on bikes, so it at least has that going for it. I mean, it’s unique, but also it raises a lot of questions in my mind.

Just looking at some of the costumes like the one above, who approved them? Mickey’s head quite literally looks like it is sticking out of his butt. Many of the outfits were really wacky and out of the ordinary, which I really respect, but also just kind of weirded me out throughout the entire parade.

Looking at the parade as a whole, it led to a lot of questions. Like why were all of the other Disney characters also celebrating Mickey? How did they meet him and become good enough friends to attend a parade for him? The entire parade just had way too many odd things, but it is definitely worth checking out for the sheer fact that it is unlike anything that you’ve ever seen.

A few years after Mickey Mania, the Magic Kingdom began its 25th anniversary celebration, highlighted by the infamous birthday cake castle. But the cakestle wasn’t the only addition, with a special parade, called the Remember the Magic Parade debuting on September 27th, 1996, a few days before the official anniversary of the park.

I really enjoyed Remember the Magic. It gave guests some unique chances to interact with the parade through show stops and more organized dances at the beginning of the parade. Also, guests got to see Mickey right from the outset of the show, which is always a really nice way to shake things up a bit.

The parade also featured some pretty awesome floats, mainly centered around the Disney Renaissance films, which is fitting considering the parade debuted in the middle of the 1990s.

This Lion King float was one of my favorites because Rafiki was so active and guests got to interact with him, which is pretty awesome for younger guests, especially, because who wouldn’t want to hang with Rafiki?

Another notable float comes to us from Aladdin. The most intriguing part of the float is the fact that it actually came from the Aladdin’s Royal Caravan Parade. It’s always nice to see Disney reuse their material in an efficient matter, especially when it leads to fun callbacks for fans of the older parades.

Overall, the parade was simply a lot of fun, but there was not a lot that was super special about it. It was very much the quintessential Disney parade in that it featured a lot of classic characters and relatively normal floats. But sometimes that consistency is just what is needed.

In fact, Remember the Magic was popular enough that when the 25th-anniversary celebration ended in 1998, the parade stuck around, but with its name changed to Disney’s Magical Moments Parade. In this capacity, the show managed to stick around until September 30th, 2001, when Share a Dream Come True Parade debuted to celebrate the park’s 30th anniversary.

Luckily, the music from Remember the Magic managed to stick around after the parade ended, with the melody moving across the country to Disneyland for the Believe in Holiday Magic fireworks as well as the Sleeping Beauty Winter Castle show. Now that Disneyland is on our minds, let’s move across the country and take a look at another anniversary parade over there.

Disneyland’s 50th anniversary celebration, the Happiest Homecoming on Earth was arguably the company’s biggest celebration ever (though I feel like Walt Disney World’s 50th will be even larger). It was so big that it even had an influence on other Disney Parks around the world. But obviously, its nexus was at Disneyland.

Via Character Central

Walt Disney’s Parade of Dreams brought the magic of the 50th to the streets of Disneyland. Debuting on May 5, 2005 along with the rest of the celebration, this parade was truly magical.

The Parade of Dreams holds a very special place in my heart because it is one of the first parades that I remember seeing at Disneyland. Personally, I’m one of those people who uses parade time to ride other attractions, so parades are not high up on my priority list obviously. But watching this parade brought back a lot of memories from when I would visit Disneyland as a kid and enjoy this parade with my family.

One of the major aspects of the parade that I remember was how cool the floats were. Like Geppetto was an animatronic on the Pinocchio float, and just looking at how tall he is makes that feat even more impressive. Also, the “puppets” who got to do flips and tricks at the back of the float always impressed me, with little old me wanting to be one of them one day.

This memory is oddly specific, but I was always impressed by the dancers before the Little Mermaid float. They carried the pearls that you can see in the picture and would toss them around everywhere, but never dropped them. Now I know that it just takes practice, but ten year old me was super impressed.

The Ursula float was similar to Geppetto in that she was a giant animatronic. If you know me, you know that I Ursula scares me, but I have to pay my due respect to this float because she was such a looming presence and presented absolutely perfectly.

On the other hand, I absolutely love Alice in Wonderland, and the float certainly did the film justice. There is so much going on and it feels out of sorts, falling into the nature of the film. But my favorite part of the float is the gigantic Caterpillar. The Caterpillar is my favorite Disney character of all-time, so having him featured on the float is too perfect.

There were also Beauty and the Beast and Lion King floats, but I felt it more fitting to end our look at the Parade of Dreams with the final float, featuring Disney Princesses and members of the Fab Five. The float had such heavy hitters on it and provided a perfect closure to this great parade.

But before I close, it’s important to make note of the parade’s primary song, an upbeat version of the song “Welcome” from Brother Bear. I haven’t seen Brother Bear in a while, but because of this parade, the song is one of my favorite in the Disney pantheon. It fits the parade so perfectly and gets me hype every time I listen to it.

Bringing it all together, the parade eventually came to a close on November 11, 2008. The next parade to grace the streets was Celebrate! A Street Party, which was nothing compared to the Parade of Dreams, so I wish Parade of Dreams could have been retooled like Remember the Magic and kept alive for a few more years. Unfortunately, that was not the case, but at least I can continue to watch the parade online today and relish in what used to be. With that settled, let’s take a little glance at what is coming next week.

1. This attraction was based on an ABC TV show.
2. Guests could experience the attraction in Hollywood-themed lands.
3. The attraction appeared in two parks across America.

Thanks for reading and have a magical day!