This week the famed Main Street Electrical Parade will make its return to the streets of Disneyland… just 20 short years after it was apparently Glowing Away for good. Back in 1996, the park sold all kinds of merchandise and souvenirs marking the parade’s departure, or as they called it, “The Farewell Season.” As Main Street U.S.A. prepares to once again be filled with thousands of sparkling lights and electro-synth-magnetic musical sounds, let’s “flash”back two decades and explore some of the Glowing Away goodies:
Adam Contreras sent us this compilation which includes the button on the right that actually lit up.
Collector cards were a thing for Disney back then. This was only a year after the 1995 40th anniversary collector cards which were very popular. So…
An old friend of mine, Rick West, found of Theme Park Adventure Magazine, created an incredible special issue of his magazine dedicated to the parade:
But if you really wanted to remember the parade by watching it whatever you want (at least as long as VCRs were around), Disney had you covered (thank Bob Pritchard for the picture):
As the parade was originally scheduled to end on October 15, 1996, an Annual Passholder “encore performance” was scheduled for October 17th.
Here’s the Commemorative Passport for that event and the souvenir program.
There was also an exclusive gift given out to guests at the Annual Passholder event:
I used to collect watches so I had to have the event-exclusive watch that was available. I’m guessing the price was $125, but that’s just a guess:
I honestly don’t remember the story behind this hat which features the original final date of October 15, 1996.
