Paint the Night is a nighttime parade that debuted during Disneyland’s Diamond Celebration almost a decade ago and last appeared during Pixar Fest at Disney California Adventure several years ago. This post covers the return of the fan-favorite entertainment after a hiatus of over 5 years!
The huge news is that Paint the Night is finally coming back! This is really-for-real news, and NOT a rumor. We make this distinction because there have been several false starts over the last few years, with credible rumors suggesting that Paint the Night was coming back, only for that to not happen. Or for Main Street Electrical Parade to return instead.
Disneyland Resort has officially confirmed via social media that Paint the Night parade will return (see video below). That’s pretty much all we know at this point, as the video is simply a teaser featuring the Mack truck float from the Cars unit, with Owl City’s iconic theme song from the parade, “When Can I See You Again?” playing over the video. With that said, there are some other things we know…
The first is that next year is that Disneyland is celebrating a major milestone. In Disneyland 70th Anniversary Celebration: Everything We Know & Wish List, we speculated that this would be a big promotional event revolving around Paint the Night Parade, new or returning fireworks, a reimagined Fantasmic, and more. Well, it looks like we’ve already gotten part of that correct.
The next question is when will Paint the Night return and will it coincide with the start of the Disneyland 70th Anniversary celebration. For whatever it’s worth, the 50th and 60th Anniversaries both began close to Memorial Day. However, the much more recent Disney100 did start in January, which made sense as a way to draw people to the parks during the off-season.
With that said, there’s nothing to say that Paint the Night must return at the start of the Disneyland 70th Anniversary. There’s plenty of precedent for parades starting earlier. Main Street Electrical Parade has returned a few times in January as a way to draw crowds to the park during what would otherwise be the winter off-season.
In other words, it’s entirely possible that Paint the Night returns in mid-to-late January 2025 and the Disneyland 70th Anniversary starts over Memorial Day weekend. This would give Disneyland Resort a way to stagger demand, and keep attendance elevated over the course of several months.
One thing we do know, or at least can be pretty confident in saying, is that Paint the Night will not return this year. Not only is it too late for that to happen, but Halloween and Christmas are incredibly busy and have their own seasonal entertainment. There’s zero incentive whatsoever for Disney to rush the return of Paint the Night. It’ll come back sometime in 2025.
The other big question is where will Paint the Night return–Disneyland or Disney California Adventure?
Our bet is Disney California Adventure, which is where it last ran during Pixar Fest several years ago. DCA has a longer parade route than Disneyland, and DCA draws lower attendance. Paint the Night is going to be immensely popular after such a long hiatus, and it’ll make much more sense to put it in the park that’s better suited to accommodate it without buckling under crowds.
Then again, the last few times that Main Street Electrical Parade has returned, it’s been in Disneyland. And all of those instances have been since Paint the Night last ran. So who knows–maybe Disney will want a jam-packed Disneyland for the anniversary celebration. That just seems like a recipe for disaster, though, especially with Disneyland’s current crowd levels being so much worse than they were back when Paint the Night first ran for the Diamond Celebration. Having Paint the Night at DCA makes so much more sense–and we expect that’s where Disney will put it.
Another question is whether Paint the Night will be a ‘pure’ addition or come at the expense of something else. Our guess is the latter, but we’d love to be wrong. Magic Happens ended its annual run prior to the start of the Halloween and Christmas seasons, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Paint the Night is its next indirect replacement.
The final question is whether there will be any new floats. Last time the parade ran, there was a new Incredibles float (pictured above), which replaced the Frozen float that used to be in the parade. Unfortunately, there were some ‘hurdles’ to moving the parade to DCA, and modifications had to be made to the parade to enable it to perform in DCA due to the Red Car Trolley cables. The Frozen float was simply too tall. (The Red Car Trolley is closing in early 2025, so perhaps this won’t be an issue going forward?)
Anyway, lots of questions about the return of Paint the Night Parade in 2025 and, unsurprisingly, Disneyland’s brief teaser doesn’t really answer any of them. Speaking of which, here’s the video if you’d like to watch:
Goosebumps.
We cannot wait to see Paint the Night parade again and are absolutely over the moon that both Disneyland and Walt Disney World will simultaneously have night parades in 2025 once Disney Starlight Night Parade debuts at Magic Kingdom. It’ll be the first time in almost a decade–since Main Street Electrical Parade last returned to Florida and Paint the Night’s original run in California!
What follows is our original Paint the Night parade review, which also includes some basic info about the parade, and photos of the floats. This is from way back in 2014 when the parade debuted at Hong Kong Disneyland. It’s pretty harsh–my opinion on Paint the Night has evolved a lot since then…
In addition to Disneyland Resort’s version of Paint the Night parade, there’s another copy of the parade at Hong Kong Disneyland. Several of the photos in this post are of the HKDL version of Paint the Night.
Here we’ll offer info about Paint the Night, our review of this nighttime parade, and our perspective on where it ranks as compared to other Disney night parades. For starters, what is Paint the Night?
Think of it as Main Street Electrical Parade for the new generation, in that the core concept of the light parade is the same, but the execution has been technically modernized, as has the soundtrack and the Disney characters represented.
Paint the Night parade has seven units: Tinker Bell Opening Unit, Monsters Inc. Unit, Cars Unit, The Little Mermaid Unit, Belle Candlelight Unit, Toy Story Unit, Mickey & Friends Finale Unit and features Owl City’s “When Can I See You Again?” as its theme song.
Other than that, I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of basic facts that you could read about on its Wikipedia page. If you want to know that stuff, click those links. Instead, I thought I’d share my thoughts on this parade…
First, the good. Paint the Night is another technical innovation on the light parade front, and more nighttime parades can only be a good thing. I’m a huge fan of these parades, with Magic Kingdom’s SpectroMagic and Tokyo Disneyland’s Dreamlights being my two favorite parades ever.
Several of the floats here are really ambitious, showcasing advanced technologies that are incredibly impressive. In fact, just about every float does something that hasn’t been done in a nighttime parade before, so Paint the Night really pushes the envelope in that regard.
The Mickey Mouse float is mesmerizing, thanks to this twisty-thingy (that’s the technical term) that sort of was like an infinite loop. It was absolutely mesmerizing. (Watch the parade on YouTube if my excellent explanation left you saying “huh?”)
Technical ambition is nothing if it’s not on a float that is well-designed, and most of these floats are exceptionally well done. Although I would say that some are a little too flashy, leaning away from the traditional light parade style, it’s undeniable that a lot of effort went into designing them.
My favorite parade unit, by a country mile, is the Belle Candlelight Unit, which looks exactly how it sounds. It’s incredibly elegant, and in addition to Belle and tons of candles around here, there are a lot of great flourishes and performers.
Speaking of the performers, costuming is also very solid. The dancers between floats almost all have really clever and well-done costumes, from the fiber-optic stringy-arm performers before Tinker Bell to the motor-men to the candle-head ballroom dancers. These are not simply performers strapped with battery packs and haphazardly covered with lights. Serious thought must have gone into the costuming.
My criticisms to the parade are more personal to me, and not exactly be objective. (Fair warning: I’m going to sound like the old fart who wants things like they were “back in my day!”)
The overall feel I got from the parade was that it was trying too hard to be cool. Disney’s best night parades–and this includes the more modern Dreamlights at Tokyo Disneyland–lean heavily on nostalgia and sentimentality.
Paint the Night is hip and flashy, almost like the parade version of a dance party. I think there’s a fine line between high energy and rambunctious, and I prefer my high energy parades to be grounded in a classic, timeless core.
I’m also not wild about the music. It is very contemporary, with Owl City’s “When Can I See You Again?” being the theme song. I like this song, but I question whether it’s right for a parade that will probably have a long run.
My preference would have been for a theme song that is timeless, with the contemporary stuff incorporated into the parade for specific units. I completely get that Disney wants to go for a younger audience here and the synthesizer beats of Baroque Hoedown don’t accomplish that, but shouldn’t the lesson to be learned from the use of those synthesizer tracks that “contemporary” music is fleeting?
If anything, Disney got lucky with Baroque Hoedown in that it has somehow become iconic with Disney fans, despite sounding like it came from a time capsule. The difference between Baroque Hoedown and Owl City is that the latter is a Top 40 hit that is recognizably from a certain era. Imagine if, in 1972, Disney opted to use the hit song “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues as the theme song for Main Street Electrical Parade.
Wouldn’t that be odd if it were still running today…or even 10 years later? (Scratch that, it would be awesome beyond belief. “Nights in White Satin” is probably a poor example anyway in that it’s now a classic, whereas I can’t recall the last time I heard “When Can I See You Again?” on the radio.) So, while I think the soundtrack is catchy and fun, it just doesn’t quite feel right, and I prefer parades to go for something more timeless.
Update: the above ‘take’ about Owl City’s “When Can I See You Again?” was written after seeing Paint the Night only a handful of times. We’ve since watched it dozens more over the course of several years. I take it all back. That song is an earworm, and has grown on us considerably. I guess the lesson there is that nostalgia works in mysterious ways, and I now have it for this silly song.
I’m also not wild about the character selection. Besides Tinker Bell–who is basically a new character given the way she has been repackaged in the new stories–and the Fab Five, there are no characters that pre-date 1989’s The Little Mermaid.
In fact, Pixar has more representation that Walt Disney Animation Studios. I don’t dislike Pixar–far from it–but I certainly think that more balance in the character choices would be nice.
While I think it’s great that Disney has chosen to represent newer films here, I think going exclusively for newer films is a mistake. I don’t even take specific issue with the Cars unit. I’m not a fan of the movie, but I have to admit that the unit here is pretty cool.
I think this could fairly easily be remedied by just one more unit, maybe before or after the stunning Beauty and the Beast candlelight unit. Like I said above, this unit is far and away the highlight of the parade for me, and another unit in this classic style, featuring some classic characters (maybe from Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty?) would go along way to give the parade balance, and make it feel less like a random assortment of “Disney Things That Are Totally Rad.”
Like I said, I’m like an old fart. I know exactly how the last several paragraphs read. Just imagine me shaking my fist at the floats as they pass, yelling at those young whippersnappers to turn down their music and get off my lawn Main Street! 😉 In thinking about the parade with a bit more deference, I realize that many of the things I’m criticizing are things young kids will absolutely love.
The thing is, kids love anything with bright lights and Disney characters, so getting them to “absolutely love” a Disney nighttime parade is no difficult task. It would have been nice for Disney to blend some timeless elements with the rad ones to throw a bone to old farts like me, too.
I’ve already watched the parade a dozen-plus times at Disneyland Resort, and I will admit that it has grown on me with each viewing. I’m still not wild about the fact that it doesn’t strike a better balance between old and new, but at the end of the day quality matters more than whether it comports with how Disneyland is marketed.
I can understand why so many people love this parade: the music is catchy, the floats are impressive, and there’s a palpable, downright fun energy to it. It’s the kind of parade that hypes you up and puts a smile on your face. While I could quibble over some of the choices in execution, I cannot discount the fact that it’s a ton of fun, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what Disneyland is all about?
Overall, Paint the Night is still a really solid parade and moving it to Disney California Adventure was a solid move. I’ve rambled on with some personal grievances about it, and while I do view these as valid criticism of the parade, I still really enjoyed it. While it’s not the parade that I would create if I were tasked with designing parades, I understand that not everything in the Disney parks is squarely aimed at me, and I do appreciate the parade’s many bright spots. At the end of the day, it doesn’t touch Dreamlights for me as Disney’s best nighttime parade, but it’s certainly a step up from the Main Street Electrical AARPade.
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Your Thoughts?
Does the Disney Paint the Night parade look appealing to you? Are you also an “old fart” when it comes to Disney offerings, or do you prefer more modern stuff? Would you like to see this parade make its way to Disneyland or Walt Disney World? Share any thoughts or questions you have in the comments below!
