It’s going to be a quiet couple of years for Walt Disney World, with one bright spot: Starlight Night Parade. We’re already anxiously awaiting its arrival, and wondering when the new light parade will make its Magic Kingdom debut and once again illuminate evenings along Main Street.
For those who are unfamiliar with Disney Starlight Night Parade, it’s the spiritual successor to SpectroMagic and Main Street Electrical Parade and is slated to debut in Summer 2025. The new nighttime entertainment was first announced during the Parks Panel presentation at the 2024 D23 Expo.
Disney Starlight will use the latest technology to tell new stories about the characters you love, according to Walt Disney World. All of this is brought to life by the magic of the Blue Fairy, in addition to beloved characters from Walt Disney Animation Studios films “Peter Pan,” “Encanto,” “Frozen,” and more. That’s all the company has officially revealed about Disney Starlight Night Parade…
With that said, the company did just post a casting call that encompasses Disney Starlight Night Parade:
Disney Parks Live Entertainment is seeking diverse, energetic performers to help bring to life roles such as Character performers, Parade performers and Look-Alike performers across the Walt Disney World® Resort near Orlando, FL.
Character performers play before thousands of guests each day in Character Greetings and Sightings.
Performers may even have the opportunity to be a part of Parades and Shows across the Walt Disney World® Resort including the new Disney Starlight Parade.
Auditions for this casting call will be held in New York City at Pearl Studios on Thursday, October 3, 2024.
I don’t want to read too much into this casting call, but I can’t help it–that’s my nature. I had several immediate thoughts when seeing this:
- It’s really early to be posting a casting call for a parade that’s debuting next summer
- It’s odd to have a casting call for meet & greet characters in New York City
- I wonder if they’re still having trouble with staffing shortages for performers?
- How is that even possible given that the College Program has returned?
I realize New York City is a major metropolis and makes for an easy hub for casting from a huge talent pool. It nevertheless strikes me as a stretch, from an applicant’s perspective, to relocate from NYC to Orlando for a role as a regular character. It’s one thing for equity positions or face characters, but this seems like more of a leap. To each their own, though.
One thing to note here is that this casting call is not specifically for Disney Starlight Parade. If you read carefully, you’ll see that invoked as an example of a future opportunity–like dangling a carrot of a more exciting future production to entice applicants. It’s certainly more tantalizing than languishing away as Vampirina at her Scare B&B in Animation Courtyard at DHS (no offense, Vampirina fans–it’s the location that’s sad, not the character!), so I’ll give them that.
In other words, this is not a casting call for Disney Starlight Night Parade–as it might appear at first blush. But what if it were? What would that mean for the target debut date of the new nighttime parade coming to Magic Kingdom? I was curious, so I did some digging.
On average, the first casting calls appear 5-7 months before new entertainment debuts. This has been the case with stage shows at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, including Rogers: The Musical and all of the returning productions at Walt Disney World. With the latter, the timeframes have typically been slightly condensed, presumably because they’re not brand-new.
On the other hand, casting calls for “The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure” were first posted just over 7 months ago, and Walt Disney World still hasn’t announced an opening date. There’s plenty of time for it to make its late 2024 opening timeframe, but we expected it closer to October 1, so the radio silence is…interesting. But that’s another topic for another day.
The last new domestic parade we have for mileposting is Magic Happens at Disneyland. The first casting call was posted on August 30, 2019 and the parade debuted on February 28, 2020. That’s almost 6 months. I’d expect something similar for Disney Starlight Night Parade.
So if this casting call is in no way determinative or even instructive for the debut date of Disney Starlight, what is?
Let’s look to past precedent for summer time offerings. Most recently, Walt Disney World has debuted the following additions during the summer months:
- Tiana’s Bayou Adventure: June 28, 2024
- Disney Dreams That Soar Drone Show: May 24, 2024
- Encanto Sing-Along: June 10, 2024
- Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind: May 27, 2022
- Toy Story Land: June 30, 2018
- Pandora – World of Avatar: May 27, 2017
- Frozen Ever After: June 21, 2016
Here are the summertime debut dates for past parades:
- Fantasmic Return at Disneyland (Dragon Fire): May 24, 2024
- Fantasmic Return at Disneyland (Post-Reopening): May 28, 2022
- Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland (60th Anniversary): April 22, 2022
- Paint the Night Parade at DCA (Pixar Fest): April 12, 2018
- Paint the Night Parade at Disneyland (Diamond Celebration): May 22, 2015
- Main Street Electrical Parade at Magic Kingdom (Summer Nightastic): June 6, 2010
As you can see, those dates are all over the place.
You can make a lot more sense of the openings by contrasting what was finished ahead of schedule or on-time with what was a race against the clock or delayed for whatever reason. In almost all of the June debut dates, construction or other hang-ups were a factor.
The May 24 or 27 opening dates reflect openings in the respective years that were the Friday before Memorial Day. This is Disney’s traditional summer kickoff, so if you had to simply bet on a start date for Disney Starlight Night Parade without any additional info, the safest bet would be May 23, 2025.
And in fact, we think the single most likely date for Disney Starlight Night Parade to debut is May 23, 2025. That’s the odds-on favorite, and by a fairly wide margin. If the parade does start on a different date, it’s far less predictable. (There’s also the fact that After Hours at Magic Kingdom has its last date on May 19–I would hope Magic Kingdom would have a full slate of late closings for Starlight, but honestly, who knows.)
Nevertheless, let’s talk ranges. Personally, I think the earliest the Disney Starlight could debut–assuming the date is being purposefully chosen and there are no hiring/fabrication impediments to picking an earlier date–is April 25, 2025. That’s the Friday after Easter, and that week will be when spring break crowds fall off a cliff.
If Disney were savvy, they might target a date in late April or early May in order to pull forward demand into the shoulder season. This gives more time before the summer tourist season starts, to whatever extent that’s still a thing. It could capture locals and diehard fans, leaving summer open to regular ole tourists. If you look at the above entertainment debuts, this is precisely what Disneyland has done with Pixar Fest and the last time Main Street Electrical Parade returns.
I’d bet against that. While it’s a smart approach, it’s also one we’ve never seen from Walt Disney World–just Disneyland. The Florida parks are more reactive or conventional–it’s hard to imagine them debuting something huge during shoulder season. More likely, they’ll offer ticket deals and call it a day. In fairness, Disneyland has different demographics, not to mention summer weather.
On the other end of the range, the end of June is the latest that Disney Starlight Night Parade is likely to debut. While there have been openings around then in recent years, those have all been due to construction. Assuming no issues with development or casting or rehearsals, it’s hard to see Walt Disney World voluntarily opting for a date that late.
About the only thing that could cause that to happen is Epic Universe opening later in the summer, which is looking increasingly likely. If, for whatever ill-advised reason, Walt Disney World wants Starlight to go head-to-head with the grand opening of Universal’s new theme park, it could debut in late June…or July…or August?!
It would be crazy to position Starlight against Epic Universe. If the new park is delayed, Walt Disney World would be much better off moving the parade forward and trying to capture as many tourists and gain momentum by doing the opposite–not competing head-to-head against a brand new theme park in an unwinnable battle. I’ve gotta think Walt Disney World realizes this, and would see the opportunity in grabbing attendance and occupancy before Epic Universe hits and causes whatever damage its opening is going to inflict upon Disney.
My personal hope is that Disney Starlight Night Parade debuts at least a week or two before Memorial Day and as part of a larger package of entertainment. They’ve already announced the new Villains stage show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, now we just need a fresh festival at EPCOT and a drone show at Animal Kingdom to round out such a theoretical celebration.
I’ve already laid out all of this when making the case for a return of Summer Nightastic, so I’m not going to rehash that here. The animating idea is turning 2025 into a summer/season of spectaculars, anchored around new and reimagined entertainment.
Honestly, what I’d really like to see–that seems like wishful thinking–is a 2-week soft opening of Disney Starlight as a ‘surprise and delight’ kinda deal. More importantly, to give Magic Kingdom operations time to find its footing with crowd control and scheduling. They’re gonna need it.
By the time Starlight debuts, it’ll have been 9 years since a night parade last rolled down Main Street. That’s an eternity in Walt Disney World terms, especially when you account for everything that’s happened in between–especially the Cast Member turnover and loss of institutional knowledge. I suspect that very few frontline Cast Members working Parade Audience Control (PAC) are still around from then. More importantly, I fear that very few Magic Kingdom managers still are–meaning they’ll have no clue how to handle PAC unless they fly in a team from Anaheim.
Regardless of when it debuts, I am beyond excited for Walt Disney World to finally get a night parade again. More than anything that’s gone missing from Walt Disney World in the last decade, I miss the night parade. In particular, I miss SpectroMagic, which is the parade at Magic Kingdom that I remember when I was growing up, and which was the parade that was running the first several years Sarah and I visited Walt Disney World together.
In all likelihood, Walt Disney World will have enough runway with Disney Starlight Night Parade that they’ll be able to announce a debut date that fans can plan around months in advance. Ideally, I’d love to have an announcement during the ABC Christmas Day Parade–that’s when many families start planning and booking vacations for the following year.
That might be deemed too early, and likely to cut into winter and spring break bookings. (I disagree–winter is inherently attractive for weather along with other selling points; ditto spring break, which is also a school recess.) Regardless, I’d hope we hear some sort of tease about the parade then, along with an opening date announcement no later than February.
Bringing a night parade to Florida should provide a desperately needed goodwill win for Walt Disney World and offer new nostalgia to a whole generation of fans. After all of the price increases, nickel & diming, launch of Lightning Lanes, cuts to things like Disney’s Magical Express, Extra Magic Hours, on and on—fans could use positive news and a reason to feel less cynical. Even though it obviously cannot “compete” with Epic Universe, it’s a really big deal for Disney fans…and there are a lot of us! We’ll keep you posted about all of the developments regarding Disney Starlight Parade.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What’s your predicted start date for Starlight? Looking forward to Walt Disney World’s first brand-new night parade in decades? Are you excited by Magic Kingdom getting its own light parade in Summer 2025? Has your Walt Disney World experience been negatively impacted by the lack of a night parade? Any floats, franchises, characters, nods to SpectroMagic or Magic Street Electrical Parade, etc., that you’re hoping to see out of the new Disney Starlight night parade? Any other questions or comment? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
