It was on this day in 1996 that the Main Street Electrical Parade performed for the last time in Disneyland Park. One of the Disneyland Resort Ambassadors at the time, Chris Allen, shared his memories about the event with D23’s Scott Wolf. “I was one of the members of the Ambassador team that was responsible for doing all the PR for the farewell season of the Main Street Electrical Parade. Once they announced it was “glowing away,” as they kept having us say, the whole rest of the year was pretty much all about saying goodbye to the Electrical Parade. My job during one of the last parades was to do play by play—color commentary if you would—with one of the local cable stations from atop City Hall. If memory serves, we did the second to the last parade for the color commentary and then for the absolute last parade I did some interviews, but I was standing there watching it go out that gate—myself and the other three Ambassadors that year, and man, was it intense! I remember them doing the interview and sitting there thinking, ‘I really want to watch the parade right now!’ The parade is going on behind me, of course. But an Ambassador’s work is never done. I was doing those interviews but I remember it being done early enough to turn around and watch the American (the “To Honor America” finale) float go down and the gates opened and they had created a fog effect and that last float went into the fog and the gates closed. I get goose bumps thinking about it again.”
