Lee and I saw the opening performance of the new “parade”: Celebrate! A Street Party at Disneyland on Friday afternoon.

According to Disney: “A cast of dancers, DJs and Disney characters invite guests to join the celebration as they take to the street for a high-energy street party featuring lively music, colorful costumes, confetti and streamers. Guests will join in twist dancing, a conga line and all the colorful fun of a celebration on Main Street, U.S.A., or at “it’s a small world” mall.”

From the Entertainment Times Guide: “Everyone’s invited to join Mickey Mouse and his pals at Disneyland’s biggest most exciting dance party ever! We’ll be pumpin’ up the streets and celebrating you!”

We watched the parade from the terraced area near “it’s a small world” – got there an hour early and already there was no street viewing available! The parade has “Celebration Zones”, and the Disneyland Cast Members clearly mark those off with ropes, and inform those who are waiting outside the area that they are not in one of the zones, in case they want to move.

The parade begins with a group of dancers, the women in sequined dresses and the men looking like 1920s college boys.

There are four floats topped with character balloons (Donald, Mickey, Minnie and Goofy) with three stage floats in between. The stage floats each have a miked DJ whose job is to get the crowd into it. There’s also a group of characters riding on each stage.

Once the parade reaches the Celebration Zone and stops, everyone goes into action. The drums on each character balloon float are part stage, part prop closet, and part costume trunk.

The party starts as the DJ asks people what they are celebrating – birthday, anniversary, just married – or just a spring day.

The first of the costume changes begins as the men don sequined jackets and the women put on sequined hats. The characters and dancers dance and swing to “Jump With My Baby Tonight”, “I Wanna Be Like You”, and “Jump, Jive and Wail”.

Then it’s time to rock to “I Love Rock and Roll” and “Do You Wanna Dance”. Guests are invited to come out and do “The Twist”.

And here come the stiltwalkers!

Time for a little salsa to “Cup of Life” as the vests and skirts come out of the costume trunk.

Guests are again invited out to join the “World’s Largest Conga Line” with the characters, to the “Latin-ized” versions of Disney tunes like “In the Tiki Room”, “Never Had a Friend Like Me” and “Under the Sea”.

Bicycle chariots suddenly appear and the characters climb aboard and are taken for a wild ride to the music of “You Can’t Stop the Beat”.

On the balloon floats confetti-decorated “Air Dancers” come out of the drums on each corner.

As the song ends the confetti launchers go off, sending streamers and Mickey head-shaped confetti into the air.

The concluding dance number is the original “Celebrate You”, which continues as the characters climb back on to the stages and the parade begins to move off.

I timed it – the parade started at 3:30, and by 3:34 all of the floats were in place and it had come to a stop. The performance is about 12 minutes long – at 3:47 the parade had started to move on.

There are lots of Disney and Disney*Pixar characters in the parade – including some that aren’t quite as common, like Mary Poppins and Bert, and a rather shapely chipmunk that we did not recognize, but I have since learned is Clarice, Chip and Dale’s would-be girlfriend.

One thing that Lee noticed – the signs at the top of the stage floats change depending on what is going on.

This parade is more in the Block Party Bash vein, where the floats themselves are very minimal, and the main attraction is the three performance stops. There are three performance zones: Small World Promenade, Central Plaza (aka the Hub) and Main Street U.S.A. If you aren’t in one of the performance zones, then you better not blink because it goes by really fast. Cast Members put up ropes to define the performance zones, and they inform those who are NOT in the zones that they might want to move.

I have to say that I was pretty underwhelmed by it. While I enjoyed the performers’ energy (they could teach the Energizer Bunny a thing or two!), but the “Street Party” aspect really didn’t do much for me. There’s not a lot to the parade itself, so it relies on audience participation to give it much substance. I’m not one of those people who wants to go out and dance on the parade route, nor does it really entertain me to watch other people do so.

The floats themselves are not much to speak of – quite honestly to me they look like they were done on the cheap, especially the balloon characters on top. There’s no where near the level of detail and visual interest that there was with the old Walt Disney’s Parade of Dreams floats – no animatronics or really anything technical beyond the rather cheesy blow-up air streamers and confetti shooters. In that respect it’s an extremely disappointing follow-up to the Parade of Dreams.

Since Lee was with me and doesn’t totally agree, he asked to add his own opinion as a “qualified person with an opposing point of view”. Lee says he thinks that the whole point was to have the floats not be the focus of attention and that he doesn’t think they seem at all cheap – they are nicely themed mobile three-story miniature dance halls with scrolling signs, sound systems, confetti launchers and stage lights (which I’m sure are more impressive after dark). In some ways, it’s unfair to even call this a parade…or to compare it to other parades. It really is a mobile dance party and he thinks it does that very well. It is fair to ask if folks would prefer a mobile dance party or a real parade.

Let me say that I have the utmost respect for the performers, though – they were holding nothing back, and since we saw the first performance stop, we really wondered how they were going to get through two more!

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