Extinct Attractions - Disney Classics Parade

Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, I took a look back at a Disneyland Paris opening day attraction.

Today, moviegoers have their first chance to see the live-action reimagining of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There really is a certain sense of irony that the movie that proved that making a feature-length animated film was possible is being turned into a live-action movie, but I think that Rachel Zegler looks the part and I’m hopeful the film will meet people’s expectations.

Via loveEXPLORING 

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is one of the only properties to have representation in each of the Magic Kingdom-style parks on their opening days, with Snow White’s Scary Adventures a part of each resort that was created through what was then called Euro Disneyland. The Parisian resort followed the lead of the original Disneyland, with near duplicates of most of its Fantasyland, including the Snow White attraction. But her representation didn’t end there as Euro Disneyland was also graced with a new parade for which the team went all out, with the Disney Classics Parade opening along with the park on April 12, 1992.

The parade started off on a high note with Mickey Mouse riding around in a plane from Plane Crazy, the first Mickey Mouse short ever created. He was hovering over some clouds and some hot air balloons, which seemed pretty cool until one saw the follow up float that was absolutely loaded with planes because there were about 15 characters from all kinds of Disney Afternoon Avenue shows in them.

Via Fandom

The next group represented was from Sleeping Beauty with the King and Queen leading a float that had a giant tower on it, with Maleficent perched up there. She then dropped from existence because she was in dragon form on the next float with Aurora and Phillip in front of her. They needed to get out of the way quickly because the dragon started moving around all over the place, so Aurora ducked out of the way for Phillip to fight it off. The technology was pretty ahead of its time, so I was impressed with this parade from the outset.

Via Every Character 

Characters from Pinocchio got the next chance to shine, with a giant Gepetto looking very puppet mastery as the main part of the float. It was kind of creepy, but also pretty cool, so it was a nice mixed bag. There were a myriad of characters from the film on the float with Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket serving as the headliners.

The next float was one of my favorites with Snow White finally making her appearance along with all of her dwarf friends. They recreated the entire mine for the parade, furthering the trend of creating super elaborate floats for the experience.

Via Every Character 

Cinderella appeared next on the docket, but not without the coolest entourage of any princess. Before her horses, there were dancers in some fun-looking pumpkin dresses that flowed nicely. Those horses really stood out themselves because they were gigantic with some awesome flowing manes before a giant pumpkin. Everything about it was more elaborate than it had any real right to be.

While Cinderella was cool, the show designers took it up another notch with the Dumbo-themed float that was up next. Set against the burning building segment of the film (complete with clowns), Dumbo quite literally flew around the float in his quest to put out the fire. It was quite the sight to behold.

Via Every Character

The fun wasn’t quite over yet, though, with an entire pirate ship from Peter Pan up next. The ship was huge and also included Mr. Smee, Captain Hook, Wendy and, of course, Peter Pan himself. They mainly went around waving at guests, but the float was so gigantic that it was tough to be mad.

The Jungle Book was the next movie to get the call with plenty of monkeys running around, while Kaa and Bagheera were simply built into the float itself. King Louie, Baloo and even Mowgli all got to run around, however, giving guests that taste of Disney magic that they were looking for.

Via Every Character

The next movie to gain inclusion was The Little Mermaid, which also features some large solitary characters, with Triton and Ursula getting the honor this time. Ariel and Eric were there, too, surrounded by a lot of fish for decor to help guests feel truly “under the sea."

To close things out, it was impossible to have a late 1980s to early 1990s Disney parade without Roger Rabbit making some kind of appearance. In this case, he got to appear on top of Benny the Cab, though their journey wasn’t quite as mad cap as the movie.

Via Every Character

As a whole, I thought the parade was very impressive, particularly in the float department. They really went all out to impress European guests with amazing float design. My only real criticism is that the music was a bit underwhelming, often relying on more of a classical, instrumental style that made the parade feel a little bit less Disney than one would expect. A cool aspect was that they continued to update the parade over time with floats from Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King all making their way in at some point, generally in conjunction with their release.

This methodology worked for a while, until they decided that The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the time to completely replace the parade, with the Disney Classics Parade closing in 1996 to be replaced by The Hunchback of Notre Dame Carnival. It’s always a bummer to see such an elaborate parade close, but four years is a pretty solid parade lifespan.

Via AllEars 

As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.

Thanks for reading and have a magical day!