Kenversations: The Summer That Wouldn't End
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Fortunately for me, I was heading for graduation; I had finished my university classes in the spring and was working on my thesis project (based on a certain Ray Bradbury book and the film Disney had made out of it). That meant I could work full time and overtime, and did. I had been "given a radio" (made Foreman) that summer, and this was quite a way to be broken in. Little did I know, the woman who would be my bride had been hired and cast in the Plaza Inn. We would not meet in person for almost eight years, long after she ended her time as a cast member. But that's another story.

The final regular Disneyland performance of the Main Street Electrical parade was on November 25, 1996, thus ending a tradition that had started in June of 1972, before I was even a zygote. The parade had had some dark years, but ran every summer from 1985 - the year I first became an annual passholder - to 1996.

From the final guest performance, it was straight into the extremely popular holiday season, with the parade route filled with the popular Christmas Fantasy Parade, itself a 1994 replacement for the extensive and expensive Very Merry Christmas Parade. So once summer came in 1996, Disneyland didn't really have an "off season" the rest of the year. (See Kenvesations: Extending Disneyland's Holiday Season)

The MSEP did run four more times (if I recall correctly) - during the two nights of that year's Disney Family Holiday Party, an annual tradition for cast members and other Disney employees, and their families. My guest and I watched the very last Disneyland performance, the second performance on the second night, following the parade to where it exited the park from the Small World Mall.

The Disneyland MSEP was replaced for the summer of 1997 with Light Magic, but that's yet another story. The Disneyland parade was shipped to Walt Disney World to have a run in the Magic Kingdom. In the musical chairs scheme of things, Disney had sent the Electrical Parade that had run at the Magic Kingdom to Disneyland Paris many years before. (See Kenversations: Light Magic)

In July of 2001, Disney's California Adventure got Disney's Electrical Parade, which looked suspiciously similar to the parade that had "glowed away forever" from Disneyland and had that run at Walt Disney World. Then, in April of 2010… aw, never mind. That's another story.

That's the tale of the Summer That Never Ended, a year when cast members and the park they operated strained under the pressure of the increased demand, and rose to meet the challenge, flourishing in their performance. I can still recall scrambling to clean up the waiting area for the Jungle Cruise at the end of one particularly busy night, and hearing a radio call from one of our managers, Glenn, to all of the Foreman, saying that it looked like we had "pulled a rabbit out of a hat."

"Abracadabra" was my response.

Those were magical times, indeed. Magical enough to take summer all the way to the holidays.