Looking Back at the Souvenirs of the Main Street Electrical Parade’s 1996 Glowing Away Year

This week the famed Main Street Electrical Parade will make its return to the streets of Disneyland… just 20 short years after it was apparently Glowing Away for good. Back in 1996, the park sold all kinds of merchandise and souvenirs marking the parade’s departure, or as they called it, “The Farewell Season.” As Main Street U.S.A. prepares to once again be filled with thousands of sparkling lights and electro-synth-magnetic musical sounds, let’s “flash”back two decades and explore some of the Glowing Away goodies:

Adam Contreras sent us this compilation which includes the button on the right that actually lit up.

Collector cards were a thing for Disney back then. This was only a year after the 1995 40th anniversary collector cards which were very popular. So…

An old friend of mine, Rick West, found of Theme Park Adventure Magazine, created an incredible special issue of his magazine  dedicated to the parade:

But if you really wanted to remember the parade by watching it whatever you want (at least as long as VCRs were around), Disney had you covered (thank Bob Pritchard for the picture):

As the parade was originally scheduled to end on October 15, 1996, an Annual Passholder “encore performance” was scheduled for October 17th.

Here’s the Commemorative Passport for that event and the souvenir program.

There was also an exclusive gift given out to guests at the Annual Passholder event:

I used to collect watches so I had to have the event-exclusive watch that was available. I’m guessing the price was $125, but that’s just a guess:

I honestly don’t remember the story behind this hat which features the original final date of October 15, 1996.

 

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Doobie Moseley
Doobie is a co-owner of LaughingPlace.com having founded the website with his wife Rebekah in 1999. He became a "hardcore" Disney fan in 1995. His favorite Disney film is Snow White and his all-time favorite attraction is the PeopleMover. Having lived near both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, he's visited them literally thousands of times. He currently lives in Nothern California with his wife and teenage son, but looks forward to living in Florida again soon. His absolutely favorite activity is going on a Disney cruise (he's done 12 as of February 2023).