In My World of Dreams, Flowers and Butterflies Talk Like Humans. Of Course, Cats Do Also

On June 12, 2009 I was able to catch the debut of Disney's Electrical Parade in Disney's California Adventure. This new version of the parade features music that can be heard from Tokyo Disneyland's Electrical Parade DreamLights. With an addition of a new leading Tink float, the parade brought back to old floats, the Dwarfs Diamond Mine and Pinocchio's Pleasure Island unit. Unfortunately, Dumbos Circus and the Blue Fairy float are no where to be found.

My impression… I thought the updated version was alright. When it was announced that DreamLights version was going to be used, I was thinking to myself "Finally!" and I couldn't wait for the day to hear it. I would listen to the Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade DreamLights soundtracks over and over with excitement that one day soon I will be hearing it at Disney's California Adventure.

I have seen Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade DreamLights in person and I enjoyed it a lot. So I couldn't wait to hear the soundtrack on the parade route in California Adventure. As the parade started its fanfare, I was actually shaking with excitement. But as the floats traveled past me, I got less and less excited. For me, the updated music does not match the style of the current floats. Where Tokyo Disneyland's floats are all whimsical and have a lot of curves to them, the California floats are seem sharp and have that 70's feel to them. Tokyo's did an updated musical score for update floats whereas California updated the musical score.  

Of course, they had to redo musical scores to some of the floats since they never excited in Tokyo. Disney's California Adventure has the Pinocchio Pleasure Island and Honor America floats, and new music was created for that. Even though for the most part, Cinderella's Ball is the same in Tokyo and California, a new score was also done for that. I am guessing it's because Tokyo Disneyland's version gets more and more orchestrated as the parade travels on, there are vocals during some of the musical segments. But in California, Cinderella is the third float segment, so having an orchestrated version with some vocals would not blend well

Another thing that surprised was that California Adventure did not use and dialogue for Peter Pan's unit. In Tokyo Disneyland's version there is dialogue between Pan and Hook. Even though Wendy has dialogue in Tokyo, I think it could have easily been edited out.