Tips for Visiting Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade

Sharing my Tips for visiting Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade today!

Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade is back after a 20 year hiatus!  This has the park goers anxious to see the parade so I hope my tips will help make your experience as enjoyable as possible!

A couple of notes… the Main Street Electrical Parade runs at Disneyland Park until June 18, 2017 and lasts 20 minutes long.  Monday-Thursday parade time is 7pm.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday parade times are 8:30pm and 10:30pm.  You can also purchase dining packages that will give you reserved seating, see more information HERE.  **UPDATE** There has been an announcement that you are no longer to save your seats hours early for parades.  When cast members set up the ropes before the parade, that is when you can get your place.  There is some talk that you can’t save additional family members seats, that everyone needs to be present to save their seat.  This will be intersting!

1. Plan Ahead.  Don’t assume you can walk up 10 minutes before the parade and find a good seat if any seat at all.  Trust me, we saw dozens of people frustrated when there was no where to get a spot 10 minutes before the parade, lol!

2.  Save your seats early    **UPDATE** There has been an announcement that you are no longer to save your seats hours early for parades.  When cast members set up the ropes before the parade, that is when you can get your place.  There is some talk that you can’t save additional family members seats, that everyone needs to be present to save their seat.  This will be intersting!

….we went to the parade on Friday January 27th and for the 8:30pm show we barely found a front row spot 3 hours early.

4.  Bring blankets or towels to help save seats for your group.  Learn from my mistake (ended up buying 2 blankets at Disney because I didn’t plan ahead).  If you don’t want to hold them all day before the parade, store them in one of the lockers at the parks.  Trust me, it’s worth having them.  Also if you are going to view the parade in the next couple weeks it gets cold at night so extra blankets come in handy to keep warm.

5.  Use the adults in your party to save your seats in shifts.  Since you have to start saving seats so early before the parade starts, especially on the weekends, it’s nice for one person to not be stuck for 3 hours.  My son and I saved our spot for 3 hours, but made friends with the other people around us also saving seats 🙂  You make it work.

6.  ‘its a small world” area is a great seating choice.  Main Street is awesome to view the parade, but it also fills up the quickest.  My son and I decided to check right by “it’s a small world” and found an awesome spot right next to the pretzel stand.  The 8:30pm show starts on this side of the park, so you get to see the parade right at 8:30pm instead of waiting for it to arrive to Main Street U.S.A.

7.  If you don’t want to save seats so early, consider 10:30pm weekend parade time.

8.  Bring or purchase snacks to help pass the time before the parade starts.  The night we were there it was freezing so the Hot Chocolate was just what we needed!  They sell it close to the pretzel stand.  We also got a big bucket of popcorn to snack on.

9.  Take lots of pictures!  I love looking back at all of my pictures from the parade.

9-part 2  Take advantage of the Disneyland photographers before the parade starts.  They have this fun sign to hold for awesome memories!

10.  Finally….enjoy the show!  It truly is magical.  Can’t wait to see it again.

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