Theme Park Thursdays feature photos from one of our theme park adventures in the past.

Vintage WDW Logo on SpectroMagic (2009)

Did you know that Walt Disney World celebrates its 40th Anniversary this year? Probably not, given that Disney doesn't seem to care about individual park milestones these days, instead favoring global "Disney Parks" marketing campaigns usually promoting some derivative of "Wishes/Dreams/Magic blah blah."

Today's photo is one of the opening units for the SpectroMagic Parade, a long running nighttime experience at the Magic Kingdom. It debuted in 1991 as a replacement for the Main Street Electrical Parade, and aside from a few hiatuses, has lit up for almost 2 decades now. It was mothballed last year when Walt Disney World's Summer Nightastic campaign brought back the Main Street Electrical Parade once again… which continues to run.

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Disney theme parks will often repurpose music and themes among properties on opposite coasts. For example, as I've already written, in 1985 Disneyland's 30th Anniversary Parade soundtrack was tweaked to be used by Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom as the tune for Mickey's Street Parade.

Recently, we've seen this type of repurposing in soundtrack once again with Disney's promotion for Summer Nightastic. This seasonal event started in Summer 2009 as an all-encompassing theme of pre-exisiting shows bundled under the same brand name ("Nightastic") to help Disneyland push their summer activities, as they didn't have any new rides or attractions to promote.

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