Disneyland is welcoming back two of its most popular recent nighttime spectaculars as it celebrates its 70th anniversary.
It was day two of Disneyland's press preview for the 70th Celebration, which officially starts Friday. Yesterday, we saw the new entertainment at Disney California Adventure. But today was Disneyland's turn in the spotlight.
The park wrapped the evening with those nighttime spectaculars: the Wondrous Journeys fireworks and projection show and the Paint the Night parade. But before we get to those, let's look around the park at what else is happening for the 70th.
The main new daytime show for the anniversary is the Celebrate Happy Cavalcade. Playing multiple times a day down the parade route, the cavalcade features an impressive line-up of characters, including ShellieMay and Duffy - the Disney Bears that first appeared at Tokyo DisneySea.
Also for the anniversary, Disney has added Miguel and Dante from "Coco" to the Latin American room in It's a Small World, extending the number of Disney characters sprinkled throughout the ride for those wish to break up the repetition of the ride's theme song with a "Where's Waldo?"-type game to find them.
As for other anniversary activities and "activations," Magic Band users can find 70th anniversary tap points in five locations, which will dispense souvenir receipts.
Those locations are Tilly’s Booth at Main Street Cinema, Frontierland Booth at Silver Spur Supplies, Fantasyland Window by Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, the Skipper Lockers at Jungle Cruise in Adventureland, and Autopia in Tomorrowland.
Park guests also can buy a $59.99 "Key to Disneyland." Stick that key into "locks" in each of the parks' nine lands to light up a symbol on the key. When you have collected all nine, you can take it to the Mickey topiary lock, near the Newsstand at the front gate, to unlock one of nine exclusive trading pins.
Back to entertainment, the other new offering for the anniversary is the Tapestry of Happiness projection show, which will play nightly on the Small World facade. Of all the entertainment Disneyland is offering for its birthday, this is the one that actually celebrates the park's 70 years.
That brings us to our returning favorites. Wondrous Journeys first appeared for the Disney 100 celebration two years ago, stuffing references from 60 Disney animated films into one spectacular projection show, enhanced with fireworks.
Designed to celebrate a different anniversary for a different part of the company, is Wondrous Journeys the right choice for Disneyland's 70th? That's a fair question, but I don't know that we need a fourth run for the 60th anniversary's Disneyland Forever. I'd rather see Wondrous Journeys again, so... yeah.
The returning production that I suspect most Disneyland fans celebrating this year have been waiting for is Paint the Night. This parade debuted at Disneyland for the 60th anniversary Diamond celebration after a wildly popular opening at Hong Kong Disneyland. Powered by an Owl City song and with references aplenty to the Main Street Electrical Parade, this is everything a Disney nighttime spectacular should be - fun enough top make you want to stay through the end of the day and upbeat enough to give you one last adrenaline push to make it back to wherever you are calling home for the night.
Ultimately, the 70th is not a major anniversary milestone for Disneyland. A much bigger party should be awaiting us five years from now, for the resort's 75th. This anniversary is a birthday-flavored annual marketing campaign for Disneyland, which - frankly - does a pretty solid job of selling itself these days. With top attractions such as Rise of the Resistance, Runway Railway, and the new Tiana's Bayou Adventure - not to mention classic such as the original Pirates and Haunted Mansion, Disneyland does not need festivals to draw crowds. If anything, Disneyland just needs some fresh programming here and there to distribute the guests evenly in its always-packed theme parks.
Fortunately, there is much from which Disney can choose to do that. Disneyland's roster of entertainment is so deep and successful that many fans - including me - are perfectly happy to see Paint the Night and Wondrous Journeys return rather than see Disney craft something new. It's a nice present to fans for this birthday celebration. This nostalgia has limits, of course. Please let the Main Street Electrical Parade remain on the shelf for many years to come. No one wants that back yet. If Disney wants to spend money on a new show right now, let's talk about the Christmas parade, shall we?
But we'd better see a lot more new stuff for the 75th anniversary.
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There is so much of the 70th anniversary merch stock in the parks and Downtown Disney that there is no reason to buy anything from online resellers, unless you are not coming to the parks at any point for the anniversary - at which point I question why you would want any 70th anniversary merch. But I know that Disney merch collectors can be obsessed with getting everything ASAP, so, yeah... y'all do you.
Wonder why the didn’t use the newer Incredibles float? Which was made for its DCA outing as Frozen was too tall. That would have been a treat having the full Paint the Night float collection out to celebrate!
I’m hoping to do a SoCal trip in August ‘26, hopefully the celebration is still going on by that time….
Early August 2026 should be okay. I expect the event to end sometime that month.
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I've been seeing a lot of videos about the new in-park MagicBand+ interactions, which seem far better than the 50th anniversary character statue MB+ interactions at WDW. Also, as you would expect, the limited edition merchandise is going to be a boon for all the eBay resellers, especially those 70th Anniversary keys. While I doubt they will, I can hope that Disney holds back some stock so regular guests can get a chance to buy some of the cool merch instead of having to buy the best items off eBay.