Mulan Parade - Disneyland 1998

I'm still a bit surprised when people tell me Mulan Parade was one of their favorite parades at Disneyland. I did like it, but it was just one year after the huge spectacle of Light Magic, and the last year of MSEP just the year before that. Mulan Parade seemed like a cop-out at first, another commercial for the new animated movie. Would you believe people complained about that? That was something that was common throughout the whole 1990s, but they gave up on the single film parade after that, and I miss it. But I grew to really love Mulan Parade, partly because of the cast and crew that I worked with on it, but also because it was just so different than anything we've ever seen or worked on at Disneyland. This is partly due to the Parade being rather slow and simple. I was worried guests would think it was too boring but it turns out everyone who saw it raved about it, especially the Asian acrobats. That team was the most memorable part, both on and off stage. They knew a couple of words in English and tried to teach us some Chinese, but the real human connection came at a ping pong table we had in the Parade Float Warehouse. And yes, that dragon was HEAVY. It was meant to have a routine that was wild and flowed like a snake through the parade route. But it weighed more than expected and was so delicate that all they could do was walk down route and sway once in a while. And don't forget all the walking architecture, this thing had buildings with feet. I'm glad the Parade had some lighting effects since it replaced two light parades. This one did look great at night, but the day time parades that came in 1999, to me it kind of felt a little too elegant in the sun light, but I guess that's not really a bad thing. Regardless, the Mulan Parade at Disneyland was our very first taste of "Authentically Disney and Distinctly Chinese".