Really the floats are great and all but why not just use the Stars and Motorcars Parade or just have a parade with characters and add a bunch of characters we rarely see like Hercules and Mulan and have a floatless parade?  That way you don't have to worry so much about routes and space for housing floats and guests get something different and unique to talk about.  They seem determined to make this a nightmare when it could be an opportunity.

While I would agree with going floatless...well...I imagine visibility is a huge concern.

Let's imagine that everyone at the front of the crowd is sitting on the curb.  Behind them would be a line of people standing.  Behind them...well...more people standing without any further elevation.  And without that further elevation, there might be problems seeing something that isn't elevated above the crowd level.

Add to that the tendency to want autographs and pictures...and what started as having characters stroll down Main Street could quickly become chaotic.

Could they possibly use the Main Street Vehicles for a parade?  Would these provide enough visibility?  And also, if you put different characters on both sides of the vehicles, you'd essentially get to see something different as it made its way back down Main Street...

If the bridge is so stable right now, and can accommodate Godzilla, why are they not running the parade floats over it?  

Is there any need to change the route?

Why not throw up a quick steel building to house these things in behind FL?  If they can make the right turn toward the teacups work, it sure seems like a superior route, from a show perspective.

When in cyberspace visit http://www.plausible-impossible.com

I don't quite get this.  I understand the need to close the bridge and reroute the parade, but to me the solution seems obvious.  Erect a temporary awning over the maintenance road behind Toontown Fair.  Early in the morning, close down Floridian Way (the road that runs behind the MK from the Grand Floridian to N. World Drive) and drive the floats to Toontown.  The parade then leaves Toontown for the hub, and finishes the parade route as normal.  Disney could even skip the awning and just run the floats over in the middle of the day.

I agree with Moonliner.  Why is it so difficult to slowly have the parade travel the perimeter road behind the Magic Kingdom?  The only real traffic back there is from cast members and 95% of the public doesnt even know that raod is back there.  Just move the parade from the normal storage facilities to Mickey's Toon Town and run it run Main Street or have the parade run up Main Street and exit Toontown and the return them to their regular storage facilities.

If that's not possible then option number two would be to run the 3 o'clock and then run the parade back down Main Street at 6 o'clock.  This would be especially beneficial if they can not run the SpectroMagic Parade as Jim suggests may happen.  It's summer, there will be enough daylight until at least til 8 o'clock, and the temporary parade route to Toontown will be considerably shorter so this will give more people an opportunity to see the parade.

Additionally, outside the timing of the music, why can't an abbreviated version of SpectroMagic be run around the hub and back down Main Street instead of stacking everything up around the hub in order to run the whole parade?

What do any and all of these options mean logicistically?  Are there sensors embedded in the alternatate parade route and are there speakers out by the Tea Cups so that guests can hear the parades soundtrack?

I'm just glad to here that they are willing to do this work at night. That in itself is a change from past practices when they wouldn't want to pay the overtime. Sure there's problems, but they'll find a way to work around them.

I still don't understand why, with careful planning and serious prefabrication, this renovation should take as long and be as disruptive as it seems it will be. I also do not know why if the bracing is as strong as the insider claims there is such a rush to do this during PEAK summer season instead of waiting for lesser crowds and holiday periods to do the work and/or why it wasn't done during the January doldrums. This isn't about engineering--its about management. Its all well and good for the entertainment/parade types to try all these various schemes out when faced with a problem, but why are they faced with it in the first place? As for those "pay no attention to that bracing behind the curtain" comments....I'll bet the folks at Southwest said that just before the FAA made them ground 30-some-odd planes for lack of inspection. Methinks they dost protest too much....and that if they're in this much of a hurry to fix the bridge that they're willing to do it in the MOST disruptive time of the year it is far worse than they're letting on.

My thoughts exactly, JohnWayne.  The urgency that is being placed on this project says it all.  Why not just do the repairs in late August/September/Early October? If repairs take too long, they could always re-route the Halloween parade instead of attempting to justify repairs during summer by saying it needs to be ready for the Halloween parade. The Boo-To-You parade would make more sense running through Toontown anyway with the amount of kids and Halloween things going on over there during the party.

What? Disney is willing to completely cancel one daily parade and make fairly drastic changes to another so that they can practice for a seasonal parade that doesn't even run every night?

It just doesn't add up.

I hope I'm not the only one who's amused by this... because this is EXACTLY how life works at Disneyland. There backstage access road is not accessible for parade floats because of the Monorail and train tracks, so on a one-parade day, the floats ALWAYS have to stay parked in the open until the park clears. DCA and the WDW parks don't have the same problem (I assume they opened Disneyland and realized "oh crap, we should have done x-y-z!"), but it's something we deal with every day out here.

And we actually DID the turn-around-the-hub-and-drive-back thing for a few days back before the 50th anniversary... they built a giant lap pool down Main Street for an Olympic swimming promo event, and the Parade of the Stars floats came out from Small World, circled around the Hub, and drove back up to Small World. Weird, but it served its purpose just fine. And it was better than having no parade.

I don't consider cutting the Crystal Castle to be "making fairly drastic changes" by any means. That thing has been around for decades, and it's either A) time for a makeover so it doesn't look like the tired old crystal castle or B) time to make a new castle float entirely!

Oh wait, it's time for a new PARADE! We thought we had it bad with Parade of the Stars sticking around for five years, but I can't fathom having to live with the snowglobes (or lack thereof) for even longer! Sheesh.

TweedlDum9...yes, but...the difference in weather is the issue. WDW's semi-regular afternoon monsoons and the general humidity of their version of sunshine can play hell with float frills and colors. At Disneyland that's usually not much of an issue (though I speak as somebody who was in the park on that fateful day when a hailstorm shut down the skyride buckets and the Anaheim Fire Dept. had to come in with a hook and ladder and cherrypick the guests out of them one by one.)

It is truly amazing how complex it all seems just because of a Little bridge repair. Surely, they can come up with temporary fixes to what seems a minor problem in the scale of things. Everyone has hit on ideas here. The down time inconveinence to the Guests appears minimal so what are they worried about.  What happened to all of Disney's great engineers and thinkers? Reroute and simplify during the smallest window of time posible.

Why not do two parades a day?

I have to side with Disney on at least one point here. If ANYTHING is wrong with the bridge, I for one, am glad they shut it down.

Why?

Because of the incredibly sue-happy mentality of the public these days it is is Disney's best interest to shut it down until it's fixed.

If someone can sue because their coffee was actually hot, then can you imagine if someone got a splinter from a Disneyland bridge? Heck, if someone heard a creak when they stepped on a plank I'm sure they could sue because they 'felt' endangered.

And I find it sad and trivial that we are actually debating and questioning a parade ROUTE!!!

We Disney fans must have it real good when we can spend time debating that path that a PARADE takes. Or WHEN they should (in our uninformed opinion) do repair work.

Thanks TweedlDum9 for an INFORMED opinion.

What I find amazing is the fact that Jim thinks this bridge is worth not just one story, but two.

With all the other INTERESTING things he could be writing about (Spaceship Earth rehab, Disney building residential homes on WDW property, the Disney Stores being sold back to Disney) we get two stories on a bridge.

Seriously ... this is pathetic ...

Good point Pickstar.  Also don't forget the treehouse villa rehab, the mysterious hunchback theatre refurb, the IASM refurb in Anaheim, and the new theme park that apparently is gonna be built in my backyard.  Has the snow melted yet?

Oh and I also maintain the using the Stars and Motorcars parade would solve this problem nicely.

Yeah, those are all FAR more interesting stories than the ones we've been getting lately ... honestly, I kinda wonder what the deal is with Jim. I'm can't really fathom why he's writing stories about bridge maintenance and PI closing when there's about a dozen other, far more interesting stories he could be focused on.

There's plenty of POTC-related info to be found in this week's column. Including the current status of "Pirates 4," news on Disney's "Legends of the Brethren Court" book series as well as a review of that I-Drive favorite, the Pirate's Dinner Adventur

Jim Hill explains how WDW officials used Mickey & friends as a diversion while repairs were being made on the Liberty Square bridge