The story of Disneyland's ill-fated "Light Magic"
I was a Disneyland Passholder from 1996 until I left for Florida in 2000 and got to witness the spectacular fiasco that was Light Magic.
It was supposed to be the successor to The Main Street Electrical Parade, which ended its original run on Thanksgiving week in 1996 (I was there for the final shows and still have a keychain fob that I bought that night for the "Farewell Season"). Disneyland had been selling off the bulbs from the Electrical Parade at $10 apiece, which was donated to Children's Hospital of Orange County (this will come back into play, keep reading).
Over the following year after MSEP's end, Disneyland spent millions expanding the promenade area around it's a small world, adding large projection/speaker towers, a tiered parade viewing area, and bypass walkways so guests could go around an active performance to get from Fantasyland to Mickey's Toontown. They also installed thousands of miles of fiber optic light points in the Main Street façades as well as computer-controlled show lighting atop the Main Street buildings and more projection points inside them. However, they didn't expand Main Street in the process, an oversight that would come back to bite them when Light Magic had its run.
Mind you, Light Magic was not a bad show per se—IMHO it was ahead of its time.
Paul Pressler was president of Disneyland at the time, a merchandising guy who previously was VP of Designing and Marketing Development with Kenner-Parker Toys before joining Disney Consumer Products in 1987 where he ran The Disney Store, before being put in charge of Disneyland in 1994; he had no prior theme park experience. He's considered the individual responsible for all of the unique little shops along Main Street being converted into the giant block-long Plush Emporium it is today. He was also considered responsible for Disneyland's visible decline during that period by cutting corners, skipping maintenance, slashing budgets, forcing Cast to launder their own uniforms, and closing rides and shows early. The ill-fated Rocket Rods happened under his watch, which made the PeopleMover infrastructure no longer usable even for bringing back the original PeopleMover. As Chairman of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, he would later oversee the building and opening of Disney's California Adventure, which nearly failed from poor reviews immediately after its opening until much of the park was redone and rethemed years later.
The nails in the Light Magic coffin began with the Annual Passholder Party for which passholders paid to stay after park hours and witness what was hyped up to be the very first performances of the show in all its glory before the general public had their chance to see it during its grand debut the following month. Instead, Pressler walked out into the newly renovated Small World Promenade and announced that what we were to see was a "final dress rehearsal", and that the show was not yet ready for its premiere. Various equipment for the environmental lighting had not yet arrived to be installed so none of the lighting apparatuses worked. When the performance finally did begin, the floats were misaligned to the projectors in the towers, so the video parts of the show didn't work right. Lines formed around the park of guests demanding refunds, and the bulbs they had sold off for $10 apiece started being sent back to Disneyland.
The next nail was the show itself. It rolled out on three gigantic stages from the back of the park onto the new Small World Promenade, stopped, did its performance, rolled dark through the park around the Matterhorn to Main Street, stopped, did a second performance, then rolled out of the park. Each stage had a drop-down screen incorporated into it that at the appropriate moment would drop down for projectors embedded in the buildings to project video portions into the show while the performers themselves were idle (it would later be jokingly referred to as "The McDonald's Moment" or "The UNICEF Moment"). The story revolved around the pixies, led by Tinker Bell (apparently they didn't know folklore that pixies were evil versions of fairies), and the soundtrack attempted to capitalize on the Irish dancing craze of the time by incorporating an Irish jig feel, including a first minute or so that sounded like the opening to Riverdance. It then ended with a finale including an arrangement of the MSEP's "Baroque Hoedown," which only served to galvanize guest sentiment against the new show and for bringing the MSEP back. (Incidentally, the new Disney Starlight show at Magic Kingdom also uses a new arrangement of "Baroque Hoedown" for its finale, as well as the same opening fanfare music, to much greater success; that show intentionally invokes the legacy of the MSEP while introducing new characters and show elements).
Remember they failed to widen Main Street? This caused a logistics issue getting guests through the front of the park because the stages consumed the entire area for the entire 16 minutes the show ran, unlike a parade that simply passed through, forcing Disney to route guests through the "back of the house" to leave the park (which nowadays is done without a second thought; back then opening non-stage areas to the public was anathema).
The show debuted to the public on Memorial Day weekend in 1997 with a television special on local TV station KCOP (the "special presentation" is available on YouTube) hosted by Tawny Little and the late Alex Trebek. The first 45 to 55 minutes of the show was all about Disneyland and behind-the-scenes of the park and the show, leaving just the last few minutes of the program to show the actual performance, whose show effects were all but overwhelmed by the TV lighting. The special and the show itself were poorly received. The $10 bulbs they had sold off from the MSEP started being sent back to the park en masse.
There were also what one could consider the predecessor of the 'meme' around the new show. Light Magic was panned with lines like "fifty percent less magic than the regular Disney show" and "Light Tragic" by passholders and guests.
An unverified-to-date story has circulated that Disney CEO Michael Eisner was with Paul Pressler watching the first run of the show from the Disneyland Railroad station; the story claims Eisner saw the show, looked at Pressler, and responded, "Bad show," before walking away while the performance was still going.
Light Magic ran from Memorial Day weekend in 1997 until Labor Day weekend the same year, when it was pulled by Disneyland "for reimagining" with the statement that the show would eventually return. It never did.
As for Paul Pressler, he was promoted from Disneyland in 1999 to President of Walt Disney Attractions, where he worked for one year before becoming Chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts for another two years before leaving the company for The Gap in 2002. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of eBay.
The show's soundtrack in its 16-minute entirety was included in the late-'90s edition of The Official Album of Disneyland and Walt Disney World alongside an abridged three-minute version of The Main Street Electrical Parade. The full soundtrack of the MSEP itself was made available in a late-90s CD featuring the complete soundtrack of the original Fantasmic! as the "A" side and the MSEP complete soundtrack as the "B" side.