WDW 50th Weekly Rumor Update


With several weeks of slow rumors and news, we are transitioning how we approach this series during slow periods of rumors or news. Instead of the short articles, we have been doing recently we are going to go in-depth on one current rumor.

For the first time, we are going to go in-depth into rumors regarding the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World.

Castle Decorations

There have been a lot of conflicting reports over what will happen to Cinderella Castle. We know for sure it will not be as elaborate as the 25th anniversary Castle Cake as that would impact the projection mapping needed for night shows on the castle. But still expect minor decorations, specifically a new color design for the castle. This could be something temporary like Disneyland did for its 50th and 60th anniversaries or something more permanent like the recent redesign of Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Night Life

The Magic Kingdom is going to get something new for nighttime entertainment. It involves two possible additions.

The first is a night parade, which could be an entirely new parade or a borrowing of the Main Street Electrical Parade. It will not be Paint the Night as it can't make the turns in the Magic Kingdom, and Spectromagic no longer exists. A new parade is also increasingly unlikely as Disney would have already had to put this into development.

Second is something new involving fireworks. Apparently, originally this involved an entirely new show to permanently replace Happily Ever After, but HEA was way more popular than anticipated so this may not happen. Instead, we may just get a 50th tag to the show, similar to the holiday ones added to the end of IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth throughout its 20-year run, but performed nightly.

50 Things Marketing Campaign

This is the most widely speculated addition for the 50th, although rumors indicate it was scaled back. Now about 10 of the things will be relatively minor, like food or merchandise, with roughly 40 actual additions to the parks, including already announced projects like Tron Lightcycle Run.

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