Similar to their motion picture predecessors, the effort and expense of creating or compiling theme park music accounts for less far less than 1% of the overall costs and yet comprises nearly 50% of the experience.  Fortunately these soundscapes are also the easiest to recreate and can even live on long after their accompanying environments have been erased or replaced. For a couple decades now, I’ve devoted a considerable amount of my time to preserving, restoring and (most importantly) showcasing this element of Disney’s parks.

Al Lutz has already written a comprehensive dissection of the compilation’s sources here. (4) The only thing I could add to this commentary is how remarkably modern it was for 1972. The albums used range from 1958 to 1969, making the oldest songs only fourteen years old and the youngest barely three. By modern comparison, if this loop was being created today Mariah Carey’s incessant song (that shall not be named) would be TWICE as old as any on the loop!

As the 2018 Holiday season rolled around the Main Street’s Christmas loop went back into my listening rotation and (I don’t know why but) I was suddenly horrified at the low quality of the mono source recording that’s been common place on the internet since the turn of the century.

With speakers often 10 ft. above and (at times) 40 ft. away from your head, with all the cacophony of sounds created by thousands of guests & cast members you might not notice all the imperfections of the untouched loop that was originally constructed with well-worn LPs, but in isolation, a modern set of earbuds will pick up every pop, crack and all the white noise of (now) antiquated audio recordings. Finally, while the monaural sound is perfectly acceptable in the parks it’s not exactly palatable at home. (5)

After doing some light research, I had discovered nearly all of the source albums Jack Wagner used had independently received their own restorations and reissues over the many decades since their first releases and all of them have been preserved in their original stereophonic state. It was then I decided to reconstruct and remaster the entire atmosphere for 21st century ears. 

But merely recombining the existing material wasn’t going to meet the quality standards now expected from my efforts. In this case, I completely restored all nine source albums by using Spectral Analysis to scrutinize every millisecond for imperfections from manually removing every pop and click to erasing the intake breaths and bow taps of the musicians. Afterwards I, very carefully, removed all noise from the background while making sure not to degrade any of the details from the originals.  Finally, the amplitude of all tracks were adjusted manually to insure the smoothest transitions possible from song to song. (6)

I’ve actually had several people tell me that it’s their favorite Christmas album now! And had so many requested for the album art I eventually had to offer it as a standalone background for all your electronic devices.

Post note:
In writing this I noticed that it’s 2022 which means it’s the 50th year for Main Street’s Christmas Atmosphere, making it the longest-running music loop in theme park history! And with all the chaotic changes happening to our parks let’s hope it’s always there.

Although, if they just get rid of the Lawrence Welk tracks, I’m okay with that :)