Merry Christmas! If like us your morning is going to involve a lot of wrapping paper and excitement, you might not catch the broadcast of the Disney Parks Magical Christmas Day Parade: it's airing on ABC today, 25 December, at 9am PT / 10am ET and live on DirectTV Stream and fuboTV too. But if you don't have ABC via your TV or online TV provider or just forget to tune in, don't worry. If you miss the live broadcast you can stream it at your leisure on Disney Plus or Hulu from Boxing Day onwards.
As you'd expect from Disney, the show is an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza featuring your favorite Disney characters. But there are also some surprises, especially among the musical guests.
What to expect from the Disney Parks Magical Christmas Day Parade
This year's event, filmed at Walt Disney World Resort, will be hosted by Derek and Julianne Hough, country star Mickey Guyton and host of The Golden Bachelor Jesse Palmer.
The show features new performances from Ariana DeBose, from American Idol winner Iam Tongi and from Michael Bolton. It also features a performance by one of the least likely Christmas guests we can imagine: gloom-rock titans Smashing Pumpkins.
In terms of putting the ho-ho-ho into holidays we'd put the Pumpkins' Billy Corgan on the list somewhere below the alien from Alien, Pennywise from IT and Colin Robinson from What We Do In The Shadows, but it looks like we'll see a much sunnier version of the alt-rock icon here: the band will play Evergreen, which is apparently a new and evergreen holiday song.
Disney says we can also expect a look back at "unforgettable performances" from NSYNC performing their hit Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and from Gwen Stefani with her take on Winter Wonderland. There'll also be another chance to see Mary J. Blige and David Foster perform Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. And if you're wondering, where's Mariah? Don't worry. She'll be there too.
The Disney Parks Magical Christmas Day Parade will be broadcast live on ABC at 9.00am PT / 10am ET on 25 December, and will be streaming on Disney+ and Hulu from 26 December.
