I think Believe has much more longevity than Wishes. Wishes suffers from the same syndrome that LightMagic did. Its only purpose is to imitate the success of another show. Light Magic was trying to follow up Electrical Parade, but in reality took much of it's theme from Fantasmic!.
When Electrical Parade opened it's message was pretty simple. It was an electrical parade. The gimmick of this and the inherent appeal of Disney's characters was enough to make this a great parade.
In 1992 Fantasmic opened. As a show it had more story than MSEP and also a theme. The theme was broad but appealing: Imagination. It was an appropriate theme for Disney. A bit corny yes, but nobody can deny that Disney was nothing if not Imaginative. The umbrella theme of Imagination was used to reference several more specific ideas: dreams, love, wishing upon a star, faith, hope, good v. evil, etc....
Light Magic tried to take these same sentiments, but obviously they couldn't use the Imagination theme. Instead they took one of the lesser themes, Wishing upon a star, and then tried to rebroaden that into "The magic of Light" theme that made the parade an appropriate replacement for MSEP. But the magic of Light is something people had never heard of. And it sounds lame. It sounds like something that a GE think tank would come up with to sell higher wattage bulbs.
Not only was it a silly theme, but it's seemed so unnecessary. There was so much less light on any of the floats than MSEP had, that it was almost drawing attention to it. Pixie Power or Celtic Dance would at least have been a more accurate theme for the parade though no more appealing.
I think Wishes has done the same thing. They've seen teh success of Believe, and tried to imitate it's heart and theme. Wishes is too specific a "type of belief" . what about faith, innocence, and trust, all sorts of belief that Believe covers. Wishes is no where near as innappropriate as LightMagic but it leaves the same taste in my mouth. Imitation.
