MINNEAPOLIS — Loreen Mills of Golden Valley has never taken the Holidazzle parade for granted, bringing her kids to Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis many times since the family moved to the Twin Cities area 13 years ago.

On Friday night, Mills, along with her daughter Regina, 17, and son Elliott, 13, was again awaiting the start of the parade in front of the IDS Center, part of a throng of people lining the mall and packing skyways for the opening night of the holiday spectacle’s final season.

“I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, and this is the only city that has something this unique around the holidays,” Mills said, ­adding that she likes Holidazzle because it’s noncommercial. “I think it will be missed.”

Friday’s parade was the first of eight on this year’s schedule, down from the 20 or more that have been customary since the first Holidazzle in 1992.

It will run Friday and Saturday nights through Dec. 21 at 6:30 p.m. on Nicollet between 12th and 4th Streets.

The parade, with fairy-tale-based floats and characters walking and ­waving in costumes aglow with tiny lights, has attracted an ­estimated 300,000 people in some years.

Each night’s parade involves hundreds of volunteers as downtown employers have recruited workers and their families to walk the mall in any of the more than 200 parade costumes. The event was even exported to Chicago for one night in 1996.