The Beatles were the " Soundtrack of my childhood". Their music was playing constantly throughout the sixties, on the radio, and in our house.
So, when we talk about Disneyland in the sixties, somehow my mind links to the Beatles.
Isn't that amazing ?
Here's another thing:
I was watching a clip on you tube last night of a very young Neil Young in Buffalo Springfield, roughly around the same time as "Rubber Soul". It's amazing what this man has accomplished, ( he performed at Woodstock, for crying out loud ). Then became a Guru at Lionel. It's worth checking out, if you have an interest in music of that era...
I was simply thrilled when more of my mom’s old records turned up (she got rid of most of them), and there was a copy of ‘Rubber Soul’.
"Unless bought from a known and trusted dealer who can vouch otherwise, assume every train for sale requires servicing before use"
tick...tick...tick....
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Don't get me wrong ! I love the Beatles, and it's never too much Beatles for me. I was just trying to paint the picture of what it was like in the mid 60's. You can't talk about the 60's without some kind of footnote about the Beatles. Still love their music to this day !
Paul
There's a pic or two around here somewhere of me wearing a kepi while touring the Gettysburg monuments. And for me it was anything by Madonna that was driving me nuts in the 80's!
I know what you mean. In the early 70's my friends and I swore if we had to listen to "American Pie" or "Nights In White Satin" one more time we were going to rip out our car radios and throw 'em to the side of the road!
Too much of a good thing indeed!
It's funny how memories link together like a chain. One thing reminds you of something else that happened around that same time. I remember we had records of show tunes playing in our house. We had " My Fair Lady", "Porgy and Bess", "Camelot", among others on the stereo. We had Disney's soundtrack album for "Babes in Toyland". It was really nice. The album opened up and had stills from scenes in the movie. And all those songs! Maybe that's why I can almost sing along with this movie.
Then came the Beatles, and they dominated. Tv, movies, radio. By '65 and '66 you could change radio stations, and the Beatles would be playing on 3 different stations simultaneously.3 different songs, of course.
Really cool to know about the circus ! That came and went B-4 my first visit in '59.
I just realized that I recall 3 different hat styles that we had:
1. The cap, with patch and visor. In one of our pictures, as I mentioned.
2. Marching Toy Soldier. When "Babes in Toyland" came out, and was being promoted heavily.
3. the " Yankee" ( Union soldier cap.) It is visible in one of your pictures of the hat shop.
We grew up with Disneyland!
I would imagine you could find the skins at the Trading Post:
Which, of course, was Crockett adjacent.
The famous ear hats were invented by Roy Williams, the Big Mousketeer and Disney staff artist, as headgear for the Mickey Mouse Club TV show in 1955. So in theory they should have spread to the park not long after the show's premier. Certainly by November of 55 when the Mickey Mouse Club Circus opened out back of the Autopia:
It was the real deal too:
But note the small crowd in this photo:
Walt just didn't understand how revolutionary his fledgling park was and didn't realize that people weren't coming to California to see a circus. It lasted until September of 56.
The big top was later used as a picnic pavilion.
I don't see any 'coonskin hats either! Davey C. would be most disappointed!
Well, I do not see our hats any where in that shop. I remember they gave you a choice of styles. My brother and I always had matching hats.
Another interesting thing is there are no Mickey Mouse hats in the pictures. I guess they must have come along later?
Cool!
This is one of the little stands I've been wanting to model for some time. It was called "The Hatmosphere" at some point in it's existence:
Hats everywhere!
Hats at the main entrance too:
This little girl is wearing a marching band style hat:
Hey Becky,
Thought you might find this interesting:
found some old pictures of my brother and I with our Disneyland hats. Our names embroidered on the visors. It is dated April '59 on the edge of the picture. Must have been our first visit. I am told that there is also a picture of us in the wheel house of the Mark Twain. Still looking for that.
oh, and I talked to my brother last week, he corroborates my story about the trees from "Babes in Toyland" being on display. Plus, he also recalls part of the toy factory being on display !
And let me mention the hats:
the hats we are wearing are a cap with a Disneyland patch on the front, and a visor. They are Not the ones with the Mickey Mouse ears.
And on a visit in the early 60's, we both had red Disneyland hats that were styled to look like the toy soldiers from "Babes in Toyland".
It looks great ! Excellent job! I see the lighting in your structures, nice effect.
Finally!
As of today I can finally call West Main Street official.
Though I think I'm going to black-out that castle wall. Anyways, the Fire house turned out well. Thanks largely to the great photos I found that I was able to manipulate into a photo-realistic representation.
On the flip side....
Left to right: Pinocchio, Snow White and Peter Pan. Here's the inside of Peter Pan's Flight:
I had the ride vehicles from a Polly-Pocket playset seen here in 2016:
and I found the mural online.
Over at Snow White, and this didn't photograph well, is Maleficent looking down on the guests below:
The Fantasyland attractions replace Liberty Square, which lets me put Independence Hall back on my postwar layout.
Now all I have to do is make it look like this in the next couple of weeks:
You're right ! Too much fun stuff topside !
And for me, that starts and ends with the trains !
All kinds of park infrastructure just a few feet underground. Here's a DACS (Though I have to imagine these have been upgraded since 1971):
Wardrobe:
Kinda reminds me of something....
As fun as poking around under Walt Disney World would be, I think I'd rather explore the nooks and crannies here:
what a great layout I could build in there ! See how my mind works ?
It makes sense to move all that materiel out of plain sight, and from a traffic standpoint as well.
I had no idea...
Ever hear of the Magic Kingdom utillidors?
Not the most exciting part of Walt Disney World to be sure, but until recent years they were off limits to guests.
This is how those characters appear and vanish so easily.
Disneyland has utility tunnels, but they're not as multipurpose as those at WDW.
WDW generates power using jet engines, I assume by using the heat to boil water and turn power turbines, but I'm not sure.
The utillidors also house the Magic Kingdom's pneumatic refuse and recycling collection systems.
Postwar PaulI did not realize there were so many incarnations of this program.
Yeah, me neither! There's only a three year gap between 83 and 86 when they didn't have something going on one of "the big three". But that window would also (I guess) correspond with the start of The Disney Channel.
We grew up with that show(S). Not to mention the Mickey Mouse Club.Walt gave an insight into the progress at Disneyland. He presented his dreams to us on national television.
I did not realize there were so many incarnations of this program. I lived without a television in my first apartment for 2 or 3 years.
Played with N gauge trains, though.
The "Wonderful World of Color," I remember it well. Not to be missed in our house!
And I love that shooting gallery! Who else but Disney's "Imagineers" could make a Hawken rifle shoot laser beams? Jeremiah Johnson would loved one!
Last year WGBH (Boston) did a 4 hour documentary on Walt Disney: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/walt-disney/ and there were several scenes in it taken from Walt's TV show including scenes of the filming of Babes in Toyland. The show was originally called "Walt Disney's Disneyland" and ran from 1954-1958. Then "Walt Disney Presents" from 58 to 61 and "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" from 61 to 69. There were also "The Wonderful World of Disney" 69-79, "Disney's Wonderful World" 79-81, "Walt Disney" 81-83, "The Disney Sunday Movie" 86-88, "The Magical World of Disney" 88-90 and "The Wonderful World of Disney" 91-present.
But who can forget the kaliedoscope:
Here's what you would have seen during the first pivotal year when Disney was producing partner for ABC, a move that gave him a lot of capital for Disneyland.:
Episode #194 which aired May 17, 1964 was titled: Disneyland Goes To The World's Fair. Airing Jan 3, 1965 was #221: Disneyland 10th Anniversary and on Dec 18, 1966 there was #280: Disneyland Around the Seasons which aired 3 days after Walt's death. Probably the show I'd most like to see beyond the early DL episodes, is #287 from Jan 21, 1968 Disneyland: From the Pirates of the Caribbean to the World of Tomorrow. Babes in Toyland aired as the feature program on Dec 21 and 28, 1969 #338 & 352.
The Frito Kid triggers something, probably one of those novelties my parents pointed out to me when I was very young. Those first visits to Disneyland, the fragments, and bits and pieces that have remained in my memory are selective at best.
I recall things like what they were selling in the gift stands. In Adventureland, adjacent to the Jungle Boat Cruise, they were selling rubber tipped spears. Go native ! Also, which we bought, were enormous suckers made of swirls of multi- colored candy. I believe it had Mickey on the cellophane wrapper. Too big to finish ! We tried to take it home, but my brother and I fell asleep in the car ride home. It wasn't there in the morning, so I think it got tossed !
As I probably mentioned before, my brother and I wore matching shirts, although one might be blue, the other red, and both of us had crewcuts. We came away from that trip with both of us styling the red toy soldier's cap from " Babes in Toyland".
Disneyland was a great place for a kid !
Walt had "the Wonderful World of Disney" tv show in the 60's, and on one episode, he introduced the birds from the Tiki Room. That may be the color pictures you have of Walt and the birds. On that show, they also would show Toy Soldier's battle scene from "Babes", among other things. There is also a clip, it may have been on that show,about the completion of the Monorail. It showed Walt with an enormous wrench tightening a nut on one of the Monorail'S supports. He says " if you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself ".
Here's something a modern, self-respecting, 21st century model railroader would never do:
Maybe we should credit Disney for showing us the neccessity of "view blocks" on our layouts. He certainly knew all about selective compression! And there too is where a lot of myths about Disneyland were born.
I made a joke awhile back about the Matterhorn, stating that mine is much easier to move around. If I were to ask what land you think the mountain belongs in, you'd likely say Fantasyland. But in 1959 it was considered a Tomorrowland attraction. Why? Most likely because it was the first tube steel coaster in America. But also because it was part of the 1959 expansion that added the Submarine Voyage (later called "Voyage Through Liquid Space") , the Monorail and made the Autopia larger. I'm not sure exactly when the mountain was "relocated", but calling it a Fantsyland attraction certainly makes more sense to most of us. Especially after the 1982 remodel that made Fantasyland look much more like an Alpine village.
Back in the early days, Disneyland attractions were practically on top of each other. And view-blocking was a thing of the future that couldn't come to pass until the trees grew. Take a look at these photos of the entrance to Adventureland:
The one above is dated July 18, 1955. That's the first day the park was officially open to the public. On the left, you can see the Jungle Cruise, and accross from it are the Bazaar and Cantina.
Turn around inside the archway and look back toward the hub and Sleeping Beauty Castle seems to be within spitting distance:
There just weren't as many effective transitions between areas as there are now. In the picture of the arch from the hub side, there's a pinkish building with white balconies in the background. On the opposite side of the building is Frontierland. And because the area was much more sparse in those days, you could see more of the Jungle Cruise as you were crossing into Frontierland.
The transition point between the lands was sort of a "side door".
The Shooting Gallery is just to the left of the Westward Ho. Trading Company (formerly the Frontierland Trading Post) in the background of the photo above.
Looking at it from the hub, you can see how tight everything is:
Going between the two left towers of the stockade is a very short trip between the two lands.
This 1955 map from a Bank of America brochure shows the little path clearly and yes, it's just to the right of the Jungle Cruise dock which is #1 in the red Adventureland section. The Shooting Gallery would be about where the #2 is in the blue Frontierland segment.
Here's the Shooting Gallery:
Now called the "Shooting Exposition", it's all about lasers:
Ever eat at this place?
Not exactly my thing, but it was next door to the Shooting Gallery and since it had such a clever "vending machine" I thought I'd include it.
Did you know the Tiki Room was supposed to be a restaurant? It's initial sponsor was American Airlines but that soon changed to Dole which makes more sense if it was a food service kinda place. It was going to be called the "Magic Fountain" and would have shared a kitchen with both the Tahitian Terrace and Plaza Pavillion restaurants (the back to back buildings). Tiki room admission was 75 cents in 1963, which was probably a bargain considering it was also the ONLY air-conditioned building in Disneyland!
If you think of how things are situated at the hub, sharing a kitchen with those 2 restaurants wasn't too far-fetched.
Especially since the Tiki Room is outside Adventureland. That white gingerbread work on the left of the photo above is the Plaza Pavillion of Main Street USA.
It may have happened sooner, but at least by 1965 the ride came to have "United Air Lines" logos plastered all over it:
Explore the gardens and get to know your Tiki gods.
Though the gardens look like they'd be more fun to explore at night.
2006 photo of the Tiki Room:
The Tiki Room opened on June 19, 1963:
Getting good photos in the celluloid days was always tough since they discouraged flash photgraphy as "our performers are tempermental" to quote the pre-show spiel. But in the digital age photographers are doing much better.
Jose:
Michael:
and Fritz:
...are the stars of the show. But this is the place where "the birds sing words and the flowers croon":
And these guys have something to say too:
The magic fountain stayed:
But you're supposed to leave your food and drink in one of these:
At WDW the backdoor to Frontierland is just as easy to follow without noticing.
The WDW Tiki Room:
The barker bird is in the little rounded roof bit just to the left of the entrance.
Well, it's getting late for me. I'll get to the Disneyodendron Semper Florens Eximus tomorrow!
That was fascinating! I remember the elephants, and the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse was not there, originally.
when I look at these pictures, I am thinking "African Queen", and that's what it is.
Also, I remember the shooting gallery right across from the boat ride.
The Jungle Boat is such a classic ! Thank You !
Also, I can see the detail became more elaborate as years went by. I recall the hippos, the elephants, I think there was a Tiger, and the man firing that pistol.
speaking of the barker at the Tiki Room, I do have a vague memory that is starting to come back.I don't think it was there last time.
I do recall from last time they nearly had to carry me out of there in my "special jacket".
Postwar Paul Hopefully you have the one from the Tiki Room
Well, I have a few...
The barker bird is the best one in my opinion. Remember him?
"This is where you can sit on your tail feathers, and rest the rest of you. Oh! Excuse me, sir! Quickly! Quickly! Get your passports...I mean 'tickets' to Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room" He ended up getting removed because he caused traffic jams!
Ah! The Jungle Cruise!
Many of the rides and attractions of Disneyland grew out of Walt's desire to present guests with "true life adventures". In fact, the working title of this section of the park was "True-Life Adventureland" until fairly late in the design process.
I know it isn't, but doesn't this look like Ronald Reagan sticking his head in a gator's mouth?
How to animate a hippo:
Early on, skippers were issued blanks to fire at the hippos. Nowadays they get compressed air and bad jokes.
The boats (launches) were the work of Harper Goff and were VERY much based on the African Queen:
...Harper Goff loved the film.
This photo tells a lot of stories.
Notice how easy it is to see the transition point from Adventureland to Main Street USA and how non-jungle-like the landscape was in the early days. It would be many years before the seedlings grew!
It was always a nice day for a jungle cruise, but if you look in the back ground of this pic of Walt and daughter Diane visiting with young guests, you can see it was originally called the "Jungle River Boat Ride". b50 cents for adults and 35 cents for kids:
Happiness is a "boating" Steve Allen?????
The first thing you'd see was the sunken city.
Buddha got replaced by something a bit more Disney:
The butterflies are fake...
..but what about the ducks?
Early gators. Or are they crocs?
In 1962 the elephants came along and scared some of the rubbery beasts away.
The modern crocs are much scarier:
In 1964 they upgraded the African Veldt:
The "lions of the rain forest" look just had to go. This, looks more like what we all think of:
The "Lost Safari" was also added in 64.
In 1994 the boathose was rebuilt:
In 95 the river was shifted when the Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye attraction was added.
You can see the river which passes just to the left of the temple in this pic taken from it's front steps:
In 1997 the original boats were replaced:
There are piranhas now.
Shop at Trader Sam's:
The boat house:
If you can't get enough of the skippers' bad jokes, you can always come back and take a "Jingle Cruise":
That's cool that you have those soundtracks. Hopefully you have the one from the Tiki Room to enjoy !
I just realized that we haven't talked about the " Jungle Boat Cruise". That's a classic from the very beginning.
About 2 weeks ago I got a new PC nad the last couple of days I've been ripping my collection (31 cdrw and dvdrw's) of music from the Disney parks to Windows Media Player. My previous PC didn't have a functional sound card so it's been quite awhile since I've had any kind of a back-up to these files other than what I had burned years ago. Most of this stuff was easy to find when the net was "young" and the "Big D" hadn't caught up to the sites that had this stuff posted as mp3's yet. Many of them are copies of real loop, ride and song tapesm, so you can imagine why Disney cracked down on this stuff being out there in an "unauthorized" form on the net.
Anyways, one that I've just been listening to is a track from the Space Mountain ride loop and it contains an intro by Disney legend Jack Wagner. Purple prose at it's best:
"Towering above Tomorrowland, are the futuristic peaks of Space Mountain. Inside, Disneyland astronauts experience the thrill of a twisting, speeding, journey past the stars and unexplored galaxies. Bursting through a cosmic vapor curtain into the deep, dark void of superspace, where time is non-existent and distances are spanned at infinite speeds."
If that doesn't make you want to ride Space Mountain I don't know what will!
That's an interesting insight into what could have been. The Monorail was proposed to the City of Los Angeles, but rejected.
Here's another somewhat similar piece of history, but with a different outcome:
in 1947, the then mayor of San Francisco wanted to replace the remaining cable car lines with busses. The people of S.F. Came together in support of the cable cars, and they still run to this day. Although the "Powell and Hyde" line is a combination of two previously separate lines, but who's to quibble? That ride up or down Hyde street is breathtaking, in either direction!
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