Theme Park Thursdays

Theme Park Thursdays: The ONLY Happiest Place on Earth

While many people refer to any Disney theme park as “The Happiest Place on Earth”, the ONLY Happiest Place on Earth is DISNEYLAND in Anaheim. The other parks each have their own motto as shown above.

Theme Park Thursdays: Walt Disney in his Magic Kingdom

Even today, Walt Disney’s presence can still be felt in his only Magic Kingdom.

For example, he personally designed Tom Sawyer’s Island and the Rivers Of America.

The balcony in the Golden Horseshoe on the left side of the stage was his personal space, and he always watched the show from there when he was in the park. If he was hosting personal guests, they would always be accommodated in his special space.

And finally, Mr. Disney had a private apartment in the park, which remains as he left it. A desk lamp is kept lit in his honor, displayed in the window.

Theme Park Thursdays

Theme Park Thursdays

Theme Park Thursdays: Walt Disney in DISNEYLAND

Theme Park Thursdays: Babes in DISNEYLAND.

The Main Street Opera House in DISNEYLAND was originally supposed to host a weekly television show that would feature Wally Boag as its host. The show would be a variety show of sorts, filmed at DISNEYLAND and broadcast coast to coast. Budgetary restrictions prevented the studio from being built and a facade was constructed to hide the woodshop that was built behind Main Street to assist with the park’s construction.

By 1961, however, the woodshop was no longer needed and guests were always clamoring for more things to see and do. Walt Disney decided to open up the woodshop, which was little more than a warehouse type building, and move the sets from his film Babes in Toyland to Anaheim, which would add another attraction to the park and promote his latest film. The sets remained until 1963, when the real Opera House began construction. It would provide a permanent home for Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln.

Theme Park Thursdays

Theme Park Thursdays: DISNEYLAND’s Horseless Carriages

DISNEYLAND’s Horseless Carriages were added to the park in 1956, providing one way trips from Town Square to Sleeping Beauty Castle and back again. As DISNEYLAND became more popular, there was a need for more attractions and transportation options. Walt Disney liked seeing a busy Main Street that looked like it could be real. Vintage cars zipping up and down the street would definitely add to that atmosphere.

Rather than just buy old cars to fix up, Walt Disney assigned his vehicle designer Bob Gurr to design a heavy duty vehicle with decent capacity that would fit the Main Street Theme. Mr. Gurr based his design on a 1903 vehicle, making it slightly bigger to accommodate six people plus the driver. These cars were then built at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank and trucked down to DISNEYLAND where they have been transporting guests ever since.

Theme Park Thursdays: Happy Anniversary to the 999 Happy Haunts!

On August 9, 1969, DISNEYLAND History was made as Walt Disney’s Haunted Mansion opened its doors to the world. Not only would regular guests experience the attraction for the first time, another first happened that day- for the first time since opening day, DISNEYLAND had to close its gates due to being at capacity. Over 70,000 guests swarmed into the park to make a trip through the Haunted Mansion.

At its peak, the wait time on that first day was reportedly eight hours. The line stretched out to Frontierland and back. Why would the attraction garner so much attention on its first day? Aside from being a masterpiece in themed entertainment, which admittedly would have been unknown to the crowds who descended on the park that day, the Haunted Mansion was the beneficiary of the very first viral marketing campaign designed by Walt Disney.

When DISNEYLAND decided to feature a Native American Village which would feature authentic entertainment performed by a cast of Native Americans, Walt Disney felt that the best location for the village would be on the far side of the River of America where Critter Country exists today. The only issue with that location was that the park hadn’t fully built out that side of the park yet. Guests would have to take a long trek out there past trees, a berm, some benches and little else. Since DISNEYLAND’s master plan was to eventually build a Haunted Mansion as part of its New Orleans Square expansion, Mr. Disney decided to just build the mansion ahead of time even though nothing would be inside it yet. Seeing the house would add atmosphere to that side of the river and make guests wonder about what existed inside those walls.

The gambit worked. Guests swamped DISNEYLAND’s City Hall to ask just what was in that house? A future attraction? Walt Disney’s Secret House? Cats? To satisfy the curious and drum up interest in the future attraction, Mr. Disney had a sign put up that became infamous among Disney theme park fans. The sign is shown below:

This sign made guests even more curious about what would occupy the house that seemingly sprang up overnight and also hid the fact that even Walt Disney himself wasn’t sure what would eventually go inside his Haunted Mansion. One early concept was a “Museum of the Weird” walkthrough designed by Imagineer Rolly Crump. The house would host bizarre and potentially haunted articles that guests would experience on foot. This idea was even mentioned by Walt Disney on his weekly show The Wonderful World of Disney.

Park operations wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a walkthrough attraction, since it would have a low capacity. Another question that came up- would this be a truly scary Haunted Mansion or would it be a funny, happier Disney version of a Haunted House? In 1966, Walt Disney settled on the funny, happier version that would be a ridethrough where guests would get to see the ghosts throughout the mansion. Finally, something was getting into that Mansion.

So by the time opening day rolled around, millions of people had walked past that house and its sign. Millions more saw Walt Disney talk about it on his show. Considering all these factors, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise that so many guests would be there on opening weekend. 49 years later, Walt Disney’s Haunted Mansion still entertains millions of guests every year.

Theme Park Thursdays: DISNEYLAND’s Chicken Plantation

When DISNEYLAND opened in 1955, it wasn’t quite as isolated as many people seemed to think it was. For many in Los Angeles, Anaheim was some far off hicktown on the road to San Diego. The rest had probably never heard of it. Orange County, however, already had a kitschy roadside attraction- Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, northwest of DISNEYLAND. The attraction began life as a roadside fruit stand, selling fresh fruit and preserves to people heading to the beaches of Orange County. After adding a fried chicken restaurant to the farm, crowds descended upon it, forcing its owner- Walter Knott- to expand the attraction, adding a ghost town to give his guests something to do during the long waits for a table.

Some people thought that DISNEYLAND would obliterate its competition, though both Walters- Knott and Disney- had a great relationship. Walter Knott saw DISNEYLAND as a place that would bring more people to Orange County and thus more people to his attractions. While Walt Disney did want a symbiotic relationship between the neighboring attractions, he did want to keep as much business within the Magic Kingdom as possible, so the park opened up the Chicken Plantation on the edge of Frontierland.

The Chicken Plantation, located roughly where Pirates of the Caribbean stands today, served fried chicken dinners in a casual, walk up environment. Despite the park’s best intentions, the Chicken Plantation was not seen as being the equal of Knott’s Chicken Restaurant and Southern California locals began a tradition of stopping by Knott’s Berry Farm after their yearly visit to DISNEYLAND. In fact, DISNEYLAND’s food service was seen by many as being subpar. Due to budgetary constraints, many of the park’s food service locations had been run by outside concessionaires who Walt Disney felt hadn’t provided the high quality he expected. By the time that practically all of the food services had been taken in-house, Walt Disney had already passed away.

The Chicken Plantation was demolished to make way for New Orleans Square, which featured the restaurant that Walt Disney hoped would change the public’s opinion of DISNEYLAND’s restaurants- The Blue Bayou. It would do just that. Today, DISNEYLAND guests looking for a chicken dinner inside the park can head to the Plaza Inn on Main Street. Some say the fried chicken is better there than at Knott’s Berry Farm. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the chicken is quite good; good enough to make Walt Disney proud.

Theme Park Thursdays: Dateline DISNEYLAND

Unrealized Dreams Week: Theme Park Thursdays

Over the years, Walt Disney and his imagineers have had many dreams. Most of those dreams never made the leap from drawing board to reality. Nowadays, DISNEYLAND typically tries to keep a lid on its future plans, though occasionally word of a future project slips out. By the time the park puts up a sign announcing a project inside the theme park, it is usually because the project has already been approved and broken ground. That wasn’t always the case.

Guests who purchased souvenir maps in the late 1950’s saw plans for “Liberty Street”, an entirely new land that would be built between Main Street and Tomorrowland. Of course, the project was never built for various reasons, but one could forgive Disney for inserting an unapproved future project on a souvenir map, right? Certainly they wouldn’t promote such a thing inside the park, right? Well they totally did.

Theme Park Thursdays: Loading & Unloading

One of the rarest types of pictures from DISNEYLAND in the 1950’s and 60’s is of interiors. Since each photo had a cost involved, both in film use and developing, many tourists chose to only take exterior pictures that were assured to come out correctly. Interior pictures might not develop correctly, so most people wouldn’t take the risk. (After all, in those days they most likely wouldn’t know if the picture came out until after they were back home.) So what did the loading areas for the Fantasyland dark rides look like? Below, we see the boarding area for Snow White’s Scary Adventures.

Apparently, the women who operated the attraction dressed like Snow White. As you can also see, there were less safety gates at the time and it looks like the male ride operators wore shirts and ties. In order to save money, the attractions had less theming that consisted of painted scenes from the film. In 1982, Walt Disney’s original Fantasyland plans were built out, with more elaborate loading areas and European village theming added.

Theme Park Thursdays: Attraction #1- The Disneyland Railroad

Often the first attraction encountered by visitors to Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom, The Disneyland Railroad was the first attraction mentioned fully planned out by Walt Disney. In fact, his first description of DISNEYLAND was that it “should look like nothing else in the world- and it will be surrounded by a train.”

The first two engines were built from scratch at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank and trucked down to DISNEYLAND. Since the trains were sponsored by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, The engines were named after founders of the Railroad- the C.K. Holliday and the E.P. Ripley. The trains were the personal property of Walt Disney; its workers his employees. His personal company rented the land from DISNEYLAND and the attraction was run as a separate corporate entity.

Eventually the two trains were overwhelmed by the massive crowds visiting DISNEYLAND each day. Walt Disney looked into building new trains, but fabricating new engines was deemed to be financially unfeasible. The company instead sought out older engines that could be refurbished for use at DISNEYLAND. The next two engines were named after then current AT&SF Railroad executives Fred Gurley and Ernest Marsh.

The trains would chug along as a DISNEYLAND tradition, eventually becoming owned by the theme park itself. A fifth engine was added in 2005, named after the Disney animator who inspired Walt Disney’s love of trains- Ward Kimball.

Theme Park Thursdays

Theme Park Thursdays

Theme Park Thursdays: Figment!

These days it seems as though the Disney Theme Parks are unwilling to create new characters for their attractions. Everything new these days always seems to be tied to existing characters. When Epcot Center first opened it wanted to present new concepts with new characters. Initially, Mickey and friends were not going to make any appearances in the park at all. When the park opened it had its own characters to delight guests and one of the most delightful characters introduced at the time was Figment!

Figment was meant to be the personification of creativity and imagination. His theme song was One Little Spark, an anthem to creativity.

Theme Park Thursdays: Anaheim Before DISNEYLAND

In the early 1950’s, Anaheim, California was a sleepy town that was barely a blip on the world’s radar. An agricultural town, its population was less than 1,000. City leadership saw that big changes were coming to Southern California and it decided it wanted to get in on the new postwar gold rush that was brewing. It had decided to begin courting big businesses and sought industrial and manufacturing companies.

Anaheim knew that it would need a mix of zones to attract the manufacturing businesses it was seeking, so it actually had begun laying out the future city zones. Several large parcels in the vicinity of Harbor Blvd. and Katella Ave. were seen as being ideal for housing tracts where future workers could live. That plan would change in 1953. Instead of housing tracts, a visionary man would see that land as being an ideal spot to locate an entirely different enterprise- a Magic Kingdom.

At first, the city of Anaheim wasn’t sure what to think about this ‘Magic Kingdom’. Was it a fly by night carnival? Some kind of fair? Luckily, Walt Disney was able to convince them that DISNEYLAND would be a jewel that would bring millions from around the world to the former orange groves of Anaheim.

Theme Park Thursdays: Disney Vacationland

South Katella Parking Gate 

Harbor Blvd. Main Parking Entrance

West Street - Disneyland Hotel

Harbor Blvd.

Walt Disney on Harbor Blvd.