“We need your help, oh great citizens of the Internet! I’m writing a book with former Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump, and we’re looking for some old photos for it that you may have in your collection. We’re looking for stuff from his time at Disney (such as Adventureland Bazaar in 1963, Tower of Four Winds, The Enchanted Tiki Room in the 60s, It’s A Small World at World’s Fair, The Land in 1980s) and his outside work (like Bear-y Tales at Knott’s Berry Farm, Circus World, and Busch Gardens). Anything that Rolly has brought to life, we’d love to see your photos of it. We will gladly give you credit AND a signed copy of the book if we use your images!”

I know some of you Neatorama readers have been visiting the park for decades, so here’s a good opportunity to take advantage of those old family vacation photos.

Link Via BoingBoing

If you absolutely adore Disney’s Haunted Mansion, then why not incorporate your own version of the ride’s classic Grim Grinning Ghosts for your Halloween decor this year? Instructables has all the directions you need to get your ghosts socializing.

Link Via Laughing Squid

Disneyland may be the happiest place on Earth, but it's no walk in the park for its hundreds of laundry workers.

Steve Lopez of The Los Angeles Times wrote about the "electronic whip" that hotels at Disneyland installed to spur productivity:

In the basements of the Disneyland and Paradise Pier hotels in Anaheim, big flat-screen monitors hang from the walls in rooms where uniformed crews do laundry. The monitors are like scoreboards, with employees' work speeds compared to one another. Workers are listed by name, so their colleagues can see who is quickest at loading pillow cases, sheets and other items into a laundry machine.

It should come as no surprise that at the happiest place on Earth, not all the employees are smiling.

Isabel Barrera, a Disneyland Hotel laundry worker for eight years, began calling the new system the "electronic whip" when it was installed last year. The name has stuck.

"I was nervous," said Barerra, who makes $11.94 an hour, "and felt that I was being controlled even more."

Link

Previously on Neatorama: Neatorama Facts: Closed Disney Rides | The Early Days of Mickey and Minnie Mouse | The Dark Side of Disney

I know I post a lot of Disneyland stories, but that’s because the park is just so darn fun. BuzzFeed’s collection of staged Splash Mountain pics are definitely worth a look for those of you who also dig Disneyland -and those of you who just like silly pictures.

Link

This maquette of the Hatbox Ghost, a mysterious figure that appeared briefly in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion before seemingly disappearing off the face of the earth, was made by Kevin and Jody Kidney in celebration of Walt Disney World’s 40th Anniversary.

He features real hair fibers and a base made out of weathered barn wood, with a wavy glass bell jar on top so the sculpt looks a bit strange when viewed through the glass. Let’s hope this sculpture doesn’t mysteriously vanish like the original animatronic figure!

Link

If you’ve been to Disneyland in the last twenty years, then you’re almost certainly familiar with Splash Mountain. Even if you refuse to ride the massive log ride, you probably at least rode the train through the tunnel that shows the happy ending of the ride. But did you know the ride is based on a movie that has never been released on home video because it’s considered too offensive? Or that the reason there are so many familiar faces inside is because the imagineers salvaged the characters for another attraction? There’s plenty more fun trivia like this inside this edition of our Neatorama Facts series.

Image Via OpenThreads [Flickr]

Trying To Make a Splash

The Zip-a-Dee River Run was originally conceived of as a way to start attracting more people over to the often empty Bear Country area of the park, which was renamed Critter Country after Splash Mountain was opened. Unfortunately, the project quickly ballooned over budget, becoming one of the most expensive projects the Imagineering team had worked on up until that point. To help reduce the cost as much as possible, the team decided to use previously existing animatronic animals from the recently closed America Sings attraction. Even then, the ride still ended up costing $75 million to complete.

Although CEO Michael Eisner kept pushing for the ride to be based on the film Splash, imagineers had long planned to base the ride on the live action/animation film Song of the South and they refused to be moved on that point. In honor of Eisner’s ignored contributions, they did decide to change the name of the ride from the Zip-a-Dee River Run to Splash Mountain.

Strangely, despite the fact that one of the most popular Disney rides was based on Song of the South, the company has still refused to release the title to American home video or DVD because their executives believe the content is offensive to black people. While Uncle Remus is the character believed to be the most offensive and was left out of the ride as well, his presence can be felt in the queue area; a variety of his quotes can be found throughout the barn-themed line area, all the way up to the loading area.

Images Via Express Monorail and PrincessAshley [Flickr]

America Sings Again

Because first Splash Mountain incorporated the characters from America Sings, the Disneyland ride has the most animatronic characters in their version of the ride –a total of 105. While the main characters were specifically created for the new ride, all of the rest were rescued from the closed attraction. All but a handful of the characters from America Sings were used in Splash Mountain; two of the other characters were already hijacked and reskinned for use in Star Tours and one was saved to help teach new imagineers how the technology works.

While the characters may have already been dressed for the occasion, the America Sings animatronics had to be completely reprogrammed and synched with the ride. It took imagineers over 80 hours to rework each figure to fit in their new home. After months of hard work, the characters can now carry out 45 seconds of movement and dialogue before they loop back to the beginning of their programming sequence.

In comparison to the 105 animatronics at Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom only has 68 animatronics and Tokyo Disneyland has about the same number. In case you’re wondering, there is no Splash Mountain at Disneyland Paris because the designers agreed the weather was a bad fit for a water-splashing log ride.

A Simple Story From A Time Long Ago

While the live-action story lines aren’t used in Splash Mountain, many of the Br’er Rabbit tales from the film are. When you get on the ride, you are soon put on a conveyor belt that brings you up the side of the mountain. The main characters can be seen, but mostly you’re just serenaded by unseen voices singing “How Do You Do?” before you drop down the first small dip nicknamed “Slippin’ Falls.” You’re then whisked inside the mountain where you are entrenched in a cartoon version of Georgia circa 1870.

Once inside, you see the source of the singing, the geese, frogs and opossums cheerfully saying hello through song. You also see Br’er Rabbit mocking Br’er Bear just before you go down the next small drop, leading to the Rainbow Caverns filled with more characters, this time singing “Ev’rybody’s Got A Laughing Place.”

In the movie, Br’er Rabbit gets caught in a tar blob that was disguised to look like a little person, but since the “tar baby” was considered to have questionable undertones, the ride shows Br’er Fox catching the sly rabbit in the honey of a bee hive instead. The mood in the ride turns somber and the characters start to sing “Burrow’s Lament” and your log starts climbing up the large hill. You pass between two vultures who taught your impending doom and see Br’er Rabbit about to be eaten by Br’er Fox.

In the movie, Br’er Rabbit convinces the fox to throw him into his home in the brier patch using reverse psychology, so after taking the huge dive down “Doo-Dah Landing,” you’re suddenly immersed in a happy land of critters singing “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” You see Br’er Rabbit relaxing at home with his family and Br’er Bear and Br’er Fox fighting off a hungry alligator.

Before arriving at the loading area, you’re shown a preview of the photo that was taken during the plunge as Professor Barnaby Owl describes the looks on the rider’s faces.

Image Via Loren Javier [Flickr]

Differences Between The Parks

Overall, the Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom’s versions of the rides are fairly similar, except that the Disney World logs feature a lap bar, likely added after a rider died after trying to get out while the ride was moving. The Disney World version also has slightly different music, as the Southern style of Disneyland’s Critter Country ride was determined to not be a perfect fit for the Magic Kingdom’s version, which was located in Frontierland. As a result, the music is a bit more country-music styled.

The Tokyo version looks largely the same as the others, but it features the country music soundtrack from Disney World with reworded lyrics and the dialogue is split between English and Japanese. The scenes are also put in a different order. This park has the highest drop of the three parks, letting riders fall 60 feet instead of 52 feet. Interestingly, the Japanese version is also the driest, as this version was specially designed to limit the size of the splash. If you want to stay dry at the other parks, all you can do is try to get on a log with a lot of kids, as the more your log weighs, the more water you’ll get soaked with.

Image Via vmpyr_david [Flickr]

Sweet Southern Sounds

You might not realize it when you’re on the ride, but some serious celebrities gave their voices to the characters.  A few background characters with famous voices include: Br’er Owl by Woody Allen, Br’er Frog by Humphrey Bogart, Br’er Turkey by Keanu Reeves and Br’er Frog by James Avery (aka Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air). Only one voice from the original movie was used, and that is Nick Stewart who voices Br’er Bear. As for the two main characters, they were both voiced by Jess Harnell, who is better known for his role as Wakko Warner on Animaniacs and as the most recent announcer for America’s Funniest Videos. Many of the other characters and the final song, “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” were voiced by imagineers and Disneyland cast members who just happened to be working at the park when the ride was being designed.

The only song that Disney paid people outside the company to work on was “How Do You Do?” This number was recorded especially for the ride by a 29-piece group called The Floozies. The bullfrogs singing this number are all performed by members of this band, with one notable exception. The frog with the deep bass voice was voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft who also voiced Tony the Tiger and was one of the lead singers for a variety of other Disney rides, including The Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion.

Image Via Express Monorail [Flickr]

Switching the “Sp” for a “F”

While I’m sure some of you are already familiar with why the ride is sometimes called “Flash Mountain,” let me go ahead and corrupt you innocent readers who don’t know about this phenomenon. Because the ride has a huge climax that is viewable by visitors not yet on the ride at the same time guest’s photos are snapped, more than a few women (and men) have decided to flash the camera during the log drop. While Disney is usually pretty good about deleting these images before they get out, at one point an employee managed to steal a number of them and upload them on to the internet. It’s almost impossible for anyone to steal these images from the park now, due to heightened security measures, but even so, a lot of women still bare it all on the drop –only to get escorted off the premises shortly after landing.

Image Via Loren Javier [Flickr]

So, do you guys like the ride or is it too tall or too wet for you? Personally, I love the singing and the characters, but after being wet for over seven hours the last time I went on it, I haven’t been too eager to go back. Have any of you had similar experiences?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, Disneyland, Songofthesouth.net, Snopes

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Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion
Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle
Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean
Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise
Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain
Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room
Neatorama Facts: Christmas at Disneyland
Neatorama Facts: It’s a Small World
Neatorama Facts: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Neatorama Facts: Star Tours

To promote the newly-opened Star Tours at Disneyland, Darth Vader himself came to check it out. The problem? It wasn’t quiiiiite ready. What’s a Sith Lord to do? Explore the park, obviously.

You can also see lots of sweet extended cuts:
Darth at the Sword in the Stone
Darth watches a parade
Darth on the tea cups
Darth walks through Sleeping Beauty Castle
Darth at a dance party

Link via Disney Parks Blog

When you talk about Star Tours nowadays, you have to distinguish between the new and improved version that just opened this year and the classic incarnation, which was first launched in 1987. Personally, I haven’t been on the new version and I’m sure many of you haven’t yet either, which is why it’s so exciting to read about. Of course, the classic ride was something all Disneyland lovers recall with fondness, so I’ll be sure to include plenty of info on that one as well, including the history of the ride itself.

Image via inturnaround [Flickr]

Creating A Ride That Occurs “A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away”

While Star Tours eventually became the first Disney ride based on a film the company had nothing to do with, it didn’t start out that way. Originally the ride was conceived to go along with the 1979 Disney film The Black Hole. The ride was intended to be an interactive simulator that allowed guests the opportunity to choose the car’s route, but because the project was going to be so expensive (ringing in at an estimated $50 million) and the film wasn’t a big success, the idea was quickly shelved.

Fortunately, rather than trashing the idea altogether, the company decided to partner with George Lucas, who was already working with them to produce Captain EO. Once everyone agreed to the idea, the Imagineers started work on the project by buying four military-grade flight simulators that cost $500,000 each and then they started designing the building and ride around their new toys.

While the Imagineers worked on the technical side of the project, Lucas and his team at Industrial Light & Magic worked on the film that would be played inside the simulators. Once the simulators and film were up to speed, a programmer then had to sit inside with a joystick to manually synchronize the vehicle’s movements to the action on screen.

By the time the project was completed in 1987, the ride cost a total of $32 million, which was almost twice the cost Disney paid to build the entire park back in 1955. To celebrate the official opening, and to help promote the new ride, the grand opening of Star Tours coincided with the park being left open for 60 straight hours starting on January 9, 1987 at 10 am.

Image via popculturegeek.com [Flickr]

The Story of A Classic

While the actual ride doesn’t start till you get on the simulators, you enter the story line as soon as you get to the inside queue area. Essentially, you are a tourist traveling through space to visit Endor. As you go through the line, you can see posters advertising different intergalactic destinations, along with animatronic characters who work at the space port and a life-size mock up of a StarSpeeder 3000 –the ship you are using to travel the galaxy.

If you paid attention in the line for the classic version of the ride, you’d notice a few Star Wars favorites, such as Admiral Ackbar, C3P0 and R2D2. The two famous robots were actually used in the film and C3P0 is even plated in gold, which Lucas chose because it was the only material that gave the right color he was looking for and it was guaranteed not to rust. Another fun distraction in the line was a recorded page for “Mr. Egroeg Sacul,” to meet his party at gate 2. If you ever wondered who the heck that is, try reading the name backwards –that’s right, it’s “George Lucas.”

Once you got near the front of the line, you’d be shown a quick safety video and then you would enter the flight simulator. As the doors closed, your pilot, RX-24, introduced himself and chattily told you that this would be his first flight. If you think this pilot sounded familiar, that’s because he’s voiced by Paul Reubens –aka Peewee Herman.

RX-24 screwed up before you even got out of the space station, sending the ship into a tunnel that led to a maintenance yard and almost getting everyone killed right away. He would then take a breath, put the ship into light speed and manage to overshoot his intended destination. Suddenly, the ship is inside of a comet cluster and RX-24 had to maneuver it out of a maze of tunnels inside of a giant comet in the belt. Upon exiting, he would then be captured by the tractor beam of a Star Destroyer.

A rebel X-wing fighter would save the ship by destroying the beam’s generator, but that also meant that the ship had to tag along in the battle while the rebels attempted to destroy a Death Star. The ship had to avoid attacks by the Empire and navigate through a complex maze of rubble before flying away when one of the rebels manages to destroy the Death Star. Finally, RX-24 would put the ship in light speed again and the ship would arrive at its intended destination, but not before almost crashing into a fuel truck before docking.

While the old ride was great, Disneyland has always been dedicated to updating its rides to keep the park feeling modern and to give the guests new experiences. With that in mind, the company worked with George Lucas again to renovate the ride. In celebration of the ride’s closing, Walt Disney World threw a huge celebration and at the end, they held a Star Tours shutdown ceremony where Boba Fett blew the ride up using a thermal detonator.

For those of you who can’t get enough of the classic, you can always take a trip to Disneyland Paris or Tokyo Disneyland, where there have been no announcements to update the rides as of yet.

Images via JoshMcConnell [Flickr] and Peter E. Lee [Flickr]

Enhancing An Already Great Time

Star Tours: The Adventure Continues takes place earlier in the time line of Star Wars. The original ride was set after Return of the Jedi, but the newer version takes place sometime between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. It is also majorly different in that it offers over 54 different possible experiences and the equipment used has all been improved –there’s now high-def video, a 3D high-def screen, an improved motion simulator and other new special effects.

The basic story of the ride remains the same, guests are space tourists on their way to a particular destination –but there are now multiple destinations available. Similarly, the queue also features the same animatronic Star Wars characters, only now there is also a discarded Captain RX-24 who periodically delivers lines from his prior role as your captain. The biggest change in the line area though is that there is now a mock security checkpoint where your luggage, cargo and self will be inspected –unlike a TSA checkpoint though, there are no nude body scanners and you can keep your shoes on.

Once you get through security, you’ll see a television monitor showing you C-3PO who has been trapped in the cockpit while trying to perform maintenance on the ship. You will then be seated and start the adventure, which will always involve delivering the Rebel spy (a randomly chosen member of the audience) to safety.

There are eleven segments of the film though and each segment has multiple options that the ride will select randomly. Ultimately, there are 54 different journeys available and that’s not including the bonus that you might be selected as the Rebel spy on your voyage. This means you can ride the attraction over and over without getting bored and if you have been on it a few times, you can even tell the queue operators which journeys you have been on to ensure you get the maximum variety for your trip.

Depending on your specific trip, you may or may not hear the newly recorded audio from famous cast members including Anthony Daniels as C-3P0, James Earl Jones as Darth Vader, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, Frank Oz as Yoda and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. All in all, the ride is even more tied in with the actual films than it used to be and the special effects and random ride options make it even more immersive than ever before.

Images via litlnemo [Flickr] and HarshLight [Flickr]

I’m waiting until the Fall to head back to Disneyland so I won’t have to deal with the heat and all the crowds, so I’m dying to ride the new Star Tours. Have any of you gotten to take a trip yet? If so, what did you think? Do you prefer the old version or the new one?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, Little-Known Facts About Well-Known Places: Disneyland

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Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion
Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle
Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean
Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise
Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain
Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room
Neatorama Facts: Christmas at Disneyland
Neatorama Facts: It’s a Small World
Neatorama Facts: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Have you ever wondered what Disneyland had to offer before it began getting massive, modernizing facelifts? Then take a look at this old map of the magical kingdom from 1962, scanned and uploaded in full size by Wishbook, with lots of classic Disney character heads surrounding a detailed, Imagineer drawn map! Look for the view all sizes button on Flickr and choose original size if you want to read the tiny text, and see all the pretty little drawings up close.

Link via Boing Boing.

Disneyphiles already know that yesterday marked the anniversary of the day Disneyland opened in 1955. What you might not know is that one of the kids who ran through Sleeping Beauty castle for the first time ever is now a Security Officer at the park and has worked there since 1972. In addition to capturing Robb Fischle’s memories, the video has some cool shots of Disneyland construction and opening day.

Link

(Video Link)

The hatbox ghost was included in the original haunted mansion and marketing materials for the attraction, but almost no one actually saw the ghost in the park. For years, debates raged on about whether or not the ghost ever really existed, but for the first time ever, someone has video evidence of him.

Link Via BoingBoing

Disney fans rejoice, it’s time for yet another set of Neatorama Facts featuring the Happiest Place on Earth. This time, we’re taking a detailed look at “the wildest ride in the wilderness,” Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Image via Mastery of Maps [Flickr]

Conceived and Created In Different Parks

Most of the definitive “Disney” rides seem to have been created specifically for Disneyland long before they were added to Disney World and the other parks, but Big Thunder Mountain started out in exactly the opposite way. This time, the ride was originally conceived as part of a new Magic Kingdom area called the Western River Expedition, a Western-themed area similar to Frontierland. The area would look like a big plateau and contain a number of rides, including a runaway mine train roller coaster. Unfortunately, because the park just opened Pirates of the Caribbean, the area was considered too expensive to install, so Imaginer Tony Baxter proposed building just the coaster as a separate attraction, which would instead be added to Disneyland park first. While that idea was approved, the project way put on hold so the team could focus on Space Mountain.

More Computers, More Problems

The delay in the project actually turned out to be a good thing though, as it meant the developers were allowed to use computers to design the coaster, allowing for a smoother ride than one designed by hand.  Big Thunder Mountain was actually the first ride to use a computer to design the track, but because it was a brand new technology, the creation process was actually anything but smooth.

While ride designers knew what would look good, the computer wanted the ride to be as simple and smooth as possible. So the imagineers had to submit nine different designs before the computer finally accepted one without automatically making changes that would make it less attractive.

Eventually the design was accepted upon by all parties and construction started. The ride opened first in Disneyland in 1979 and a larger version opened in the Magic Kingdom a year later.

Image via Sally Ann French [Flickr]

There Is Actually A Plot

While the railroad coaster may not seem to have as much of a storyline as some of the other rides, it actually have a pretty detailed story. Essentially, gold was discovered at Big Thunder Mountain and the nearby town quickly became a thriving mining town. Unfortunately, the miners who built the mine trains to transport the ore didn’t realize the mountain was sacred to the Native American tribe and that those who disturbed the mountain were cursed. The earthquake in the tunnels destroyed the mines and killed enough workers that the town was quickly abandoned.

I’ve been riding the mine carts for years and never once realized that there’s supposed to be a significance to the fact that there’s no engineer in the train. As it turns out, that was very intentional. The carts are supposedly running on their own because they are possessed.

Tourists are now asked to enjoy a trip through the haunted mines in the possessed trains. Scary, right?

Shoutouts to The Past

Before Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was built in Disneyland, there was already a somewhat similar (although significantly slower) train ride in that spot. The Mine Train attraction featured a small mining town, glowing pools of water and two waterfalls, named Big Thunder and Little Thunder.

After tearing the old attraction down, many of the features were kept around and incorporated to be part of the new ride. The ride itself is named after the large waterfall in the Mine Train ride and the town at the end of the ride was from the old ride, the rainbow caverns at the beginning of the ride, and most of the animatronics are all from the previous occupant of the space.

Image via kalavinka [Flickr]

Acquiring Other Design Details

The rock formations themselves are based on real landscapes found in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah (the landscape at the other parks is based on Arizona’s Monument Valley). As for all those fun decorating details like the ore-crusher and the hauling wagon that sit just out of reach of the tourists, those are real relics from the American Southwest that were purchased specifically for use on the ride.

Sound Familiar?

If you’ve kept up on all of these Neatorama Disneyland articles, you’ve probably noticed that Disney was big on using the same voice actors over and over. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is no exception to this rule. The narrator that warns you to keep your hands and arms inside the ride while you experience the “the wildest ride in the wilderness” is Dallas McKennon. If you think his voice sounds a little familiar, that’s probably because you’ve heard him talk in many other Disney roles, including the fox in Mary Poppins, the Owl in Sleeping Beauty and a number of supplemental characters in Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians. He also did the voice for Archie Andrews in the Archie cartoons of the 60’s.

Image via iheartlatkes [Flickr]

By The Numbers:

• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad can reach a top speed of 30 miles per hour, but usually travels around 24.
• The ride lasts an average of three minutes and fifteen seconds.
• There are six trains on the ride and they all have terrible puns in their names, all of which start with U.R., I.B. or I.M. The full list is: U.R. Courageous, I.M. Brave, I.M. Bold, U.R. Fearless, I.B. Hearty and U.R. Daring.

Do you guys like Thunder Mountain, or is it a little to fast for you? Also, how many of you actually knew the ride had a plot? Be honest.

Sources: Wikipedia, Mental Floss, All Ears

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Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

Neatorama Facts: Christmas at Disneyland

Neatorama Facts: It’s a Small World

Walt Disney Imagineering is updating the features of the Haunted Mansion. Here’s a look at how they are changing the beloved “hitchhiking ghosts.” -via Boing Boing

Sarah Gallejo knows a winner when she sees one. This young girl was chosen out of the audience at Disneyland’s Jedi Academy to participate in a stage show. She went off script and, rather than fighting Darth Vader, joined him.

via Super Punch

Image via Thomas Hawk [Flickr]

A Last Minute Addition

One of Disney’s most iconic attractions actually started out as a last minute attraction to the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The team was already working on a number of exhibits for the fair, including the Magic Skyway, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and The Carousel of Progress, when the program manager for the fair reached out to Disney and asked him to creat a tribute to UNICEF.

Always up to a challenge, Disney agreed and asked Mary Blair, Marc Davis, Alice Davis and Gregory S. Marinello for help. Mary gave the ride its overall feel and whimsy and inspired the general character design. Marc designed the scenes and the specific characters, while his wife, Alice, designed the costumes. Gregory designed the clock face on the exterior. Walt oversaw the design of the doll’s faces, which were all made to be exactly the same in order to promote the concept that all around the world children are all the same deep down.

Image via Andy Castro [Flickr]

The original nickname of the ride was “the happiest cruise that ever sailed” and the ride was intended to showcase the national anthem for each country portrayed. Unfortunately, this ended up sounding like a terrible mess in practice, so he hired the Sherman Brothers, the same gents who wrote the theme song for the Tiki Room, to create a song that would unify the ride’s characters together. It was only after the boys came back with their masterpiece that the ride got its name.

To really bring a spirit of unity, children from all over the world were hired to sing the song for the official recording. A London church choir, a Roman school chorus and Mexican tv performers are some of the many voices heard on the soundtrack. In a striking gesture, Disney opted not to copyright the song at the urging of UNICEF and he declared that he gave it to the children of the world as a gift. It remains the only Disney creation to never be copyrighted.

A Smashing Success

At the fair, the ride was a huge hit and over 10 million ride tickets were sold in the two years the fair operated, resulting in a huge chunk of proceeds given to UNICEF. While the ride constantly had visitors, the mechanics of the boat ride allowed for lines to move quickly. The amazing capacity prompted the company to change their plans for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean attraction from a walk-through exhibit to a boat ride.

As soon as the World’s Fair was over, the ride was installed in the Anaheim park, opening for the first time on May 28, 1966. The attraction was installed rather quickly since it mostly just had to be moved from the World’s Fair back to Disneyland and put back together (all the original pieces were used in the current version). Still, some additions were needed to ensure it could survive as a permanent ride instead of a quick touring ride.

To commemorate the ride’s official opening, Disney invited children from around the world to attend the grand opening. He asked each of them to bring a container of water from a lake, ocean or river in their native country. Before the ride opened, the containers were emptied into the water of the attraction.

Each cruise lasts about 15 minutes and features over 300 costumed dolls singing the official song. Because there are now five Disneyland parks, all of which play the song on a constant loop, the song is estimated to be the most performed musical composition in the world. It’s estimated that more than 256 million people have ridden the cruse, which means it might just hold the record for “song to get stuck in the most people’s heads.”

Changing A Classic

Image via Armadillo444 [Flickr]

As you may have noticed through the Neatorama Facts series about Disneyland, the park always goes through renovations and no matter how minor they are, fans always cry foul. It’s A Small World went through a very serious renovation in 2009 and the reviews seem to be divided. While some of the changes were minor, like the enhancements to the water jets that push the boats through the ride and the replacement of the old boats, the big difference was the addition of over 30 Disney characters into the classic attraction’s scenes. The renovation also included a new “America” area, where there used to be a South American rain forest scene.

Personally, I find the added Disney characters to be subtle and their inclusion creates a fun game for guests to find all of the new characters. Here’s a video of the change for comparison:

Holiday Inspirations

It’s A Small World joins the Haunted Mansion in being one of the only rides to change on the inside and outside during the Christmas season. During this time of year, the children sing classic holiday songs, which are seamlessly blended in with the Small World theme. Each region is also adorned with the area’s traditional holiday décor. On the outside, the façade is just as impressive, adorned with tons of glowing Christmas lights.

Image via Andy Castro [Flickr]

A Few More Fun Tidbits:

• The Sherman Brothers claim to have written the song in response to the fear caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis, hence some of the less cuddly lyrics like “it’s a world of laughter, a world of tears, its a world of hopes, its a world of fears.”
• In reference to the song’s lyrics, which say, “there is just one moon and one golden sun,” there is at least one sun and one moon in every room of the ride.
• The official name of the waterway you travel down is the “Seven Seas Canal.”
• The golden accents on the building are actually 24-karat gold.

Do you guys like It’s A Small World, or does the catchy song drive you bananas? For those of you who are fans, what do you think about the Disney character additions? Are they a fun little enhancement or a distraction?

Sources: Wikipedia, National Institute For Health, Mental Floss, Disneyland and Little-Known Facts About Well-Known Places

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Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

Neatorama Facts: Christmas at Disneyland

The Enchanted Tiki Room is kind of like It’s A Small World –people either love it or hate it and no matter how you actually feel about it, you’re guaranteed to have the songs stuck in your head after you leave. Personally, I’m one of those people who loves the show–not least of all because it means getting to sit in a nice air conditioned room while eating pineapple soft serve while the temperature outside exceeds 90 degrees.

Image via CarterHawk [Wikipedia]

Dinner Theater Is For The Birds

When Walt originally started work on the Tiki Room, he envisioned it as a restaurant where guests would be entertained by animatronic birds performing for the diners. It was intended to share a kitchen with the Plaza Pavilion and Tahitian Terrace. Interestingly, now none of these locations operates as a restaurant, the Plaza Pavilion is now used as an Annual Passport processing center and the Tahitian Terrace is now Aladdin’s Oasis, which mostly serves as a meet and greet area for those looking to take pictures with Aladdin and Jasmine.

Image via Loren Javier [Flickr]

There are still aspects of the building that give away its original nature. For one, it is the only attraction to include its own restrooms. Another mark of the planned restaurant, the magic fountain in the center of the room was originally planned to be a coffee station –which is why there is a storage compartment build into the base.

Of course, Walt and his crew soon realized the property would be too popular and was too small to seat all of the people who would want to see the show. Rather than scrapping the idea, the design was altered to accommodate rows of benches for guests to sit and watch the show.

Entertaining Through Animatronics

The Tiki Room was the first Disney attraction to feature Audio-Animatronics and since it required the use of computers (the operations room is located under the attraction), this also meant that it was the first ride to offer air conditioning –a factor that has continued to add to its popularity during hot Southern California summers.

Image via Loren Javier [Wikipedia]

In order to make the birds look as realistic as possible, designers opted to use real feathers on their bodies. They didn’t think the feathers looked quite right on the bird’s chests through, so they continued to brainstorm on what to use until imaginer Harriet Burns had lunch with Walt one day. He was wearing a cashmere sweater and Harriet noticed that the fabric moved on his elbows the exact way the team had envisioned the bird’s chests to move.

When the attraction opened, the four host birds all had the same colored feathers, white, green, yellow and blue. But as time progressed, the designers decided that each bird’s coloring should represent his country of origin. Jose is red, white and green. Michael is white and green. Pierre is blue, white and red. And Fritz is black, red and white.

If you’ve ever wondered about the breakdown of birds to flowers to tiki carvings, there are over 150 animatronic “actors” in the show, including:

• 54 singing orchids
• 12 toucans
• 12 tiki drummers
• 8 macaws (including the four hosts)
• 7 bird of paradise flowers
• 6 cockatoos

Opening A Classic

Strangely, Walt decided to put ownership of the attraction under his own company, WED Enterprises, rather than the Walt Disney Company, which owned the rest of the park. This meant guests had to pay a small admission fee of $.75 when the ride opened in June of 1963.

When the attraction opened, Hawaii had only recently become a state and America was obsessed with anything featuring a tropical island theme. Unsurprisingly, the Tiki Room was an instant success. In fact, the show was so popular that crowds would block up the entire entrance of Adventureland just to catch  glimpse of the talking bird outside the attraction –he was soon removed.

Inside The Show

Image via Loren Javier [Flickr]

Before entering, guests are entertained by talking tiki statutes that each represent Polynesian gods. There is also a Dole-sponsored video about pineapples. Eventually, the doors open and you are invited inside. Once everyone is seated, the cast member taps on Jose’s perch with a bamboo cane and the show begins. While it is not common knowledge, the show doesn’t have to be started by a cast member, so if you ask if you can wake up Jose as the audience filters in, you just might get to kick off the festivities.

The show kicks off with a little banter and then the birds and flowers start to sing “The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room,” which was written by the Sherman Brothers, who also wrote a number of other Disney classics including “It’s A Small World,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” The fountain then opens up, revealing a chorus line of beautiful cockatoos, the birds then perform “Let’s All Sing Like The Birdies Sing.”

Image via Loren Javier [Flickr]

The next song is the “Hawaiian War Chant,” stars the tiki carvings who sing and play drums. Interestingly, the song wasn’t actually written as a war chant, but as a love song.

The chant suddenly results in thunder, lightning and rain appearing on the windows. The host birds promise to show guests a magic trick by making the audience “disappear.” While everyone leaves, they sing a modified version of Heigh-Ho, that exclaims, “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s out the door you go.”

Behind The Birds

If certain voices from the Tiki Room sound familiar, there’s a reason for that. Fritz and the Hawaiian god Tangaroa are both voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft –the same man who voiced Tony The Tiger, sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” and performed the lead vocals for “Grim Grinning Ghosts” in the Haunted Mansion.

As for some of the lesser known voice talents in the attraction, Jose is voiced by Wally Boag, who was the star actor in the Golden Horseshoe Revue all the way up until 1986. Boag also helped write a lot of the script for the Haunted Mansion. Wally was honored as a Disney Legend in 1995 and was even given his own window on Main Street that reads, “Theatrical Agency – Golden Vaudeville Routines – Wally Boag, Prop.”

Image via Loren Javier [Flickr]

Michael is voiced by Fulton Burley who also worked on the Golden Horseshoe Revue. Pierre was performed by Ernie Newton who also did the singing vocals for Boo-Boo Bear in “Hey There It’s Yogi Bear.” Most of the other bird’s vocals were done by Purvis Pullen, aka Dr. Horatio Q. Birdbath, who was best known for his work with the satirical band Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

The Benefits of Sponsorship

If you don’t like the idea of Disney attractions being sponsored, you may want to reconsider your position when it comes to The Tiki Room. While the original sponsor, United Airlines, didn’t do anything to particularly hurt or help the attraction, Dole did when it took over as a sponsor in 1976. Not only did Dole enhance the show by offering delicious pineapple treats like the Dole Whip (I personally consider these an important aspect of the entire experience), they also put a stipulation in their contract that the attraction remain unchanged. When you consider what happened to the other park’s Tiki Rooms, this can certainly be interpreted as a major victory for the attraction’s fans.

Changes At Other Parks

When the Magic Kingdom opened, they offered a show that was pretty much the exact same, only called the “Tropical Serenade.” This attraction was replaced in 1998 by The Enchanted Tiki Room (Under New Management). This new show started out similar to the original, but was soon interrupted by Iago from Aladdin –voiced by Gilbert Gottfried. Iago yells at the birds and insists they update their act when Zazu from the Lion King enters and tells him to leave the other birds alone and warns him against upsetting the tiki gods. Iago continues and then directly insults the gods, resulting in the tiki goddess Uh-Oa waking up and zapping him with her powers.

When a small fire broke out in the attraction on January 12 of this year, a number of Disney fans expressed the hope that the ride will be “under old management” when it reopens.

The Japanese version also started out like the original, but it was changed to have a Vegas-styled theme with Lounge-styled songs in 1999. Then in 2008 it was changed again, returning to a Hawaiian theme, but this time incorporating Stitch from Lilo and Stitch into the mix. I have to admit that as much as I hate the idea of changing these classic attractions, I’m a huge sucker for Stitch and really want to see this show.

Do you like the Tiki Room or do you find it a little too dull? Also, if you’ve been to the other versions of the attraction, what do you think about the modifications?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, Little Known Facts About Well Known Places: Disneyland

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Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

So far, I’ve focused all of the Neatorama Disney Parks articles on Disneyland, mostly because it was the first of all the parks and most of the classic rides originated at the Anaheim park. But, when I decided to write about Space Mountain, I soon learned that it was one of only two classic Disney Parks attractions to debut at Disney World (the other was the Country Bear Jamboree), so to do it justice, it was only right to focus on the Disney World version of the ride.

Image via KWDW [Wikipedia]

Necessity Leads to Innovation

The idea for Space Mountain originated from the success of the Matterhorn Bobsleds at Disneyland. The popularity of the ride showed Disney that thrilling rides would do well in his park and he started to work with Arrow Development Company (the same firm that designed the Matterhorn) on a concept for a new Tomorrowland attraction called the Space Port. The concept was similar to the Bobsleds, but it would be inside with special lighting and other effects. Originally, the group wanted to use four separate tracks, but when that proved to be too space consuming, the plans were cut down to two tracks. In 1966, the ride was renamed “Space Mountain.” Unfortunately, Walt’s death that year and the new focus on opening the new Disney World park put the plans for Space Mountain on hold indefinitely.

After a few years, it was obvious that The Magic Kingdom was a major success, but also that their customer base was older than originally expected, comprising of a lot of teens and young adults. To keep up their popularity with this age group, the corporation decided they needed to install more thrill rides. There wasn’t enough space in Fantasyland to add another Matterhorn and the weather of Florida made outdoor rollercoasters somewhat impractical. That’s when designers returned to the idea of Space Mountain. There was enough space in Tomorrowland and the technology improvements in the last few years made many of the outlandish concepts for the ride practical.

Because the ride would be kind of expensive to create, Disney approached RCA to sponsor the new attraction –many rides at the park were sponsored at the time. RCA provided communications hardware and money and, in exchange, their name was plastered all over the ride and the moving sidewalk that took guests out of the attraction was accompanied by a “house of the future” exhibit that prominently featured RCA products. RCA’s sponsorship stopped in 1993 and FedEx took over between 1995 and 2005, but the ride no longer has any sponsors.

When the ride was added to the Anaheim park, it had to fit in a smaller dome, so it was reduced to only hold one track. The other Disney parks also have only one track in their Space Mountains.

Image via William M [Wikipedia]

Specs In Space

Space Mountain opened in January 1975 and was the world’s first completely dark indoor rollercoaster. It is now the oldest operating coaster in Florida. It is enclosed in a dome that is 300 feet wide, 183 feet above ground (it also sits 15 feet below the ground, making it a total of 198 feet tall). All together, the dome has a total area of more than 4.5 million feet. The wall is made from 72 massive concrete beams that are each 117 feet long. Because it’s so big, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover passes through it. Fortunately, the PeopleMover features a glass viewing area so guests can look at the ride and see many of the effects used in it.

The Magic Kingdom version of the ride is the only one to offer two tracks and they are almost identical except the Omega track –the one on the right- is ten feet longer so it can cross the tracks to return to its platform.

When the ride is warming up in the morning or after a temporary shutdown, the grease on the track is cold, so the coaster goes slower, up to 25 mph, and the ride lasts longer. Once it’s warmed up, the ride goes up to 32 mph.

Image via WillMcC [Wikipedia]

Travelling Through Space

The ride starts out at the Space Port where guests are loaded into rockets that look similar to the Bobsled carts only there is only one person per seat. Each of the 30 rockets carries six people in a single file line. Guests then travel down a small slope where they enter a circular tunnel featuring shooting lights and repeating sound to signify the building of energy. At the end, it suddenly makes a 180 degree turn and, thanks to the use of mirrors, looks like it will crash into the rocket on the other track. That’s when the real fun starts and guests start seeing the projection of Earth, asteroids, comets and other astral bodies on the ceiling. The ride then goes through a number  of twists and turns before it enters a swirling wormhole that brings it to the braking area and pulls back into the station.

Image via WillMcC [Wikipedia]

All of the park’s Space Mountains are different and while many people prefer the original for its place in history, polls of Disney fans that have gone to all the parks have shown that the one in Paris is considered the best. Have you been on more than one Space Mountain? If so, which is your favorite?

Sources: Disney World, Ultimate Orlando, All Ears, Wikipedia

Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

In many ways though, the creation of this holiday magic is even more amazing than the actual displays. Here’s the details that go into transforming a park from a Halloween harvest theme to a Christmas wonderland.

Image via Armidillo444 [Flickr]

The Christmas Tree:

Every year since its opening, Disneyland features a sixty foot tall Christmas tree that towers over Main Street. Up until 2008, live trees were driven in all the way from Mount Shasta, but since then the park has opted to go green and use an artificial pine that was specially designed by Disney’s Imagineering team. The tree is 65 feet tall, as 5 feet of it sits underground for support. It has over 1,200 branches with a total of 280,000 pine needles which are decorated with 2000 ornaments and 75,000 lights. The electrical cable needed to light all of the lights weighs an astonishing 5,000 pounds.

During the majority of the year, the tree is kept in a warehouse away from the park, but in October, they transport all six pieces of it to the park in the middle of the night. The tree is then put together in the back area of the park, the lights are applied and technicians test the light show. Once they are sure it’s ready to go, they take it apart into two sections. In early November, the 12 ton tree is then moved into place in Main Street using 15 cast members and two cranes.

The tree isn’t the only decorative touch in Main Street though. Throughout Disneyland, the park uses more than 1.5 miles of garland and over 2,000 feet of this is used on Main Street alone. Main Street also features 812 bows, which require 1.4 miles worth of ribbon to create.

Image via Andy Castro [Flickr]

Sleeping Beauty’s Castle:

The iconic castle is redone for wintertime, with a fresh layer of artificial snow and 50,000 lights, including hanging icicles that light up during the nighttime shows. The castle is the central part of a three-part show that takes place every night. The first part of the show occurs at twilight when the sound of wind blowing enters the air followed by a child wishing for snow. A motherly voice is heard to respond, “in order for your wishes to come true, you must believe.” Just then, snow machines blast out icy flurries and the castle lights up with its snow glistening.

Later on, the fireworks show starts and the child is again heard wishing for snow. Then the lights on the castle get even brighter as the snow begins falling again. The fireworks then kick off and just as they approach the grand finale and White Christmas starts to play, the icicles light up and then snow falls in Main Street, New Orlean’s Square and the Small World mall.

Image via Andy Castro [Flickr]

It’s A Small World:

We’ve already talked about how The Haunted Mansion is changed to a Nightmare Before Christmas theme throughout Halloween, but that’s not the only ride to be altered during Christmas time. It’s A Small World is also redone to reflect the holiday spirit. Instead of singing the classic song that provides the ride with its namesake, the children throughout the world sing ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Deck the Halls.’ The exterior of the ride is covered in 300,000 Christmas lights and the large clock in the center is decked out with a Santa hat. After dark the façade features a multi-media presentation projection every fifteen minutes.

Big Thunder Ranch is also modified for the holidays, as it provides Santa and his reindeer a relaxing place to stay just before he rushes around the world to deliver toys.

Image via Wikipedia user Lyght

The Parade:

Every year, the park also features “A Christmas Fantasy parade.” While certain aspects of the parade change every year, it always starts with a music box float featuring a ballerina, which is followed by toy soldiers playing snare drums and trumpets. The Winter Wonderland part of the parade features Tigger, Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh riding and pulling sleighs while Mickey and Minnie skate on an ice rink float. Clarabelle Cow, Goofy and Max all work together to bake gingerbread cookies. Cinderella and the other princesses and their respective princes dance together on a ballroom float. Next, toys of all kinds walk and roll by, led by Chip and Dale, members of Toy Story and Pinocchio. At the very end of the parade, Santa rides by in his sled, wishing Merry Christmas to all the good girls and boys.

Image via Armadillo444 [Flickr]

Are you planning to visit any theme parks during the holiday season? If so, which one(s)? Do any of our Orlando-favoring readers fill us in on the details of the Magic Kingdom’s Christmas celebrations?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, About.com, WDW Info, West Ways Magazine

Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

Creating A Classic

Walt originally envisioned the attraction as an educational adventure where boats would travel by live animals from around the world. He soon realized live animals would be too much of a challenge because they would frequently be sleeping and hiding in the back of enclosures like zoo animals tend to do. Even worse, they’d have to go poo at some point, which would look gross and could be pretty stinky given the small area of space the animals would have to live in.

So instead he opted to use animatronic animals, but he worked to have the creatures look as lifelike as possible and participating in realistic behavior, like the lions eating the zebra. Silly scenes like the rhino attacking the men on the pole and the gorillas ransacking the camp weren’t added until later.

The Imagineers based much of the ride on the movie The African Queen and the vessels used to ferry guests through the attraction are even based on the steamer seen in the film. Another inspiration for the ride was the footage used for the fifties Disney documentary series called True Life Stories.

One of the most difficult challenges of building the attraction was finding plants that looked exotic and getting them to grow. Imagineer Bill Evans chose to use both native and exotic plants in order to save money, but he ensured the local flora still looked in character by performing little landscaping tricks. For example, he grew orange trees in a way where their roots were exposed and then he grew vines on the roots, creating a very junglesque feel to the plants.

The Jungle Cruise was one of the first rides still around that were actually in operation when the park was first opened to the public. In fact, it was one of the first rides built because Walt wanted to give the foliage time to grow before the park opened, even so, it was still pretty sparse on opening day.

Because this specific ride was covered by the press so much during the construction process, it was always a popular attraction and was an E ticket ride.

Tracing Your Voyage

The Jungle Cruise starts out with a simulation of the Irrawaddy and Mekong Rivers, taking visitors through the South East Asian forest. The boat passes a Cambodian temple adorned with crocodiles, giant spiders, king cobras and a Bengal tiger. Next they enter a sacred Indian elephant bathing pool where Indian elephants play in the fountains and spray water at the guests.

The boat then travels through the rivers of Africa, specifically the Nile and passes by two African bull elephants before approaching an African Veldt where giraffes, zebras, wildebeest all watch a group of lions munching on a zebra. A little past this area, there is an angry rhino trying to attack a group of safariers who are hiding up a tree.

Next, the boat is surrounded by angry hippos who are only chased away by a gun shot fired by the skipper. Interestingly, the gun is real; it’s a nickel plated Smith and Wesson .38 Special that has been altered so it can’t shoot live ammo. The skippers carry two types of ammo, the regular blanks used to scare the hippos and extra loud ones in case of emergency. Interestingly, the operators at the Magic Kingdom only carry inoperable prop guns these days, so I wonder what they do when there is an emergency.

Guests then pass under the backside of Schweitzer Falls, named after Doctor Albert Schweitzer, and then enter the South America and traverse the Amazon River. Drums and chanting signal that the boat is now in headhunter country. Soon enough the headhunters are wielding spears at the visitors, who are suddenly attacked by piranhas in the water. Just before the boat returns to the dock, it passes Trader Sam, the shrunken head dealer, who offers visitors a two for one special –two of his heads for one of theirs.

Sillying Things Up

When the ride first opened, it was supposed to be serious, but within a few years, Walt realized that it would be greatly improved with a little humor to liven it up. So he decided to have animator Marc David write a script that incorporated some humorous gags. The funny bits started to be incorporated into the action in 1962.

These days, the skippers are always hired with their sense of comedic timing in mind. In fact, there has been a long-running comedy show in Fullerton, California since 2006 that features only Jungle Cruise skippers.

Evolution

Video link

Disney believed in constantly updating rides to ensure they were always interesting for guests. While most people don’t notice the changes, the attraction has gone through quite a few stages to be at its current state. If you have visited the park in the last few decades, you may notice a few differences from the modern version and the one seen in the video.

The first change happened in 1962, when the elephant bathing pool was added. Two years later the safari camp was installed.

When the Indiana Jones Adventure was built in 1994, the Jungle Cruise queue area was redesigned and the river was slightly rerouted. The new attraction fit in well with the setting, but the throngs of tourists that could be seen from the ride itself were a little distracting. Fortunately, the skipper script was adapted to make fun of the tourists.

Another refurbishment took place in 2004, when the piranhas were added along with an explosion effect where the gorillas have taken over the camp.

Even the boats on the ride were changed, as they were originally clean and beautiful replicas of the African Queen, but the 1994 refurbishments allowed the imagineers to give the boats a grungy look so they better fit in with their surroundings and the Indiana Jones Adventure next door.

Differences Between The Parks

Like most classic Disneyland rides, the attraction is also featured at other Disney parks, but each has their own tiny variations. Disneyland Paris is actually the only one to not feature the ride. This is because Imagineers worried about trying to find appropriate jungle plants that could handle the cold temperature of the area and because other theme parks in France have already adapted the ride, so it would not be a unique experience to European visitors.

At the Magic Kingdom, the biggest differences are the order of the scenes and the inclusion of a downed airplane near the hippo pool. This is the back half of a Lockheed Model 12 Electrica Junior that was purchased for the Casablanca scene in the Great Movie Ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The other scene only required the front half of the plane, so the back half was added in the jungle setting.

Other than the plane, the Tokyo version of the ride is pretty much identical to the Magic Kingdom version, except the narration is in Japanese and the ride runs clockwise instead of counterclockwise.

The biggest changes can be seen at Hong Kong Disneyland though. At this park, the river goes around Tarzan’s Treehouse and the ending has been completely redone to include a grand finale with a battle between the gods of fire and water. This park has handled language problems by having three separate lines, one of English, one for Cantonese and one for Mandarin.

Steering The Streams

The skippers on the boat do control the speed and direction you are going, but the underwater railing prevents them from having to steer. They generally use the steering wheel prop throughout the journey, but only for fun.  On the other hand, this does mean they can put you in the line of fire for the elephant sprays by adjusting their speed appropriately –as my sister learned the hard way when she was throwing a tantrum on the ride when we were kids.

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen in case of a breakdown, you can relax even if you are a bad swimmer. While the canal reaches depths of up to eight feet, it is is no more than three feet deep in most areas. The water is died brown to help prevent guests from being able to see the “river” bottom.

Do you guys like the ride? What’s your favorite terrible Jungle Cruise pun, or do you prefer to leave the jokes to professionals and avoid the ride?

Sources: Themed Attraction, Wikipedia, Disney Reporter, Jim Hill Media, Disneyland, Mouse Planet, Little Known Facts About Well-Known Places: Disneyland

Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

You may have been to Disneyland, but how much do you really know about it? Find out in today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored a dismal 25%. I’d like to say that is is because I’ve never been to Disneyland, but it was because I just didn’t know the answers. Surely you can do better! Link

Images by Zeon Santos

Sleeping Beauty Castle may not be a ride, or even much of an attraction, but it has become an icon –not just of the Disneyland Park, but of Disney as a whole. In fact, the design has been used as the logo for Disney products for years, which sets it apart from all other rides and attractions in the park. To better understand what makes this castle so magical, let’s take a deeper look at the park attraction in today’s Neatorama Facts.

Inspiration For The Creation

It is widely known that the castle is largely based on the Neuscheanstein Castle in Germany, but it is not an exact replica. In fact, the castle is actually flipped in orientation and also takes inspiration from various French architectures, including Notre Dame and the Hospices de Beaune. Few people also realize that the design incorporates forced perspective, making it appear to be much more tall and impressive than its actual height of 77 feet (about four stories) would ordinarily appear. This technique is also used on the businesses in Main Street.

The castle is also a lot less permanent that it appears, being constructed mostly from cement, plaster and fiberglass.

The attraction was included in the original plans for the park and it was one of a handful of attractions seen on opening day that still remains completely the same.

A Mysterious Family Emblem

At the front of the castle is a coat of arms, which many fans mistakenly believe are the Disney family crest. Interestingly, this is not actually the Disney crest and no one seems to know the true origins of the crest on display, but it is known that it was added to the castle at some point in summer of 1965.

Utilizing the Fortress

In front of the attraction is a draw bridge that connects the castle to the end of Main Street. The draw bridge actually works, but it has only been raised twice, once on opening day and once at the 1983 rededication ceremony for the new and improved Fantasyland. The gears can be seen below

The top story of the castle was originally empty, but it bothered Walt to have such a great space left unused, so he challenged his Imagineers to design something for the area. The result was a diorama of Sleeping Beauty that allowed guests to walk through the castle and follow the story of the princess.

In October of 2001, the walkthrough was closed and while Disney never gave an official reason, the two most widely accepted stories state that the building violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and that the terrorist attacks of September 11 led park officials to worry that the tight enclosed spaces in the castle could be a target for terrorist attacks.

While the timing would indicate that the closure was at least partially due to fear of attacks, the fact that there was a wheelchair accessible Sleeping Beauty experience added on the ground floor of the castle added when the attraction reopened indicates that the ADA compliance was also an issue.

On my last trip to Disneyland, I was able to visit the attraction, and I have to say, the slight revamping of the classic diorama was quite good. They went with the original style of the walkthrough, but added a few extra technologies that were not available when it opened the first time. The handicap accessible area is also pretty cool, as it recreates the experience using a closed-captioned high-def screen that shows the entire diorama.

Sparking Up Some Fireworks

Most visitors recognize that the castle serves as the focal point for the Disneyland fireworks shows that seem to operate throughout the entire year. Each fireworks show costs around $41,000 to put on per night –that’s big money for some lights and explosions!

Traditionally, Tinkerbell will fly down to the castle from the top of the Matterhorn to set the celebration in motion, although sometimes another character will do it depending on the season or theme of the show. The first Tinkerbell was Tiny Kline, a circus performer and aerialist who was only four foot ten. What’s most interesting about Tiny though was her age: she was 71 when she first performed the role.

Incompletion Or A Simple Error

All of the spires on the castle are plated in real gold, except one. There is a delightful story that it was left unplated in order to celebrate Walt’s statement that “Disneyland will never be completed as long as there is imagination left in the world.” While it’s quite a romantic notion, the truth isn’t nearly as cool. As it turns out, the spire was actually messed up in the 1990’s during the castles refurbishment. The staff believed that gold-colored patina would look better and be easier to work with than the gold leafing previously used, unfortunately, it didn’t work and the spire now looks dark and forgotten compared to its counterparts.

The Motivation For Selected Vegetation

The moat around the front of the castle is largely adorned with junipers, which may not be as stunning as many of the other landscaping used in the park, but there is good reason for their selection. Disneyland leases swans to swim in the moat on occasion and junipers are in a select group of plants that swans won’t try to eat.

It’s interesting to note that Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland are the only two parks to have a Sleeping Beauty Castle. The parks in Florida and Japan have a Cinderella castle, which is much bigger in scope and size. Those of you who have been to both parks, which do you like better?

Sources: Little-Known Facts About Well-Known Places, Wikipedia

Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Haunted Mansion

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

Since I was a kid, I loved ghosts and haunted houses and Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has always been one of my favorites and I’m sure many of you agree. But what do you really know about the mansion and the stories behind its layout and design? The history behind the ride is almost as cool as the experience itself, so for today’s Neatorama Facts, I give you an inside look at the Haunted Mansion.

From Humble Beginnings Rose A Legend

Image via Passport to Dreams.

The Haunted Mansion wasn’t open until 1969, but the idea was kicked around since the beginning. In the one of the original park designs created by artist Harper Goff showed a crooked street coming off of Main Street and winding past a church and a graveyard and leading to a run-down mansion on a hill. The idea wasn’t incorporated at first, but Disney liked the idea and assigned imaginer Ken Anderson to build a story around the drawing and create a full experience around it.

Because plans for New Orleans square were currently in progress, it was decided that the ride would be built in the style of an antebellum manor. The original souvenir map that showed New Orleans Square promised that the area would include a thieves market, a pirate wax museum and a haunted house when it was open.

The first drawings for the mansion showed it overgrown with weeds, filled with swarms of bats and having boarded up doors and windows. While this certainly would have set the mood for a scary adventure, Disney hated the idea of a run-down building in his park and insisted, “we’ll take care of the outside and let the ghosts take care of the inside.”

Delays on Top of Delays

Video link

When working on the original plans for the mansion, Anderson developed a number of wonderfully chilling tales, the main of which revolved around a ghost of a sea captain who killed his nosy bride and then hung himself. He was even hoping to incorporate some of the monsters used in Universal films. Most of this ended up not materializing because Disney wanted to take things in another direction.

For the special effects, Rolly Crump and Yale Grace were hired to create creepy effects that would be far from obvious. The pair researched real haunting stories, Greek myths and monster movies and then started building elaborate effects in their private studio. The effects got to be so good that they scared some of the cleaning crew. Thinking that was funny, they hooked up all the effects to a motion sensor so it would all go off when the cleaning crew entered the room. After that, the crew refused to enter the area and they had to clean up their own studio.

Despite all the work on storylines and effects, things didn’t progress very fast and then the imagineers were held up by Disney’s active role in the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. While this didn’t end up speeding the process up, it did actually end up becoming an important part of the final project, as it made the creators realize that the attraction would be far too busy for people to just walk through, as originally intended. Instead, imagineers decided to use the people mover they built for the fair and used in the Adventures Through Space ride as “Doom Buggies” to carry guests through the exhibit.

To Be Or Not To Be (Spooky)

Three of the main designers of the finished project were Marc Davis, X Atencio, and Claude Coats. Rolly Crump also helped add to the ride, as he proposed a “Museum of the Weird” restaurant be built beside the attraction and filled with coffin clocks, talking chairs, man eating plants, living gypsy wagons and other spooky settings. While the restaurant idea was quashed, many of Crump’s ideas managed to make it into the final version.

Claude Coats was design-focused and wanted to create a terrifying atmosphere for the ride, but Marc Davis wanted things to be silly and goofy like traditional Disney attractions. X Atencio was assigned with scripting the ride’s plot line and he managed to mix the two ideas together so the atmosphere begins spooky and eerie and then as the ghosts appear, things begin to get silly.

Image via DoomBuggies.com

Funny enough, the ride’s many delays led to the façade being up for five years before the ride actually opened and a number of rumors began to circulate as a result. One of the best stories said that the ride was so scary that someone died of fright during testing, so they were forced to tone it down and play up the silliness. Because the ride has just such an arc in its story, the tale is widely believed to this day and is even reported on in the Snopes website.

All the ghost stories and urban legends actually helped promote the mansion though and the opening of the ride helped the park recover from Disney’s recent death in 1966.

Size Can Matter

Disneyland is a fairly small park and by the time the Haunted Mansion was set to be established, space was already running out. That’s why the imagineers started the ride off with the legendary “stretching room” that serves as the elevator to help bring guests below the surface level.

Once in the actual ride, you go far beyond the boundaries of the park that you can actually visit, under the railroad, and under the back lot, along the tunnels for Splash Mountain.

Dedications By The Dead

If you remember the outside tombstones looking different when you were a kid, you’re probably right. When the mansion first opened, the tombstones were largely made as a tribute to the imagineers that helped develop the ride. The one dedicated to X Antencio, for example, read:

REQUIESCAT
Francis Xavier
NO TIME OFF
FOR GOOD
BEHAVIOR
RIP

X was perhaps one of the most important fathers of the mansion as he not only scripted much of the ride, but he also wrote almost all of the verses seen on the tombstones and co-wrote the famed “Grim Grinning Ghosts” that serves as the ride’s theme song.

Nowadays though, these memorials have been removed to expand the waiting area (X took his home with him) and a newer pet cemetery has been added in front of the mansion. There is also an older pet cemetery with headstones scattered about, but this can only be seen from the handicap line area these days.

Inside the interior graveyard scene, there are more headstones, many of which also contain hidden messages relating to the imagineers. There are also a few gag ones and one rhyme relates to a charity auction Disney put on eBay that allowed the winner to have his or her name added to a tombstone in the graveyard scene. The winner, a doctor and medical attorney named Cary “Jay” Sharp, was given a tombstone that reads:

Jay
Doctor-Lawyer
Legal Clerk
Forever Buried
In His Work

Image via DoomBuggies.com

In the Disneyworld graveyard, the pet cemetery also contains a special tribute, a headstone for Mr. Toad that was added after the park closed Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in 1998.

Ghoulishly Good Voice Talent

The “ghost host” who narrates your journey is voiced by Paul Frees, who is commonly mistaken for Orson Welles, who he was able to do a great impression of. You might also recognize his voice as the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, or as the narrator of Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln. He was also the narrator of a number cartoons and stop-motion animations, most notably Donald in Mathmagic Land and the Rank and Bass Christmas series. Perhaps the funniest credit he has to his name though was the voice of “Josephine” (Tony Curtis’ female role) in Some Like It Hot.

Image via Express Monorail [Flickr]

Throughout the entire ride, the “Grim Grinning Ghosts” song is played, although the version changes from room to room. The singing busts in the graveyard actually depict the real singers of the tune and the one most people mistake for Walt Disney is actually Thurl Ravenscroft, who is also well known for doing the voice of Tony The Tiger and his work in the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

If you’re wondering how the busts sing, it’s actually just projections of the singers shot at busts with the actors’ features. The same effect is used for Madame Leota as she floats in her crystal ball.

Spectacularly Spectral Effects

Image via Dave Cobb [Flickr]

Speaking of effects used in the mansion, one of the coolest is the ballroom filled with dancing ghosts. The ghosts are not actually holograms, but are instead reflections of dancing animatronic figures located above and below the doom buggies track that shine on to a glass plate set in front of the viewers.  Marc Davis, who designed the room did forget one thing when he set up the ballroom, reflections show up in reverse. As a result, if you look closely, you’ll notice that the women dancers lead the men. Another cool bit of trivia, the organ being played in the ballroom is the original organ used in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Another favorite effect is the appearance of hitchhiking ghosts in your doom buggy. This is done through the use of a conveyor belt carrying the ghosts at the same speed behind the wall and two-way mirrors which show the ghosts using weak lights.

Remember the Moving Suit of Armor?

If you were one of the lucky few who got to ride the attraction at its very start, you might have a vague recollection of a suit of armor that actually moved around and walked the halls. If so, you’re not crazy, when the ride first started, a cast member would roam the halls in the suit of armor. Because the cast members weren’t supposed to be seen entering and exiting from the dressing room, they were given a remote control to stop the ride. Unfortunately, this resulted in the ride constantly being stopped whenever someone would spit at the character or throw something at him.

The dressing room is still around and is hidden behind the breathing doors.

Variations Between Locations

Image via Express Monorail [Flickr]

All Disneyland parks have a Haunted Mansion, but each one is a little different from one another, with the exception of the French Phantom Manor, which is very different from the others. In the Disney World mansion (seen above), the exterior is done in a Dutch Gothic Revival look because it is located in Liberty Square. Because the park had more space, there are a few more rooms, including a library that features flying books, moving ladders and an invisible ghost reading a book in a rocking chair. There is also a room that looks like something M.C. Escher may have drawn up that features staircases going in all variety of directions and green footsteps moving across them. The Tokyo park is almost identical to this one, except that the outside features broken windows and the narration is in Japanese.

The Phantom Manor of Paris though, follows a completely different storyline than all the other rides. The design of the Manor looks quite a bit like the house in Psycho, but Disney says it was based on the Fourth Ward School House in Virgina City, Nevada. Personally, I think it looks much more foreboding.

Image via wrayckage [Flickr]

The story of the Parisian manor follows the story of a young woman named Melanie Ravenswood and she is predominant throughout the ride, starting with an exterior headstone. Because the ride is located in Frontierland, there are a number of Western-themed displays in the ride, but it is otherwise similar to the original Haunted Mansion’s layout and story.

The story of Melanie Ravenswood says that she was the daughter of a man who made his fortune in the gold rush and built his mansion in a town that’s now run down. Melanie wants to marry a train conductor who promises to take her away from it all, but her father wants to stop the marriage at all costs. The father and mother are killed in an earthquake shortly before the wedding day, but a phantom arrives on the day of the ceremony and kills the groom in the attic (he is the one hanging in the stretching room this time). Melanie swears her groom will return to her and wanders the house throughout the rest of her life dressed in her wedding gown, while the evil phantom and his demonic guests celebrate around her.

After the bride’s boudoir (the room that belongs to the black widow in other Haunted Mansions), there is no graveyard scene, instead the doom buggies visit the backyard where the phantom sits laughing above an open grave. They then travel to underground catacombs and then pass into Phantom Canyon, which is a supernatural version of Thunder Mesa where an earthquake is going on and ghosts rule the streets.

The Mansion Before Christmas

Ever since Christmas of 2001, the Disneyland Haunted Mansion has been decked out yearly for the Haunted Mansion Holiday, featuring the entire cast of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Tokyo has had similar redecoration, but the Paris and Florida parks have never held a similar overlay.

This was not the first Christmas overlay on a ride and The Country Bears and It’s a Small World both received the treatment before, but what makes the Haunted Mansion Holiday special is its use of spooky characters from the Tim Burton film. The special Christmas layout became so popular that it was responsible for the decision to add a Fast Pass to the ride.

Now, there’s plenty more secrets of the Haunted Mansion and I’m sure many of you can help fill in the parts I left out, so be sure to add your own trivia in the comments.

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5; DoomBuggies.com #1, #2, #3; Mouseplanet; Passport 2 Dreams; 2719 Hyperion; and Disneyland: Little-Known Facts About Well-Known Places.

Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

Mickey and Minnie Mouse, 1934

Before the opening of Disneyland, people have been wearing Mickey and Minnie Mouse costumes. This one is from the November 1934 issue of The Oakland Tribune:

The mice will play, even if Santa Claus does give them permission. Here’s Santa greeting Mickey and Minnie Mouse at Kahn’s toy department.
Story at Vintage Disney Collectibles 1928 – 1945

Mickey and Minnie, 1959

From Stuff From the Park, a fantastic blog about all things Disneyland – via Broke Hoedown

Photo: Gorillas Don’t Blog

Mickey and Minnie Mouse, 1950s

Though from the improvement of the masks over the Matterhorn 1959 photo, I’m guessing this is in the early 1960:

Photo: Miehana [Flickr] – via Smogr

Mickey and Minnie Mouse, 1961

Photo: Miehana [Flickr]

For more 1960s photos, check out Stuff From the Park blog’s Big Head Characters

Mickey Mouse, 1962

Photo: Daveland Blog

Mickey’s mask looked much better, but it obviously wasn’t yet perfected as it collapsed under the hot California sun.

Mickey and Minnie 1970

Photo: Daveland Blog

Don’t miss Dave DeCaro’s fantastic Disneyland Attractions website | See also Dave’s Mickey & Minnie Mouse: Evolution of a Costume

That’s the first Disneyland admission ticket ever sold. It was purchased by Roy O. Disney (Walt Disney’s older brother) for $1 in 1955.

Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times has a fascinating story about the Disney Archives:

After Walt Disney died in 1966, his grieving staff sealed his office suite in Burbank, and even as work proceeded on "The Jungle Book" there was anxiety that the company’s past might be brighter than its future.

Four years later, those worries deepened as key executives approached retirement, including Walt’s older brother, Roy O. Disney. That’s why, in 1970, the company handed the key to Walt’s still-sealed office to a former UCLA research librarian named Dave Smith, who was sent into the chamber to learn its history.

"I didn’t expect this to become my life’s work, but it did," Smith, 69, said on a recent afternoon as he gave a tour of the Disney Archives, a massive collection spread across several in-house libraries and high-security warehouse space filled with Disney movie props, costumes, toys, art, animation, vintage theme-park gear and company publications.

It all began with the items that Smith found in Walt’s desk all those years ago.

"It was an eerie thing to sit … in his chair and count the paper clips in the drawer," Smith recalled with a nervous chuckle. On the bookshelves, he discovered books and letters given to Walt by Upton Sinclair, Winston Churchill and C. S. Lewis, who inscribed one of his books of poetry with the words: "From one visionary to another."

Link | Gallery

So on top of sharing some hidden Mickey images with you, I’d like to open the floor to your interpretations and ask if any of you readers have photos of the phenomenon.

Let me start off by saying just how difficult it can be to spot hidden Mickeys (let alone photograph those of them on the rides). On our first day in the park, my boyfriend and I spent about an hour in The Golden Horseshoe eating ice cream and enjoying the musical stylings of Billy Hill and the Hillbillies.

While in the saloon, I looked ceiling to floor to find a Mickey. Eventually, I decided there must not actually be one in The Golden Horseshoe. When I got back to the hotel though, I thought I’d check the internet just to make sure. That’s when I discovered that the only one in the building is one tiny Mickey in the central vent under the stage. That’s when it started to strike me just how hard this project was really going to be.

That’s also when I started to realize just how hard it is to define a hidden Mickey. While it seems like a basic concept, the definition of “hidden” is quite open. I read a few forums where people argued about this idea and even as we started spotting our own hidden Mickeys, my boyfriend and I started debating over what was too obvious to be considered hidden.

For example, I thought these Mickey rivets should be considered hidden because they weren’t something you’d expect and you certainly wouldn’t notice them on first glance. On the other hand, he felt they were simply decorations and too in-your-face to be hidden.

Mickey’s House in Toon Town proved to be an excellent example of this concept as everything is already Mickey themed. Do the obvious music notes and metronome count?

And if those are considered to be too obvious, then what about the tiny Mickey heads on the book backs of both Mickey and Minnie’s favorite titles?

Were these lights in the movie theater too obvious?

The matter only became more problematic from that point on. While some Mickey’s were very obvious and intentional, like the rock formation below, it’s sometimes hard to determine if any given arrangement of three circles beside one another would count.

Did the Disney gardeners intentionally clip the cactus so it would form a Mickey head?

Does a hidden Mickey have to be completely closed and circular to count?

And what about the layout of the three umbrellas in this billboard seen in California Adventure?

On our final day, we thought our questions may finally be answered when we ran across a book titled Disneyland’s Hidden Secrets: A Field Guide to Disneyland Resort’s Best Kept Secrets.

Once we started browsing through the book though, we soon realized that it was not written by an imagineer or someone else with a definitive authority on the subject, but simply an avid Disney fan. In fact, the book had many of the questionable hidden Mickey examples that we also saw on line.

For example,can Smee’s eyes and nose on this wood carving really be considered a Mickey face?

And is this decoration on the stalls in Downtown Disney really secret enough to be considered hidden?

I guess that like so many other things in life, there is no definitive answer as to what is, or is not, a hidden Mickey (at least not until the imagineers come forward and list off every one they intentionally embedded in the rides and shops.)

So rather than speculating, let’s just step back and appreciate the pictures of the following “subtle Mickey” images from around the park.

Photo: Ack Ook [Flickr]

Yo ho ho and 66 animatronic pirates! The Pirates of the Caribbean ride is one of my favorite Disneyland rides. And apparently, I'm not alone in this: over 300 million people have gone on the ride since it opened in 1967. But did they know that the ride was originally supposed to be a walk through with wax figures? Or that it was Walt Disney's favorite project? Or that political correctness led Disney to change some of the raunchy scenes?

For today's Neatorama Facts, let's take a look at some of the neatest facts about the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland:

The Pirates of the Caribbean was Walt Disney's favorite ride. Actually, whatever ride Walt is working on was his favorite - and since he died during the construction of the ride, it will remain his favorite forever.

Originally, the Pirates of the Caribbean was supposed to be a walk through Rogue's Gallery with wax figures. Walt figured out that boats (which he did for the It's A Small World ride) and audio-animatronics (which he did for the 1964 New York World's Fair) would work better. But if you think about it: pirates and boat certainly go together!

Oh, and what did Walt do for the World's Fair? An animatronic of President Abraham Lincoln in an attraction called Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. After the Fair closed, the Disney pavilion was demolished and it was thought that the Lincolnbot was lost forever. Years later, someone discovered it packed in a crate - the animatronic president is now on display.

The ride starts at Laffite's Landing, where you board a boat after waiting in line for what seems to be three and a half days or so. The Lafitte in Lafitte's Landing refers to Jean Lafitte (often spelled Laffite), a real life pirate and privateer in the Gulf of Mexico (and subsequent American war hero) in the late 1700s/early 1800s. (Photo: John Bellamy at pirates.wikia.com)

When you passed the Blue Bayou restaurant, look up at the second story of the building. You may think that it's a facade, but the balcony actually belongs to Club 33, a member-only restaurant that most of us can't afford to join (it costs tens of thousands of dollars to join, plus there's a ten year waiting list anyhow). But who says you can't see the inside of Club 33? YouTube to the rescue!

The lyrics to Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me), the theme song of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride that you hear early on, was written by Disney Imagineers X Atencio and George Bruns. (X? How cool is that! Actually he was born "Xavier" but became X later on in life). It was based on Robert Louis Stevenson's sailor's work song (or sea shanty) "Dead Man's Chest" found in his 1883 novel Treasure Island. (Photo: Disney Legends)

Dead Chest Island is actually an uninhabitable island close to the island of Tortola in eastern Caribbean. The lyric "Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest" and "Yo Ho Ho, and a bottle of rum!" referred to the pirate Blackbeard's habit of leaving crewmen on the deserted island, with only a bottle of rum, to die as punishment.

Back to the song for a minute. The Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me) was sung by The Mellomen, a barbershop quartet that also sang many songs for Disney films. They also sang as backup singers for Elvis. The frontman of The Melloman, Thurl Ravenscroft, was the voice of Tony the Tiger, of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.

OK, let's continue with the ride itself. Whether you love the old Pirates of the Caribbean or the new one with all the movie tie ins, you've got to admit, the floating head of Davy Jones on a waterfall of fog (fogfall?) is kind of cool. But who is Davy Jones? No, not the guy from the Monkees or the early stage name of David Bowie - Pirates of the Caribbean's character Davy Jones came from the old seaman's idiom "Davy Jones' Locker". It means the bottom of the sea: if someone was sent to Davy Jones' Locker, it means that he died at sea.

When the Pirates of the Caribbean first opened, Imagineers thought that the fake skeletons used were unconvincing. So they bought real human skeletons from UCLA Medical Center and used them as props. These have since been changed (phew!)

Remember the talking skull on the wall at the beginning of the ride? The original voice (now changed) was actually X Atencio's. Many other voices on the ride - like the auctioneer pirate, ship's captain and mayor - was provided by Paul Frees, who also did the Ghost Host in the Haunted Mansion. But those were not Paul's most famous work: he was also the voice of Pillsbury Doughboy.

The Pooped Pirate before (L) and after (R).
Photos: Tellnotales.com and FilmEdge (c) Disney

The most famous pirate of the entire ride - besides the newly added Jack Sparrow, Davy Jones and Captain Barbossa for the movie tie-in - is the Pooped Pirate. Originally, the Pooped Pirate was shown boasting and waving a lady's lingerie while a woman peeked up from inside an oak barrel behind his back. But that was too raunchy for Disney - the Pooped Pirate was changed to the gluttonous pirate (the woman in the barrel was replaced by a cat) and then to a regular fat pirate holding the key and map (with Jack Sparrow in the barrel). X Atencio didn't like the change, and said that the ride was Pirates, not Boy Scouts of the Caribbean ...

If you love the new Jack Sparrow animatronics, check this YouTube clip where Johnny Depp met his robot counterpart:

When Pirates of the Caribbean first opened, people thought that real flame was used for the burning town scene. Actually, the flickering flames are created by illuminating strips of cellophane blowing through the air. The fake flames are so convincing that the Anaheim Fire Department requested that they be automatically turned off in case of fire so firefighters can fight the real blaze and not waste time battling artificial ones! (Source)

Remember the jail scene where several characters were trying to get the key from the dog? The whistling guy in the middle is based on a janitor that used to work at what is now called Walt Disney Imagineering.

Just because the ride is dark, it doesn't mean that The Mouse doesn't see any hanky pankies goin' on. Like other rides in Disneyland, the Pirates of the Caribbean has many infrared security cameras - park operators can see what young lovers try to do. Sometimes they use the PA system to ... erhm, gently remind them that they're actually in public. Sometimes, if the deed is done, Disney cast members would applaud the romancin' riders who would then realize that they were being watched all along.

Purists: nostalgic about the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride? Here's a neat YouTube clip from the Wonderful World of Disney:

[YouTube Clip]

Now, I'm sure I missed a whole lot of neat Pirates of the Caribbean trivia - Do you have anything to add? Please do so in the comment section. (And if you like this Neatorama Fact feature, what should we do next? The Haunted Mansion? Indiana Jones Adventure? Space Mountain?)

More Disney Articles on Neatorama:

Happy Birthday, Walt Disney!	10 Cool Secrets About Disneyland	6 Attractions You'll Never See at Disneyland ...
Disneyland Remodeling "It's a Small World"	The Dark Side of Disney	6 Repurposed Disney Songs

It’s hard not to love this fantastic time lapse footage of Disneyland’s original construction.

Rare and unseen footage of Disneyland’s construction narrated by Imagineers. Includes some amazing new footage of Walt Disney walking the site before construction even started and some never-before-seen timelapse footage of the park from groundbreaking until opening day. This film was on the way to deep storage and was found by a curious employee, otherwise there’s a good chance we’d never get to see this.

Thank goodness that curiosity doesn’t kill the Disney employee or we would have all missed out on this great find.

Link Via Boing Boing

]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2009/07/27/disneyland-construction-time-lapse/feed/ 3 http://www.neatorama.com/2009/02/05/seven-secrets-about-disneyland/ http://www.neatorama.com/2009/02/05/seven-secrets-about-disneyland/#comments Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:24:59 +0000 Queuebot http://www.neatorama.com/2009/02/05/seven-secrets-about-disneyland/

Gudrun Enger has a friend who works in Disneyland, and whenever she visits the park her friend comes along and acts as a tour guide, and usually shares a few secrets.  Here are some you might not know:

The drawbridge to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle really works.  It’s been raised only twice: once on opening day, and once in the l980s when Fantasyland reopened.

The crest above the drawbridge is the Disney family crest.

It took only 364 days to build Disneyland.

Main Street represents Walt’s home town, Marceline, Missouri, in 1901, the year he was born.

The organ that was in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea now lives in the ballroom of the Haunted Mansion.

In the early years of the park, the Rivers of America were stocked with catfish and visitors were allowed to fish off the docks of Tom Sawyer Island.

When Disneyland launched its original Submarine Voyage ride, it included Weeki Wachee-type mermaids swimming among the submarines.  Here’s a video of them.

Photo of Tom Sawyer Island by Gudrun Enger

Link

More posts about Disney on Neatorama:

- 10 Cool Secrets About Disneyland

- Happy Birthday, Walt!: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Walt Disney

- 6 Attractions You’ll Never See Again at Disneyland

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride is quite possibly one of the best attractions Disney’s Imagineers have created during the theme park’s history. From the tombstones surrounding the mansion’s decaying exterior to its cobwebbed interior, the whole ride creates a pitch-perfect atmosphere of gothic glee.

This year the attraction celebrates its 40th anniversary. To commemorate the milestone, one of Disney’s favorite artists, Shag, has been commissioned to create original artwork inspired by the ever popular attraction.

>“Represented in the artwork are some of the attraction’s most beloved scenes, including the Stretching Portraits, the Ballroom, the Séance Room, the Attic, Graveyard, among others. This unique collection is a must have for any Shag and Haunted Mansion enthusiast.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.

So, you think you know Walt Disney. But did you know that "Disney" wasn't his family's ancestral surname? That he drove an ambulance? That his first studio went bankrupt in just one year? Or that he was a train nut and had a miniature railroad put in his backyard? To celebrate the 107th anniversary of his birthday, here are Neatorama's 10 Fun Facts About Walt Disney:

Origin of the "Disney" Name: d'Isigny
Walt's ancestors were named d'Isigny, and came from Isigny-sur-Mer in Normandy, France. They moved to a village in Lincolnshire, England now named Norton Disney.

Disney Tried to Join the Army, but was Rejected
In 1917, Walt tried to join the Army to fight in World War I and was rejected ... because he was too young! He was 16 at the time, so he joined The Red Cross instead. His first job there? Driving an ambulance.

Walt Disney as an ambulance driver in France - photo via Croce Rossa Italiana

Laugh-O-Gram: Disney's First Venture Went Bank-O-Rupt
In 1922, Disney founded an animation company called Laugh-O-Gram. The company immediately ran into financial troubles (Disney had to live in the office and take baths once a week at a neighboring train station). In just about one year, the studio declared bankruptcy. Disney sold his movie camera for a one-way ticket to Hollywood, California.

The studio produced only a few animations, including one called Tommy Tucker's Tooth, which was commissioned by a local dentist about the merits of brushing your teeth. (More on Laugh-O-Grams at The Animation Empire)

Before Mickey Mouse, There was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Walt and Ub Iwerks created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (who looked suspiciously similar to Mickey) for Charles Mintz of Universal Studios. In 1928, with the popular cartoon series going strong, Disney asked Mintz for an increase in budget. Instead, Mintz took over his current employees and demanded that Walt take a budget cut!

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit - via Los comienzos de Walt

Mintz thought that he had Disney cornered - instead, Walt went on to start anew with Iwerks and a loyal apprentice named Les Clark. They tried sketches of various animals, including dog, cat, cow, frog and horse before settling on a mouse (based on Disney's pet mouse Mortimer).

They were going to call the character Mortimer Mouse, but Walt's wife Lilian convinced him to change the name to Mickey Mouse (she thought "Mortimer" sounded pompous) (Source).

Disney's Folly: Snow White
In 1934, Disney embarked on his most ambitious project yet: a full-length animated feature called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Both his brother Roy and wife Lilian tried to talk him out of it, saying that it would be too difficult and too expensive (Lilian said: "No one's ever going to pay a dime to see a dwarf picture.") The Hollywood movie industry mocked it as "Disney's Folly."

Two years later, while still in mid-production, Walt ran out of money. The initial production cost of $250,000 (already 10 times the average budget of his other animations) ballooned to over $1.5 million. (today's value: $21 million) He had to mortgage his house and get a loan to finish the movie.

Walt in the trailer of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - via Wikipedia

In 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarf was released and became an instant success. The movie won an honorary Oscar (see this post on Neatorama: Oscars Fun Facts) and grossed over $66 million domestically. Over its lifetime, the movie grossed over $184 million. Not bad for a "folly."

Disney Goes to War
In 1942, a naval officer wrote a letter to Walt asking for a design for an emblem of the Navy's new fleet of torpedo boats nicknamed "mosquito boats." Disney obliged with a drawing of a mosquito riding a torpedo (the insignia was such a hit that every torpedo boat in the fleet soon had it).

Words spread, and Disney was bombarded with requests for insignias for tanks, minesweepers, bombers, and figher planes. Skylighters.org has a neat article about Disney's artistic contribution to the Great War: Link (text from LIFE Magazine)

Walt Disney was a Train Lover
Disney loved trains. He even built a miniature railroad in his backyard called the Carolwood Pacific Railroad. It was named after the street on which his home was located.

Walt's railroad had 2,615 feet of track, including trestles, loops, overpasses, and even a tunnel (after his wife vetoed the train going through her flower beds).

Disney's backyard railroad became an inspiration for the Disneyland theme park.

Walt's Disneyland Tribute to His Father

Photo: David Ball [Wikipedia]

Elias Disney, Walt's father, was a carpenter who earned about $1 a day. In 1895, Elias began a modest home construction business that ultimately failed. He continued to work odd jobs afterwards, including farming, running a newspaper delivery business, and working in a jelly factory.

Elias didn't live long enough to see Disneyland, but the lamp in his window is always lit in his honor. (Source: Disneyland Detective: An Independent Guide to Discovering Disney's Legend, Lore, and Magic by K. Trahan, D. Hawkins, and B. McKim)

Cigarettes Killed Disney
Walt Disney was a chain smoker. In 1966, he was scheduled to undergo a neck surgery for an old polo injury, but a pre-surgery X-ray showed a large tumor in his left lung. Doctors ultimately removed the lung, but Disney died later that year.

[YouTube Clip]

In 1951, Disney produced a short clip titled "No Smoking" of Goofy trying to quit smoking. The company banned the cartoon from TV broadcast.

Disney's Mysterious Tie Clip
The Walt Disney bronze statue in Disneyland has a weird tie clip that looks like a symbol from an alien language.

Photo: Zesmerelda [Flickr]

It turns out the symbol is made of the letters S, T, and R, which stands for "Smoke Tree Ranch," Disney's ranch in Palm Springs, California. Nearby Walt's ranch lives a good friend of his, who became the inspiration of the character "Jacques" the Mouse in Cinderella! (Source: Hidden Mickeys, with a lot more fun facts of Disney)

1. Disneyland was expected to fail.

Opening day was such a disaster that pretty much every press organization that attended the celebration had predicted the park’s failure within one year.

It opened on a day that was 101 degrees and the street asphalt still wasn’t dry, leading to it sticking to shoes. By the end of the first day, all but 2 of the 48 Autopia cars were crashed and about half the rides were broken.

Despite all that, park visitors loved it and attendance continued to grow day by day.

Source (Photo: ThomasFredrick [Flickr])

2. Need a real drink?

While many Disney fanatics may already know this one, others may find it surprising to know there is exactly one place in the entire park that serves alcoholic beverages.

The place is called Club 33 and it is a very exclusive club to get in. To gain entry, there is a ten year waiting list and admission is at least a thousand dollars. Supposedly, the food is good though.

Source (Photo: emmyboop [Flickr])

3. Tomorrow Land is so outdated.

Or at least, the first version is by now. The only Tomorrow Land ride that still exists in its original state from the opening is Autopia, and even it was changed to fit with Cars the movie. Actually though, there is one major change in Autopia from how it was on opening day -there were originally no guide rail to keep people on track. Sometimes Disney was a little too trusting of the good of humans.

Source (Photo: Frikitiki [Flickr])

4. There’s a Disney Underground.

Photo: lwr [Flickr]

It’s not quite as exciting as it sounds though. Despite rumors, the area under the park isn’t a massive underground city. There are many underground basements though, where cast can relax, change in and out of costumes and eat lunch in peace. Think of it like a few really big break rooms.

Disney World on the other hand, was built late enough that they have a full city underground.

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5. Olympic sports anyone?

Photo: Frikitiki [Flickr]

Just walking around the park over and over again is exercise enough for most people, but employees have the option of working out in the Matterhorn. Surely you didn’t think that huge mountain was only used for one little ride did you? No, the Matterhorn is officially classified as a gym and has a full basketball court inside. In 1984, it was even certified as an official Olympic Stadium.

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6. It’s safe, but not 100% safe.

Photo: videocrab [Flickr]

Despite persisting urban legends that claim no one ever died in the park, people have. At least 12 people have died there, reports vary as to whether some additional death tales are true or not. All things considered though, 12 deaths in over 50 years isn’t that bad. Keep in mind, aside from dangerous rides, there is also a notable amount of gang violence at other Southern California amusement parks that doesn’t occur as frequently at Disneyland.

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7. Ever feel like you’re being watched?

You might be. There are cameras everywhere. Aside from average security brigades, they even have special tasks forces with only a handful of things to focus on.

There are at least two special forces at the park, one dedicated to catching people using drugs at the park, and another dedicated to catching people who flash or flip off the cameras during the photo parts of the rides. If you’ve ever gotten a message saying your photo isn’t available when you got off the ride, there’s a good chance someone either flashed some breast or flipped the bird to the camera.

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8. A ghostly Hazmat problem.

Photo: major_clanger [Flickr]

There are many reports of people trying to spill the ashes of loved ones in the Haunted Mansion. As nice of a thought as it is, there are plenty of ghosts in the Mansion already and if everyone dumped their ashes here, then the whole thing would be covered in dust. So, every time it happens, the Mansion needs to be closed and a hazmat team cleans it.

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9. A pirate’s life for Jack.

We all know that Johnny Depp is dang sexy, but just the character of Jack Sparrow? Apparently, a lot of women still think he’s just as good as Depp. In Pirate’s Booty, an ex-actor at Disneyland confessed how many women would try to hump him just for playing the character. The stories range from flirting to receiving napkins with naughty offers.



(Photo: Locket479 [Flickr])

10. Words from beyond.

Ever notice the telegraph clicking at the New Orleans’ train station? It’s ticking out the speech Disney gave out on the park’s opening day. Traces of Disney are all over the park, my favorite one though is his old apartment over the fire house on Main Street. They always leave the light on in his memory. Not only is it cute, but it’s also rad that he got to live in the park.

Source (Photo: Mysteryofmaps [Flickr])

A few other fun tidbits:

• Steve Martin used to work in the magic shop here.
• There used to be live girls dressed like mermaids in the 2000 Leagues Under the Sea pool.
• Did your balloon pop? Just show any balloon seller your popped balloon and they’ll give you a new one.
• The Imagineers put special touches everywhere. The Haunted Mansion features faces of a few of the early Imagineers and has tombstones written with inside joke references.
• Coke gives the park free soda to eliminate competition in the park and for the advertising.
• Hidden Mickeys are spread all over the park and there’s at least one in every ride.

Source and Source

photo by Stacy Conradt

The ride is currently under major renovations at Disneyland, and while I admit it’s not one of my favorite rides, I was disappointed that my sister-in-law didn’t get to experience it on her first-ever Disney trip last month. And now, she may never get to experience the original World’s Fair version that has resided in Fantasyland for the past 40 years.

Disney says that the main change is a change of boats, but according to insiders in the know, it’s actually going to be much more. We’ll get to that in a second.

The original IASW is based on the idea of world peace. No, really. Walt Disney attended a conference held by President Eisenhower in 1956 about promoting world peace and cultural understanding through world travel. Inspired, Disney recruited Mary Blair to design the attraction, Marc and Alice Davis to design the scenes and the doll outfits respectively, and Joyce Carlson to design the dolls. At first, the ride included the national anthems of all of the different nations represented, but Disney decided he needed one uniting song. Robert and Richard Sherman wrote the now-famous tune and that was that.

photo from feministJulie on Flickr

A couple of quick facts:
• The attraction debuted at the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York.
• Major themes of the boat ride include Europe, Asia, Africa, Central/South America, South Pacific Islands, the Finale and the Good-bye Scene.
• Throughout your 10.5 minute boat ride, you’ll hear the repetitive song in Spanish, French, and Japanese, to name a few.

And now the changes: The changes are going to see the rainforest scene – a really detailed, colorful and innovative representation of Mary Blair’s artwork – replaced with a massive “Hooray for the U.S.A.” scene. Right now, the only American characters represented are a cowboy and an Eskimo. This might seem like the U.S. isn’t very well represented, but when you consider that the point of the ride is to explore other cultures, it makes sense.

Another big change is that Disney is going to stick its characters in scenes where they “belong”. So you might see the Hunchback of Notre Dame in the France section, Simba and Rafiki in the African section and Ariel with the gurgling mermaids at the beginning of the ride (at Disneyland, not Disneyworld). Commercialism at its worst, I guess. I get that it’s Disney and its bread and butter is its characters, but the original IASW was not designed to sell Disney product. Walt himself commissioned it with the idea of promoting global understanding, not global marketing.

photo from Re-Imagineering
I guess I’m torn – I can understand the need to update and improve the ride, but maybe not to the lengths they are going. Can’t they up the America factor by adding a few more characters instead of destroying an entire classic scene? And what about subtly putting Disney character references into the ride instead of the actual characters themselves, which won’t match the dolls in the rest of the ride? For instance, make one of the French dolls wear the simplistic blue-and-white Belle dress and carry a book. Give one of the mermaids red hair. I think it can be done in a way that doesn’t rip the integrity of the original design away.

What do you guys think? Horrible updates, or is Small World long overdue for some modernization?

Some Disneyland attractions are classics and have been around forever – Dumbo, for instance, has been around almost since the beginning (the park opened on July 17, 1955 and Dumbo followed about a month later). Peter Pan’s Flight has been around since the beginning, and so has the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (the teacups!) and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

Other rides haven’t really stood up to the test of time, unfortunately, and those are the ones we’re going to take a look at.

Holidayland

photo from A History of Disney Theme Parks

You’re probably familiar with the different sections of Disneyland these days – Tomorrowland, Frontierland and Fantasyland, to name a few. But Holidayland? Yep. It opened on June 16, 1957, and was a nine-acre picnic area that was for… well… frolicking, basically. There were playgrounds, horseshoes, a baseball field, volleyball and the “world’s largest candy-striped circus tent” which stood where the Haunted Mansion is today. Pirates of the Caribbean takes up the spot where the baseball field used to be. It only lasted a few years – Holidayland closed in 1961 because it just didn’t fit in with the rest of the park (among other things like lack of shade).

The Viewliner

This miniature train has the dubious honor of being one of the shortest-lived rides to ever exist at Disneyland. It opened in June of 1957 and promptly closed in September 1958 when construction started on the Matterhorn and Submarine Voyage. There were two trains – one for Fantasyland and one for Tomorrowland – and the track ran a figure-eight through both of those areas. The tiny, sleek (for that time) train was supposed to represent the future of train travel. Eventually the monorail filled the void left by the Viewliner.

Monsanto House of the Future

picture from Apartment Therapy

I love those old ads from the 1950s that show “futuristic” kitchens cooking the meals all by themselves with “space-age” technology. That’s kind of what the Monsanto House of the Future was like. It was in operation from 1957 to 1967 and was a tour of a house in the year 1986. It’s laughable now, but the MIT-built house featured technology such as microwaves, which obviously did end up being invented. Just about everything about the house – including the exterior – was made out of plastic. You can still see the support pillars of Monsanto’s House of the Future in Neptune’s Grotto – they were rated for earthquakes and proved to be so sturdy that they were just about impossible to remove. Monsanto, by the way, is an agricultural biotechnology company (meaning they make herbicides and pesticides and the like).

Captain EO

picture from AlteredDreams

In the more recent past, we have Captain EO, which I vaguely remember from EPCOT. Captain EO was a 3-D movie starring, of course, Michael Jackson. And if you’re looking for more credentials than that (keep in mind MJ was HUGE at this point in time), it was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and executive produced by George Lucas. They also co-wrote the script with Rusty Lemorande.

Here’s the plot: Captain EO and his team are piloting a spaceship to deliver a gift to the evil Supreme Leader (Anjelica Huston). One of his shipmates is named Hooter, which seems like a huge oversight to me. Hooter is an elephant, not an owl as you might suspect. Well, the Supreme Leader isn’t exactly thrilled with the crew and orders them to be tortured. EO charms the Queen by singing her a song, but as soon as the music stops the spell breaks and she orders the crew to be captured again. EO uses his music to transform the evil guards into dancers who line up to dance behind him Thriller-zombie-style. EO eventually uses his powers to turn the Supreme Leader and her entire planet into things of beauty.
The 17-minute film cost somewhere between $17 and $30 million to make. Sounds like a lot, but when you consider than it ran for more than 10 years at Disneyland (1986 to 1997), maybe it’s not so bad. Then MJ went weird and Disney decided to pull the attraction and replace it with “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience”.

America Sings!

picture from Yesterland

Looking for a collection of animatronic swamp critters singing old Dixieland favorites and old folk tunes? Too bad you missed America Sings! Had you been at Disneyland sometime between June of 1974 and April of 1988, you could have witnessed geese singing “Camptown Races”, a dog singing “Home on the Range” a pink singing “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey?” and a crane and a rooster singing “Shake, Rattle and Roll”. A decent number of the characters appeared to be either quite intoxicated or at least trying their hardest to get there. It’s one of the few Disney attractions with characters actually drinking alcohol (Pirates of the Caribbean also comes to mind… rum anyone?). The building was used for offices for a while and eventually became home to Innoventions, which I believe is still there today. The swamp creatures, however, befriended Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and Brer Bear and now reside happily at Splash Mountain.

Flying Saucers

Picture from Yesterland

High school physics students who participated in Hovercraft competitions, this one is for you. Basically, the Flying Saucers ride was Disney’s answer to bumper cars. When the ride starts, air would shoot up under the saucer and lift it up off the floor (just a little… we’re not talking feet here). Riders would have to tilt their bodies the way they wanted the saucer to go and were encouraged to bump into other guests. Alas, the saucers only lasted about five years in the mid 60s.

Those are just a few of the rides that are now defunct – things at all of the Disney parks are always changing. Even the old favorites get little updates every now and then. Do you have a favorite ride that is no longer in operation? I know a lot of people were upset when the Magic Kingdom’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea met its maker.