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Fans of Disneyland know that no matter how popular an attraction is, there’s still a chance it won’t be there in ten years. That’s partly because Disney wanted his parks to always be improving, but also because things wear out or become dangerous and there’s no inexpensive fix. While some fan favorites, like Captian EO will eventually return if you wait long enough, others, like America Sings will be readapted to fit into another attraction and will never be seen in their original incarnation again. Here are a handful of attractions that once existed at the park and may or may not be gone for good.
Image Via bearexposed [Flickr]
Most visitors to Disneyland before the mid-nineties will remember this attraction, even if they never rode it. After all, an aerial gondola ride that went through the Matterhorn was something that was pretty easy to remember. The ride was built in 1956 and while plenty of similar rides exist in parks around the country these days, at the time, it was the first aerial ropeway in the U.S. In fact, the Skyway was actually built before the Matterhorn, which had to be built around the pre-existing gondola ride.
While the ride was very popular in that it allowed guests to view the entire park from above, it was closed in 1994 because the Matterhorn battery supports started to show stress cracks. In addition, prior to the closing of the ride, someone jumped out and while he ended up OK, the incident was certainly not something Disney executives wanted to repeat. Fixing the machinery and updating the ride to become ADA compliant and safer would have been outrageously expensive, so the ride was closed all together.
The hole in the Matterhorn is now covered up and the Tomorrowland station has been torn down, but the Fantasyland station is still sitting around empty.
Image Via ATIS547 [Flickr]
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m particularly sad this one is gone. Opened in 1972, the Country Bear Jamboree was a stage show performed by animatronic critters –mostly bears. The attraction was so popular, it even was given a special Christmas show to entertain guests and inspired a movie that was released in 2002. A year before the movie was released though, the attraction was removed to make room for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride.
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Storycorps listened to cousins James Ransom and Cherie Johnson as they remembered their childhood Sunday school teacher Miss Lizzie Devine, “the only woman who scared them more than their grandmother.” Animated by The Rauch Brothers. Link -Thanks, Krisi!
A new study shows that crows remember people’s faces and will recruit other crows to attack those that have wronged them. Even weirder -the crows that joined in the mobbing will also remember that person and may lead an attack on their own later on, despite the fact that the individual may never have done anything to them.
Link Image via Lucina M [Flickr]
The computer generation has become nostalgic. The blog How I Met Your Motherboard collects photographs and stories from the days before computer nerds ran the world. Consider the memories Laura has of 1984.
Along with the ZX Spectrum, my parents had also presented us with a selection of computer games. Loading them was an undertaking in itself: each fed into a cassette player, its buttons held down with thumb-numbing force, while the tape whirred and spluttered and made a sound that may be roughly transposed as chkeeewschyrrrrrfffffllychkxduhuhftttt. My brother had three games: a vampire adventure named Transylvanian Tower, a treasure hunt called Espionage Island and a complicated programme that followed the process of evolution. For me, there was a solitary cassette, a numeracy aid named Count About. I cannot deny that I was at that age rather muddled by mathematics, but it only added to my sense of dismay that my computer time would involve assisting a badly graphicked monkey clamber up a tree to collect a specified number of coconuts.
You can contribute your own memories to the collection. Link -Thanks, Jason!
If you are a sucker for nostalgia, this will make your day. I can remember getting that amazing trio of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Super Soakers, and then a Gameboy. In fact, those would still make great gifts for grown men with a penchant for walks down memory lane.
The holiday shopping season is quickly descending upon us, which means this year’s more popular toys and consumer electronics are soon to become in increasingly high-demand. In recent memory, the Sony Playstation III, Beanie Babies, and of course, the Tickle-Me-Elmo have generated a considerable amount of hype – quickly selling out, and then establishing a re-sale market. But have you ever wondered what the “it toys” have been throughout the decades? We have; and as a result, we decided to compile a time-line which illustrates the top toys from the last 50 years. Here they are, the most popular Christmas toys since 1960.
From the Upcoming 
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