Anaheim, Calif. – You have to look quickly, and you have to know exactly where to look. But if you do, you will catch a pretty cool inside joke at Disneyland.
On the Star Tours ride, just before your runaway Starspeeder exits the space station, keep your eye on the lower right side of the screen:
You flash past what looks like a giant electron microscope. Old-timers will recognize it as the Mighty Microscope from Monsanto’s Adventure Through Inner Space, torn down two decades ago to make room for Star Tours. Disney designers included it as an in-the-know tribute to the beloved old Tomorrowland attraction.
Disneyland, where a 50th birthday celebration is under way ich begins an 18-month celebration of its 50th birthday this week, is chockablock with such lore. More than any other amusement park – including those of Disney’s Orlando empire – the original House of Mouse has its own culture, history, traditions and rituals, passed down like sacraments from generation to generation.
“A lot of us who grew up in California feel like Disneyland isn’t just a theme park – it’s a really big part of our lives,” says David Koenig, author of “Mouse Tales,” an unauthorized, behind-the-scenes look at the park. “It’s something that belongs to us, a part of our family traditions.”
Disneyland’s extraordinary level of detail and craftsmanship sets it apart from other theme parks, Koenig says. Whether it’s the sounds you can hear coming from closed-off storefronts on Main Street if you lean close to the windows, or the mechanical fish that leap from a little-noticed pond on the fringe of Frontierland, “you can come here a hundred times and always discover something you never noticed before.”
So, In honor of the park’s 50th anniversary, we present some cool, obscure and simply odd things you probably didn’t know about the self-proclaimed Happiest Place on Earth. Many were culled from “Mouse Tales,” some were provided by Disney archivist Dave Smith and others came from “101 Things You Never Knew About Disneyland,” by former park employee Kevin Yee and lifelong fan Jason Schultz.
1. Disneyland’s original Tinker Bell was a 71-year-old Hungarian circus performer named Tiny Kline. The first to fly off the top of the Matterhorn on a zip line, she previously worked as a stunt aerialist, hanging from a flying airplane by her teeth.
2. High up inside the hollow Matterhorn, there’s a basketball court. It’s part of an employee break room. Los Angeles Lakers center Vlade Divac has been up there to shoot hoops.
3. Many of the faces of the pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean are modeled on those of the “Imagineers” (Disneyspeak for the park’s artists and engineers) who created the ride. There’s evidence one face was modeled on Walt Disney’s.
4. The spooky voice that narrates the Haunted Mansion ride is that of the Pillsbury Doughboy. An actor named Paul Frees, who was to Disney what Mel Blanc was to Warner Brothers, supplied the voices for both, as well as many of the pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean and most of the characters in “Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln” (except Abe himself). He was also the voice of John Lennon in the old Beatles cartoons and Boris Badenov.
5. The sailing ship Columbia, which is supposed to be a replica of the first U.S. ship to circumvent the globe, actually was built in large part from the plans for the HMS Bounty, of mutiny fame.
6. From groundbreaking to opening, Disneyland was built in just 365 days.
7. Perhaps inevitably, Opening Day – July 17, 1955 – was a disaster. Asphalt poured just hours before guests arrived hadn’t fully dried, and women’s spiked heels sunk into Main Street. VIP passes were widely counterfeited, and double the expected number of people showed up. Rides broke down. Because of a plumber’s strike, Walt Disney had to choose between drinking fountains and bathrooms.
8. Frank Sinatra showed up on Opening Day and took a spin around Autopia.
9. Disneyland cost $17 million to build in 1955, about $116 million in today’s dollars. The Space Mountain ride, which opened in 1977, cost more than half that amount (in constant dollars.)
10. Disneyland is home to feral cats – nobody knows how many – that come out at night, after visitors leave. Years ago, more than 100 were discovered living inside Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
11. If the voice of the droid-pilot in Star Tours sounds a little like Pee-wee Herman, it’s because both are voiced by comedian Paul Reubens.
12. At least three babies have been born at Disneyland.
13. ABC was one of the original financial backers, and for years owned a share of the park. Now, of course, the Walt Disney Co. owns ABC.
14. On Opening Day, Walt Disney had his gardeners cover up bare patches of dirt by replanting weeds from the parking lot and labeling them with long, horticultural-sounding names.
15. At the end of the Star
Tours ride, just as your Starspeeder
is about to crash into a
fuel truck, a man in the control
booth ducks down, then stands
up and picks up the phone. The
man is George Lucas.
16. Conspicuously missing
on Opening Day: the Matterhorn.
In its place was a two-story-
high pile of dirt from the excavation
of the castle moat. It
was billed as “Lookout Mountain.”
The Matterhorn didn’t
open until 1959.
17. The soundtrack on Space
Mountain, “Aquarium” from
Saint-Saens’ “Carnival Des Animaux,”
is played by 1960s surf
guitar legend Dick Dale.
18. Nikita Krushchev was
never turned away at the front
gate by Walt Disney, as is popularly
believed. Disney was eager
to show the Soviet premier
his submarine fleet, at the time
the world’s sixth largest. It was
the U.S. State Department that
nixed the visit, saying security
wasn’t adequate.
19. Main Street is based largely
on the town of Marceline,
Mo., where Walt Disney spent
part of his childhood a whistle
stop on the old Atchison,
Topeka and Santa Fe rail line
between Chicago and Kansas
City. The town named a swimming
pool and elementary
school after its most famous
son. The latter is the only place
outside Disneyland authorized
to fly the official flag.
20. Once and for all, Walt
Disney is not frozen cryogenically
at Disneyland or anywhere
else. He did have an interest
in the technology, but he
is in fact spending eternity at
Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale.
…
Easy tips for a smoother ride
To avoid long lines, the Adrienne Vincent-Phoenix of the independent website MousePlanet.com offers these tips:
– Buy admission tickets in advance – from your local Disney Store, online at disneyland.com., at Disneyland Resort at 714-781-4400, through a travel agent, at your hotel or at Disneyland the night before your visit. “Good Neighbor” hotels offer admission media at the front desks. For a list, visit Disney’s website.)
– Buy souvenirs in the morning, when the stores are less crowded, or in the afternoon when attraction lines are the longest. Avoid stores in the evening, especially the last two hours before park closing.
– See the less-crowded second showing of the parades and Fantasmic. These are less crowded, and you’ll spend less time holding your spot before the performance. Or skip Fantasmic and head to attractions on this side of the park: Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion and the Jungle Cruise. The parades are a good time to ride Space Mountain, Star Tours or the Matterhorn.
– Eat lunch early or late when restaurants are least crowded.
– Use FastPass and the Single Rider lines. If two or more adults are traveling with small children, use the Child Swap passes. Child Swap passes are available on any ride with a height restriction.
– Bring your own bottled water and food “as long as it’s premade,” says a staffer. “You can’t bring in a loaf of bread and a package of deli meats.”
– Stow it: Get a locker, usually at the end of a side street off Main Street, halfway up on the right. Upon arrival, load it up with sweat shirts, bottled water, diapers, sunscreen, fresh socks for everybody and a sweat shirt or jacket for chilly evenings. And, after nine hours of pounding the pavement here, you’d be surprised at how rejuvenating it is to face the evening frolic with a clean pair of socks.
– Escape to eat. The dining options in Disneyland are ed, but they’re alsoabominable. For an alternative, Exit the park through the front gates and wander into the Downtown Disney District for better, if still overpriced food and adult beverages. To return, catch the Monorail at its station between Tortilla Jo’s and the Rainforest Cafe.
For updates on rides and developments go to mouseplanet.com, jimhillmedia.com, allearsnet.com and laughingplace.com.
– San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Daily News
