Patty Winter's
Disneyland Trip
November, 2005
Day 3 (Tuesday, Nov. 29)(Click on any image to see a larger version of the photo.) This was the morning for the "A Walk in Walt's Footsteps" tour. As I mentioned in Day 1, my friend Larry was going to join me for this. I had to meet him and the rest of the tour group at the Disneyland entrance at 8:45 a.m., and I didn't get up soon enough to stand in line for a muffin at the La Brea Bakery, so I missed breakfast. (I found out later that Whitewater Snacks at the Grand Californian has a nice selection of hot and cold breakfast items.) I did have a small packet of trail mix in my shoulder bag, so I downed that while waiting for the tour to start.
There were about 15 people on the tour. Our guide was Mary, with Karen providing logistical support. (She went ahead of us to prepare each of our major stopping points.) As you've probably seen or heard previously, the Disney tour guides wear traditional Englishwomen's riding outfits, including caps, vests, and plaid skirts. Mary began by giving us a brief biography of Walt Disney. She also explained his concept of people coming to a "show" when they visit Disneyland, which of course is the origin of the term "cast members" for Disney employees, and the the term "onstage" for the public areas of the parks, hotels, etc. Disneyland opened at 9:00 a.m., and we immediately entered the park. Luckily, this being the week after Thanksgiving, crowds were light, so we had no problems keeping our group together during the tour. Our first stop was just inside the gates, but outside the berm, in sight of the train station. Mary mentioned that the Mickey Mouse floral design is changed about nine times a year, and that the Disneyland population sign on the train station is updated at major milestones. (It currently reads 500,000,000.) We then walked through the tunnel. Now we were really in Disneyland. Specifically, in Town Square, facing the fire station and Walt's apartment. Mary said she would normally have us look at the plaque under the flagpole that has the first words of Walt's opening day speech, but that area was walled off to hide some sets for the upcoming Candlelight Procession. (Don't ask me why it's called a "procession" at Disneyland and a "processional" at Disney World.) One of the ideas Walt Disney had for funding Disneyland was to get actual retailers to open stores on Main Street. I think he got a few, but not as many as he needed. He had better luck persuading a TV network (ABC) to air a show about Disneyland--before it even opened. That turned out to be a great marketing tool for the park. Mary talked a bit about opening day and some of the things that went wrong. In fact, it was referred to as "Black Sunday." One problem was the sheer number of people. Opening day was an invitation-only event for 11,000 people, but 28,000 people showed up. I mentioned Walt's apartment. He wanted somewhere he could stay overnight on occasion without commuting all the way from his house in northwestern Los Angeles (Holmby Hills). So he built himself an apartment above the Disneyland fire station. Whenever he was in residence there, he left a lamp lighted in the front window. Today, there's a light in that window all the time, to indicate that Walt's spirit is always there looking out over Disneyland. However, during the holiday season, the lamp is replaced by a small lighted Christmas tree. Mary told a fun story about how Walt's grandchildren would visit him and sometimes sneak into the Jungle Cruise area from the back of the fire station. They would hide in the jungle plants and jump out at people going by in the boats. When Walt got word of this, he would go out to the Jungle Cruise loading dock, get in a boat, and give the kids a little surprise of their own when they jumped out. :-)
Before we left Town Square, Mary pointed out that the buildings at the castle (hub) end of the street are a bit shorter than the ones at this end, creating a forced perspective that makes the distance look longer than it is. Sure enough, it only takes a minute (at most) to walk from one end of Main Street to the other. We actually took longer than that this time, stopping briefly as Mary explained the significance of some of the names on the Main Street second-floor windows, drew our attention to the scents being piped out of the food shops, etc. Our next stop was outside the entrance to Adventureland, where Mary talked about the invention of audio-animatronics. We then went inside the Enchanted Tiki Room to see the current generation of Disney's first audio-animatronic show.
Before the show (for which other park visitors were admitted), we had a talk from Jeff, one of the Tiki Room CMs. As Karen carried retired singing flower "Ophelia" around for us to see close up, Jeff explained how she worked (solenoids). I was glad we stopped here, because the Tiki Room is pretty low on my Disneyland priority list, and I hadn't made it to the show in many years. It was fun to see it again.
By now it was about 10:30 a.m. We wended our way through Adventureland to New Orleans Square. As we passed the Jungle Cruise area, Mary pointed out a window dedicated to Harper Goff, who designed the Jungle Cruise. He had good credentials for the job, having worked on the design of the 1951 Humphrey Bogart/Katherine Hepburn movie "The African Queen." We continued on to Rue Royale, and stopped outside #33. After a couple of the kids in the group made the appropriate "secret knock," Karen opened the door and admitted us to the lower lobby of Club 33, the members-only restaurant at Disneyland. Mary told us about the club as we took photos of the area, including the stained glass over the door, and the convex "butler's mirror" that allows someone to discreetly view the entire room behind them. We were also given the opportunity to have photos taken of ourselves standing in the beautiful old elevator.
After leaving Club 33, we walked to the New Orleans Square train station and caught the train to Tomorrowland. Mary pointed out the many edible plants that are used for landscaping in this part of Disneyland, which I had never noticed before. There were lemon trees, cabbage, herbs, etc. She also noted that when Disneyland was about to open and there wasn't enough time to finish the planned landscaping, Walt got the idea of putting stakes with Latin names in front of the weeds so that visitors would think they were some sort of exotic plants. Another little bit of trivia that Mary mentioned was one I had known about but forgotten. The popcorn carts throughout Disneyland are themed by changing the little person who's turning the wheel of the popper. Here in tomorrowland, it's the title charcter from the Disney film "The Rocketeer." A couple of days later, I noticed an Abominable Snowman in the cart near the Matterhorn.
We stopped briefly to admire the Matterhorn. I hadn't realized that it's a 1/100 scale model. The real mountain reaches an altitude of 14,700 feet, while this one is 147 feet high. Of course, the base of the Matterhorn in Zermatt is more than a mile above sea level, unlike the base of the Matterhorn in Anaheim. Mary mentioned that the legendary basketball court inside the Matterhorn is part of the break room for the climbers, so that they don't have to go all the way to the bottom of the mountain between climbs. We continued around the side of the Matterhorn to the front of Sleeping Beauty Castle, where Mary again drew our attention to some forced perspective. This time, it was the size of the "stones" of the castle, which are bigger at the bottom and increasingly smaller at higher parts of the building, making the castle look taller than it really is. From the hub, we cut through Frontierland back to New Orleans Square. We walked up some stairs to what appears to be the back door of the Disney Gallery, but was in fact the front door to Walt's other apartment in the park. We then went into the lovely second-floor courtyard and finished our tour with tasty box lunches. We were each given a special golden 50th Anniversary version of the "A Walk in Walt's Footsteps" tour pin.
Well, I've spent a lot of time discussing the first four hours of Day 3! I'll summarize the rest of the day more succinctly. After lunch, Larry and I spent a couple of hours shopping (taking advantage of his AP discount) and looking for benchmarks. We didn't find any full-size disks, but did find one more small spike in Frontierland that, because of its position and style, we're sure is a survey mark. (See Lloyd's Aerial Imagery of Disney Survey Markers page to visualize how the Disneyland survey markers tie together.) We really, really think there should be a mark somewhere in front of the Mark Twain/Columbia dock, but we haven't found anything yet. Here's a photo of one of the DL/DCA benchmarks. Larry was being a real trouper and decided to stay for dinner and the fireworks show. We went back to the Grand Californian and had a delicious meal at the Storytellers Café . I wasn't all that hungry, so I only ordered a field greens salad, a cup of corn chowder, and a barbecued shrimp appetizer. Larry also got the chowder, along with a grilled salmon fillet.
Earlier in the day, we had decided that the patio near the elevator on the sixth floor of the Grand Californian would be a nice place from which to see the Disneyland fireworks. It has a nice view of the mountains to the east of the Grand Californian, including the Matterhorn and Space Mountain. ;-) But when we went back upstairs after dinner, we discovered that since our last visit, a sign had been placed by the patio door saying that it was reserved for kids attending the Pinnochio's Workshop childcare program at the hotel. Oh well, guess we have to go back to Disneyland. Life is tough! :-) By this time, it was only a few minutes before the start of the fireworks, so we had no hope of getting down Main Street to the castle for the best views. We ended up just in front of the Christmas tree at Town Square. We were able to see most of the projections onto the castle from there. Narrated by Julie Andrews, Remember...Dreams Come True has elements of the Wishes fireworks show from the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, plus segments devoted to many of Disneyland's most popular attractions, including the Haunted Mansion, Star Tours, Indiana Jones, and some rides that no longer exist.
(Oddly enough, the fireworks show did not include the infamous "It's a Small World" theme. But just to make sure that classic ride doesn't get ignored, here's a photo from 2004 of the spectacular holiday lights on the outside of the Small World building at Disneyland.) As the fireworks ended, we worked our way a little further down Main Street so that we could be in the snowfall zone. I hadn't seen the 50th anniversary film "Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years" (narrated by Steve Martin) at the Main Street Opera House, so after a few minutes of playing in the snow, we headed off to see that, looking at the opening-day model of Disneyland in the lobby while we waited to go into the theater. We finally left Disneyland at 8:45, exactly 12 hours after we had arrived! I accompanied Larry to the parking lot tram stop and wished him goodnight, then walked the remaining short distance to the Downtown Disney entrance of the Grand Californian. I swung by the Hearthstone Lounge to get some hot chocolate, went upstairs to my room, added some amaretto liqueur to the the cocoa (try it--it's great! Kahlua is delicious, too), and drank it while watching "House" and packing for my departure the next day. |
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Last updated 1/8/06