Join us as we welcome a special guest editorial by Jon Nadelberg about the shortening of the Rivers of America and what it says about changes at the Walt Disney Company and how Disneyland is run.
Some may be aware that Disney is about to place a new Star Wars land in their Anaheim theme park. This involves ripping out large parts of the frontier area, and shortening the river where the paddle wheeler travels, an area mostly untouched from the earliest days. The train running around the park will be shortened as well. Many are upset by this.
People have mentioned that the train around Disneyland has never been modified. That’s incorrect. The train track has been modified several times. Originally, there were only two train stations. One in Frontierland, and one in Main Street. The Main Street one was the passenger train, Frontierland’s was the freight train. The engines were themed to be more like the time periods for each station.
The trains would go completely around the park, and not stop at the other station. There were passing tracks at each station that the trains would use to bypass the station they were not intended to stop at. The remnants of these passing areas can still be seen. At the Main Street station, the passing track is still there behind the main track. Usually there is (or was) a hand car placed there. But originally, that was where the Frontierland train would travel along to go past the Main Street station. In Frontierland, the change is not so obvious. The tracks have been removed. The original train station where you bought tickets and waited was lifted and placed onto the gravel where the bypass tracks used to be. This is why the graveled area is so wide at the Frontierland train station. There is room there for two tracks, but only one exists.
The original train configuration was also modified. When Walt Disney brought Ward Kimball out to see his trains, Kimball said to Walt, “The walls on this freight car are too high. Don’t you want people to see your park? People will feel like cattle.” Disney was, of course, annoyed, and went ahead with the way he wanted to do it. Later, when they found that people were not getting on the train at Frontierland, they asked people why. Apparently, they thought the cars were too boxed in. They couldn’t see out and felt like cattle. Walt ordered that the trains be fixed, and that Kimball not be told. “Kimball can’t know he’s right all the time,” Disney said.
The train station at Frontierland is modeled after a station in the film “So Dear To My Heart.” Kimball is also wrapped up with the station a bit, too. After the movie, he was given the station for use on his Grizzly Flats RR, located on his property. When Walt was building the park, he asked Ward for it back. He told him no, (But gave them a copy of blueprints he’d drawn up – Fab) so they had to rebuild a new station for the park. It sits there on the gravel to this day.
The trains were further modified by the addition of the Grand Canyon in the 1950s, and the Primeval World in the 1960s. The original train barn was located off to the west of the park, in a long building that is still there. In fact, you used to be able to see the switch to the old barn if you looked back and behind the train as you circled around Frontierland. I expect that little tunnel will now get demolished finally. The old train barn is now used for different workshops for the park. It was abandoned as the train barn in the 1960s when the current train and monorail barn was built over by Tomorrowland.
Of course, other additions have been made. There was a train station added to Tomorrowland, and one added at Fantasyland, which was later removed, then eventually rebuilt as the ToonTown station. Trains have also been added.
Every attraction, every last one, has either been removed or modified in some way. The Mark Twain at one time had entertainment aboard, the stage is still visible there, but it is never used anymore. It also had a bar where you could get sodas and chips. It’s still there, but not used. Selling food aboard was a mess. That is probably the second least changed attraction in the park. The absolutely least changed? The Horse Drawn Streetcars on Main Street. The only change to them is from when they used to charge 10 cents (or an A coupon) to ride them. That’s about it, almost no change at all. It also used to be that there were three running at one time on busy days. I don’t think they’ve done that for years. But the overarching attraction it is part of, the Main Street Vehicles, has changed a great deal. For example, the fire engine, which you can still ride up and down the street, used to be horse drawn. That vehicle is located in the firehouse still. It is the original fire engine ride for Main Street. Horse drawn surreys were removed, as well, and replaced with the Horseless Carriage. The horses that drew the fire engine and the surrey just could not deal with the crowds, so they were retired.
Everything has changed. The Main Street Cinema used to show only Steamboat Willie as the cartoon, while showing live action films on the other screens. You could watch William S. Hart, Laurel and Hardy, and others in various films. The names on the marquee would change depending on what was playing.
So, the park always changes. But change simply means change. It does not mean change for the better. Change can be bad, too. Was the 1983 change to Fantasyland a good change? I think so, although I miss going into the Fantasyland Theatre to watch cartoons and get out of the heat. I miss the Welch’s Grape Juice Stand, and I miss the pirate ship tuna fish restaurant. Was the addition of New Orleans Square a good change? Of course. Was the rebuild of Tomorrowland in 1967 a good change? Of course.
Was the addition of ToonTown a good change? To me, it’s pretty weak. Was the 1990s change to Tomorrowland any good? No. It was terrible. Was the change out of Country Bear Jamboree to Winnie the Pooh good? No. It was probably one of the worst decisions they ever made.
Will the new change be any good? Who knows? I don’t like them shortening the river. They’ve been eyeing that for decades. There has even been talk of permanently mooring the Mark Twain and turning it into a restaurant, because it was such a maintenance problem; so understand things could always be worse.
But given their track record, I’m fairly skeptical of their destruction of this area personally designed by Walt Disney. He laid out the island and placed where all the parts of it should be. Certainly it’s changed a bit too over the years, but nothing this major. Would he approve? Who the heck knows, and anyone who says they think he’d feel one way or the other is wrong. Anyone quoting him to justify what they personally believe or what the corporation is doing is also wrong. He has been dead 50 long years this year, and has no say in it. The park has long ago gotten away from what he felt it was about. That park, which is gone, can be understood through its dedication which Walt stated on national TV on opening day and which is inscribed on a plaque at the base of the flag pole in Town Square. It says in part:
“Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”
That is not what it is about any longer. It has now turned inward towards the Walt Disney company itself. It is not about America anymore, nor the people in it. It’s now about the company and its products. It’s about cartoons and selling trinkets related to the cartoons.
Is this wrong? I don’t know. It seems popular, but it has nothing to do with what Walt Disney built, the final vestiges of which are at long last being destroyed.
People can and do complain. They are destroying the frontier. They have destroyed Tomorrowland. They have filled all the shops with horrible and cheap foreign junk. And these things are true. It is also true that Disney is still able to fill their parks on a daily basis while charging exorbitant admission prices and continually lowering the quality of their offerings.
That is what the management of a corporation is supposed to do for the owners, the stockholders. Lower costs, increase revenue. If they don’t, the owners come in, and replace management with other people who will do it. That’s how things run in this country. Disney is not a small boutique corporation that produces the artistic vision of one man, it’s the largest entertainment corporation in the world, and it’s going to be run like it is. The family who built it is gone, except in name only, and all that is left are the bloodless MBAs who are doing their job the best they know how.
This does not make them mustache twirling evildoers. It’s just the way of the world, and all things must pass. That sometimes includes a better time and a better place.
And it was a better time, and it was a better place. And it will always be there in our hearts. As we go through life change we cannot control becomes something we all must deal with. What remains is within ourselves in what we carry with us, and how we bring that forward. It can act as a source of sorrow, but it can also be a source of joy and inspiration. It remains to be seen what will happen, and nothing is ever certain. Yet while this theme park may never again be the same for ourselves, nor hold the iconic position in American society and culture that it once did, we will always be able to remember what once was. Those memories are ours, and regardless of what they bulldoze or destroy, no one can ever take them from us.
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