Editor’s Note: Please give a warm MiceChat welcome to our newest columnist, Fox Hill, of Eating Tourists. Fox is a long time Disney fanatic and launches his new column with a look at his favorite topic . . . The Happiest Place On Earth.
What does the word “Disneyland” mean to you? It’s difficult to imagine a world in which nobody had even heard that word, but my own parents were born into that world. For me though, there has always been a Disneyland, and the word conjures up such a complex mix of feelings and memories that it’s nearly impossible to separate my life from that place. It has been the gravitational center about which much of my life has revolved.
Studying the park, photographing it, reading about its rich history, and keeping abreast of new developments have consumed more of my time that I care to admit. Yet the more I give to the happy task of “knowing” Disneyland, the more I am rewarded. I avoided peeking behind the curtain for many years, in fear that it would – Wizard Of Oz-like – somehow spoil the magic for me, but that didn’t happen at all. The more I knew about its planning, inception, art, and all those talented individuals that brought it into existence, the richer my visits became.
Those that share my love of Disneyland (on any level) are almost certainly aware that there is something very special about this place. It is much more than just the sum of its parts and I wanted to know how that had happened. Through this column, I hope to take my readers along on a journey of discovery through an examination of Disneyland as a theme park, a cultural phenomenon, and dare I say, as what is truly “The Happiest Place On Earth.”
My “first” visit to Disneyland might not count…but then again…it might. My mom was very pregnant with me in the summer of ’62 during her second trip to Disneyland. While I can’t be sure of this, I often wonder if the timing of that trip might not have had some influence on me. It’s assumed that babies as yet unborn pick up on the feelings of the mom, and even hear things like music that is played for them. It’s not too much of a stretch then to think that maybe I got some of that excited “vibe” from my young mother on her trip to Disneyland with my dad, and maybe even heard some of the sounds of the park. Whether I did or not, I have had a fascination with that place that has been with me as long as I can remember (maybe longer).
It was that fascination with the park that started what I now recognize as a transformation of sorts. For years it was just a place I liked to be at, a favorite vacation destination, and I accepted it for what it was at the time of any given visit. But as our regular visits stretched from the ’60’s on into the ’90’s, I started to be bothered by questions like, “What used to be on top of the Tomorrowland Stage?” or “Wasn’t there a shooting gallery here once?” At the time there was no easy way to find any kind of historical timeline, or any photographic record of the park that would let someone get their memories of Disneyland in “order.” The internet as we now know it barely existed, and the explosion in publishing related to all things Disney had yet to happen.
Like almost everybody else in the ’60’s and ’70’s, I had made the mistake of taking my own participation in the history of Disneyland lightly. I would probably have come home from a summer trip to Disneyland and then tossed my unused attraction coupons in a drawer, along with our wrinkled and well used park guides from that visit. Sooner or later my frustrated mom would clean all this “junk” out of the drawer, and in so doing would toss some more irreplaceable history into the trash. Even Disney didn’t realize what they had when they squandered an almost priceless legacy of park history by blithely destroying many things that would be desirable and collectible beyond imagining today. Walt himself once asked someone to sort through thousands of hand painted animation “cels” and throw out any that they couldn’t sell for at least a dollar. Oh the horror! (Note that for simplicity I will refer to the Company as “Disney” and the man as “Walt.” I don’t intend any disrespect by this, and I’ve always felt that’s the way Walt would have wanted it anyway). It probably wasn’t until at least 1980 that Disney started to realize that anything from the park, no matter how seemingly insignificant or trivial was going to become a very big deal in the future.
It was already too late for me when I finally realized how much that post-trip childhood detritus would have helped me get my memories of Disneyland in order. I could have seen the state of the park, visit by visit, seen what was where and when it was there. So I did the only thing that I could think of, and set out to buy back my childhood from eBay. I started by tracking down a copy of “Your Guide To Disneyland” from 1967. (A mistake about the dates of my parent’s early visits convinced me that I was there in the summer of ’67, but it turned out to really be the summer of ’68…oh well). When I won the auction and got the Guide booklet in the mail, I was beside myself with nostalgia. Poring over the pages of the little booklet was like an experience in time travel, with long forgotten memories washing over me like a warm summer day in Anaheim.
I’d like to pause for a moment to discuss this “forgotten memory” business, since it affects all of us and plays a big part in our lifetime of enjoyment of Disneyland as fans. I’m inclined to think that we all actually remember everything that we’ve ever seen, done, heard, tasted, felt, and so on. As evidence of this, I ask you to recall the experience – that we’ve all shared – of having a “forgotten” memory surge back with total clarity the moment you taste a certain thing, or smell a certain thing, or even look at an old photo of some experience you had in the past. We don’t have a memory problem, we have an access problem. It’s ALL in there somewhere, but our filing system is so bad that unless we have a trail of breadcrumbs to follow we just can’t get to the location in which the memory is stored. When I’m trying to remember something, I often imagine my brain as being staffed by lazy government workers who rummage around in dusty file cabinets looking for the bit of information I’m after. They eventually come up with it, sometimes days later, and shuffle into the office of my consciousness and ask, “Is this what you were looking for?” That’s when I yell, “Aha!” at Vicky and make some out-of-context pronouncement about a conversation we were having a week ago regarding the length of the Monorail in 1971…but I’ve digressed.
As I was saying earlier, the little 1967 Guide To Disneyland was probably the most engrossing piece of printed material I had held in my hands for years. 29 pages of breadcrumbs all leading to the dusty file cabinets of my memory in which my 5 year old self had stored images of one of the most important trips he would ever take. Page 11…Aha! I knew there was a candle shop. I dust off the suddenly vivid memory of colorful, twin, hand-dipped, wax candles, hanging in rows by the common wick that joined them at the top.
Page 13…The Big Game Safari Shooting Gallery. Oh I loved this! It had real waterfalls, and the whole front part of the gallery was full of water. There was a row of black metal shark fin targets swimming along from right to left. When you shot them they fell over with a splash, only to be be resurrected by the time they appeared again for another pass.
Page after page, memories flooded back to me as the path to those memories became not some difficult to follow trail in my mind, but a well traveled road that would now remain open and clear forever. This first taste of the payoff of joyful wonders that came with a little historical research set the hook and reeled me in for what was to become something of a happy obsession. I had taken the first tentative steps from just “liking” Disneyland to becoming a full-on “foamer.” The study of the history of the park would be the carrot-on-a-stick that kept me moving toward an ever greater understanding of the depth of Walt’s genius when he first conceived of Disneyland.
With my next post, we’ll take another step back in time with a look at some more Disneyana from early Disneyland, as well as a discussion of how the birth of Disneyland helped create two different populations during the Twentieth Century. I look forward to your comments, and I hope you’ll join me again for more of our meandering exploration of the Happiest Place On Earth during our next Stroll Through Disneyland.
I invite you to look back into your own personal archive. Do you have photos, old park maps or guides, long forgotten souvenirs, or other hidden history that you’d like to share with MiceChat? We’d love to hear from you. CONTACT MICECHAT
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