Thursday, October 09, 2008

Disneyland in Focus: '59 & The Submarine Voyage, Pt. 2



5 more Submarine shots from yesterday’s June 1959 batch. Enjoy, and feel free to create your own narration!



The next four are also from June 1959.







See more vintage Submarine Voyage photos at my regular website.

3 comments:

Katella Gate said...

Since Dave had kindly allowed us to narrate our own stories here's mine:

You may recall that in the submarine, each person has a porthole to look out of (in fact you had to put your face rather close to the glass to see anything). To prevent the glass from steaming up, there was a vent at the bottom, with a nifty, snap-in grill covering the hole.

Right about 1965, I was visiting the park with my Dad. He was an aircraft mechanic and immediately had an attack of mecho-lust for these hard to find grills. Since the sub was dark and with everybody distracted looking out the ports, he quickly produced a pocket knife and started to pry out the grills for our family's portholes.

At 5 years old, I had a very poor concept of what exactly Disneyland was. I could only imagine that it was Walt's private back yard - an overgrown train set that, thru the goodness of his heart, he had thrown open to the public. And my Dad was now damaging these precious subs and stealing from Walt Disney himself.

So, right in the middle of the show, I piped up: "Daddy, why are you stealing stuff from Walt Disney??" He stopped dead in his tracks, but boy did I get a "talking to" as soon as we got away from the exit line.

In between the scolding one line stuck with me; "Billy, Mr. Disney is a very, very rich man and won't miss these. In fact, he probably owns the factory that makes these."

So I learned two important things in that moment: First: Disneyland wasn't just handicraft Walt put together for fun, it was an industrial enterprise that took an army of people to put together and I spent the rest of my visit trying to wrap my tiny mind around it. I also learned never to leave anything around my Dad that he might want to have for his own.

Anonymous said...

Katella, great story! Your poor wee mind hehe Bad daddy, bad.

Dave I'mmm still round and love your blog too, I just have a lot of catching up to do and probably more ahead with the way things are right now. Thanks for keeping the posts comin'!

Daveland said...

Hi Chiana! I was actually away myself...had to do about 10 days of blogs in advance, so glad you are still around! Katella - what a great story! So did your dad get the porthole window?