Disneyland and The Queen Mary

This November 1971 image from the Disneyland Hotel initially looks like some kind of mod sculpture. Nope. I learned that it was one of the propellers from the Queen Mary, a luxury ocean liner that was part of the Cunard portfolio. Its maiden voyage was on May 27, 1936 and then it was “retired” from the sea as an active liner when it became permanently docked in the harbor at Long Beach, California on December 9, 1967. Don Ballard is definitely the expert on Disneyland Hotel history. I edited this info from his The Disneyland Hotel The Early Years Facebook Group to explain how the ship’s propeller ended up on Disney property:

February 1971, the propeller from the Queen Mary is installed at the Disneyland Hotel as part of Water World. Disney obtained the license to “operate” The Queen Mary from the City of Long Beach when they bought Wrather Corporation in 1988. The deal also included the Disneyland Hotel.



Group member Dan Fendel added this info:

I once talked to a former LB City Councilman about the deal they got the Queen through—Cunard was offered MUCH bigger pricetags for her, but they all involved scrapping her and they prefered her preserved. However, to turn her into a hotel and tourist attraction meant lots of work, and under the laws of the time (and maybe still) it meant that as long as she could make steam and move under her own power, the MARITIME unions for things like construction, electrical, plumbing, etc. etc. had jurisdiction (at about 3-4 times the cost of land-based equivalents) SO...they had to GUT her technical spaces, leaving only one of the four engine rooms to act as a display for the tour. THAT meant pulling a LOT of metal out of her and they decided the big stack shafts would be the way in/out for the cranes so the plan was to remove the stacks and set them on the pier for replacement later. What happened was unexpected—as they were released from the guy wires holding them and the bolts, the huge sections of stack were craned to the pier...where they DISINTEGRATED into piles of crumbled metal! Metallurgists were called in and found that over the decades of painting the OUTside and the degrading of the metal INSide all that was left was rust and many coats of lead PAINT. SO the stacks you see now are all new fabrications made to imitate the originals at that time, and of course, the areas that were the other engine rooms were turned into the Jacques Cousteau museum back then.

I snapped this photo of the Queen Mary back in August 2020:



And this one from June 2009, the only time I stepped aboard the fabled ship:



See more Disneyland Hotel photos at my main website.