This poor feller has a bad case of heartburn; and it’s not from the mozzarella sticks at the Stage Door Cafe, either. The burning cabin and dead settler always took me by surprise as a little kid; just didn’t seem very Disney, but neither did the death of Bambi’s mother. Life is also about dark and creepy things; even Walt understood that.
See more vintage Disneyland Burning Cabin photos at my main website.
9 comments:
Nice, clear straight in shot! You'll never see this non-P.C. scene again...
Lookit that cabin burn! I wonder if it was made of steel and fire brick, or what. I may be mistaken, but I think I've seen the dead settler's body draped over a bench as well. I'll have to look through my stuff!
Funny you should say that; I just emailed Tangaroa about the same thing. I have seen the same pics of the guy draped on a bench as well. Am waiting to hear the story behind the change.
Great shot! I guess that could be said of both the archer and the photographer. Sorry but it the Jungle humor exposing itself again in written form.
This was always a surprise to me too. But it met the quote on the plaque on Main Street, "Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America…” What makes this shot so interesting to me is that I never noticed that this frontiersman had a beard. I remember him also being in other poses, but never on a bench. Would be interested to see what all of you dig up.
As to the building material, the cabin was made of cement cinderblock and much of the wood material was actually sculpted metal. In the early 90’s, after the river was upgraded with new effects (P.C. burning cabin) and audio animatronics, one of my assignments was to take the WDI blueprints and go out into the wilderness and identify and label all the speakers and show lights (color gels, light types, watts, etc.). This labeling allowed us to accurately communicate with maintenance, sound and animation when writing Shop Work Requests (SWR’s) for repair. In case you are wondering there were two speakers missing and never installed. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the background info, Amazon—very much appreciated. Must have been fun to have free-roam on the island.
Thanks for the feedback daveland. I realize my comments are very long. I hope I'm not boring anyone.
i doubt if anyone would be bored - you give great info. and if they are, they can go to another blog. their name isn't on this one. do you have a website?
Hey, thanks for the encouragement. I won't feel bad about long entries. No I don't have a website. I signed up with a blog name just a couple of weeks ago to get in touch with matterhorn 1959 which gave me a blog site, but I haven't added anything to it. And once I found his site I saw his links to your site and major pepperidge’s. Now I’m hooked! I check all three sites each day!
And to answer your earlier question, it was great to have free roam of the island and the area next to the RR tracks for one full day. I had to keep reminding myself I had a job to do, but I knew I was living a lot of kids’ dreams to go beyond the barbwire fence.
I was about 5 or 6 years old when I first saw the burning cabin. It made me so sick to my stomach that my mother had to take me back to the hotel. My mother would often make comments of "That Disney aways has to show the depressing side of life" She would make this comment after Old Yellow, Bambi, etc. I have been always glad Walt did. With ever laugh there is a tear. My life has been like that. In some ways I think this is why we still love the things that Walt created. He know we had to be tough to make it. With even an escape life still can be hard.
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