…is the Frontierland Shooting Gallery! Just imagine a world before video games…or even Candy Crush…or Farmville! Instead of those games, peeps at Disneyland did a little pretend shoot 'em up at the Frontierland Shooting Gallery, seen here in this circa 1960's photo. Let's zoom in a bit…you know you want to.
Yup. Still dark. Those shadows are just killin' me. I need details! Here's a semi-contemporary shot of the Gallery at night:
A closeup of the targets:
I'd take this over Farmville any day.
See more Daveland Disneyland Shooting Gallery photos at my main website.
The shooting gallery's not as thrilling as it was in the old days, but I still play it once in a while. I still preferred it before it went electronic.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why they closed "Big Game Shoot" in Adventureland. Did it become politically incorrect to have a safari hunting theme of shooting animals? Or was it because there wasn't enough traffic to make it profitable? Anyone know?
I do. Jim Korkis wrote a good piece on it a while back. The BB pellets were constantly ricocheting off the targets and flying off into the guests behind the shooter. Also, the targets had to all be hand painted every night at close of business. It wasn't cost-effective and by 1984 it was now a legal liability. The manufacturer of the rifles, responding to customer demand, invented light-gun rifles that didn't require so much target painting at night. Disney saw the cost-effective advantage in this. There's another article you can Google written by Jack Spence that covers details the Korkis article didn't go into.
ReplyDeleteOne of the fondest memories I have of a trip to California with my parents in the early 60s was the shooting gallery in Frontierland. At the time you shot a real .22 caliber rifle that use "gallery" rounds with bullets that were designed to shatter when they hit the target or backstop. There were even real clay pipes that stuck radially out of the revolving circular plate in the center. The most fantastic shooting gallery I've ever seen.
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