Disneyland Comin' at Ya! Summer 1955, The Grand Finale!

We’ve covered Main Street and Fantasyland, now it’s time to see the rest of the Park circa July/August 1955 in glorious Faux©D! This view of Adventureland was taken at the entrance, looking inside the themed area. As always, the 3D version and the stitched panorama below. That little boy was thirsty!



A closeup of the Tiki's Tropical Imports souvenir stand:



A shot of the stand and its wares from March 1956:



A view of one of the Bull Elephants from the Jungle Cruise attraction:



Not as exciting without the 3D effect!



The Indian Village was once located near Adventureland, in the approximate spot that Indiana Jones would eventually take over:





Below is the New Orleans Street area of Frontierland, which now houses the River Belle Terrace Restaurant.





This location housed Casa de Fritas (opening August 11, 1955) until it moved in 1957 and was replaced by the Silver Banjo BBQ. Initially, I thought the singing group was the Gonzales Trio (with a fourth member added in for good measure), but let’s just say I’m not 100% sure on that!



The Mark Twain riverboat:





It is so jarring to see autos inside the Park in many of these early shots taken during the first few months of operation:



Last one shows the entry area to Tomorrowland, featuring tile from the Clock of the World at left and the atomic symbol on the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry at right:





And that’s all, folks! I hope you enjoyed this FauxD© look at early Disneyland!

 See more photos at my main website.

Gorillas, Lucy, and The Abominable Snowman

A recently acquired image stamped May 1957 shows two gorillas under construction for Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise attraction. This seems about right with what I already have in my photo collection. ,According to Disney Theme Park blogger Foxxfur:

“These fellows were right at the end of the ride, where the carnivorous fishsticks are now. There was one on each side of the boat, and judging from the angles of all the photos I've ever seen of them they were positioned in such a way on the river bend there that you couldn't see them until you went right past them. They probably raised their arms quickly and growled, as all the jokes mentioning them in my copies of vintage Jungle spiels make some reference to them grabbing you, the long arm of the law, etc. Latest spiel mentioning them that I have is from 1965, but I bet they lasted all the way until 1975, when the Davis scenes designed for Florida were installed. The old mother/baby Rhino gag was pulled and the gorilla camp scene was put there, and with much better gorillas earlier in the trip, these two stiff guys were pulled and replaced with the Python scene. I think most of this info came from The E Ticket, Mouse Tales, or both...”

This reminds me of the “I Love Lucy” episode titled, “The Tour,” which originally aired on May 30, 1955. It very well could have inspired Walt and the Imagineers to think about entertaining guests on BOTH sides of the Jungle Cruise boats. In the episode, Lucy and Ethel decide to take a tour of the Stars’ Homes via a Tanner Gray Line Motor Tours bus.



Once seated, Lucy notices from the brochure that she’s going to miss Clark Gable’s house on the opposite side of the bus. I attempted to match the brochure, but couldn’t find an example of it. I hate when that happens.



Barbara Pepper plays a passenger on the bus who refuses to give up her seat for Lucy. “Pardon me, madam, but this seat is taken.” “Sure is, honey!” snaps back Pepper. Side note: Pepper was the 2nd choice for Ethel Mertz (a previously committed Bea Benaderet was the first choice) who missed out on getting the part due to her drinking and inability to handle the physicality required of the character. Ball and Pepper had been close friends for years, and as a result, she played a number of supporting parts in the cast. Today, she is probably best remembered as Doris Ziffel from “Green Acres.” 



Attempting to take back her original seat, Lucy is flattened by another unaware passenger (Audrey Betz).



Back to the Jungle Cruise gorilla. My earliest shot of it is this one, most likely from 1957 or 1958:



September 1958:



A closeup:



Another from September 1958:



This undated 1950s image shows how guests were caught unaware of the gorilla, as many of the photos taken barely catch him as the boat cruises by.



May 1960:



September 1961:



From April 1963 I have two images that were shot consecutively.



They appear to have captured both gorillas on film, as the vegetation looks different in these two images.



June 1963:



September 1963:



And the last image in my collection is dated February 1971:



The Safari Outpost scene is where the gorillas moved to, as seen by these semi-contemporary images that I photographed:





In case you wonder what happened to the original gorillas that used to be on this attracton, the late Alain Littaye from Disney and More was able to give some answers:

A looong time ago, guests could watch two not-so-threatening but massive audio-animatronics gorillas standing and observing you, from the banks of the “rivers of Africa.” And then one day, the gorillas disappeared. 1977-78, was a time for a major refurbishment of the Jungle Cruise and legendary imagineer Mark Davis worked on its upgrade—which was after WDW had opened with their improved show. Part of Mark’s new show for Disneyland included the Gorilla Camp with the tents, overturned jeep, and the family of gorillas unpacking and turning the camp inside out. That's when these older previous tenant Gorillas vacated the Disneyland Jungle Cruise. But as they say at WDI, "good ideas never die.” Reemploying animation figures is common at Walt Disney imagineering; some of the AA’s from Nature’s Wonderland are now part of Big Thunder, and almost all America Sings audio-animatronics are in Splash Mountain. Approximately at the same time, in 1978, the imagineers were also working on another major refurbishment of another Disneyland attraction: the Matterhorn.

The Disneyland Line newsletter has the closure dates for the Matterhorn as September 1977-June 1978. This corresponds with an image from my collection dated December 1977:






Back to Alain:

New Bobsleds were being added along with new track, and better brakes for the splash down. It was also decided to put some show in the interior, mostly for the Skyway buckets that passed through the Matterhorn more slowly. The Bobsleds could see the new icy interiors and crystals as well as what is now a very famous Disneyland figure: the abominable snowman. Steve Kirk, imagineer extraordinaire who became the show producer-in-chief for Tokyo Disney Sea worked on the design of the three “abominable snowmen” in the attraction.



The design of these Snow Men was based on Steve’s artwork (the one above) which was a composite of several different contemporary depictions and his own warped imagination. Sculptor Blaine Gibson sculpted the snowman mask, and the imagineering team with legend and Matterhorn creator Fred Joerger added the interior with the new Ice Crystals. You’ve probably already guessed the end of the story: yes, the old Jungle Cruise audio-animatronic gorilla put on a new suit in 1978, and is now living a second life in the role of the Matterhorn’s abominable snowman. Transforming ex-gorillas into Snow Men had to have been purely for economic reasons and probably dictated the proportions of the final generation of the simian snow men. As there are three Abominable snow men in the ride, i couldn't tell you which ones exactly are the former Jungle Cruise gorillas, but next time you ride the Matterhorn bobsleds and see the abominable snow man, have a little thought for these old Jungle Cruise gorillas, who were some of the first Disneyland audio-animatronics. I’m sure they will be sensitive to this attention, and watch out for that third abominable snowman as he may be the real one.






The earliest photo I have of the Snowman is one I took in February 2007:



By the time I shot this July 2015 image, the Snowman had been upgraded once again. I wonder if any of the original gorilla parts were still used?



And that’s all for today, folks!

See more Disneyland Jungle Cruise photos at my main website.

The Dapper Jungle Cruise Skipper

This recently acquired vintage Disneyland image shows a cast member straddling the Jungle Cruise dock and the Ganges Gal boat. Very dapper looking, especially that watch! The back had “1955” handwritten on it. Not one to just trust handwriting vs. a slide date stamp, I looked at my Jungle Cruise collection to see if the cast member uniform matched the time period.



Not only did the uniform match another 1955 image in my collection, it matched the cast member!



It appears that the striped shirt only lasted the first year of this attraction’s operation, replaced by a floral/Hawaiian motif, as seen in the August 1956 shot below:



 See more Disneyland Jungle Cruise photos at my main website.

Main Street Model Monday, Part 2

Faithful readers knew that at some point I’d get around to part 2, and here we go! This recently listed vintage image from ebay shows the model that was created for Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A. If you look closely at the original model, you can see that the original intention was to call the store below Crystal Palace. At some point before opening it was changed to Crystal Arcade.



The model also shows the building below as being a Sporting Goods Store; Coke stepped in at the right time with a sponsorship and won this coveted location…



where it still resides today. Could the Crystal Palace and Candy Palace co-existed peacefully on the same street? I guess we’ll never know.



Eagle-eyed readers will see the concept art for Storybook Land on the back wall…



and Peter Pan’s Flight…



and the Jungle Cruise.



See more Disneyland Main Street photos at my main website.