Disneyland Stage Coach Articles
All Aboard Disney's Fort Wilderness Railroad
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It's no secret that Walt Disney had a special place in his heart for railroads. Years before Disneyland opened, he built a model railroad in his backyard which he dubbed the Carolwood Pacific Railroad and spent countless hours riding it, tinkering with it and giving his family and friends much-coveted rides.
When Disneyland opened in 1955, the narrow-gauge Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad circled ...
Disneyland For Adults Only
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When I told a friend I was heading to Disneyland to explore its appeal for adults, his immediate retort was that it would be a very brief visit. And when our group, not a person under 35, walked through the gates of Disneyland on a warm Saturday and contemplated the crush of elbow-high humanity before us, I wondered if perhaps he was right.
Yet seven hours and eight attractions into my first day, a ...
He Spent 21 Million Dollars Just For Fun
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Last week the 9,474,254th visitor walked through the gates of Disneyland since they were opened July 18, 1955.
And just for fun-that these visitors might have the time of their lives - $21 millions have been spent on the fabulous playground at Anaheim by its creator, Walt Disney.
That's not all. Says Disney:
"Disneyland never will be completed. . . . It will continue to grow, to add new ...
Trip To Disneyland Will Be Literally Out Of This World
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For vacationers, week end travelers or plain Sunday drivers a tour through Disneyland Park in Anaheim which opens tomorrow will be a trip that is almost literally out of this world playground officials said today.
Because, behind the high embankment that shuts in the heart-shaped park and shuts long present day cares, there are "new worlds" of enchantment serving up fun for all kinds and ages of ...
Back To The Old West
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If it was in the West, it's here. The Mark Twain Riverboat docks at the aptly named Mark Twain Landing in Frontierland.
The first train ride, apart from the Disneyland Railroad, was the Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland, opening in 1960; the Mine Train closed in 1977, and Big Thunder Mountain opened two years later. The two rides could not be more different. The Mine Train was a slow, relaxing ride ...
Disneyland And Imagineering Part 10
"I know it's here somewhere"
I'm not sure if that's exactly what was said upon first sight of where the Rivers of America used to be, but I'm sure it was something similar. Maybe with a little more salt. A lot of the excavation for the layout of the park revolved around removing existing trees and vegetation, digging out what would be the basin for the riverbed that would become the Rivers of America. ...
Anaheim Gal Disneyland Envoy
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A pretty 21-year-old Anaheim girl Monday was named Disneyland's Ambassador to the World for 1966.
Connie Jean Swanson, a tour guide at Disneyland for the past four years, will travel throughout the United States and many foreign lands during the coming year carrying in her portfolio the friendly spirit which has made Disneyland famous.
Daughter of Mrs. Florence O. Swanson and the late, Rudolph ...
Disneyland In The Beginning A Look Back
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The youngest grandchildren made their first trip to Disney World over the Christmas holidays. They loved it. My fairest daughter, who hadn't been there since she was small, came back raving about the quality of the entertainers in Magic Kingdom, impressed at how they managed to be so consistently nice to children day after day. She took the occasion to tell the kids that their grandfather, the author of ...
Disneyland And Imagineering Part 14
There's Got to be a Morning After
When we last left off, Walt Disney had made it through Opening Day. It wasn't all that he had hoped it would be, but he made it. "Black Sunday" was supposed to be a relatively tame press preview. Instead it resembled more of an all out free-for-all -- the park being besieged by triple attendance that was more than expected. From a certain point of view, this was ...
Amazing Original Disneyland Designs Included A Working Farm
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Sixty three years ago today, with a nationally televised grand opening, Disneyland arrived on the scene as Southern California's signature tourist attraction.
In spite of a rocky opening day, the theme park attracted more than 1 million visitors in its first two months in business, offering a spectacle quite unlike any other at the time.
But Walt Disney's initial vision for the park was even more ...
All Aboard For Disneyland
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Byways, streets and rail lines of yesteryear, rivers of today, super freeways and sky-trails of the future, paths and celestial seas in the ageless realm of make-believe are ready for travel-and all can be traversed in a single day at Disneyland.
Tours into four centuries in horse-drawn streetcars, stagecoaches. Mississippi stern-wheelers, old-time trains, cars-of-tomorrow. "flying" pirate galleons ...
Here's Your First View Of Disneyland
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Walt Disney's imagination is running wild again. At Anaheim, Calif., 25 miles from Los Angeles, bulldozers are piling up miniature mountains for a new product of Walt Disney's fertile imagination - a fabulous playground called Disneyland. At present, Disneyland exists mainly in drawings, models and the color map on these pages. But already its four major areas (see map) are backdrops for the Disneyland TV ...
Still Magic In The Kingdom
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Disneyland is a place where a grown man looks perfectly normal wearing Mickey Mouse ears and where a little girl can feel like a princess.
The first true theme park also is a melting pot where an Indian woman in traditional dress poses for a photo in front of the Small World ride featuring children from around the world and where instructions to ride the Winnie the Pooh attraction are given in ...
California Supreme Court's Ruling On The 'Indiana Jones' Ride
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Last week, the California Supreme Court decided that the "Indiana Jones" amusement park ride at Disneyland was like a city bus. It therefore held that Disneyland owed the duty of "utmost care" of a common carrier to the passengers on the ride.
As I will argue below, the majority opinion in the case is a telling example of bad common law reasoning.
The Facts of the Case, the Plaintiff's ...
Disneyland
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It may be more than the kids can bear. It has an Adventureland from Tahiti, a Frontierland entered through the log gates of an old fort complete with a Davy Crockett museum, a Fantasyland full Snow White, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty and all their associates, and a Tomorrowland with a Space Port. Walt Disney arranged it all, of course, and then named it Disneyland. Sprawled over 160 acres at Anaheim, Calif., ...
If You Plan To Visit Disneyland
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The wonderful world of make-believe called Disneyland is now two years old, and it continues to delight Westerners by the thousands-small children, teen-agers, adults alike. What's more, it doesn't lose it's luster in a day's visit, nor in two or three. Possibly it never will for a good many visitors.
We won't try to describe in detail this imaginative combination of playland and museum; but we do offer ...
Disneyland Then And Now
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1955
Hours: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week in summer; closed Mondays the rest of the year.
Size: 60 acres, plus 100 acres for parking.
Zones: Fantasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Main Street USA 18 attarctions
Admission: $1 (including tax) for adults. 50 cents for children. Ride tickets, sold separately, priced from 10 to 35 cents.
Employees: About 1,000
...
A Wonderful World
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The saga of the aging cinema star is a part of American folklore-the heady upward trajectory, the few brief seasons on the summit, and the swift descent to "B" pictures, guest appearances, and, of late, odd jobs on television. Next October the saga will be re-enacted again, but with one big difference. The old friend taking a job as TV master of ceremonies will have all his joints in top working order, and ...
Small Boy's Dream Come True
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During World War II, Dad's artists designed thousands of insignia for planes, tanks and shoulder patches; over 4000 designs in all. I collected them in scrapbooks, so I ought to know. Uncle Roy figured that each of those insignia cost the studio about twenty-five dollars, and the studio did the work for nothing. That is a pretty big giveaway-$100,000. "How could you turn them down?" Dad asks. "It meant a ...
Intrepid Kids Of Disneyland
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It was a normal Sunday afternoon at Disneyland. The Gay Nineties show had just broken at the Golden Horseshoe, a make-believe salon located in the Frontierland area. The tourist-packed Mark Twain, a scaled-down reproduction of a nineteenth-century Mississippi river boat, was sailing around Tom Sawyer's Island. Stagecoach passengers were jolting through the Painted Desert, which, until recently, had been an ...
Steamboat 'round The Bend
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A summer vacation with pay. . . traveling down the rivers of America into the past . . . the exotic and the whimsical . . . this was my summer travel adventure.
Dozens of school teachers and college students shared this unusual tour, yet none of us traveled more than 50 miles. All of us met thousands of people from nearly every corner of the earth. We were part of the newest of Americana, Disneyland, ...
Mouse That Turned To Gold
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In real life, fame rarely leads to fortune--particularly if you are a mouse. But in Hollywood, almost anything can have a fairy tale ending. After more than a quarter-century of paw-to-mouth existence, Mickey Mouse finally is piloting his creator, Walt Disney, to the pot of cheese at the foot of the rainbow.
In some ways, the $17-million Disneyland amusement park that opens in Anaheim, Calif., July 18, ...
Happy Birthday, Disneyland
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Disneyland was Walt Disney's baby, a dream he nurtured for years which eventually turned into a flat-out obsession ... an obsession that had as many skeptics as it had bank creditors demanding that Disney make good on all the loans he needed to make his pie-in-the-sky come true.
Tomorrow, The Happiest Place on Earth celebrates its 55th anniversary. Five and a half decades after the world's first ...
Disneyland In 1955 Rides Now Long Gone Weird Glitches On Opening Day
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Disneyland was dedicated during a special preview opening day on July 17, 1955. The public opening was July 18. The dedication aired on ABC at 4:30 p.m. July 17. Some details of the opening:
Park attendance: 6,000 guests were invited for the special preview opening, but an additional 22,000 showed up with counterfeit tickets, making for a total of 28,000 guests that day.
Temperature: 101 ...
Visitors To See Historic West
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Glimpses of the old and historic Western movement of American history are provided to visitors of Disneyland in Frontierland.
The period of Frontierland is approximately from 1810 to 1860, but flags flying over Frontierland encompass the period from the establishment of our union of states under the Constitution through the post-Civil War era.
The 13-star entrance flag ...
23 Rides That Have Shut Down And The Surprising Reasons Why
Rocket to the Moon closed and inspired several futuristic flight rides were equally unsuccessful.
Rocket to the Moon was a Disneyland opening day attraction in 1955 that placed guests in a giant rocket ship, or moonliner, standing in Tomorrowland. The futuristic simulation ride was sponsored by the now defunct airline TWA (Trans World Airline).
Guests sat in a circle with screens ...
Classic Conveyances From The Skyway To Autopia Go To Auction
How synonymous is The Happiest Place on Earth with various iconic vehicles, those marvelous modes of transport hailing from the past, present, and future?
You don't even need to step inside Disneyland park to see one of its most celebrated on-the-go attractions, the Monorail, gliding outside the entrance with futuristic grace.
So when a few of these fanciful cars, coaches, and ...
