Disneyland is now past the half-way point in a spring construction program that will add 1 1/2 million dollars in new rides and amusements to Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom in Anaheim. Major areas of activity are Frontierland and the Tom Sawyer Island in the Rivers of America. More than $250,000 is being spent to make the island a "playland out of a youngster's dream." On the island -- named for and ...

When Walt Disney completed the $2,000,000 expansion program at Disneyland this summer, it was estimated by park officials that the capacity had increased by 100,000 rides per day. Completion of Disneyland"s first expansion program came this past month with the opening of the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train Ride in Frontierland. The Rainbow Caverns ride was the last and most costly of the new ...

The Walt Disney Company recently announced that an entirely new land based on the Star Wars universe would be coming to Disneyland, likely in 2019. The 14-acre mini universe will feature two major new rides and other attractions including a restaurant based on the Mos Eisley cantina in the films. I'm not a big Star Wars aficionado, but I hear that the designers working on it are, and genuine fans can ...

As the final scheduled day for the Rivers of America attractions at Disneyland comes to an end, it marks the closing of Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island, the Mark Twain Riverboat, Sailing Ship Columbia and Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes and "Fantasmic!" for more than a year. Also included in the closures is the Disneyland Railroad. All of this is so that Disney can reroute the Rivers of America to ...

Among the attractions that will vanish for at least 18 months during the construction of the new land devoted to Star Wars, there's a good chance that at least one, located on Tom Sawyer Island, might not return: Dead Man's Grotto. After the enormous (and unexpected) success of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the folks at Walt Disney Imagineering began developing an extensive makeover of ...

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 ...

Twenty years ago," Walt said as we drove toward Disneyland, some 25 miles southeast of central Los Angeles, "I was always trying to think of a place to take my two small daughters on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon - a place where I could have fun, too. "At an amusement park the only fun provided for a father, besides having his bottom dropped out from under him on the roller coaster, was the same he ...

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 ...

Disneyland really started more than 20 years ago, when Walt got the idea for an amusement park that grownups as well as children would enjoy. "I had all my drawing things laid out at home, and I'd work on plans for the park, as a hobby, at night." At the time, amusement parks were dying all over the country, "I talked Disneyland but no one could see it," Walt recalled. "So I went ahead and spent my ...

At the Turtle Talk With Crush exhibit at Disney's California Adventure theme park, Crush the sea turtle makes a cameo like those at the start of most Disney rides. Nothing seems out of the ordinary as the character goes though the script with a cast member, until the Finding Nemo star takes questions from the audience. "I want to talk to this little dude in the purple shirt," Crush says, "the one up ...

Let the lads and lasses loot, plunder and pillage to their hearts' content at Disneyland - if they can get past some scurvy scallywags ready to defend their precious spoils. Now that facets of old Tom Sawyer Island have gotten the heave-ho, the attraction reopens today with a redesigned "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme meant to boost the aging interactive playground and capitalize on the success of ...

“Twenty years ago,” Walt said as we drove toward Disney­land, some 25 miles south­east of central Los Angeles, “I was always trying to think of a place to take my two small daughters on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon-a place where I could have fun, too. “At an amusement park, the only fun provided for a father, besides having his bottom dropped out from under him on the roller coaster, was the ...

Hop aboard the horse-drawn trolley (or if you prefer a surrey, a double-decked bus, a "horseless carriage" or fire wagon) and let's begin a tour through Disneyland with a jaunt down 1900 Main Street. To our right as we leave Town Square is the Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad Station, where passenger and freight trains depart for a trip around Disneyland. Facing the square are a bank, in ...

An entirely new concept in family entertainment awaits visitors at Disneyland. From the moment you enter its nostalgic Main Street of early America, you are transported out of the world of today into a realm where time seems to stand still, where memories of the past and dreams of the future combine to ensure a day in your life that will never be forgotten. Disneyland is built ...