Tomorrowland Autopia Articles
10 Most Expensive Items In Auction Featuring 1500 Theme Park Collectibles
An upcoming auction featuring hundreds of Disneyland items expected to fetch as much as $600,000 apiece will give Disneyana enthusiasts a chance to add a bit of the Anaheim theme park 's history to their personal memorabilia collections. Heritage Auctions in Beverly Hills will hold the Disneyland Signature Auction: The Rummell Collection on Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, May 22. ...
11 Attractions From Opening Day
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When Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 1955, it wasn 't an immediate success. The park experienced numerous setbacks, including counterfeit tickets, concession shortages, and malfunctioning rides. But it also featured many rides and attractions that are considered classic parts of the Wonderful World of Disney today. Here are 11 attractions guests got to experience when they visited ...
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 ...
50 Things You Didn't Know About Disneyland
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In honor of Disneyland's 50th anniversary, we present 50 cool, obscure and simply odd things you probably didn't know about the self-proclaimed Happiest Place on Earth. Many were culled from Mouse Tales by David Koenig (Bonaventure, $19.95). Some were provided by Disney archivist Dave Smith, and others came from 101 Things You Never Knew About Disneyland by former park employee Kevin Yee and lifelong fan ...
70 Years Of Disneyland A Look Back And Forward At The Happiest Place On Earth
Building Disneyland was an uphill battle for Walt Disney. Architects didn 't understand his vision. Banks didn 't want to make loans. And his business-minded brother (and partner) wanted him to reign in his spending. Yet Walt 's magnificent original park, the only one that he ever got to visit and enjoy, became a global icon beloved by generations of visitors.
Today, as Disneyland celebrates ...
A Brief History Of Disneyland, An American Classic
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"The thing will get more beautiful year after year. And it will get better as I find out what the public likes; I can't do that with a picture it's finished and unchangeable before I find out whether the public likes it or not." Walt Disney on Disneyland. Walt Disney found different reasons to build his seventeen million dollar Magic Kingdom in Anaheim in 1955. The idea had originally stemmed ...
A Fantasy That Paid Off
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The place is surrounded by a berm, a high barrow of earth, that insulates it from the external world. There is a single gateway where admission is charged. This, the land of Disney, is more secure than ancient Troy. No Trojan horse will get into Disneyland. Guards at the main gate closely scrutinize all who enter. Not even an unseemly teenager will get past them, much less a Trojan horse. Disneyland is ...
A Grandmother's Magical Return To Disneyland
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If you live in North America, indeed much of the world, you are unlikely to have avoided the spell that has been cast over modern culture since the day Walt Disney opened the gates to his Disneyland theme park in California in 1955. If you were a lucky child, your parents loaded up the station wagon and headed to Anaheim at least once during your childhood, cramming the family into a little offsite ...
A Park With A Powerful Spell
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Disneyland opened on this day in 1955. For five decades, the Anaheim attraction has worked its magic on our culture and transformed the entertainment industry. To build his dream theme park in Anaheim a half-century ago, Walt Disney borrowed against his life insurance policy and cashed in property, including a vacation home in Palm Springs, to pay the $17-million construction bill. When the ...
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 ...
Areas Of Disneyland Provide Visitors Wide Entertainment Choice
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Adventure, fantasy, the future, the past, the modern the old and the outdated-all are present in quality and quantity at the Disneyland world of entertainment, enchantment and variety. Starting with their entrance into the Park leading onto Main Street; U.S.A., visitors can project themselves into any one of four worlds which await them during their 1 1/4-mile walk through Disneyland's ...
Autopia Busted! Disneyland Learns Real Engineering
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At the end of Disneyland's opening week we had just two cars running out of the (37) Autopia ride vehicles built. Walt's custom car was safe on its rotating display turntable parked in Tomorrowland, while the two police cars were still running good enough for ride operators to give the tiny kids a ride. I was still repairing the cars with my own tools, working out of the trunk of my yellow Cadillac ...
Autopia Manufacture
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Some thought Walt was nuts to get into the automobile manufacturing busines. Why not just buy one of the typical carnival type midget autos that were commercialy available. Why go to the trouble of developing Disneyland's own little Autopia car? Well, to buy just any car certainly was not Walt. His park was going to be "his" and so the cars going to be "his". An importer of German amusement cars had ...
Autopia Testing
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By April 1955, the first Autopia car body was finished and mounted on the hand-built production test chassis. The Disney Studio Machine Shop now had a complete car ready for test driving, but without any bumpers. Kaiser Aluminum was to be a sponsor of Disneyland, and their salesperson, Mel Tilley, suggested we use their aluminum for the Autopia wrap-around bumpers. WRONG! I was to find out too late that ...
Autopia's New Wheels
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If the new Autopia at Disneyland needs a slogan, it could be "Cars are people, too." At Tomorrowland beginning June 29, guests will have the choice of three personality-filled vehicles to "drive": Suzie, a cute, curvy compact; Dusty, a rugged and roomy SUV; and Sparky, a Ferrari-like sports car. "Today, being on the open road is a common experience, but the thrill of trying on a new car is still there," ...
California's Disneyland
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Disneyland, the country's first truly big-time theme park, is located 27 miles southeast of Los Angeles in Anaheim. When the park opened in 1955, Walt Disney promised it would get bigger and better. Well, Disneyland is celebrating its 25th birthday this year, with a spectacle of special happenings. In fact, you may want to check into what's on tap when and schedule your visit accordingly. But whenever you ...
Celebrities Officials Join Walt Disney To Dedicate New Era In Entertainment
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More than 50,000 visitors were attracted to Disneyland on Monday, July 18, when the Park officially opened its gates to the general public. Reactions were mixed but highly enthusiastic, ranging from exclamations of "fantastic" to "unbelievable" and "too terrific for words to describe. Governor Goodwin J.. Knight of the State of California assisted Walt Disney and some 25,000 invited guests at the official ...
Charlie Ridgway's Long And Winding Road To Becoming A Disney Legend
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The Walt Disney Company and newspapers would seem to have little in common ... except for the fact that so many key people who have either worked for or are currently in Disney's employ got their starts in the print media. It started, of course, with Walt Disney himself, who famously delivered newspapers in Missouri after his father Elias bought a route. Walt rose before sunrise each morning to ...
Chevron and Disneyland Unveil Redesigned Autopia
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Disneyland and Chevron today unveiled a remodeled Autopia featuring restyled cars and roadways with interactive surprises, visual puns, unexpected road hazards and humorous billboards. The new attraction, which officially opens to the public tomorrow, combines the Fantasyland Autopia and Tomorrowland Autopia roadways into a single attraction with access through a new boarding area in Tomorrowland. ...
Dangerous Disneyland Mental Fatigue Part 1
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Disneyland gets sued for injuries and deaths all of the time. Believe me, I get that accidents happen, but most of these tourists are simply victims of their own stupidity. Mild disclaimer: a few of these I've read about on only one site, so I'm not entirely sure they happened. Now, let's get down to business. Matterhorn, Space, and Thunder Mountains are not most dangerous in that respect, ...
Dear Walt, Thanks For The Memories
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From smooching in the tunnels to wide-eyed kids and sobbing adults, our readers have been through it all in Disneyland's 50 years. We've chosen excerpts from our favorite stories and photos among scores of tales told by readers who've paid countless visits to "The Happiest Place on Earth." Disney's celebration begins this week and runs for 18 months - some birthday party! Ours starts today. ...
Discovering Disneyland
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You have to look quickly, and you have to know exactly where to look. But if you do, you'll catch a pretty cool inside joke at Disneyland. On the Star Tours ride, just before your runaway Starspeeder exits the space station, keep your eye on the lower right side of the screen: You flash past what looks like a giant electron microscope. Old-timers will recognize it as the Mighty Microscope from ...
Disney Legend Bob Gurr The Man Behind The Motion
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Disneyland, “The happiest place on Earth,” is known for its attractions, which transport people of all ages into a world of imagination. Park guests can voyage under the sea or even slide down a snow-covered mountain. One man to thank for this is Bob Gurr. Gurr often quips, “If it moves on wheels at Disneyland, I probably designed it.” He is responsible for more than 200 motion projects ...
Disney Magic A Strong Magnet At Mouse Meet In Lynnwood
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For eight years, the Pacific Northwest Mouse Meet has sprinkled a little Disney magic on Snohomish County. The annual event brings together Disney fans at the Lynnwood Convention Center for a day of presentations, photos, autographs, sweet treats, activities and displays. This year's event was Saturday. It sold out, with 450 tickets purchased by people in 11 states along with Canada and Japan. ...
Disneyland 60 Things You Might Not Know About The Magic Kingdom
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TV show named "Gunsmoke" made its debut, and another named "Make Room for Daddy" won two Emmys. Elvis Presley and Pat Boone had young hearts all shook up, and for the first time, they could listen to those crooners and others on a new gadget called a pocket transistor radio. A new car cost $1,900, gasoline was 23 cents a gallon and rents averaged $87 a month.. It was 1955. On July 17 of that year - a ...
Disneyland And Chevron Enter Multi-Year Agreement To Upgrade Autopia
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The Disneyland Resort announced today a joint 13-year marketing, promotion and sponsorship agreement with Chevron that will update and improve Disneyland's Autopia attraction. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The remodeled Autopia, tentatively scheduled to open in mid 2000, will feature new visual show elements, restyled cars, the introduction of an entertaining pre-show area, and the ...
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. ...
Disneyland And Imagineering Part 13
Disneyland, the idea, came from the mind of Walt Disney, but Disneyland, the theme park, was a collaborative effort. It took a great many men and women to create it. Since all men are created equal, everyone who contributed should be credited. I've known about C.V. Wood for many years, and although he was not an Imagineer, he was a land developer who made significant contributions in terms of sales and ...
Disneyland And Imagineering Part 7
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The Land that Never Was One of the themes that Disney toyed with was the birth of the nation, continuing on through the Colonial Era, following inventors and political figures that shaped our country. Officially, it wouldn't be referred to as a land per se, the same as Main Street USA, New Orleans Square and Toontown. Actually the proposed idea was a combination of two areas, the first being Liberty ...
Disneyland And Imagineering Part 8
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Picture this You're an artistic designer; You're scheduled to attend a design meeting for a project you drew the design that "greenlighted" the project you're currently working on; Deadlines are rapidly approaching; And in walks your boss He looks concerned -- something between worried and extremely serious; He opens the meeting and begins talking about a specific part of ...
Disneyland And Imagineering Part 9
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The birth of space exploration in the middle of the 1950s affected both sides of the globe, but before the Space Race there was the Cold War. There was a fair share of unilateral fear from several previous wars. As a result, it pitted the United States against Russia in a "race" for strategic military superiority. Although the Cold War came first, the Space Race wasn't far behind and for a long period ...
