Tom Sawyers Island Articles
Pirates Premiere Has Disneyland Scurrying Many Scallywags Expected
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If you plan on going to Disneyland, then plan on massive crowds this week. On Tuesday the final preparations for what is expected to be the biggest premiere yet are currently under way with the completion of the giant screen. The Pirates of the Caribbean 4 is taking sail at the Disneyland Resort and scallywags from cities (and islands) far away are planning to attend the "Happiest Place on Earth' to catch ...
14 Venues, Show Temporarily Close In Disney Parks
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Disneyland Resort parks have 14 venues and one show that are temporarily closed during May, mostly for major makeovers or special events. Many of the projects are ending this month as the two parks -- Disneyland and Disney California Adventure -- prepare for the summer season. Along Disneyland's Rivers of America, four attractions and the Fantasmic! Show are shut down for preparations of the ...
22,000 Expected At Disneyland 'Pirates' Premiere
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Disneyland plans to set up 20,000 bleacher seats for fans who want to watch celebrity arrivals, including possibly Johnny Depp, for the "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" premiere Saturday. Another 2,000 invited guests, stars and ticket holders only are allowed to watch the "Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides" premiere along the Rivers of America. Fans can start filling seats as soon as the ...
Disneyland Closes Attractions For Pirates Premiere
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Disneyland this week temporarily closed five attractions as the park prepares for next week's celebrity-studded premiere of the upcoming "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" movie. Crews are building a screen and seating along Rivers of America for the outdoor viewing May 7 of "Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides" for celebrities, invited guests and ticket holders. The screening follows "black" ...
Disneyland Prepares For The Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Premiere
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A 3-D screen on Tom Sawyer Island, food for 2,000 people, musical acts it takes a seaworthy crew. For the last few weeks, after Disneyland has closed its gates for the night, a team of workers, including eight divers, has labored through into the morning in Frontierland and New Orleans Square, ferrying building materials to Tom Sawyer Island and sinking support structures into the floor of the ...
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 Few Nuggets About Disneyland As It Turns 56
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Disneyland The Happiest Place on Earth turns 56 on Sunday. Much has been said and written about the groundbreaking amusement enterprise in Anaheim, Calif. But even after more than five and a half decades in operation, some interesting nuggets can still be unearthed. For instance, not many people are aware that during the first few years of operation, not only could you visit the park during a ...
As Disneyland Turns 56, Walt Disney's Daughter Reminisces
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Imagine growing up in a family surrounded by cartoon characters, a miniature steam train, Academy Awards and theme parks. Diane Disney Miller did. Her dad was Walt Disney. "He was always fun to be with him to walk around with him was fun," Miller said. While their father was a workaholic, one day a week was her and sister Sharon's day. "He would pick us up at Sunday school, then ...
Walt Disney King Of Fantasy
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Walt Disney and friends. Walt Disney, whose Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck brought laughter to the world and whose Disneyland is a playground for the world's people, calls his home at Smoke Tree Ranch, "my laughing place." Whimsical, as always, he refers to the Uncle Remus story where Brer Rabbit oh-so-casually mentions his "laughing place" and makes it sound so intriguing that Brer Fox insists on ...
12 Unique And Magical Memories To Be Made At Disneyland
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When visiting Disney, many families head straight for the E-ticket rides, from Space Mountain to the Matterhorn to Dumbo. But in doing so they not only spend a whole lot of time in long lines, but they miss out on so many magical moments and memories that can be made at the "happiest place on earth.' Though these attractions are less popular, they are just as special and endure in family memories far ...
California vs. Paris: Frontierland
Looking back at the articles I have written comparing the two Disneylands closest to my heart (California and Paris) I realize that the only Land in the Paris version of Disneyland Park which I haven't covered in any detail yet is Frontierland. [The only elements of this Land I have looked at, to date, are Tom Sawyer Island and the Railroad]. With regards to Anaheim, I also haven't covered Critter ...
Disneyland Day Every Day For This Couple
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At 8 a.m. today, Tonya Mickesh and Jeff Reitz were to go through the entrance turnstiles to Disneyland for the 366th day in a row. It's a journey that's seen them spend 24 hours in the park for the 24-hour Leap Day, watch baby ducks grow up, and go from unemployed to full-time jobs while becoming nationally known as the "everyday Disneyland couple." "It was a way to keep ourselves occupied because ...
California vs. Paris: Rivers of America
I learned something today. My comparison article for January 2013 was always going to be about the Rivers of America in Anaheim's Disneyland Park, and its counterpart in Disneyland Paris. However, until perhaps five minutes ago, I had assumed that the Paris equivalent was also called Rivers of America. Turns out, it's the Rivers of the Far West. Whilst it has been made clear which rivers ...
Have A Relaxing Disneyland Staycation
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Disneyland used to be a "one and done" visit a one-day rush through Disneyland with a pit stop at California Adventure for a couple of favorite rides and then home. That's almost impossible to do now as the new-and-improved California Adventure with Cars Land is a destination itself and Disneyland continues to add new attractions and shows. These days, stay a night or two; make it a staycation and your ...
Disneyland For Dads
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In the land of Disney, princess always reigned supreme. However, though Sleeping Beauty's Castle, the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and those ever-popular princesses may get a lot of the attention, Disneyland and California Adventure offer a pixie dust-less world for the guys in your life too - all in time for Father's Day in June. Cars Land Route 66 comes to life for plain-old cars and animated ...
New Fantasmic Show 2024 Whats Changed And How Long Is It
Just over a year after unexpectedly closing following a destructive fire, Fantasmic! is back at Disneyland Park in California but, it looks a little different from what had been there before. In April 2023, Disneyland's roughly 45-foot-tall, full-body Fantasmic! dragon caught fire, and the nighttime spectacular was closed indefinitely. It re-opened on May 24, 2024 to a packed audience, but ...
Nighttime Spectacular That Almost Happened In 1987
Disneyland developed a nighttime spectacular in 1987 that featured ghosts, skeletons and black widow brides escaping from the Haunted Mansion to entertain crowds along the Rivers of America five years before “Fantasmic” became a surprise sensation.
Disneyland consultant Don Dorsey discussed the history of the shelved Haunted Mansion-themed nighttime spectacular during the Magic After ...
Growing Up In Disneyland
Don DeFore's Silver Banjo Barbecue Restaurant in Frontierland Disneyland fans who have enjoyed the park numerous times might say they too "grew up in Disneyland." But my family's story is a bit different. Our Mom loved to quote us kids saying, "gee, do we have to go to Disneyland again? Such was the case in the early years of the Park when Dad owned a restaurant in Frontierland. A few stories below ...
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 ...
What It Takes To Run Mark Twain Riverboat
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A few years ago, The Orange County Register was allowed to spend some time with the crew on board the Mark Twain Riverboat. Many of the attractions at Disneyland are operated with the push of a button, but the Mark Twain Riverboat is not one of them. Just like the locomotives of the Disneyland Railroad, the Mark Twain needs steam to power its paddlewheel and a crew that uses signal bells to help ...
8 More Unanswered Questions About Star Wars Land
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Disney raised even more questions with the recent announcement of plans to temporarily close the Rivers of America, Tom Sawyer Island and the Disneyland Railroad to allow for construction of Star Wars Land. Here's what we know so far: The new 14-acre land will feature two attractions set in a remote frontier town on the outer rim of the "Star Wars" galaxy. While no opening date has been set, ...
Tom Sawyer Comes To Disneyland
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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 ...
Big Disneyland Expansion Since Original Opening
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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 ...
Disneyland Ride Review Full Steam Ahead On The Mark Twain
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Engine room, full speed ahead. The bell clangs and the steam whistle blows as you embark on a journey aboard the Mark Twain Riverboat, one of Disneyland's opening day attractions still around. It will take you on a journey on the Rivers of America in Frontierland, nearly identical to the one visitors to the park encountered in 1955. As the steam-powered paddle wheeler glides away from the dock, it ...
Truman Visits Disneyland
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Harry and Bess Truman were just another couple of out-of-season tourist here Saturday. The former president winked cupped his hands and shouted to his wife over the brassy din of a band playing. "I'm Just Wild About Harry": "Boy, is this plate a rubberneck's paradise." Then he set off on a 2 1/2 -hour tour of the park at a pace so brisk that his official party and newsmen had to jog to keep ...
Whats All This Jazz At Disneyland
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The "saints" are all ready to come marching in-at Disneyland, and when they arrive Saturday, Oct. 1, the most unique combination of Walt Disney pageantry and Dixieland jazz ever presented west of New Orleans will take over the Magic Kingdom. Called "Dixieland and at Disneyland," the spectacular will mark the first time in the Southland that a show has ever been presented in a setting that turns the ...
10 Scary Legendary Ghost Tales Of Disneyland Haunts
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I recently interviewed a cast member who works inside the Haunted Mansion. She talked about the belief, among Disney employees, that the place is inhabited by more than the Disney-created 999 haunts. She said female employees talk about ghosts that untie the ribbons in the cast members' hair. She said props move from one side of a room to the other. She said there are behind-the-scenes rooms in the ...
Why Star Wars Land Is Being Added To Disneyland
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Star Wars Land won't open at Disneyland for several years, but construction will start bringing changes to the park soon after the New Year. The changes Star Wars Land is bringing to Disneyland reflect much more than the addition of a wildly popular entertainment franchise to a wildly popular theme park; they represent a cultural shift that is affecting theme parks across the country. When ...
African Veldt
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Way down in Jungleland, below the Amazin' Disney line, there's news among the gnus. "The Trapped Safari" is the new headline feature and a bit of bright fun in Disneyland's far-famed Adventureland and the Jungle River Cruise. Jackals, hyenas and buzzards lay siege to a comical hunter and his retinue treed by the wild beasts. Disneyland adventurers drift safely past as lions devour an unsuspecting prey ...
Neat Facts About Disneyland Rivers Of America
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Disneyland fans have just a couple more months to enjoy Frontierland's Rivers of America before Disney closes it, and all its related attractions, for more than a year to make way for the construction of Star Wars Land. So let's honor Disneyland's Rivers of America with some fun facts that you might not know about this section of the park. On a personal note, the Rivers of America is my "home" ...
58 Ways Star Wars Land Is Changing Disneyland
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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 ...
