Mike Fink Keel Boats Articles
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 ...
Book Written By Two Disneyland Janitors Dives Into Dirty Details Of Cleaning The Magic Kingdom
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What's the cleanup needed after a "Code V?" What about a "Code H?" Those terms and many other secrets of keeping Disneyland clean are revealed in a book by two former members of the park's custodial staff, titled "Cleaning the Kingdom: Insider Tales of Keeping Walt's Dream Spotless."
The book, by Ken Pellman and Lynn Barron, takes readers on a detailed tour of what it takes to be a "jani" (a ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Getting To Disneyland Star Wars Land Needs To Be Magical
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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 ...
Rivers Of Fun
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The Rivers of America is as old as Disneyland, with the Mark Twain Riverboat as its only attraction (with the dry docks for refurbishments), though Mike Fink Keel Boats would open in December that same year. The Rivers and all green waters in the park are interconnected underground, allowing the water to naturally filter and de-stagnate the way a lake would. They act as a single body of water and prevent ...
10 Disneyland Attractions That Do Not Exist Anymore But We Wish Did
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It's not easy being Disneyland. To keep people coming back and visiting year after year, the Anaheim amusement park has to constantly reinvent itself while not changing in ways that'll alienate diehard fans whose nostalgia runs deep. A few months ago, the park permanently closed the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror to turn it into Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: Breakout!, which opens May 27. While Disney ...
Rare Walt Disney 20000 Leagues Under The Sea Personal Presentation Nautilus To Be Auctioned
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700 Items to Auction in One Day
Van Eaton Galleries has announced The Art of Entertainment, a pop culture & Disneyland auction taking place May 4, 2019 beginning at 10:00 a.m. PT at Van Eaton Galleries in Sherman Oaks, California. A striking item included in the collection is a very rare, one-of-a-kind original presentation Nautilus used by Walt Disney in 1954 to promote the feature film "20,000 ...
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
...
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 ...
Disneyland Turning 50
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Here's the deal with Disneyland. The two women ahead of me in line were Elizabeth and Lexi, twins fromWinnetka, Ill. Elizabeth is a communications and political science major at the University of Southern California. Lexi is a philosophy major atYale.
They knew the words to ''We Can Fly,'' a song from Walt Disney's ''PeterPan.'' It's the song the chorus sings when Wendy, John and Michael,powered by ...
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 ...
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 ...
At Your Own Pace Through Fantasyland
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Would you believe it? An amusement park has hung up the nation's record as "the best-planned city in America" in meeting the needs of people.
It has demolished the "architectural barriers" we know to our cost in every city and town: streets that stretch non-stop with no spot to sit and rest... flights of stairs too steep for the handicapped or very aged ...bus steps too high for easy ...
Frontierlands Keel Boat Ride
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Well, howdy there, pioneers and sod-busters ... welcome aboard the ol' Gullywhumper ... Ya know, this here's the boat that ol' Mike Fink used a while back when he took on Davy Crockett for the wildest keel boat race this river has ever seen ... well, we ain't goin' to be doin' no racin ' today, so ya'11 sit back, relax, kick off yer shoes and we'll get a first-hand look at what's happenin' out on the ...
See You In Disneyland
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As he was led manacled away after his conviction, serial killer Richard Ramirez, Los Angeles's infamous "Night Stalker," turned to the courtroom audience and snarled "See you in Disneyland." America recognized the turn of phrase from the familiar TV as that invariably follows the World Series or Super Bowl. After a montage of key plays - with "When You Wish upon a Star" swelling behind - the beaming hero ...
Magic Worlds Of Walt Disney
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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 ...
Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom
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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 ...
Onward And Upward With The Arts
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One day last year in Los Angeles, as I was about to step aboard a helicopter that would take me to Disneyland with my teen-aged son and daughter, these two, smiling wanly, nodded toward a tourist poster that gave equal billing to our destination and to Forest Lawn cemetery. Their gesture reminded me that in earlier years they had wasted hundreds of child-hours vainly urging me to bring them on this very ...
Behind-The-Scenes Look At Disneyland's New River
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Disneyland's main waterway has always been called the Rivers of America, but it wasn't clear what the name meant.
"We've never even named the rivers," said Kim Irvine, art director of Walt Disney Imagineering.
For the first time, the body of water around Tom Sawyer Island will have distinct sections designed to look like four U.S. river regions: the Mississippi, the Columbia, the Potomac and the ...
Disneyland Offering Plenty Of Old West Fun for Summer Visitors
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Take a bit of the Old West, mix in a hair-raising thrill ride or two, and what do you get? A great way to have fun on this year's family summer vacation.
For 2010 Disneyland offers great combinations of fun rides and touches of Western heritage for the family.
Here's a quick run down of what's going on at the park for this summer season.
Disneyland
Since the park opened in Anaheim, ...
Walt Disney Reveals Just How Disneyland Was Created In Rare Interview
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“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 ...
Mr Disneyland Ron Dominguez Passes Away On New Years Day
The year has started off on a sad note for the family and friends of Disney Legend Ron Dominguez, also fondly referred to as “Mr. Disneyland.”
Disneyland Alumni Club Facebook group member Mark Eades shared the unfortunate news, writing:
Some sad news to start the new year. The Disneyland Alumni Club has learned that Ron Dominguez, to many known as “Mr. Disneyland, and a former ...
We Are Going To Liberate Minnie Mouse The Day Yippies Invaded And Shut Down The Park
Before the pandemic shuttered Disneyland in March, there had only been a few days that the park had unplanned closures: the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, after the Northridge earthquake in 1994, and after 9/11. But there was another day, in 1970, when Disneyland was overtaken by protesters, whose number and fury - about Minnie Mouse and miniskirts - closed the park early.
...
Variety Keynotes A Day At The Magic Kingdom
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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 ...
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 ...
