60 Disneyland Diamonds: 1956-1965

Welcome back! Last week, I announced a new post series I'll be running here at the Disneyland Dilettante in honor of Disneyland's 60^th birthday: 60 Disneyland Diamonds for the Diamond Anniversary. So let's get the ball rolling with the first ten!

1956: Storybook Land Canal Boats

This is one ride I feel gets overlooked by the majority of guests. It has a nice conspicuous location on the corner where Fantasyland's east-west walkway meets up with the parade route, but all you can tell about it from the outside is that you ride a boat into Monstro's mouth. That fact alone might make it seem too scary for young kids, but the “Storybook” name might make it seem too childish for the rest of us. And if you do know what it's about, it might seem redundant—why sit in a boat and look at tiny versions of the settings from various animated movies when full-fledged dark ride versions of those same movies are located only yards away?

Because the miniatures are awesome, that's why. Walt Disney certainly thought so. He always wanted to have a display of detailed miniature buildings in Disneyland, but the budget during initial construction didn't allow it. So Storybook Land had to wait a year for its debut, taking over from the bare-bones Canal Boats of the World ride. It was well worth the wait—the miniatures are exquisitely crafted, with working doors in order to facilitate changes of the tiny lightbulbs that make them look lived-in. No characters can be seen, but their voices can sometimes be heard, giving the impression of a secret fairyland whose inhabitants stay out of sight of humans but betray their presence by accident.

Strangely enough, for an attraction whose general subject matter is animated Disney fairy tales, Storybook Land hasn't received many major updates. A pair of 90s makeovers added scenes from The Little Mermaid and Aladdin to the roster, and late in 2014, the Old Mill set was replaced with a model of Arendelle from the record-busting film Frozen.* Apart from that, the ride is pretty much just as it was when it opened 59 years ago—an underrated Diamond of tranquility and timeless beauty.

1957: Baby Care Center

Disneyland is fun for the whole family...even those members of the whole family who can't walk or talk yet. To meet their special needs, The Baby Care Center, located off Main Street near the Plaza Inn, is available free of charge. A quiet, soothing place decorated in the Victorian style, it includes facilities for breastfeeding, breast pumping, preparing bottles, changing diapers, napping, and just cuddling overstimulated babies. If your party includes a member of the pacifier demographic, take an opportunity to visit this wonderful little amenity. If not...nip in anyway, just for a moment (no loud noises please), and take note of the tintype infant photo on the wall in the lobby. Ladies and gentleman...meet our founder, Mr. Walt Disney, aged 10 months. Aaawwwwwwwwwww...

1958: Alice in Wonderland

Fantasyland opened with a Wonderland attraction—the whirling teacups of the Mad Tea Party—and got the associated Mad Hatter hat shop the following year. But a setting as wacky and exotic as Wonderland deserves the dark ride treatment, even if it went in a little late (with apologies to the White Rabbit). Alice in Wonderland is the most interesting of the Fantasyland dark rides from a layout standpoint, with a track that winds not only left and right but up and down—its second story sits over part of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride—and even travels outside the show building for load/unload and for a brief breather before its finale, showing off its distinctive caterpillar-shaped ride vehicles to passersby. Its exterior is equally distinctive and attractive, the queue lined with fanciful leaves, flower-shaped lamps, and a giant mushroom (formerly the ticket-taking booth) upon which is displayed the ride's title sign in the form of a book. It may not be as inspiring as Peter Pan's Flight, as heart-pounding as Snow White's Scary Adventures, or as comical as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, but in terms of representing its environment, Alice in Wonderland epitomizes the art of the classic dark ride.

1959: Disneyland Monorail

In 1959, Tomorrowland received the first of what would prove to be several large-scale makeovers. Oddly, it has proven to be the most enduring. Nearly every legacy of 1967's “World on the Move” renovation has fallen by the wayside, and the additions from 1998's “New Tomorrowland” are gradually dropping off the map as well. But all three of the big developments from '59 are still operating in one form or another. The Matterhorn may have “moved” to Fantasyland and the Submarine Voyage may have been handed to Pixar's cartoon fish, but they're both still there. And the Monorail—a milestone not just for Disneyland but for transportation in general, as the “first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere”—is still there, still part of Tomorrowland's original focus on advancing technology, and not vanishing any time soon. In fact, the ride is periodically updated with new vehicles; currently we're on Mark VII trains. (The rule is that odd-numbered models get installed in Disneyland, while the even numbers go to Walt Disney World.) It remains the only attraction to leave the park, in its role as an actual mode of transportation between Disneyland and Downtown Disney. And then in its sightseeing aspect, the ride offers elevated views of Tomorrowland, parts of Fantasyland, the Esplanade, California Adventure, and Downtown Disney. You owe it to yourself to take a ride!

1960: Audio-Animatronics

In my Enchanted Tiki Room post, I made a brief mention of the fact that while that attraction is often credited as the first use of audio-animatronic technology in Disneyland, the Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland actually used them first, in the form of wild birds making their characteristic songs and calls. The term animatronic can be applied to any electro-mechanical figure that makes pre-programmed motions, but what makes an audio-animatronic is that the motions are not only synched to the recorded sounds the figure makes, but actually cued by them. Occasionally, workers refurbishing the Nature's Wonderland birds would install the wrong tapes, resulting in accidental cross-species mimicry...but not ventriloquism, thanks to the fact that the signals for beak movement came from the tapes themselves. Audio-animatronic technology is so common today that it it sometimes used in children's toys,** but it all started at Disneyland.

1961: Snow White Grotto

Most people probably think of it as “where the Wishing Well is” and don't realize it has its own name. I confess that I don't spend much time in Snow White Grotto, but I appreciate it as one of the few remaining quiet corners in an ever-busier park, as well as one of the few remaining features that was put in not to draw long lines or sell merchandise, but simply to be pleasant and provide a little pocket of atmosphere (and a suitable place for its namesake character to hang out). I appreciate it for its simplicity: just the footbridge, the well, the water feature with its miniature cliff and quaint plaster statues of Snow White and the Dwarfs, and the song “I'm Wishing” echoing out of the well every few minutes. It seems almost too small to belong to something as grand as Disneyland—rather, you would expect to find it in the backyard of a well-to-do Disney fan. Yet here it is.

1962: Elephants' Bathing Pool

So much is made of the Jungle Cruise having been up and running since Opening Day that one fact is often overlooked: there wasn't much there back then. Almost none of the iconic scenes date back that far—1955 passengers saw no gorillas ransacking the campground, no African Veldt or Lost Safari, no native village or ambush...and no Elephants' Bathing Pool. That scene—along with the Cambodian ruins that precede it—was one of the first big additions to Adventureland's signature attraction. Interestingly enough, it's one of the few scenes on the ride that's still played more-or-less straight—the remarks about it being all right to photograph the pachyderms because they “have their trunks on,” while humorous, would not be out of place on a bona-fide safari led by a waggish guide.

Take note, though! If you take a ride on the Jungle Cruise this summer and your skipper tells you Bertha is so wrinkled because she's been in the shower for 60 years...they're lying to you. It's been 53 years. Still long enough to produce some epic prune factor, though.

1963: Enchanted Tiki Room

Having done an entire post about this attraction within the past month, there's not much more for me to say about it here. Suffice it to say that it was one of the official Magical Milestones for the 50^th, and it fully deserves to be considered a Diamond.

1964: China Closet

There has been a shop selling china goods on Main Street since Opening Day, but until 1964 it was the Ruggles China and Glass Shop. Only after Ruggles pulled its sponsorship did it become the China Closet of today, a veritable treasure trove of decorative Disney collectibles, many of them featuring the iconography of Disneyland itself. Items include kitchenware, dolls, figurines, and even a year-round selection of Christmas ornaments that covers an entire wall. During the winter holiday season, of course, the ornament displays expand to fill most of the shop's impressive square footage. Earlier in the year, naturally, Halloween decorations dominate. But the China Closet is delightfully trimmed all the time—its own interior decorations include artificial foliage rotated four times a year to reflect the turning of the seasons. It's one of the few shops I enter and actually browse (as opposed to just passing through) nearly every time I visit the park.

1965: “Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln”

People who have never been to Disneyland or any other Disney park often don't know much about the individual attractions there. They know there's a castle, and that you can meet Mickey Mouse and other characters. They know there's a spinning tea cup ride, and something called Space Mountain which is apparently really cool and always has a huge line, and a ride with dolls singing that annoying “It's a small world after all” song. They (now) know there's a pirate ride based on that Johnny Depp movie.***

And they know there's an Abraham Lincoln robot that stands up and gives a speech.

I find it fascinating how famous the Lincoln animatronic is, especially when you consider that he's not at all popular. I rarely see the Opera House theatre at more than about 20% capacity for the show. I suspect some of it rubs off from Orlando's Hall of Presidents, which does draw crowds. It probably also helps that he got a great start, as one of the attractions created for the 1964-1965 World's Fair and the first of the four to be moved to Disneyland, for the inanely named but probably momentous “Tencennial” celebration. Lincoln was the Imagineers' first attempt at creating a realistic audio-animatronic human, and the effort was so successful that overawed guests have occasionally mistaken him for a live actor. Rumor has it that he remains the most advanced human figure in the park because new improvements in the technology are applied to Lincoln first and only then trickle down to the likes of the pirates. Whether this is true or not, he's damn convincing even by current standards. Amazing to think that someone so tall and so well-known could hide in plain sight on the east side of Town Square for 50 years.

Tune in next week for ten more Diamonds!

* The word is that the Old Mill was removed intact and is currently in storage, possibly to return one day.

** One excellent example is Teddy Ruxpin.

*** Yes, yes, I know.