Beyond Blue Sky: The Time Machine

Because you are a good person at heart, the Blue Fairy has teamed up with Cornelius Robinson to give you a gift: a real working time machine, good for one trip into the past, and the return trip, and no more. To minimize the risk of changing history and damaging the timestream, you may only stay in the past for one day, and it is highly advised that you spend that day in a place where your actions have few or no repercussions for the outside world.

Might as well go to Disneyland, huh?

So...how far back do you go?

Do you drop in on Opening Day and shake Walt Disney's hand? Maybe pop back and see one of the New Tomorrowlands—'59, '67, or '98—when it was genuinely new? Are you more tempted by the prospect of revisiting your own nostalgic memories or seeing things that were gone before you had the chance to know them?

Not gonna lie—I'm going with Option A. I'd rather go back and see things I miss than things I missed, if you follow. Nonetheless, I'm actually gonna set my time machine to a point slightly before my earliest solid memories of the park. Target Year: 1980.

It's a very auspicious year for me where Disneyland is concerned—my first ever trip was that year, the day before I turned three years old.* I have one extremely brief and sketchy memory of meeting Chip and Dale on Main Street and hugging their huge fuzzy bodies, but that's all. Anything else distinctive about that trip has vanished into the fog of toddler forgetfulness.

Going back to 1980 would enable me to see all the extinct attractions I miss from my childhood, as well as the ones I don't miss because I didn't properly appreciate them back then. I would be able to experience a few things that I technically saw but don't quite remember, such as the old Fantasyland and the ride coupon system. I would get to re-visit the original (or near-original) versions of attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, which have been extensively updated over the years (not always for the better). And in general, I would get to re-acquaint myself with details that were changed long before I had an Annual Pass and the accompanying luxury of contemplating details.

1980 was before Pressler and even before Eisner. It was before the big Cast Member strike that some say permanently changed the relationship between frontline CMs and management. Even aside from specific rides and features, it would be great to see Disneyland in that more innocent state. There was more unique merchandise in the shops (another thing I didn't really get to enjoy until it was gone) and the characters were mostly free-roaming instead of restricted to specialized meet-and-greet spots.

I would also relish the opportunity to see what the park's Silver Anniversary was like, and compare it to the fondly remembered Golden Anniversary and ongoing Diamond Anniversary celebration. Special events were less, dare I say it, bloated in those days. It would be neat to experience that environment as a thoughtful adult fan rather than a gobsmacked kid with nothing to compare it to.

So this post turned out to be both shorter and more wistful when I expected when I came up with the concept. I guess I'll turn things over to my readers: What year would you set as the destination for your Disneyland time machine and why?

* My parents were no dummies when it came to saving money.