After-Action Report: Mickey's Toontown

Mickey's Toontown doesn't seem to have too many friends these days. It's one of the Disneyland fandom's most popular candidates for demolition, usually to make room for a much-desired Fantasyland expansion.* The justifications for deep-sixing an entire land usually fall along the lines of: There's nothing to do there/no good rides. It's only for little kids. It's tacky-looking. It's not a Disneyland-worthy concept. (Huh?)

Surprising no one, I am not on board with this idea. I don't visit Toontown every time I'm in the park, but I think it works. So I'm going to sit here and explain why the above arguments are wrong/misguided and why Toontown should stay, and you're going to read it.

Or, you know, visit some other website.

Beyond Blue Sky: The Disneyland House

“Bring Home the Magic.” One of Disney's many marketing slogans. It's usually used in conjunction with their home video productions, but people also take the expression a little more literally and decorate their houses with their favorite Disney characters and motifs. And sometimes with their favorite Disney theme park motifs, which Disney finally cottoned onto a few years ago, so now you can get official Disneyland attraction housewares. If you had about a grand to spare and a more advanced case of Disneyland-mania than even I have, you could go to Le Bat en Rouge and outfit your entire dining room with Haunted Mansion plates, placemats, drinking glass coasters, and even candlesticks.*

But what if more were possible?

What if you had basically unlimited funds and no sense of restraint whatsoever?

What if you could make your entire house into a mini-Disneyland of sorts? If you could, in fact, Make the Magic Your Home?

My sister and I had more-or-less this conversation the other day, fantasizing all kinds of what-if, and we came up with a rough plan for a Disneyland House, if only such a thing could be achieved. And then...I couldn't stop thinking about it. More and more details suggested themselves to my mind. And since it would be out of character for me to keep my thoughts to myself, I'm happy to share them with you here.

Read on, dear...readers, yes...and dream with me.

Kidnap the Magic: Wonderland Leaves

With Easter less than a week away, you might be thinking about spring and summer decorating motifs for your home and garden. It's the season of leaves and flowers, and for some people, there's no need to be weird about it—real plants and/or realistic silk floral will be fine. But some of us might prefer something a little more...specific. More stylized. More relevant to our unique interests.

More like the art of Mary Blair, amirite?

 Mmmmmm...artistic...

The Trains of Disneyland

Among his many, many, many interests, Walt Disney was passionately in love with trains. Rail enthusiasm is a fairly common hobby, of course, but even among the many people with the inclination to build model railways, only a slim handful are dedicated enough to build an actual steam-powered rideable one in their backyard. Small wonder, then, that one of the inaugural attractions Walt planned for Disneyland was a train ride even more impressive than the Carolwood Pacific. Or that many more trains joined it in the years that followed.

This is a post about those trains. That's all—no deep philosophy or scathing opinions, just some warm and fuzzy feelings toward this surprisingly common attraction type. Think of it as part After-Action Report and part Sentimental Paleontology, with a big dollop of See Ya Real Soon added to the mix.

To be clear, I'm only talking about trains that are presented as trains. The Space Mountain vehicles technically qualify as trains but are presented as rockets.

All abooooaaaarrrrrrd!