Source Materials: The Wildlife of Primeval World

If you enjoy my Sentimental Paleontology posts, you'll love this one—it's about actual paleontology! Dinosaurs, man! Who doesn't love dinosaurs?

I love dinosaurs. And that's why I've always had a special place in my heart for the Primeval World Diorama. You can keep your Fun Facts^TM about the New York World's Fair and the Ford Magic Skyway and the world record for the longest diorama display. All that stuff is important, but it pales in comparison to the simple fact that: Dinosaurs.

But are they...accurate dinosaurs? No. No they are not. We can get that out of the way right off the bat. The Primeval World diorama contains animatronic figures built in the mid-60s, many of them riffing off an animated movie that came out in 1940. At best, they reflect the paleontological consensus of the times, filtered through the sensibilities of animators and other artists who were not necessarily scientifically literate, let alone scientists.

So just how bad is it? Let's find out. While grinning like an eight-year-old at the Natural History Museum, because dinosaurs.

Beyond Blue Sky – Four Disneyland Headcanons

Disneyland tells a lot of stories...a lot of extremely incomplete stories. Even the longest, most intricately designed ride hasn't enough time and space to give us all the details. We're left with a sharply abridged narrative, or perhaps even just a series of vignettes with no explicit “plot” to connect them.

It's like I keep saying: this park is awesome.

A story told piecemeal is practically an engraved invitation to fill in the gaps with your own interpretations, speculations, and headcanons.* These bits of fanfiction might be as simple as names assigned to animatronic characters who don't have official ones, or as elaborate as a “how they met” story for all 17 Country Bears. The vast majority will probably fall somewhere in the middle.

Here are four of mine.