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!

60 Disneyland Diamonds: Introduction

On July 17 of this year, the Happiest Place on Earth turns 60. The party starts this Friday!

60...wow. Feels like only yesterday that it was turning 50.

 

Back then, they did something called Magical Milestones to highlight just how much the park had grown since it opened. There were actually two versions of Magical Milestones: a set of trading pins and a special set of penny presses installed for the duration. Both versions consisted of 51 items, one for each calendar year Disneyland had been in operation and featuring a landmark event from that year—usually the opening of an attraction, but the M.M.'s also included parades, other important anniversaries, and even lesser-known events like the launching of the Disneyland Ambassador program.

The pin set would have been nice to have, but the pins started at like eight dollars a pop, and there were fifty-one of them to collect. I didn't have anything like that kind of money,* so I got the pressed pennies—a much lighter investment. I assembled a bunch of nice shiny pennies and got about $30 in quarters and had a great time hunting down all the special machines. Ten years on, the pennies aren't nearly as shiny, but I'm still proud of finishing that sidequest...and of the special drawstring pouch I made to keep the pennies in:

(I feel safe in saying that no one else in the whole world did this. Made a pouch for the Magical Milestones pressed pennies, that is. I am a special kind of strange.)

Where was I...?

Anyway, Disneyland's Golden Anniversary was great, largely due to cool things like Magical Milestones which delved into the history of the park. The Diamond Anniversary seems...less focused on that stuff (although of course I won't know for sure until it kicks off and I get to see what's what). So just in case the Powers That Be don't revisit something like Magical Milestones now that Disneyland has another decade's worth under its belt...I'm doing my own version:

60 Disneyland Diamonds for the Diamond Anniversary.

Not only will this be a nice tribute to the occasion, it will allow me to talk up rides and other things that might not merit a full post. A lot of the Diamonds will be the same as the corresponding Magical Milestones from 2005. How could they not be? The debut of the Haunted Mansion was the Disneyland event of 1969; Space Mountain was likewise the highlight of 1977. But rather than copying that list wholesale and tacking on ten extra, I've set myself a couple of limiting guidelines:

1. Disneyland Park is what's turning 60, not “the Disneyland Resort.” Saints preserve us from brand manipulation. So nothing from California Adventure, Downtown Disney, or the resort hotels will be included in this list.
   
   
2. Many of the Magical Milestones referenced attractions that are long-gone. I want each and every one of my Diamonds to be something you could go enjoy tomorrow, if you so chose.

In order to make up for these limitations, I've expanded the list of candidates to include not just attractions and parades, but shops, restaurants, and various tidbits not considered glamorous enough to be featured on any official merchandise. But they're all, in their own way, Diamonds in the Disneyland crown.

The entry for 1955 is obviously and inevitably Disneyland itself, and this whole blog is dedicated to discussing it. So next week I'll pick up starting in 1956 and give you the first ten Diamonds from that first magical decade! See you then!

* I did buy one M.M. Pin, though—1977, my birth year.

We Name the Nameless

A couple weeks ago, I shared a tidbit about having made up my own names for the individual members of America Sings's Gander Quartet*, since they never had official ones, and teased that I might do an entire post about this weird habit I've developed of doing just that. Let it never be said that I'm content to be a tease...

STAR WARS DAY BONUS! After-Action Report: A Tale of Two Tours

This post is sort of an After-Action Report and a Sentimental Paleontology in one. You can most definitely go to Disneyland and ride Star Tours in the present...but it's on its second incarnation, which is different enough from the original to almost be considered a new attraction. Whether it really is or not is a matter of opinion and perception, but it seems like Disney is counting it that way. Either way, such a major change to a long-standing E-ticket level attraction inevitably invites a Before vs. After comparison. And that's exactly what you're gonna get here.

It might surprise you to learn that I even have a preference vis-a-vis the two versions of Star Tours, after I thoroughly decried the presence of Star Wars material in Disneyland at all, in large part because I'm just not into the franchise. But here's the thing: I don't hate Star Wars. I can appreciate the importance of this film series in terms of its effects on the art of filmmaking and popular culture as a whole. I can understand why people find it so cool. I can even, from time to time, enjoy watching the movies, although no more than a chunk or two at a time.

And I do, for the most part, enjoy Star Tours. It's effective both as an adaptation of its source material and as a fun ride in its own right. Do I ride it every time I go to Disneyland? Heck no. But I ride it often enough to intelligently weigh in.

Sentimental Paleontology: Pop! Went the Weasel

Tomorrowland is a mess. This much is a largely agreed-upon fact in the Disneyland fan community. Saint Walt's Utopian Dream of the Future has Lost Its Way and become a ghastly mishmash of attractions with vague technology, science-fiction/fantasy, and even cartoon themes—mostly from IPs Disney has purchased, as opposed to creating in-house. It's probably true that the area is more inconsistent than ever before, but if we're completely honest with ourselves...we have to admit that “theme confusion” in Tomorrowland is nothing new. It arguably goes right back to Opening Day, when budget shortfalls forced Walt to fill Tomorrowland with corporate sponsors who had much more to say about what they were doing in the present than about what they would do in the future. But those exhibits at least had a scientific or technological bent that worked with the area.

So let's try a different approach. What was the last major Tomorrowland attraction to be straightforwardly futuristic rather than taking a sideways leap into science-fantasy or sillier? I think you could make a case for Space Mountain, which debuted in 1977.* It is first and foremost a roller coaster (in the dark!), but it appears to take place in a setting where people hop into tiny rockets and go zooming around the asteroids for fun. That's fanciful, but it's at the harder end of the science-fiction scale. Personal spacecraft launching from a space station are a believable future technology.

But even by the time Space Mountain made the scene, Tomorrowland already hosted a ride that had nothing to do with the future or outer space or science or technology.** That ride was America Sings, a brief history in four acts (plus an introduction and an epilogue) of American music as demonstrated by audio-animatronic cartoon animal characters. Described so brusquely, it almost sounds like a parody of Disney attractions, like the sort of thing that would be featured in an episode of The Simpsons lampooning the whole institution, while those in the know would be aware that all of those individual elements could be found in abundance throughout Disneyland, but never all in the same attraction.

But they were all in the same attraction. America Sings was sort of a distillation of Disney park tropes of its era. It was installed in 1974, timed for synergy with the upcoming American Bicentennial. But why in Tomorrowland? Even as a young child, I realized how weird this was. Why not, say, Main Street, which already had patriotism as a major theme?

After-Action Report: Enchanted Tiki Room

I had so much fun assembling last week's post about hosting an Enchanted Tiki Room-themed luau that I decided to dedicate this week's article to the attraction itself.

Having already written one of these for the Jungle Cruise, the obvious thing to do is a compare-and-contrast between these two Adventureland attractions from Disneyland's first decade. So here it is: In addition to the two points of commonality already mentioned, the Jungle Cruise and the Enchanted Tiki Room both heavily feature comedy involving audio-animatronic tropical animals. And that's about it for similarities.

The Jungle Cruise is a boat ride, the Enchanted Tiki Room a stationary show. The Jungle Cruise evokes Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America, while the Enchanted Tiki Room evokes Hawaii. The animals in the Enchanted Tiki Room are all birds, while the Jungle Cruise showcases a few birds, lots of mammals, some reptiles, and even fish and insects. The Enchanted Tiki Room is about one-and-a-half times as long as the Jungle Cruise—over twice as long if you include the pre-show. The Enchanted Tiki Room revolves around music; the Jungle Cruise decidedly does not. The Enchanted Tiki Room presents a pre-programmed show that never varies, while the Jungle Cruise, thanks to its live spiel, is different every time.

Do I have to keep going?

Kidnap the Magic: Enchanted Tiki Luau

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Spring has sprung and the weather is warming up! It's the time of year when people start to think about moving their recreational activities outdoors, and one of the classics is the luau. A better term might actually be “Hawaii theme party,” since we mainlanders don't usually follow all the genuine island traditions, but “luau” is the accepted term used by all the party supply stores. Luau gear is in abundance all throughout the spring and summer in the U.S.—all the leis, tiki torches, and plastic piña colada glasses molded to look like coconut halves that you could want.

But this isn't just any party planning guide. This is the Disneyland Dilettante! And when a Disneyland aficionado gets it into their head to hold a luau, there's only one place to go...

To the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room!

In this issue of Kidnap the Magic, I'll provide tips for turning your party space into a tropical hideaway for the lucky people you welcome there.