SPEAKER_00 0:00

And since this is a family affair, I thought you might be interested in seeing the rest of the link letters who are all gathered around me. And to show you exactly what happens now, I let them all take a little vote. Diane, you're six. Where would you like to go of all the places in Disneyland? Take anyone. To the great big castle where Sleeping Beauty is.

Kelly 0:44

We talk in, over, about, and through our week's topic, and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety, or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me as always is Peter Overstreet, University Professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California. So, Pete, what are we talking about today?

Pete 1:14

Well, today we're going to be talking about another classic uh attraction at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California. We are going to discuss the history and the cultural significance and uh the potential future of Sleeping Beauty Castle. Sleeping Beauty Castle. Yes, indeed. Um Do I sound like Ed McMahon when I do that? Not enough chuckles. Not enough chuckles. And the uh on the first envelope, it actually says uh Ken Anderson, Ivan Earl, and Tony Baxter. And the answer is Sleeping Beauty Castle. Not interestingly, uh Sleeping Beauty Castle. Well, and also the interesting thing that I mean, let's just get right down to it, is the fact that the original intention uh of this castle in the middle of Disneyland, or at least the at the gates of Fantasyland, uh was the fact that it was going to be Snow White's castle.

Kelly 2:11

That's right.

Pete 2:12

And uh Walt definitely wanted a castle in his theme park. And uh he had certainly talked about it enough on the wonderful world of Disney. Um, but it was originally intended to be Snow White, and then he realized, I mean, this is this is one of Walt's superpowers, is to kind of understand that uh there is great potential in the future for some of the creative projects that are going down at uh Walt Disney Productions. And so he basically made a decree like, hey, we've got Sleeping Beauty in the works here, so let's start designing it to be that castle and not necessarily Snow White.

Kelly 2:49

Right. And it's interesting because well, I I I want to get back to I want to stick a pin in that point. Yeah, please. Um, because I think it's super interesting. Um, yeah, an initial press for this had it listed as the medieval castle, then it became Snow White's Castle, then at some point it became the Fantasyland Castle, and then it became Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Pete 3:16

Well, and also King Arthur Castle.

Kelly 3:18

That's right.

Pete 3:18

I've heard that, and I don't know when that happened in the LC Register or something like that. Right. Real quick mention. But I think that was mostly speculation on some rather enthusiastic Orange County reporter. Right. Have I got a scope? Yeah.

Kelly 3:33

And there's there's something there's something really interesting about this idea, and I I I've been trying to think it through. So he built the centerpiece for Disneyland based on a film that not only hadn't been made, but they hadn't really even decided what it was going to be yet. They they knew like we have this, we want to take this story that is bizarrely similar to a story we've already done, and and make it. Yeah. And so he he he bets the farm in a lot of ways on a film that hasn't been made yet. Wasn't going to be made, like once, once Sleeping Beauty Castle opened, it was still going to be four more years before Sleeping Beauty was released. Yeah. This is astonishing to me.

unknown 4:27

Yeah.

Pete 4:29

Yeah. Well, I think the other part of it is um, I mean, we'll go into this a little bit more as we progress throughout the show, but this is literally kind of an exercise in not necessarily forced evolution or solid design. It is literally evolution on an attraction out of necessity over a couple of years, um, in which you have uh Herbie Ryman's early drawings of the park, you know, coffee, coffee laden and ready to go, and uh and and then it evolves on into all of the things that we just talked about, of it being this castle or that castle. It does not look like any of the castles that are rendered in the Sleeping Beauty animated film. Yeah. As designed by Ibert Earl. Right. And so uh the um the design of this castle uh would actually be based off of Walt's love of Europe, probably from his experiences when he was in World War I and later without later travels, obviously. Um, but it's actually based very heavily off of a castle in Austria. Uh not Austria, sorry, Bavaria. Called Now, all of you German speakers, you're gonna have to be forgiving with this uh critical.

Kelly 5:45

I'm glad you're doing this. I'm gonna be the brave one here. Yeah.

Pete 5:48

So this is uh I and I'm I'm gonna try very hard not to do give it like the Heidelberg accent, but Tushka, you know. Um uh Nuschwanstein. Or is that right? Neuschwanstein. That's the best one to do it.

Kelly 6:04

Uh we'll have a contest.

Pete 6:07

Neuschwanstein. Okay.

Kelly 6:09

Mad Ludwig's castle, Neuschwanstein.

Pete 6:13

Yes, and in Bavaria, it's at the top of this magnificent peak. It's beautiful. But when you look at pictures of it, just Google it. You you at first you look at it and you go, Oh, I don't see it. I don't see it. And then you look at the top turrets and the upper towers, you go, oh, oh well, there it is. There's Sleeping Beauty Castle right there.

Kelly 6:33

One of the interesting things that I discovered about this and about kind of the timeline that makes this make a little bit more sense is so Sleeping Beauty goes into production in 1950, which is interesting because Sleeping Beauty as a film was released in 1959. So it's an incredibly long production cycle, like crazy. And you know, our our story of how this all happened was they hired Ivan Durrell and used him as a background artist and designed a film based on his art. Right. That's not what happened. The timeline is that's not how that worked. Okay. So Sleeping Beauty goes into production in 1950, and I swear I'm getting back to where you were. No, it's okay. Um, it goes into production in 1950. 1951, they hire Ivan Earle as a background artist. So Ivan Earl is doing these really interesting backgrounds, mostly for goofy cartoons. Oh, you'll yeah. Now he was a fine artist in his own right, but that's not what they hired him for. And he is not that big of a part of Sleeping Beauty at this point. So in 1953, uh Legendary Imagineer Harriet Burns builds a whole bunch of tiny models of Neuschwanstein. Whole bunch of them. Okay. And they have Her Bryman and Ivan Earle come in and paint them. So physically paint them. Physically paint them with with colors. Okay. The film was going the storyboards were going to be scrapped for this film at least two more times after this point. So nothing in the film is relevant to any of this.

Pete 8:26

Okay. At this particular point in the production, yeah.

Kelly 8:29

And so what they do is they take these these uh little models of Neuschwanstein. I think I'm getting better at that. Either that or I'm convincing myself that that's what it's supposed to sound like. You're sounding it better than I am. So they they take these little models of Neushvanstein and they they paint them. And Ivan Earle being a a colorist, you know, that that's really the thing he knows, much much like Mary Blair, he's got this instinctive sense of color that is like nobody else's, paints them very colorfully. Her Bryman paints them uh with trim that is pastel blue. And Walt, evidently, comes in and says the blue will go better with the sky, and that's that. So so Ivan Earl's uh influence on the actual design of the the outside of the castle is pretty non-existent. Wow. So I I I just find this interesting. And it's after this that Earl becomes sort of the keystone of the look of the film Sleeping Beauty. And what's the year on that again? 53. 53.

Pete 9:45

Okay, okay. I'm getting the mental picture. Go ahead.

Kelly 9:47

Yeah, so so it's very interesting. We kind of have this backwards picture that it all starts with Earl and then builds up from there, but it's not true at all. Earl's Borderline not involved, even to the point where they're designing the castle, except for that he gets one shot to paint it and is rejected. Right. But Walt's becoming really bored with Sleeping Beauty. And he basically hands it over to Earl. At a certain point, he says, We're working on Disneyland. Can you kind of run with this? So this is strange because if you look at the credits for the film Sleeping Beauty, which I did just today, actually, Earl gets very little. He gets some it's something along the lines of like color organization. Right. In spite of the fact that it is pretty clearly from his concept art. Oh, yeah. What we end up with.

Pete 10:41

Oh, yeah. There's some very, very famous scenes in that film that are very much him. I mean, not just the backgrounds, but the moment where the guards are supposed to be surrounding Maleficent and they have all this marvelous, you know, forced perspective with all the sharp spears that they have like rows of playing cards. Yeah. With Maleficent with her green flames in the middle. It's just gorgeous design, but it's very much Ivid's flattened out, almost medieval uh illuminated manuscript approach to rendering that makes it very, very fascinating and frankly very suitable to this tale.net, you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company, Disney history, and the universe of theme parks available anywhere.

Kelly 11:38

Come join us at BoardwalkTimes.net.

Pete 11:47

And so that gets us to our attraction. Yeah. In which uh, you know, he keeps Herbie Ryman up for a weekend with black coffee, sits him down, and says, Draw me Disneyland. And he does, and in the smack dab in the middle of it is this fantasy castle. Yeah. Developed off her off of the one, you're the one who's reading it. I'm like pointing at him goingstein. Thank you, the Neuschwanstein. Mad Ludwig's Nuschwandstein. Yeah, and and for those who don't know, Mad Ludwig was absolutely that guano crazy. I mean, this guy really was nuts. Yes. And eventually he wound up drowning himself by just walking into a nearby lake and no one ever saw him again. Uh but his castle castles, because he had several, yeah, are lavish, they're incredible, but they were built in the 1800s. And so they were already kind of fake theme park castles as it was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:45

Yeah.

Pete 12:46

So I think that's part of why they're already starting from a place of opulence, and that's what makes these castles so special.

Kelly 12:53

So I'm I'm gonna ask you, Pete, to tell tell the story that is required anytime anyone talks about Sleeping Beauty Castle, which is Herbie Ryman and the top.

Pete 13:05

Okay. So Herbie Ryman, when it came time to present Walt for one of Walt's many inspections, when you hear when you hear the off in the hallway, and everybody started saying, Oh, man is in the forest. Um in comes Walt, and what had happened was they were dusting off the model to make sure it was nice and pristine clean, get all the sawdust and all the other little particles off of it. And they had taken the top half of the castle and had set it aside as the story goes, and he puts it back on backward, and Walt comes in and says, Looks great. And I I I like it that way. That looks better. And that's that's the required story that everybody is told and everybody knows. Right. But Kelly has something else to tell us. Oh, do I? I don't know. Do you? No, no, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

You were making it sound like you actually had a secret to tell. Oh, no, no.

Kelly 14:06

I didn't, I just thought you would tell that really nicely. Oh, okay. Which you did. With smokers cough. It's yeah, as I understand it, um early on, uh, Walt had complained that the castle model looked too much like Neuschwanstein. Yes. Um and they hadn't and they didn't really know what to do about that, so they just kept going.

SPEAKER_07 14:24

Right.

Kelly 14:25

When Herbie he sort when Walt was coming for that particular inspection, and uh Herbryman sort of panicked and spun the top around, uh Anderson w started freaking out and going, Herbie, turn it around, turn it around, Walt's gonna be here. And by the time he finished saying that, Walt was standing there. Oh man. But but of course, he he loved the castle.

SPEAKER_05 14:48

Yeah.

Kelly 14:48

And and it and it makes a certain amount of sense. And I I don't know why, but it does.

Pete 14:53

It does. It absolutely does. Even though it's reversed, it there's something about the charm of it. And I think what also happened from a design point of view that became appealing, first off, it's built in force perspective. Uh, but you also have this remarkable opportunity that I guess they saw when they were looking at the design when it had been reversed, which is oh, that means there's a balcony right over the main gate. Yeah, right over the main gate. So you could actually have characters come out from these two doorways on either side in the middle and come out, and you could have a princess, which they would actually do. They would have cast members come out as Aurora or a Snow White and wave at people at certain points of the day. And but that whole upper part was just a facade made of plywood and a brand new type of material called fiberglass. And um and so they they sculpted everything in clay. They would build up these frameworks, sculpt it in clay, and then make giant molds of the castle and of the conical roofs and so forth, and then they would piece it together like a giant Lego set. There's actual footage of them lifting these different towers and parapets together. Right. They're fully formed. They were not, you know, done brick by brick like a normal castle would be. Right. Um, and so this opportunity of having something up top was just kind of an afterthought, except for we could have people pop out and wave and that's it. Yeah. Like they didn't really think that this was going to be a show building.

Kelly 16:20

Well, and they did use it, um, as you said, and they also used, though I've never seen a picture of this, but I understand it's true, they also used some of the battlements up on the side. Uh people could get up in there. And this will come into play shortly when we start talking about the inside of the castle. But for the beginning, there were routes through this kind of chaotic mess of construction debris to get to both that balcony and to the the turrets, which had a little standing area, and and the battlements.

Pete 16:53

And it's interesting, like that that development was captured actually very brilliantly by it's my absolute favorite photograph of Walt. And what it is, it's a photograph of him, and it's taken from um pretty much like right in front of Peter Pan. Yeah. Looking out towards Main Street. It's obviously been either raining or there's some sort of wet down going on, and it's slightly foggy. And Walt is walking through, just kind of admiring his little world that he has decreed. Yeah. And it's this it's this beautiful image of someone whose imagination is coming true right in front of his eyes. And I, to me, I don't know about anybody else, but to me, that photograph is the embodiment of the birth of finger quotes, Uncle Waltz. Uncle Walt. Because that that becomes very important to the story. Yeah. Um, it is that moment where he really is understanding that he's building a world. And, you know, we obviously have Fantasyland, which is very different than what it was, well, what it is now. Yes. It was very much more like an Ivan Earl set of pavilions.

Kelly 18:03

Yeah. Yeah. Interestingly so, because, you know, very little of what was going to be Ivan Earl's part of the film had was in it. Um, as I understand it, when they got near opening day, some of that was just a scramble. They had intended to do something more elaborate, and they said the best we can do is put up these sort of faux Renaissance medieval colored flags and and fronts, which did end up looking a bit like the Ivan Earl designs for Sleeping Beauty. Which was a happy accident, I'm sure. Yeah.

Pete 18:38

So if I may share another story. Please do. Let's get to the attraction itself. Long after the uh park had actually opened in 1955, which I have a little personal story. Um, my cousin, Don Siglin, uh, if you watch the ABC broadcast of the opening of Disneyland, there's that moment where they the first time the drawbridge comes down and all these kids run right through the gates of uh Sleeping Beauties Castle and go straight into Fantasyland.

SPEAKER_04 19:07

Yeah.

Pete 19:08

My cousin Don is one of the front kids in that line, rushing in there. And there's actually a great picture of him in Life magazine where you show the kids running to speed in there. And there was the the big Tashin book. He's in that. Oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_04 19:21

And I was like, I have that book.

Pete 19:22

That's my cousin Don. Like, yeah, there he is, you know. Um so, cousin Don, if you're listening, you are now immortalized. Um so anyway, um, but the other part is the attraction did not go into production or nor was it opened until 1957. So two years after the park had opened. Right. So at uh the story goes that Waltz had this idea like we gotta do something with this building.

Kelly 19:47

Right. And all people are running towards the building and there's nothing there. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 19:50

Right. I mean, kids are literally going, that's the first place I want to go, is in the castle. Right.

Kelly 19:54

But they can't go in it. In fact, it's it's in the special. In the opening day special, Art Linkletter asks one of I think it's its own kids, like, where do you want to go first? And his daughter seems absolutely terrified, and he's just like, Where do you want to go first?

Pete 20:10

I want to go in the castle where the sleeping beauty lives.

Kelly 20:14

Right.

Pete 20:14

It's like, uh oops.

unknown 20:17

Yeah.

Pete 20:18

Well, there's nothing in there, kid. Except uh during those early days, apparently the door into the space that would eventually become the attraction would be left open because it was used as storage.

Kelly 20:27

Yeah, and and supposedly on opening day, some people got in there.

Pete 20:31

Yeah. Oh, look at this. Look at all this plywood. Yeah. We fiberglass fumes. Woo! At least it gets me away from the melting asphalt. Um but apparently this is where the bathrooms are. It is now. Um so apparently Walt took Ken Anderson and another manier by the name of uh Emil Curie into the castle to kind of walk them around. And the story goes is that as he's walking around and go, look, look, I know there's not a lot of space, but we gotta put something in here. I want you to start, I want you to start thinking about what you want to put in here. We're gonna walk you around and you know, show you the inside of the castle. And as they walk in, they are surrounded by nearly 100 cats that have been living inside this empty space and breeding in this space.

Kelly 21:19

And the cats are not the first sign that they see that there are cats, though. What is the first sign? The first sign is that Emile Curie's white pants start turning black. And the reason is fleas.

Pete 21:32

Right. Lots and lots of fleas. And Emile makes the wrongest possible decision by picking up what he thinks is just this abandoned sack. It is basically a flea nest. Yeah. And he is covered head to toe in fleas, as is Ken, as is Walt. And Kelly tells this part better than I do. Apparently, Walt does something very interesting.

Kelly 21:55

So so Walt kind of makes his pitch. We need to do Something with the inside, there's more room in here than you think. Okay, let's get out of here. So he goes down, gets to a phone, picks up the phone, and supposedly what people hear is it's Walt. Walt Disney, that's who. And then someone uh he asks someone to come pick them up. So the the pickup is a motorcycle with a sidecar shows up and Walt gets in. Walt turns to um his two imagineers and says, wait here. Don't go into the crowd. Meanwhile, Ken and Emile are going through the case. The second Walt drives off, Ken and Emile run into the crowd.

Pete 22:55

They're going to get out. Don't run into the crowd, whatever you do. And they made they're like men over, like, wait a minute, did you run through the crowd? Nope. Nope. So and then once they had, you know, healed with lots of calamine lotion, uh, they started going into production, but they don't have a lot of space.

Kelly 23:14

Wait, let me let me just real quick. Yeah. Um, the happy ending to the cat story.

Pete 23:19

Okay, yes, please.

Kelly 23:20

Is that they hired exterminators to come in, and the exterminators said, We need to destroy these cats. And Walt refused and had them all caught, neutered, and adopted. That's wonderful.

Pete 23:35

Yeah, isn't that nice? That is nice. That is a happy ending. So, and that's actually a perfect way to actually start this attraction because it's all about a happy ending. Yes. That's what's no nice about this particular attraction. It's about a happy ending. Um it's also this time in which the attraction is actually starting to develop roughly about the same time that the movie is in production under the guy under the watchful gaze of Ivan Earle. Right. So it was it the whole point of it was that it's kind of a preview. Because if you look at footage, um there if you go on YouTube, you can find it, or if if you really want to support the company, go get the Blu-ray or the DVD of Sleeping Beauty that has all the special edition stuff on it. And take a look at this fabulous reconstruction video that was done. It's hosted by Tony Baxter, and they give you a walkthrough. If you really look at it, there's a lot of scenes in there that don't actually look like anything from the movie. Right, because the movie hadn't been made. Right. It's this kind of preview pastige of this is the world we're working on, but it's not necessarily a telling of the story. Right. And and it opens as a B ticket in uh uh was it October 7th, 1957?

SPEAKER_04 24:49

Yeah.

Pete 24:49

And uh I mean, and in a very short space of time to design it, very short space of time, and when you really look at a lot of the effects, uh it's very bare bones.

SPEAKER_04 25:00

Yeah.

Pete 25:00

And there's something kind of charming about it.

SPEAKER_04 25:03

Yeah.

Pete 25:04

Uh in that regard. Um, so I want to put a pin here for a minute because I want to ask, Kelly, I want to ask you, what is your having I'm sure looked at the 57 version, yeah, what is your favorite moment in the 57 version of the walkthrough?

Kelly 25:24

Oh boy. It it's a it's a toss-up because there is of course the the uh spinning wheels, which is the first use of the pepper's ghost effect in Disneyland, and the only use of the pepper's ghost effect in Disneyland. Oh, but real quick to answer your question, I think it's the endless well. Um we're best friends for a reason. The endless well, not only is it an amazing effect, yeah um, you know, done with mirrors so it looks like it goes on forever, but there's that insane recording effect where they're actually there's microphones in there recording people's voices so that their voices will echo over and over and over again. And I just think it's simple and marvelous.

Pete 26:17

A lot of people actually refer to that as the expletive tunnel because of all of the kids. I already know why. Yeah, shout out little dirty words down that way, the little creeps. Uh so this attraction. I want to do a little deep dive here. So I'm gonna put I'm gonna put on my this so this is welcome to Pete's History Corner. Yeah. And uh welcome aboard, the fabulous okay. So we're gonna talk about history for just a second. Yeah. And the first thing that I did with my research is I kind of want to do a deep dive on the effects that are used. Because a lot of people love to say, oh, this was cutting edge technology, this was cutting-edge effects. Oh no, my friends.

Kelly 26:59

No, these were older than dirt.

Pete 27:01

Yeah, these are so old-fashioned, but they but I think it's because of the design work that went into it and the thinking that went into the storytelling that made it feel cutting edge. But I want to talk about some of the people that developed the elements that are required to make this attraction. Yeah. So the first one I want to talk about is the fact that the entire attraction is nothing but a series of dioramas. Yeah. You are not you are not completely surrounded by the world like you are in Mr. Toad or uh Peter Pan or Pirates of the Caribbean. You are literally walking from one vignette to another that is literally built into a frame that you're looking through either a window, a doorway, or an alcove in order to view these different scenes. And you are you open it up, which I think is one of my favorite charming aspects. It opens up with you reading a storybook, which I just love that. There's something delightfully charming. Yeah. And it harkens back to the actual uh animated features where they would have the giant bejeweled book that would open up and stop motion. And okay, here you go. Today we're gonna hey kids, we're gonna talk about this, you know, uh princess. Uh did you know who invented the diorama? Let me ask you. I'm gonna put this to Kelly. Who do you think involved? The diorama as an art form? The a diorama as a concept and an art form. Who do you think invented it? I have no idea. Okay. It was invented as early as 1823. And it was invented by a man who is actually credited as one of the fathers of photography, Louis Daguerre. Oh. Louis Daguerre. As in the Daguerreotype. As in the Daguerreotype, the chemist. And uh, if you ever see a photograph of him, he a man with no neck. Um just Google it, guys, when you're listening and you'll you'll start laughing. So your office mates are gonna wonder why you're laughing, because you're looking at what's why are you laughing?

SPEAKER_01 28:55

I'm looking at a picture of Louis Daguerre.

Pete 28:58

Um you'll suddenly sound very, very silly, but also very intellectual. Um so apparently uh it was uh he was assisted by a painter by the name of uh Charles-Marie Bouton. And it was in Paris, and what it was, it was a little tiny little theater, kind of like a puppet show, and it was done in the same aspect ratio ratio that we use today for letterbox. Um and what it is, it's a series of backdrop paintings that when they are lit from the back, it has one scene, and when it is lit from the front, it becomes another scene.

SPEAKER_04 29:36

Yeah.

Pete 29:36

And then he would add another layer with cutouts like scrims in a theater. And uh it was a process of various painted backdrops that used light to make up that illusion. And I want to read a real quick quote about how it worked. It says the diorama thus operated according to both um catroptic and dioptic principles. So as Daguerre describes, the first effect painted on the right or front of the canvas is lighted by reflection, while the second effect, that which is painted on the wrong side, receives its light by refraction. That is, from behind only. The right side facing the spectator is the realm of the illusionizing potential of projection, the production of artificial reality. The wrong side belongs to the operator and or the painter who performs the catrophic illusion by seeing through it.

unknown 30:25

Wow.

Pete 30:26

So they are changing paintings, basically. Yeah. And and he would do illustrations of uh various um scenes of battles or uh the the eruption of Vesuvius was one of the things that he did. And it was this little theater, you paid a couple of uh the the French equivalent of pennies, yeah. Uh, and you would go in and see the show. And uh it was it was a Montmartre style entertainment, although this is 1820s, long before the Monmart became the place for all the Impressionists.

SPEAKER_04 30:56

Yeah.

Pete 30:56

Uh but Louis Daguerre, uh he was the one who invented the diorama. And uh along with that, not long about 40 years later, there's another inventor who learns how to bend light. Right. Uh but he has a couple of partners. And this fellow's name is uh John Henry Professor Pepper. And Mr. Pepper, Professor Pepper, is considered the inventor of the Pepper's Ghost Illusion. And it was unveiled at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1862 in a play called The Haunted Man, which was based on a short story by Charles Dickens. And actually, Charles Dickens, who loved illusion, was in attendance. Oh wow, I didn't know that. He actually thought that the illusion detracted from his text, even though he was delighted by the phantasmagoria that he was witnessing. Um it was also um the patent, however, is not just under Pepper's name. There was another guy whose name was Henry Dirks. Dirks, Henry Dirks, which is interesting because Pepper's ghost sounds better than Dirk's ghost.

Kelly 32:03

So this is I'm I'm gonna jump ahead because this is the this is the thing that I was I was trying to be f fabulous with. I will let you be fabulous. Be fabulous. So the technology was basically invented by Dirks, and his technology was called the Dirk's Phantasmagoria.

Pete 32:23

Which sounds amazing.

Kelly 32:24

Oh man, that sounds so cool. It is. It had some built-in problems. The problems with the Dirk's Phantasmagoria uh one is that it required sunlight for some reason. I'm never I'm uh I've seen diagrams of it, and I don't know why he specifically wanted sunlight to light the characters instead of just artificial light, which existed. But he did, and it involved building an entire theater under the audience. Yeah. That is the specific thing that separates the Dirk's Phantasmagoria from the Pepper's Ghost. Nice. The Pepper's Ghost involves a tilt the artificial light, so that's good, but a tilted plane on which the figure stood. Which meant they couldn't walk if it was a human. So that uh particular patent also involved a rail and a sliding thing so you could push the human back and forth. As the ghost, yeah. And this is why the haunted mansion is a Dirk's phantasmagoria and not a Pepper's ghost. Very good.

Pete 33:39

That's awesome. I never knew that. That's I never knew that distinction. Thank you, Kelly.

Kelly 33:43

That is my favorite thing I've learned this year.

Pete 33:45

That is cool. Okay, so along those lines, at the Royal Polytechnic, you know, inspired by the um the success of Dirk's and Pepper's Ghosts, the phantasmagoria of these two. Right. And and you're right, the Pepper's Ghost Patent is under both of their names. Correct. Yes. Yes. Um, there is a uh Professor Pepper would chip in once more with another illusion in collaboration with a man named Thomas Tobin. And it was premiered at the Egyptian theater uh in Piccadilly in 1865. And what it was, it was this large cabinet about the size of a large refrigerator in which an assistant would be placed in, the doors would be closed, there'd be some the cabinet would be spun around, and then the doors would open and the person would be gone. It was referred to as the Proteus Cabinet. And instead of using uh glass, I'm sorry, magicians, I'm gonna give away some of your come on, you can look this up in the library, okay? But it's called the Proteus Cabinet. What it requires is two forty-five-degree angle mirrors that are reflecting the side walls of the cabinet. And when they are closed, the side walls are painted black. So when the mirrors are shut onto a pole that sits right in the center of the doorway to the cabinet, you cannot see the edges of the mirrors. Yeah. And the person is safely hidden behind between these two 45-degree angle mirrors. Yeah. Now, this is there are many variations that include uh a lot of circus gaffes in the 20s and even the 1880s, which you have the half man or the headless woman, and all they all use the Proteus Cabinet illusion, which is the angle. And that is a patent under Henry Pepper and Tobin.

Kelly 35:35

That's okay. I'm I never knew that. That's fascinating. And as a person who has really difficult times with spatial relationships, I'm sitting here with my hands trying to like hide myself behind the fake mirrors.

Pete 35:48

It looks like well, when I've been telling this story, it looks like I'm actually like narrating a kid's novel in Kelby because I'm like, here's the church and here's the steeple. You know, where are all the people? Where'd they go? They're in the Proteus Cabinet. So um Yeah, okay, so that's that illusion would be utilized also in Sleeping Beauty's Castle in order to help save space. Because so where's that used? Uh well, especially in the newer versions, in order to get longer hallways and that sort of thing. There's a variation actually that is utilized in our favorite effect in the 57. Because what it is, is instead of using a regular one-way mirror, you can use a two-way mirror. Yeah. So when you're looking down into the bottomless pit, they have a certain amount of the shaft built. So it does actually, and it is in force perspective a little bit. But there is a mirror actually right at the top. And people think, oh, that's glass to keep people throwing chewing gum down the bottomless pit. It's actually the backside of a two-way mirror. And when you look down, you're looking at a regular mirror. And so the mirror is reflecting back and forth. So it's going into infinity. That's how that works. That's the Proteus cabinet variation. That's it's called the Proteus Infinity loop. And so that takes that's how I've heard it referred to. Again, press the digitators and magic historians. Ricky J is no longer alive, so he can't come through and go, nah, you got it wrong. So um, but anyway, that's the principle. And that was used. So the Proteus illusion was basically a variant that they used to make one of those illusions. And it's one of our faves.

Kelly 37:26

Yeah, if I ever get digitized into the game grid of Tron, can I be called the Proteus Infinity Loop? I'm I'm in there. Okay, I'm I'm right there.

Pete 37:33

I just I I I don't know what my Tron name would be. I don't care. Probably just Pete, but it's just spelled with like, you know, a pie symbol instead.

Kelly 37:40

And like a three.

Pete 37:41

Yeah. Now I got two more guys to talk about here, real quick. Actually, three. Um, but for two very, very specific um contributions that will make everything that is in this attraction, even to this day, possible. And as a matter of fact, a lot of our favorite dark rides possible. Yeah. Um, the next one is a man whose name is uh um Dr. William H. Byler. Okay. Uh and Dr. William H. Byler was a physicist, a scientist, and an astronomer, and he wanted a way on how to break down light out of all of the visible spectrum. People had already, you know, all the way to Newton and even earlier had been experimenting with prisms in order to separate light into all the various colors. But then you also enter the realm of infrared and ultraviolet. Byler was focused on ultraviolet, and he is actually credited to um have uh invented black light. But he isn't. The person who actually developed it much earlier was a man named Robert Williams Wood, and he did so in 1903. Now, we uh for those of us who are history nuts, you especially in the early 20th century, there's this massive almost gold rush of discovery in which you have you have Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison fighting over ACDC. Yeah. And not the band. Right. Though they they both like the band. The band was great for both of them. Yeah, everybody likes ACDC. Tesla liked Back in Black, you know, and Edison really liked Thunderstruck. So there you go. Um actually, I think it's the other way around, knowing Tesla.

Kelly 39:22

I think Tesla was kind of a Bon Scott man.

Pete 39:24

I can see that. I can totally see that. Um but in radio, you had you know, uh DeForest and all the other guys fighting over who's gonna be the master of radio. Yeah. Um, same thing with ultraviolet light. And so there are some people who are in the wood camp, and there are those who are in the bailer camp. But these guys are credited for creating the filter that is required to put over a large bulb, a bright enough bulb, yeah, to project light that filters all the spectrum except for ultraviolet. And that allows us to actually bounce off of um organic reactive materials to create fluorescent lights, light effects. Okay. Now, in order to have that work, you gotta have paint. And this is one of my favorite stories. This is the last one I'm gonna share about the innovations that are required to make this stuff. This is great. So there are two brothers from Berkeley, um, Joseph and Robert Switzer. Joseph and Robert Switzer, uh, Joseph was a uh professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley in the 1930s. And his brother Robert, I'm I'm not sure what he did for a living, but I think he also worked as a chemist as well. So they were they were working together. Uh, but I think uh Robert worked more as more of an industrial chemist. Like he was helping out companies come up with new ways on how to package things and that kind of stuff. And how I know this is because um he was working for, of all people, the H.J. Hines Corporation, the maker of ketchup. Was he making that neon green ketchup? No. But he certainly left quite a splat when he fell off of a delivery truck moving packages of tomatoes, and he fractured his skull and damaged one of his optic nerves. Okay. The doctor said that you're very lucky to be alive, but you're going to have to live in darkness for the next couple of months to let your optic nerve heal.

Kelly 41:24

Okay.

Pete 41:25

And your skull. Right. So his brother, uh Joseph, loving his brother, decided, well, he can't be in the complete darkness. What if we just use ultraviolet light? Well, they're so they went to their their father who was a chemist, and he had one of um one of the wood lights, one of Robert William Wood's lights that he had invented. Uh-huh. And they they were using it to investigate, you know, organic compounds and also minerals. Right. Because certain minerals will fluoresce under black light.

SPEAKER_04 41:56

Yeah.

Pete 41:56

So they started goofing and they started noticing, wow, look at that puddle of cat pea in the corner. That's fluorescing. You know, that kind of stuff. But they did notice, like, ooh, cotton shows up as a bright blue. I wonder what other organic compounds do. So they started playing around in this darkened studio where Robert was living to convalesce and playing with black lights in order to figure out, ooh, what if we mix this and this? That'll make a green. This will make a red. And they actually are credited for creating fluorescent paints. And they founded the Floor S Art Company in Ohio in 1934, and they're the first company to ever make black light paint. Wow. Which is integral to everything that you see in the 57 version and the current version. And pretty much every dark ride in in Fantasyland. Absolutely. And and and and of course, Haunted Mansion, etc.

Kelly 42:53

Um and I know that your uh friend, Don Carson, not that long ago did a whole bunch of research into uh fluorescent and black light paints.

Pete 43:03

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Which ones work and which ones actually I've worked with it. It is a very difficult art form.

SPEAKER_04 43:09

Yeah.

Pete 43:10

You do have to wear special glasses, which are you basically if you want to work with UV paint for a long period of time and you wear spectacles, you should order blue light glasses for computers at the highest possible setting.

SPEAKER_04 43:24

Yeah.

Pete 43:25

So, yeah, to the point where they are almost yellow. Yeah. And you can and you can't really mix in white light. There's just no way to do it. If you actually uh turn on the regular lights, for those who have had those special moments where the ride breaks down and all of a sudden the regular lights come on, you go, ugh, this is what the ride looks like. Well, that's because UV light doesn't look right until it's under UV light. So you have to mix it in the light. And unfortunately, UV light is very dangerous to have long exposure to. This is what tanning beds use. Yeah. So you are you can suffer opt. Damage, you can suffer skin cancer by having long-term exposure as a UV painter. So you kind of work in shifts. Yeah. Take long breaks and go out. You know, you don't paint at night, you paint in daylight. And unfortunately, I made that mistake where I was working on a haunted house and I just thought, well, I'll work at night. Wrong. Wrong. You go to bed and you're seeing inflorescent. Oh god. And it's like, oh, I can't do this anymore. So, but those are the guys, uh, all those people that I just mentioned, all these inventors basically set the stage for all these effects that we see in the 1957 version of a Sleeping Beauty Castle attraction. So there's my little history lesson on the inventor thing.

Kelly 44:44

That's in that's incredible. I think I think what you've given here is an absolute grounding in the basics of theme parks. Like this is this is the information that you need for historical grounding in the basics of theme parks, particularly theme parks with dark rides, which are all the cool ones.

Pete 45:01

So for our future episodes, and when we start talking about other rides, we'll just go go to episode two, you'll learn the rest. History de guerre, what are you talking about de guerre? That's stupid. But um don't worry, he'll come back later. Um because he will.

Kelly 45:23

So I I want to I want to talk about something in in this first walkthrough. Yes. Um, the the walkthrough that was there until roughly 77. Yes. I want to talk about the goons. The goons are interesting to me. What where do we get that word?

Pete 45:40

And because I mean, do you hear it much before that? No, I mean you kind of hear it in gangster movies every once in a while, like this guy and these goons over here, but that's about it.

Kelly 45:51

So the the the etymology is vague. Um generally people agree that it was probably a sailing term uh that was a derivative of goni, which is something that sailors called large birds, like albatrosses, seagulls, awkward-looking birds. Oh and they they had a different word for for smaller, more agile birds. Uh there was a term briefly for basically union enforcers in the Pacific Northwest. So if you were in if you if you had a union and you needed some tough guys, they were sometimes called goons. So that's interesting. But by far the most popular use of the word was from Seeger's Popeye. What? That seems to be the source of our modern interpretation of the word goon. Alice the Goon. Alice the Goon and the island of goons. Wow. And uh I don't know if you remember this, but there were also moon goons. Oh, yeah. Because that's where they started and they sent some down to the to Earth.

Pete 47:04

So these two things I always I always think of the old Popeye cartoon of like I love Alice the Goon. Anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Kelly 47:14

Well, and and and you know, uh Alice Lagoon is a a a great character. Oh, yeah. A fascinating character because she's terrifying. She s seems to be vaguely gendered. Yeah. Though late later they make her more clearly female. But uh uh she's terrifying, and then you discover that she is terrifying because she is fearing for the life of her child. So there's this dimension to Alice. Alice is being forced to do things because she needs to do it to protect her child. Um so it's a real there's a depth to character. And you know, we don't think about it that much these days, but really the only character that challenged Mickey for popularity in those early days was Popeye. Oh yeah. Um the the popularity and and he's he's clearly faded. We know who he is.

SPEAKER_04 48:13

Oh yeah.

Kelly 48:14

But he his his popularity's faded. But he was huge. Oh yeah. It was a massive character. Um he eclipsed Betty Boop for uh for the Fleischer films. And the Fleischers didn't use the goons very much. Um they but they did. There was a couple of films with that that uh the goons were in. Um the goons were used a lot later in like the 60s uh the navy years. Yeah, the theory.

Pete 48:40

Not the coasty years, the navy years.

Kelly 48:42

But um but the goons were consistently through the the Seeger um strips and the later comic books, all of which were still being published at the time that Sleeping Beauty was being made. Absolutely. So I don't know if there's a connection here, but I think it's interesting because it really does show like two of the mightiest uh animation companies kind of meeting in this really weird place.

Pete 49:09

Well, yeah, and in the future, we are planning on doing a speculative episode regarding the difference between Disney and Fleischer. Yeah. Uh um but not today. Uh but not today. Not today. Um but yeah, can continue with the goons because interesting stuff.

Kelly 49:37

This month at Boardwalk Times, we're writing about the status of the beyond Big Thunder and Tropical America's lands at Walt Disney World in Florida, the fall of Evermore Park, and why Disneyland's Autopia is going electric. Come check it all out at BoardwalkTimes.net. Uh in the original Sleeping Beauty walkthrough, yeah, there is the Meet Maleficence Demons area where the goons are. And we see two of the three goon encounters in that recreated DVD extra. Right. And but we don't see all three. That may be because the figure w was lost. But this is an interesting story. The story of the figures of the goons. Okay. So originally that in that walkthrough, and everyone who's listening, do yourself a favor, go on YouTube and find it. It's really fascinating. But there there were three giant wooden doors that were, you know, bolted shut, and and you could look through the keyholes. And if you looked through the keyholes, you saw something really interesting. You looked through the first keyhole and you saw a single goon looking back at you. We think, we don't know this for sure. There's not really strong records, but we think that this the goon was looking back at you with one of your own eyes. As as a so it was a mirror stuck inside a figure of a goon.

Pete 51:10

And extended on a stalk of a metal bar. Right. And what happens is, so let me know. Please let's let's go back to our Proteus cabinets. Yeah. So uh basically it it's a small cut piece of mirror in the shape of an eye that's extended so that way it's right in front of the keyhole. And so the eyeball w looks a little weird when you look through the keyhole because what it is doing is reflecting your eye through the keyhole. Right.

Kelly 51:39

So And so then in the second door, we do know what this is because we we know where those fig these figures are now. We you had two goons, but they were, I believe, one-eyed goons. So each of them was looking at you with one of your own eyes. Right. Same effect, but done double. And then the third keyhole you looked into was a million eyes of your own eyes looking back at you.

SPEAKER_07 52:03

Right.

Kelly 52:04

Great, great effect. Yeah. Uh part of the reason that those displays were there at all was because the original walkthrough was supposed to involve you being able to walk out onto the outside balcony. Oh now, we don't know exactly why they decided against that. It was late in the game, but they we think that it had to do with it would have been a traffic choke. That that everyone would just would have stopped.

Pete 52:33

I could also see a potential there for kids who are looking down and people going through the gate of fantasy landing. Right. Yeah, yeah. So that might have been an issue too.

Kelly 52:44

But so what they did with that area is they they closed off the entrances to get outside. You could still do it, and they still use this from time to time, but it wasn't publicly available anymore.

SPEAKER_05 52:55

Right.

Kelly 52:56

And it left this kind of open space. And so they very quickly wheeled in these figures, put them in barrels, put them behind these doors, opened up a keyhole so you could look at them, so there would be something there. Right. So an interesting thing happened in the 1977 revamp. Oh boy. Which we which we all know is uh as the Barbie version. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um they they went in and redid a bunch of these scenes in in in some ways just so that they would be actually reflect scenes in the film, which the original walkthrough didn't that much. And in some ways they wanted them to look more dimensional. Uh their choice of dolls to do that is questionable.

Pete 53:43

But because they were done in the style of the uh like the window displays in the emporium and other parts of maintaining.

Kelly 53:49

That's right.

Pete 53:50

Yeah.

Kelly 53:51

And um and in doing this, they ended up just kind of boarding up old areas of the attraction. Yeah. Yeah. And so for a long, long time, people didn't know where this stuff was. Now I'm gonna, if you'll bear with me for a minute, please. I'm gonna read you a couple of things. And this really speaks to what Disney fandom was in the 90s. Okay. Go for it. Which is almost non-existent. Really? It wasn't that much of a thing. Disney, partially because Disney had such a hold on all information going in and out. Yeah. Until these two gentlemen, the Jansen brothers, uh-huh, uh, started producing. I'm holding it up to Pete, but nobody else can see it.

Pete 54:41

And I'm drooling because I'm looking at this very like, oh, I didn't realize you had this collection.

Kelly 54:48

They started doing their magazine, which was originally just a fanzine called The E-Ticket.

Pete 54:52

Yeah.

Kelly 54:53

Started doing it in the uh mid to late 80s, kept doing it up until about 2000. One of the brothers died. Right. Um, I think it was Leon died. They uh did a uh issue or two more and then folded. Yeah. Now, if you are an insane Disney fan like we are, you can get reprints of these at the Walt Disney Family Museum. Yes, they they bought out all of the property of them and have reprinted them ever since. So that's great. That is awesome. But I was watching this happen in real time. So in an epis in an issue in about 1990, the Jansens wrote an article about the Sleeping Beauty walkthrough with as much information as they had. And it's actually pretty good. You know, we've been able later, as as more people have gotten more information out of the company and more more people have been through the stuff to check a lot of what what we thought that walkthrough looked like in 1990. Because remember, no one's seen it since 1976, 1977. Yeah, right, right, right. But they had it down pretty well. So they they they wrote about it, and a little bit later, like two issues later, we get a there's a letter, and I'm gonna read from the letter in the e-Ticket magazine from Roberta Brewbaker, a supervisor in Disney's sound department. Dear e-Ticket, thank you so much for doing an article about my favorite Disneyland attraction, Sleeping Beauty Castle. I'll skip ahead a little. Years ago, while working in the castle, I found, stuffed into the back of one of these scenes, a three-foot-tall plywood cutout of Maleficent. I dragged it out and cleaned it up, and wow, beautiful! Painted in dark, subtle hues, the figure showed the back of our favorite evil fairy with Diablo the raven on her shoulder, his wings being slowly flapped by a small motor mechanism. So this is she ran behind, she went behind the walls of this of the 77 walkthrough and found this stuff still sitting there. Wow. And she said, We found behind the large barred arch door on the top floor, three of the barrels you described with the goon peep show. They are still there, living magically behind the walls. If you look at the outside of the castle from the carousel at the arched windows, the three yellow lights are each resting on one of those barrels. But wait, there's more.

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Wow, what a discovery. That's that's serious like geek archaeology here.

Kelly 57:49

Go ahead. So, two issues later, there's a letter from Larry Nikolai, someone who worked with Walt Disney Imagineering. Yeah. I thought you might be interested to know that the saga of the Goon Peep show and the original Sleeping Beauty Castle attraction has continued, and that it has been as a direct result of your enlightened articles on the castle's interior. After reading the follow-up article, where Roberta Brewbaker commented on the goons still living secretly in the walls of the castle, David Mumford and myself made a trip to the park early one morning to investigate. Sure enough, with Roberta's brave and expert guidance, we managed to uncover the little creeps behind the wall's hiding place, exposing them to the Orange County sunshine after nearly 30 years of dark seclusion.

unknown 58:42

Wow.

Kelly 58:43

Although one of the two barrels they lived in had lost its occupant, which is why only two of the three displays appears in that DVD walkthrough because they don't know what the other one looked like, because they never found him. The other one was still occupied by two fearsome goons with gap-tooth smiles and cyclopic eyes. A third barrel offered a tiny forest of mirrors that stared back at you with your own eye when spied upon through the peephole. Fearful that the two goony demons might escape like their companion, we carefully double-sealed them back into the wall and reported their presence to Tony Baxter at WDI. Tony suggested that we have them placed into WDI's custody as a piece of Disneyland history. That's wonderful. Isn't that amazing? So this is happening real time as these magazines come out. And here's you can't see it on the podcast, but I'm showing Pete. There's the goons they found.

Pete 59:44

Oh wow. They're fantastic. They're delightful. I love them. You know, it's like I'm I'm I'm now invisible. I mean, since Disney now owns the rights to Indiana Jones. Yes. We should have Raiders of the Lost Goon. Oh, yes.

Kelly 59:59

It belongs in a museum. You know, like it's you know, but uh and and they did um Tony Baxter, who is clearly a good guy and loves this stuff. Oh yeah. Um, when they did the next renovation, um, they didn't put the goons back in, but what they did do was have a display of all of the pieces that they had found because of these articles.

Pete 1:00:23

Wow. See, that's a great example of how uh fandom. So for those of you who are fans, yeah, and if anybody goes, uh, fandom, I mean, what does that amount to anything? Like, look, fandom actually has its place in history. Yeah. For some very good parts. And for those of us, some of the stuff really matters. Um obviously it matters because hopefully you're still listening. Um yeah, so let's talk about the Barbie version for just okay, this is this, we're just gonna have to, you know, girt ourselves up. This is the one Kelly and I both basically said, like, yeah, we never saw the 57 version in person. We we weren't old enough, or we never got a chance to see it when we could remember it. But I I have always, when I was growing up, always remembered the Barbie version. And I think, and I'm gonna I'm gonna posit something here, which is I think the Barbie version with the three-dimensional characters all moving with like barbecue spit motors and moving very, very slowly, and everything's kind of pl. I mean, there's this one scene in which Rose is in the forest, and you've got the owl dressed in the cloak and the boots, and you know, the prince's cloak and boots. And the prince figure peering out from the woods, watching her, is the creepiest thing ever. He's just kind of like this weird standing off of the woods, like, I'm the bronf.

Kelly 1:01:53

I saw a picture of that just the other day, and I was like, it's still creepy.

Pete 1:01:56

Yeah, it's it hasn't changed. So it's like, forget Maleficent, that's easy. I'm like, let me get to the dragon because this guy's creepy. Yeah, I'd rather face that dragon. So for me, it has always been that version when I was growing up. Yeah. And I think also it's because of that version that this particular attraction started to gain a reputation of this not being a good attraction for a lot of people. I think that's where it gets this reputation where people go, uh, sleeping beauty castle, that's for kids, and it's junkie. That's not good. And I think it's because of that. But interestingly enough, it lasted for a long, long time. It did. Almost 25 years or more of this of the Barbie version, and it got shut down briefly. Yeah. And then fans lost their mind. Yeah. Like we they just went, How dare you close this thing that we hate? Right. Because a lot of the people that were raising us stink about it were probably the fans of the 57. Right. And that's what they were remembering. But they were like, but like I could actually imagine like Eisner kind of going, Have you actually seen it lately? Like I'm I'm looking at the numbers here. You're obviously not going in there, so why do you care? So yeah, so there was this big protest, and then they reopened it under this protest. Right. And then what really shut it down was it was kind of this mixed bag because the thing that gave it gave the company an excuse to do so was uh the tragedy of September 11th. Yeah. And which Disneyland was actually listed by various terrorist organizations as a potential target, or so we were told.

Kelly 1:03:49

Right. Yeah. And I'm I'm glad you're framing it that way because I I I think that that was a myth that the company hid behind.

Pete 1:03:56

And that's where I'm going to get at because that became a myth that they could hide behind because they're like, you know what? It gives us a great excuse to finally shut this thing down. Because, oh, it's safety concerns.

Kelly 1:04:06

Right. And noticing that they did not shut down the much larger Cinderella castle in Florida.

Pete 1:04:13

Yeah, that. So on October 7th, 2001, it was finally closed. Shuttered up, and uh like literally no like no remnant of it whatsoever.

Kelly 1:04:25

It was just a locked door. And an interesting thing about that is that they they closed it saying it was closed temporarily, but around 2004, people started seeing the figures from the display in the windows on Main Street, at which point everyone knew it had been dismantled. Yeah, it's like, oh dear. Yeah.

Pete 1:04:46

So I think it was in early 2008. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They were going to put out a special edition of Cinderella, uh, not Cinderella, sorry, Sleeping Beauty, uh, on Blu-ray and DVD with all these special features. This is back when they were doing their classics editions. And Tony Baxter, our good old friend at WDI, uh was talking about the very articles that you were, you know, and and the goons, yeah, and saying, it would be great to kind of bring this stuff back again, you know. Like in order to promote this, he's like, Well, do you think you could do it? And uh and they basically charge Tony with designing and redesigning and reviving the 57 version.

Kelly 1:05:30

Yeah, probably didn't have to twist his arm.

Pete 1:05:32

Uh Tony talks about that the the movie is one of his absolute favorite films. He loves Sleeping Beauty just because it's beautiful, it's something it's a gorgeous film, there's a lot going for it. So to have this opportunity to do put something together like this was remarkable, kind of uh plussing it up. And see how I worked that in? Oh, yeah. And uh adding some more modern techniques while still pulling some strings for some old classics. Yeah. And adding some, you know, fiber optic uh materials and and going back to the good old uh two-dimensional aspect, which I actually find more charming than the three-dimensional figurines.

Kelly 1:06:11

Yeah, oh I do too. Well, I mean, it's it's a low bar because the three three-dimensional figurines did look like Barbies. Yeah, they were t oh yeah.

Pete 1:06:19

Yeah, they had their own wigs and you know, the the love's first kiss is the most slow motion, interminable. It's like, hey, come on, Ma, go ahead, give you a kiss. How long it took them to get from standing to kissing position. It was ridiculous. Uh, but they uh they quickly, I mean, it was a very short space of time, yeah, put this attraction together, um, adding video effects. They did some new animation with this dragon sequence that I think is like phenomenal. It's terrific. Yeah, it's really good. Great music, great sound mixing, uh mixing modern digital uh screen technology in order to add uh video projection along with the pepper and uh Dirk's ghosts all over the place, and Proteus Cabinet Mirror Illusions in order to make it all work. And the Hall of Goons sadly doesn't like I yes, there's the door with the little spear, which is cute. And then when you grab, I love the the one thing I do love is the door that pulls back on you. Yeah. The minute you touch it, it goes, and then there's like giggles behind it. It's like, okay, that's cool. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. I remember uh showing my stepdaughter that one time. Yeah. It's like, go ahead and grab that door, and she did, and she screamed. That's and that's sorry, Emma. I hate to it's a good haunted house trick.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

It's a great, it's a stupid, yeah.

Pete 1:07:39

It's a stupid haunted house trick, but it's really, really sweet. Yeah. Um, and then you had Maleficent Shadow on the Wall, etc. I mean, really this great refurbishment. But I want to share a stony uh story that just made me laugh hysterically when I first heard it. Um, which is they were literally coming down to the absolute last minute in finishing this thing. And they had in the love's first uh Love's First Kiss scene, diorama, they had gone through all the trouble to render and paint all of these individual red roses for the foreground, unforced perspective.

Kelly 1:08:16

Oh, I don't know this story. This is good.

Pete 1:08:18

The problem is that once they actually installed it in the diorama and they actually put it into the Pepper's Ghost illusion, because that scene is actually because you have the twinkling and you have the changing of the lights and the sunset, it's actually an extended set. They use it as a way to make it seem deeper and more layered than it actually is. The problem is the minute they did that, all the flowers didn't work. Suddenly you could tell that they they they basically look like 45-degree angle lollipops. Oh. And so the day before, I think it was, and Tony, please correct us. Uh I guess it was the day before, he drove to every single Michael's that he could and bought every white flower that he could get his hands on. And they basically had a fluorescent paint dipping party where they're literally taking all these white flowers that he bought at Michael's the day before going and popping it into red fluorescent paint and giving a little bit of wash to give it some dimension. And they just went, stuck it in there, closed it up. Great, put the glass, oh, we're open. Okay, get out of here. You know, like it's that fast. Why does it smell like paint? Yeah. I don't know, it's Disneyland. You know, anything's possible at Disneyland. And then uh and and and and it opened up to great acclaim. I mean, they they showed off one of the things uh when Tony was first going through to inspect the space to see how they could use it, he said it was like going through a real haunted space because everything was falling apart, there was debris everywhere. Yeah. And I thought, man, what a what a moment to be there to see this old, you know, this old derelict space that you're about to revive to make beautiful. Because I personally, I still have a love for this attraction. Yeah. Because you're not not like Peter Penn or Mr. Toad or Snow White or any of these other ones. Are you a character in the story? You're having someone like your favorite relative reading you a story. Yeah. And you're turn and you've started with the big book, and you're kind of like, okay, so these are illustrations in a book. So it's like being it's a comfort food for me. It's like being in bed with your favorite blanket, yeah. Having somebody read you a read me a story. I just want, I just because think of it. When you're in fantasy land, you've been in line for Peter Pan for two and a half hours, you're losing your mind. It's a lot of people, and it's a lot of noise and a lot of music. And especially those of us who are a little on the neurospicy side, it it gets a little overwhelming. Yeah. So for me, there's like three or four spaces at Disneyland, um, one of which is now gone. Which is then uh that's uh Big Thunder Ranch. Oh, yeah. Which is gone now. It's now the Star Wars area. Yeah. Uh but for me, it's you know, uh Cafe Zo Colo, and then um Sleeping Beauty's Castle, where you can unwind and still have a little magic. Yeah. And it makes you kind of put you back into that little kid headspace of read me a story, Mom. Yeah. And it's it's delightful. And that's what I love about this attraction.

Kelly 1:11:30

So as we're talking about probably the the most famous and most successful plus up of this attraction, which would be Tony Baxter's redo of it. Yeah. I think we need to face up to the fact that we need to come up with a plus up for this attraction.

Pete 1:11:47

Oh boy. Uh okay. So I'm gonna admit something to you, Kelly. I had a hell of a time. I've been thinking about this all week. Yeah. And I'm I'm gonna let you go first this time. Let me, are you? I went first last time. It's your turn to go first. All right. Uh because this one is really, really difficult. And mine I've got a couple of stuff. So I want you to go first because I want to hear your take on this first.

Kelly 1:12:14

Okay. I also had a really hard time with this because um it is exactly what you describe. It it is it is a serene place. Um, it it has a real sense of nostalgia, even with the the modern version. In fact, almost more so with the modern version, because it it looks like and harkens back to the 57 version so strongly. Um it is the icon of icons of theme parks in the world. And there is no no more significant one. It is the weenie for the park. Um it is the thing that is the weenie. Yeah, and and and you know, I do understand that Walt intended to have, and the this is his word, I'm not making this up. Uh he intended to have a weenie for e each land. Um and really there's this one, and there's the rocket in Tomorrowland, and those are the only ones that you can actually see.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:16

Right.

Kelly 1:13:18

But I understood the intention. But it is, it is, it is the focus for the entire park, and thus the fundamental structure of all theme parks. Yeah. Um, and I recognize, don't anyone yell at me, I recognize there are theme parks that are around that predate this, and yet this is the preeminent one at this point. So it is hard to talk about changing it. Yes. In inside or outside. Yeah. So I decided to stop overthinking it and back up and say, what could we do just to make it a little more magical? And here's what I decided. We know that the drawbridge works. Now, it has been lowered twice ever, once on opening day, and once, speaking of Tony Baxter, at the opening of New New Fantasyland. And I do know that that after it was lowered, um, in what was it, 85 for New Fantasyland? That a few things were put in place that that uh prevent it from easily being lifted, but those things can be removed, it can be lifted again. Sure. So my plus up for the castle is that once maybe every season they lift that thing and pick a kid to announce its opening and and have the thing come down. To to perhaps r recite part of the opening speech for Fantasyland and let one kid lower the drawbridge, just maybe four times a year, and make that kid's life. And so that that's my plus up. Just have the castle do a castle thing that's super special for a kid.

Pete 1:15:13

That's wonderful. I love that notion, you know, like yeah, making it much more personal. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's a little bit like um the King Arthur, you know, sword and the stone.

Kelly 1:15:25

Yeah, yeah, very much so. It's like, oh, you got selected. And and this would be even more so uh because you can't do it that often. But all right, who's next?

Pete 1:15:37

Well, you know, they could turn it into a coin press. Just put it under the Yeah, so we have the drawbridge coin press. Just be sure that doesn't fall in so you don't kill the ducks. Um kid, get away from there.

Kelly 1:15:54

Yeah. Um, so that that that's mine.

Pete 1:15:58

I that's a delightful one. I love that notion. Thank you. That's really, really sweet. So I've got two that I I wanted. One of which has an interesting little side note that I kind of want to preface because one of the things that I loved during that dark period when it was just about ready to like they were trying to find ways on how to get people interested in Sleeping Beauty Castle again. Right. And what they thought is is exit through the gift shop. So when you leave, you would exit onto the um the villain shop, uh-huh. KKA the villains layer. Yeah. Uh, which was all about Disney villains. And it was it was it was a marvelous little themed shop that I just oh, you know, the Halloween nerd in me just went, yeah. Give me a Chernobyl t-shirt, you know, I'm I'm in.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:51

Yeah.

Pete 1:16:51

Um, and to me, as a demented little kid, and I know uh being a parent of a demented little kid, and I say that with all love, Emma, we like darker stuff. Yeah. And the thing, the the real attraction of Sleeping Beauty is not Briar Rose. No, of course it's not. She's she is she's in the film for like 16 minutes. Beautiful voice, yeah, great dancing, owls and squirrels in drag. Love her. Okay. Sure. Um, but people drag, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm wearing a cloak. Um, but she's not the star. Maleficent is the star. Clearly. And so is Flora Fauna. Maryweather, yeah. You know. Um and so I would actually argue that when you exit, they should actually continue the tour a little bit longer because you have uh an attraction in Disneyland currently called the Bippity Bopity Boo Boutique. Yeah. And or Bippity Bopity Boutique. Yeah. And uh my friend Caitlin used to work there as a cast member. And what it is, if if you've never seen it, it's this as a parent, it's a nightmare. Yeah, it's a it's a money hemorrhaging. Yeah, your wallet literally walks in, and when you're a kid, you're like, this is amazing. When you're a parent, you're like, okay, well, we're gonna need a mortgage on the house. But what it is, it's basically a Disney princess makeover for your kid.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:25

Yeah.

Pete 1:18:25

Um, what I like recently is that they've actually introduced it uh introduced princes. Yeah. And one of my favorites. And they're much cheaper. And my favorite is when I saw a young boy go in, he had long hair, little surfer kid, yeah, went in, and I saw him about a half an hour later out in front of Mr. Toad, and he had come out as Prince Loki. Oh. And I went, okay, yes, that's cool. Boom, that's great. Okay, yay. That's like that's one of the benefits of having Marvel under Disney now. Yeah. Um, okay. So that being said, they don't the Bippity Bopity Boutique is mainly focused on cute little happy princesses. Let's indulge the dark a little bit more in a safe manner, yeah, in which you actually have the dark side of Bippity Bopity Boutique, in which it's a makeover for all of us weirdos who want to be Ursula or want to be and have an audience with the dark queens and the and Captain Hook and all these other villains. Yeah. So that way we go, yeah, like we're gonna be villains.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:33

Like, let's live it up.

Pete 1:19:35

Yeah. For those of us who just that's the catharsis of the fantasy. It's like it's good to be bad. Yeah. You know, um so something like that would be kind of cool. I I think that would be great.

Kelly 1:19:46

Kind of like what they did with the Memento Mori shop in in uh Disney World in the Magic Kingdom, where they were just like, hey, you know, we have a haunted mansion deal here. Um well, how about some spooky stuff? Yes, yeah, yeah, because I mean and and Maleficent is an incredibly popular character.

Pete 1:20:04

She's one of the best villains ever.

Kelly 1:20:05

Yeah.

Pete 1:20:06

She really is. I mean, be able to have an audience of Maleficent, but make it like you don't just step outside, you get to be in her creepy green, underlit layer with the the thorny stuff. You have a throne of thorns that you get to sit with Maleficent on, and you're all decked out. I mean, kids would eat this up. Yeah. So, Disney, you're gonna make a lot more money and make a lot of parents either very, very happy or very, very broke. Yeah. But that would be Which will make you very, very happy. Right. So that's my that's my entrepreneurial plus up. That's a that's a great one. My sweet plus up. Okay. Is one of the things I love about Sleeping Views Castle. Part of it is the economy of it, of it being something that you discover.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:54

Yeah.

Pete 1:20:55

Like like those who know will go for it.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:57

Yeah.

Pete 1:20:58

But most people just go right past it. I think, and I and I know that um the executives at Disney have actually made it very publicly known that they want to find ways on how to expand the park even further.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:13

Yeah, yeah.

Pete 1:21:14

Um part what I would love to see is to go around to other parts of the park. Yeah. Take the thinking and the ingenuity and some and hey, all the old tricks as well as the new. And go to New Orleans Square, go to Frontierland, go to Bear Country, go to or crater country. Critter Country, yeah. And go to Which is becoming very small right now. Uh even Tom Sawyer's Island, go go to all of these different locations and find ways on how to sneak a storybook attraction like Sleeping Beauty's Castle into that space. Yeah. Uh the reason is is frankly, Disney's having an identity crisis. Yes. And I don't want to I don't want to get into how I'm gonna fix Disney because there's they're not gonna listen to me. Yeah. And and frankly, they shouldn't. Because believe me, I'll make cool stuff, yeah. They'll go broke. Yeah. Well, yes. Yes, I yes, they will. Peter, we can't we cannot make an all Chernobyl fireworks display. We just can't do it. I command it. Yeah. Uh boom.

unknown 1:22:32

So anyway.

Kelly 1:22:33

Um I I agree with you. They do have an identity crisis, and and people are losing sight of what these stories are.

Pete 1:22:39

Right, exactly. So yeah, that's totally where I'm going. So uh now luckily, with the advent of the plus up of Splash Mountain to Princess and the Frog, that's pretty much covered for New Orleans. Yeah. And I was because I would have suggested that otherwise. But there are other uh like you could do the rescuers. Yeah. Uh you could do um um something that is film you know uh themed more old west in Frontierland. Uh heck, even if it's Pocahontas. I know I don't know. Uh or anything that's up up and coming. Yeah.

Kelly 1:23:16

I mean, imagine Well, that's the thing, right? Like we were talking about Sleeping Beauty Castle being built like you know, five, four, five years before the film came out. Have some faith. Like, build build something based on something you're about to make and show us how much confidence you have in it. Exactly.

Pete 1:23:32

Or, or, you know, tap into some obscure stuff that you want people to remember and get back into again.

Kelly 1:23:37

Yeah.

Pete 1:23:38

You know, uh, and tell these and and give it the same type of, okay, take because again, this is something that uh we mentioned early in this episode, is that more and more people are I'm sure that these people we we have been around, us neurospicy people, who get overwhelmed with all the people and all the noise and all the hubbub. We've been around for a long time. Yeah. However, I also think we're becoming more and more acknowledged by the the corporations out there of going, sure, we need to listen to this.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:11

Yeah.

Pete 1:24:12

And so having mental resets without losing the magic or cutting off the feelings, uh, and and hey Disney, if you're listening, no, I am I am totally acknowledging that you gotta sell merchandise. Yeah, but you're not selling merchandise, you're selling feelings. Yes, and so if you are overwhelmed and bored or burned out, you're not gonna want to buy anything. But if you are still kind of having a relaxing moment and still feeling that magic, yeah, with something like, hey mom, read me a story, please. Okay, well, if we're over in this area, like in Tomorrowland, let's do a storybook about a character for the three future. You know, things like that. So having storybook niches all over Disneyland. I think that would be so nice. And what a great way to actually mentor new imagineers and thinkers by giving by taking some of the old guard. And how they there's a mentorship between them kind of. Yeah. You know, old guard, new guard. What a great way to kind of cut their teeth where that you don't have to say, like, here's a seven, you know, seventy million dollar attraction that you have to no no, you've got three million bucks and you have six months.

Kelly 1:25:30

Yeah. Do it. Yeah, and and just go, hey, look at look at the space that they had here at Sleeping Beauty Castle, and look what they made. So you don't have very much space, you don't have very much money. See if you can make something like that. Right.

Pete 1:25:44

And what if you set that up and you have the spaces, if it's not successful, it's not that big of an investment compared to like something like Star Wars. So you could pull that out and push it back in. So in a way, it's almost also an expansion of the Emporium windows. So that's my second plus up.

Kelly 1:26:01

I love it. I'm I'm I it's there's an intimacy to it. And uh yeah, I love that. I think it sounds so great. All right, before we wrap this up, yeah, I wanted to I pulled this one quote um, which is about John Hench, which is why I was thinking about it.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:17

Okay.

Kelly 1:26:17

Um and this is a quote uh from uh the book The Disneyland Story, the Sam Genaway book. Uh we love Sam Genaway's books. And um it's uh it's about John Hench talking about uh Sleeping Beauty Castle. And it says, The castle seemed to have a power of its own. John Hench suggested if you walked up and asked the guest why he liked the castle, why is it worth worth photographing, he could never tell you. He'd probably stammer out something like Because it's just beautiful? And yet, when he gets back home and shows his pictures, the feeling will never be the same that he experiences simply standing there. Hench explained, The fact is, as we stand here right now, there are literally hundreds of stimuli etching an impression and an experience in our minds through every one of our senses. He noted that the most obvious was the sense of sight, but the experience runs even deeper. There is a static nature about the castle structure itself that makes you think it's been there for centuries. And yet there's motion, the motion of those flags, the trees around us made by the wind, the movement of people, vehicles and boats, water, balloons, horses, the white clouds passing by overhead. He also suggested standing in front of the castle was the best stereo or quad system in the world, with an ever changing background. The rock work, the horses appeal to the guest's sense of touch, and the flowers are real and you can smell them. That popcorn, you can go over there and taste it. The result was that every one of our senses are coming into play. Play, said Hench. This is total involvement. You can never capture this moment and take it home with you in a camera or a tape recorder. You can only take this experience home in your mind. John Hench. Wow. That's beautiful.

Pete 1:28:17

Yeah, so before we end, we have to end. First off, uh, want to thank all of our listeners for joining us here. And if you think you have a good plus up for Sleeping Beauty Castle, please leave it in the comment section. Keep it kind, keep it simple. Don't nitpick me on all of my factoids. You can if you want to, but I probably won't read it. But I know I'm joking. I will probably read it and then I'll cry.

Kelly 1:28:42

But uh but he will, he's sensitive.

Pete 1:28:45

I know. Uh and I will also pose you another question, oh listeners. Uh, and I will start off by asking Kelly this very question. Yes. We'll end on this question tonight. Which do you prefer? Blue or pink?

Kelly 1:29:09

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Lowdown on the Plus Up. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at Boardwalk Times.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group or send us a message directly at comments at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at Incompitech.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.