SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Disneyland Hotel. As we'll show you in the next few minutes, there's an exciting world of things to do and see. So come on along for the tour.

Kelly 0:28

Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures, and novelties. 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. Yeah. What are we talking about today?

Pete 1:07

Well, today's episode, folks, is probably our hardest yet. And yes, it's only episode number three. But I think Kelly and I, after our last two episodes, we decided to make a concerted effort into not just go for the easy subject matter. We decided to go for one of the most obscure and probably one of the most challenging of our episodes up to date. Um because I think we I think honestly, secretly, we wanted to get this over with and do it do it now.

Kelly 1:37

Well, I don't I don't know about that. I you know, I think we both have very fond memories of this particular item, which is the Disneyland Hotel. The Disneyland Hotel. Now I I I'm gonna say right up front that I have a a little bit of a prejudice here. Okay. My prejudice is that in the 90s, the Disney company bought the Disneyland Hotel. Yeah. And I have zero interest in anything that happened with the hotel after that point.

Pete 2:10

I can go with that. Um so okay, so for those of you listening who are big fans of the resort as it is today, probably not going to be your program. Um probably not. However, I do uh before we proceed, I do want to throw a little bit of kudos to at least the Disneyland Hotel staff uh who were there in uh 2011. Uh I was there with a friend, and we were supposed to check in, and there was some sort of cheerleader convention going on at the Anaheim Convention Center. Oh no joke. Real teeny boppers and teenagers and cheerleaders everywhere. And we had a a reservation which I had made months in advance, and they said, Well, we're all full up. Yeah. And I kind of went, Well, we're all the way down here. We took a plane, we got carted over here by the tram from John Wayne. Right. Uh, I'm not sure what we're gonna do now. Maybe maybe you guys can help me rent a car, and maybe we can find something at the Marriott or something. They said, Let me see what we can do. And they went back and we had to wait for about 15, 20 minutes, and they came out and said, Okay, uh, we would really like to apologize. We've put you in one of the suites. Not one of the big magical suites, which we're gonna talk about in a minute, uh, but one of the larger suites. We've set you up in it, very nice hotel room, and they set us up with a couple of food, you know, dinner vouchers, and you know, Bob's your uncle, and and they really took very good care of us, even when, and I know Disneyland probably doesn't want me to mention this, but I got food poisoning at the Blue Bayou, and they took very good care of us when we were going through that. They were like we we had mentioned on the way to the lobby, and they started sending stuff up for us, like you know, buckets of ice and stuff, just in case we needed that. And the and the front lobby actually checked on us. So the staff was great. Our story really uh is complicated with this one because as we researched this hotel, what we thought was going to be okay, well, I guess we're gonna talk about the giveaway soap, and we're gonna talk about the little paper band they put over the toilet for your sanitation? Like, what are we gonna talk about?

Kelly 4:19

It seemed very much like fact after fact after fact after fact. And and you start to go, what what ties this together? What makes this an interesting story? Yeah. And and I wanna I wanna take just a second. I I should pee this book just a little while ago, but um there is a book, and I referenced it a lot in in this episode, and and the author deserves uh all sorts of credit. His name's uh Donald Ballard. Yay, Donald. Yeah, and there's a book called Disneyland Hotel, the early years, 1954 to 1988. He's written a few other books specifically about the Anaheim Disney hotels, which is uh an amazing thing to take on as your subject of interest, but um they're invaluable. And if you're interested in this stuff, really seek him out. I'm I'm going to be lifting facts from him left and right.

Pete 5:09

Yeah. Well, and and you bring up an interesting point, is is um a lot of people actually consider uh to get that type of obsession about the hotel. Because you have to be obsessed in order to write a book like that. Yeah. And then there's we're talking good nerd obsession here, where it's like, I love this thing and I'm gonna stick with it. I'm the same way. Um and I think what's interesting is it it doesn't surprise me that people develop obsessions about places like the Disneyland Hotel because in its heyday, it really was something unique, something special. It was a trendsetter. It was and it uh broke ground in so many ways. And the more I learned about it, the more I actually have a healthy respect for uh what would you say the pre-year? So it's from 1956 to 19 what? Uh 1988. So yeah.

Kelly 6:03

So uh So eight eighty seven is when um Disney as a company uh they team up with a a New Zealand company to buy out Rathercorp. And and there's there's some stickiness that goes with that, but we'll we'll get to that. But so after after 88, it it is suddenly the Disney Company's hotel. And things change a lot. Yeah.

Pete 6:26

So this this episode is gonna be a little ping-pongy. We're gonna be jumping all over the place with this one because again, see part where Kelly and I were like, what are we gonna do with this thing?

Kelly 6:38

Well, let's let's go back to the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Okay.

Kelly 6:40

In 1955, Walt's about to open his park. He realizes that there's not a lot in Anaheim. People are going to have to travel to get there.

Pete 6:52

At most, there was like a hundred rooms total in all of Anaheim by the time that he was building Disneyland Park.

Kelly 6:59

Right. And and so he knew he needed a hotel, uh, sort of fulfill his dream about this. He went to some of the big players. Uh they all said no because it's went to the Hilton's, didn't he? He did go to the Hilton's, yeah. Uh they said no, they said that this is a crazy idea. You know, at this point, obviously people still didn't know whether the park was going to be a success. Um, even if it was a success, if it was going to be enough of a success to uh uh sustain a a large hotel. So he went to the Hiltons, he went to several other people, they said no, he went to Jack Rather. Rather said no. He also didn't want to have anything to do with it. Disney came back to him a few more times and rather he he acquiesced and said, okay, well, we'll we'll put this together.

Pete 7:48

I wonder what he what it took.

unknown 7:51

Yeah.

Pete 7:52

You know, like did he walk in with the giant drawing of Wethel Roger, like, look at the perk, it's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Bank of America said yes, you should too.

Kelly 8:00

One of the things that I think may have played into it was that um Rather and his wife, Benita Rather, were friends with Ronald and Nancy Reagan. And they were actually quite close friends with Ronald and Nancy Reagan. And Walt was friends with the Reagans. Um Ronald Reagan was going to appear on the opening day special of the park opening. I think that the it's uh potentially that might have been part of the deal, that might have been part of the sell. Well, Jack, I think you better do it.

Pete 8:37

Bonzo over there is really enjoying this fine hotel. Calm down, little Jim Panji. Sorry. That Reagan and boy, am I a child from the 80s. Yeah.

Kelly 8:50

I I want to back up a little with Jack Rather because the story just makes me so happy to tell. You know, a little bit, I I think of this podcast as like Greel Marcus's lipstick traces book, where it just takes a little factoid and follows it that way for a while and sees sees if we can tease something interesting out of it. Jack Rather was married twice. Uh Benita Rather was his second wife. His first wife was the daughter of Wilbur Lee past the biscuits, Pappy, O'Daniel. What? The governor of Texas.

Pete 9:28

Oh my God. And you being a Texas boy, this is a big deal.

Kelly 9:32

Yeah, no. Now, the Lee O'Daniel's really interesting for a lot of reasons. Uh, he was governor of Texas. He became governor because he owned a flower company called the Lightcrust Flower Company. And the Lightcrust Flower Company had its own radio show. The radio show was extraordinarily popular in Texas. It featured a band called the Lightcrust Doughboys.

Pete 9:58

Oh, I love them. Yeah, yeah. I I love them so much. It got a great sound of that Memphis Swing.

Kelly 10:05

Right. Yeah. And Bob Wills, the king of Texas Swing, started off in The Lightcrust Doughboys. And their theme song was a song called Pass the Biscuits Pappy. So Wilbert Lee O'Daniel became known as Lee Pappy O'Daniel, or sometimes Lee Pass the Biscuits Pappy O'Daniel. Wow. He was extraordinarily popular. He became governor of Texas. He was not a great governor. He ended up running for uh senator in Texas, and this is one of the very few elections that Lyndon Johnson ever lost. Really? Lyndon Johnson lost an election for senator of the state of Texas to Wilbur Lee past the biscuit, Papio Daniel.

Pete 10:53

You know, that that's saying that's like dueling charismas there. Right. You know, like Johnson, I don't know.

Kelly 10:59

Daniel just by less than 2,000 votes. Whoa. Incredibly close.

Pete 11:04

Holy moly.

Kelly 11:05

And this is why later, when uh Papio Daniel decided not to run again, so he he was coming in uh uh in a vacated term, so he it was a special election. So he came in, filled, filled that election, ran one more term, then decided not to run again. So Lyndon Johnson decided to run after that. That was like 48, I believe, and he ran against uh Koch Stevenson. And Lyndon, having learned his lesson from the fight with uh Pepe O'Daniel, fixed that election real good.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

I don't want any biscuits served at this election.

Kelly 11:46

He made sure he was gonna win that one. Voters be damned.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

How the hell did they get more gravy?

Kelly 11:52

Yeah, it's wow. But so the interest so I I I just I I love the story. Uh so great. Lee Lee Lee O'Daniel shows up as you probably know in O Brother Where Art Thou, the Gone Brothers movie. Yeah, where the uh Lightcrest Dough boys are replaced by the soggy bottom boys. Yeah. Fascinating character. But so Jack Rather marries Lee O'Daniel's daughter, Mary, I believe is her name, and then goes to war. He has they have two kids, he goes to war, World War II. He actually sees action. Wow. Um, towards the end of his time, which is like 44-45, he's in action in the Pacific Theater.

unknown 12:35

Wow.

Kelly 12:36

During this time, his wife files for divorce. Now there's all sorts of strange things about this origin story, right? Because first off, you you're a Texan in the 40s, you don't really file for divorce. No. That doesn't happen.

Pete 12:53

It's not, yeah, making a run for Reno is not really a thing over there.

Kelly 12:57

Right. Yeah. So you especially don't file for divorce when your husband is in the Pacific fighting in World War II. Yeah. But she did. And her father at that point was senator, very wealthy. And they ended up in courts for years. It it fairly decimated Jack Rather. Wow. So his his origin story coming into the 50s, which is what we're really here to talk about, is is interesting. It's it's it's devastating.

Pete 13:30

He It's kind of starting from scratch. Yeah. Midlife. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly 13:35

So anyway, that's that's the story of Jack Rather and Pass the Biscuits Pappy.

unknown 13:40

Wow.

Kelly 13:41

That one blew me away. So yeah, the 1955 uh Walt Disney somehow talks Jack Rather into uh taking on the hotel there. Rather has a whole bunch of different industries that his company owns. He's he's an oil wildcatter, so he owns a bunch of oil. He uh has a few different things. And and along his career, he has a bizarre collection of industries that Rathercorp owns.

Pete 14:08

It doesn't surprise me one of the ventures that you told me about. Yeah. Um, especially his connection to uh the oil industry. And uh having grown up part of my youth in Southern California and driving through portions of the desert and seeing the oil rigs pumping crude out of the ground, it doesn't surprise us. So tell us about this one industry that would totally probably surprise some people that he was involved with. Are you thinking about the erector set company? Yes.

Kelly 14:38

So uh Jack uh his his wife, uh his second wife, Benita Rather, who we're gonna talk about a lot because uh I think we both find her pretty fascinating. Yeah. She said later in her life, I believe after Jack had passed away, she said, My husband was really good at acquiring assets. He wasn't always good at making money at them.

Pete 14:58

Aaron Ross Powell Which is interesting because uh Jack Rather actually has a quote that says there's two ways that you acquire them. You either build them or you buy them. That's right.

Kelly 15:07

Yeah. It's interesting. And so he did, and this was a little bit later on, he bought the Erector Set Company, uh, which was a German company. Yeah. He drove it into the ground. It was devastating on their financial books. Um he ended up having to sell it off again, and then it popped right back up. And you know, my question to you, Pete. Yes. How do you screw up the erector set company?

Pete 15:38

Well I don't know. I mean, I've seen older erectors. I remember having my erector set and half of the parts were plastic. Yeah. Like by the time it reached our age group, like they were trying to make it much more little finger-friendly.

Kelly 15:53

I think this was exactly the problem. I think this is actually what Rather did. Yeah. So he took these kind of cool metal things that you bolted together, and he decided he was going to make them. He was going to use space age polymers, plastics. And and it took some of the charm away from it. It took that weird industrial kids like to watch Earth-moving machines charm away from it.

Pete 16:15

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, you can imagine him in a like some sort of uh boardroom like nuts. Kids don't need nuts.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

They can in my day, we didn't use nuts. We used we used we used bubblegum and it served us well.

Kelly 16:28

But you know, some some other things that Jack Rather owned, um, he owned Musac. What? Yeah, he owned the Musac company. Get out of here. Um, no, and and and and they held on to that for a very long time. It was bizarre. Fairly successful. He also owned a bunch of entertainment properties, um, all of which he bought. Like none of these he created, but he owned The Lone Ranger. He owned Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. He owned Lassie.

Pete 17:02

Okay, wow. Now okay, now, alternate reality. Somewhere, there's an Avengers movie in which. Sorry, I'm making myself laugh before. He's cracking him back up. In a world of prohibition, a Canadian mounted officer is on the track and it takes him to the old west where a young boy named Timmy is caught up in a in a boot.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah, she we gotta make sure this whiskey gets on the other side of the border. Well, what are we gonna do over here? Wow, wow. What is it now, lassie? There's only one money who can save us now. Hi, ho Silver! Away.

Pete 17:46

Throw in a 900-year-old Davy Crockett, and we'll call it a day.

Kelly 17:51

What is it's uh yeah, it's surprising that the Davy Crockett and Sergeant Preston didn't take off.

unknown 17:58

Right.

Kelly 18:02

I'm not sure which one's the young ward. Um I think it's probably the dog. And so yeah, he bought the Lone Ranger. This was after it had been uh radio series and had been on TV for a while. He maintained it and kept it on TV for a little while. It died out. He brought it back, it kind of failed. He he did a movie based on it, it kind of failed. He sort of ran it into the ground. But not as badly as uh Jerry Bruckheimer did. Not as badly as Jerry Bruckheimer. I'm just saying. No, sir.

Pete 18:39

Anyway, you were saying I'm sorry.

Kelly 18:41

No, no, no. No, it was an excellent point. One one of the things that was sort of associated with him owning the Lone Ranger is he's the guy. Uh Jack Rather is the guy that gets an injunction against Clayton Moore and says you cannot appear in the Lone Ranger outfit long after the TV show's off the air. Wow. Clayton Moore was trying to make a a living. You know, he's trying to survive to dressing up as the Lone Ranger, as he did on TV for like seven years. Yeah. Um and Jack Rather forced him to stop.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

What?

Kelly 19:13

Which is not cool. That is not cool. Right. And you know, r the Rather company's going to get its comeuppance later in a very similar sort of way. But uh so he did that. Um he he didn't really make much out of the Lone Ranger. Sergeant Preston kind of died out pretty quickly after that, though rather desperately tried to bring Sergeant Preston back a number of times, including at the hotel. Later on. What? Yeah, later on in 1981, they built the Sergeant Preston's Yukon Saloon.

Pete 19:47

And got the moose heads and snowshoes and stuff all over the walls.

Kelly 19:53

So it was a restaurant at the hotel in 1981. And after a while, they put a sort of like hoop-de-doo review kind of show in called Sergeant Preston's Yukon Follies.

Pete 20:06

I had no idea that Sergeant Preston went and dragged. Oh, if only.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

That's right. I'm looking rather fabulous, eh?

Kelly 20:19

And then and that that restaurant eventually became like the neon cactus or something and and disappeared. But so he they were they were desperately like, you know, there's a market for Sergeant Preston. Not anymore. And the and the third of those those entertainment properties that he uh owned, Lassie. Yeah uh that one actually did pretty well. Yes. It held on for a long time, and this is in a large way because of his wife, because of Benita Rather. Benita Rather had been a child actress, pretty successful one, actually. Yeah. When she m got married to Jack, for some reason, uh she said that she thought he was the type of person that would not want his wife going off and doing movies. Interesting. Um she didn't say it angrily, she didn't say it like, oh, this this is something I regret. She was like, Yeah, this is fine. It's just what our relationship is. So she she got out of the entertainment industry for a while, but then she came back. She was producing Lassie for a while, she was voiceovering Lassie for a while, I believe she appeared in Lassie for a while. She was the dog.

Pete 21:36

I mean, that's uh okay, you know. I mean, the just to translate, you know, to dog. You know, it translates it to he's in the well sounds very different than oh, he's he's down in the abandoned mine. You know, like that's very different. Yeah, and you have to know the difference. Well, she wouldn't know she wouldn't know a lot about mystery because it turns out she was I uh according to this She was cinema's first Nancy Drew. Oh, what? I didn't know that. She was Nancy Drew Reporter in 1939. Nancy Drew Detective in 1938. Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase. And Nancy Drew Troubleshooter. All of them within a two-year span. She was also in The Lone Ranger in 1956. She made an appearance in that. She was in a movie called Hitler's Children.

Kelly 22:27

That's I've heard about that. And I've heard it's actually pretty good.

Pete 22:30

Yeah. Love Laughs at Andy Hardy. Uh-huh. Apparently not anymore.

Kelly 22:36

I know she's in a version of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour called These Three. Mm-hmm. She's in a lot of Lone Rangers, actually.

Pete 22:43

Which does not surprise me. She's in like two or three uh The Magic of Lassie. Here she is. The Children's Hour, 1961, obviously no longer a child actor. Right. Those were the days. 40 Little Mortimer. The Wild Man of Borneo. She married. Yeah. And this is my favorite. All it is, like this is such a great, a great title. It's just 1935's Ah Wilderness. So yeah, that's that's that's Bonita Rathers or uh what's her maiden name is Bonita Granville's.

Kelly 23:21

Granville Rathers. Yes. And that is why the restaurant that was most recently Steakhouse 55 was originally named Granville's. Ah. It was named after her. And what was the other thing that was named after her? What? The Bonita Tower. Oh, wow. The third of the three big towers.

Pete 23:41

Right, because there are three towers. There is the Sierra and the Marina. And the Bonita. And then there's the Santa Maria.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

No, it's not a fourth tower yet.

Pete 23:53

I'm sure Disney's working on that. Christopher Columbo.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Colonialism aside, folks, uh, we're going to move on here. We can talk about uh small children actually performing as dogs, but we we can't actually talk about Christopher Columbus.

Kelly 24:15

So she she was she seemed to be kind of keeping the entertainment piece of the Rather Company's portfolio alive. Yeah. If not solely like she was doing a big hunk of the work there. And we're gonna find out later how savvy of a business person Bonita Rather was. She operated very much in Jack's shadow for a long time. But later, when Jack's no longer in the picture, Bonita really shines.

Pete 24:43

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, very much indeed. Kelly and I have kind of decided that she's kind of the heroine of this mighty tale. That's right. Overall. I mean there's a lot of people that really contribute and they do amazing things. We could spend hours going into the actual history of the building of the hotel and all the Mac. But you know what? They did a marvelous job on Disney Plus, on Behind the Attraction. They actually do a very great, almost hour-long documentary, which you know, even they kind of say, like, really, this is fascinating? No, really, it's fascinating.

Kelly 25:18

It's fascinating.

Pete 25:18

Yeah. Um, I would also recommend. So there's uh there's a great documentary called The Rise and Fall of the Original Disneyland Hotel by a fellow on YouTube uh called YesterWorld Entertainment. And uh he does a great job about the history and the background and so forth. And we may we may or may not have lifted some of those. So uh dude, I don't know your name, but thank you so much for letting us borrow some of your information. That's Werner Weiss. That's Werner Weiss. Awesome. Okay, well, Werner, thank you very much.

Kelly 25:45

Yeah, he's he's he's a great resource. Yes, he is. So they they uh start to build the Disneyland Hotel. It is not at all what it looks like right now. It is a lot of sort of long two-story, three-story buildings with some restaurants. I mean, when they when they open, they they don't open in time with the park. Right. When they do open, I mean, there's a hundred rooms or so, some of the rooms are being used as administrative buildings, they're they're scrambling. Yeah. But they get it open and um it immediately starts to turn to profit. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 26:21

With an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a black and white television in every room, which was a luxury at the time.

Kelly 26:28

It was. And one of the things that I I'm really interested in is how many of these almost futuristic things the Disneyland Hotel keeps pumping in to the experience. I mean, it goes on from the beginning all the way through to when Disney buys it. Um he's constantly do using these revolutionary technologies. It's really remarkable. And I think it's interesting because you know, we talk about Rather says he's to make money you need to buy it or build it. Most of the things in the Rather Company portfolio he bought. Not this one. No. And this one, certainly the shining star of the portfolio. It's the the one thing that continues to make money for for most of the time he's he runs it. But it's also the one that he seems to be very passionate about. It's just constantly improving and constantly trying stuff. Yeah.

Pete 27:29

Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of the innovations, uh, like like we said, not a lot of uh hotel rooms would sport a television set in every single room. That's right. Um, and also the layout of uh giving people the convenience of access to so many different things while they're guests at the hotel. Because Kelly reminded me that Disneyland was not open seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Kelly 27:57

Right. It was open quite sporadically early on, and I didn't realize this until I think it was yesterday, that it wasn't until 1988 that they completely committed to being open seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Pete 28:10

And what an interesting koinky dink. That's about the same time that the Disney Corporation acquired the hotel.

Kelly 28:17

Yeah. So and so it's it's interesting because you think so. We think about the Disneyland Hotel, and it seems like a real no-brainer, right? It's uh the hotel that goes next to one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.

Pete 28:30

As a matter of fact, most of the park industry of Disney, and and also rapidly catching up, Universal is built around not just the park itself, but also the resort built adjacent to or around the park. Right. Uh because Walt really learned his lesson after this experience of the Disneyland Hotel. Right. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Kelly 28:54

Aaron Ross Powell So it is it's interesting because you think about it as such a no-brainer, but obviously in 1955 it wasn't. The the success of Disneyland was in no way assured.

Pete 29:05

Yeah.

Kelly 29:06

It wasn't open through the whole week. You still have to fill those hotel rooms. There's nothing else in Anaheim at that point. Yeah, it's orange groves.

Pete 29:16

I mean, at this point, right still.

Kelly 29:18

Right. And and you know, they tried to come up with some things to sort of attract people, you know, there were little shops and stuff and things that were on the outside of the park that you could still kind of access. But Jack Rather had to find ways to draw people into the hotel, even when the park wasn't open. And that's tricky.

Pete 29:38

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Some of the ways uh are the obvious things, you know, fabulous swimming pool, yeah, television in every room, air-conditioned rooms. Yes. Ooh, yeah, that's a big deal. But it's also the stupid little things that we would take for granted and just say, well, big deal. I'm just gonna go down to the street. But you have to keep in mind in Anaheim, there wasn't going down the street. A lot of the streets were still kind of Borge Groves. Yeah. I mean, if you drive down Catella Avenue now, it's you know, you've got the Peter Pan Hotel and the convention center and so forth. Oh, right. Catella Avenue, which was used as one of the entrances for the Disneyland Hotel for some time. Yeah. Did you know that that's actually named after somebody? No, I didn't. It's named after two little girls, Kate and Ella. And their house literally resided on where that street begins, right at the entrance. They, while they were, you know, building up the berm and scraping out all of the land and giving it all the orange trees, there's this little farmhouse, this little charming Victorian uh house. They picked it up and they moved it. And it sat derelic for some time, and then it was finally moved closer to downtown Anaheim.

Kelly 30:49

Right.

Pete 30:50

And it was purchased by uh two Disney artists, Kevin Kidney and Jody Daly. Okay, who have restored it. And it's this uh I've been a guest in their home a couple of times. That's a different story for another time of how I met them, and it's very charming. They're wonderful, wonderful guys. Um, but they welcomed me into their home and they fully restored it to its original glory. And they told me, yeah, you know Catella Avenue? It's named after the two girls who lived here, Kate and Ella. I had no idea, I'd never heard that before. So that's that's where that's all about.

Kelly 31:34

Belowdown on the Plus Up is a Boardwalk Times podcast. At Boardwalk Times.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. Come join us at BoardwalkTimes.net. I had this thing where I was like, I'm going to make a list of all of the sort of futuristic, for the time, yeah, things that they put into the Disneyland Hotel. Um, some of this stuff seems very trite now, but at the time it was revolutionary. Yeah. You you've, as you said, black and white TV, air conditioning, big deal. Infrared heating, which is that crazy kind of heating that you put in uh bathrooms to keep things from setting on fire. Oh, wow. They used to have modern fashion shows every Thursday. Oh, wow. The lobby had a suspended fireplace. Oh. Which you don't get much more mid-century modern than that.

Pete 32:39

It's gorgeous. I mean, for those who've never seen video, it is spectacular.

Kelly 32:43

Yeah, there's some great pictures of it.

Pete 32:45

It's really cool. It's like, oh, I really want to have a cup of coffee in front of that. I really do. And I don't even drink coffee.

Kelly 32:51

Yeah. Yeah. And and you know, I I might argue that I don't know any place that was as mid-century modern and remained as mid-century modern as long as it did as the Disneyland Hotel. Yeah. Um, it just that to my mind, that's what that aesthetic is. They had their own radio station. Oh, yes. K-E-Z-Y. Right. It was in the lobby for a while. Uh the helicopter, landing pad. Um, of course, the most famous thing, the monorail.

Pete 33:24

Ah, yes, the monorail. I remember I was telling Kelly uh um it was the first time I ever saw uh Color TV. Yeah. Uh was at the Disneyland Hotel, and that was the same visit. We talked about this during our first episode uh with Great Moments of Mr. Lincoln. Um that same visit, uh when I'm shouting at Mr. Lincoln. Um in order to get into uh Disneyland, we would just walk across the fabulous little garden pathways from our room, and you've got you know the the sound of uh morning doves. I always remember I can I can smell the Disneyland Hotel with all of the the kind of petrichorp and the morning doves. And because they've they've just you know the the staff has just washed down all the walkways, but still it's like it's a fresh rain, it's a fresh day, beautiful summer day. And you just walk underneath this one little alcove area with these beautiful gingerbread details all over the building, and there's like a gift shop right there with the air conditioning kind of starting to come out, right? And you have the rumble of the air conditioning, and then there's the rumble of the monorail coming right overhead, and it's like that's where how we're getting into the park. Yeah. I I'm it's interesting that when I went, we went in on the monorail for the first time, and the first thing we did, like we saw tomorrowland. It's like, here we are in Tomorrowland. Okay, now let's get on the train. Yeah, what? And then we took the Disneyland Railroad through the Grand Canyon, through the primeval world, and straight off, and then we got off the train. Oh, wow. Rather than walking, because they want my parents wanted me to see the monorail. They wanted me because it gives you this fabulous overview of the park. Yeah. And as a kid, I've got my you know, little booger-laden nose pressed up against the plexiglass, like, wow, wow, look at that.

Kelly 35:16

Yeah.

Pete 35:16

And it's it's amazing. But to have that that convenience that close, it made you feel so special. Yeah. Like I'm a guest here and I've got a special ticket. Like this is our secret way of getting into the park. It was even though it really wasn't, you know, secret, it it felt secret. It did.

Kelly 35:35

It feels it felt very special. Yeah, it felt futuristic. Um, I you know, I I was at Disney World in January and took the monorail out of the contemporary. Uh, you know, it goes through the lobby. And I'd gone over to see the Mary Blair uh mural and the five-legged goat. Yeah. I took a picture of it. Yay! Um that mural's magnificent. I mean, it's like nine stories tall. It's crazy. But I you know, I got on the monorail and just and it snaps you right back to that feeling uh of you had as a kid at Disneyland, or I had as a kid at Disneyland, where you got on the monorail and you were in the future and you were going to Tomorrowland.

Pete 36:15

And now the it it you have to uh get on at what used to be the Ring Force Cafe right above it. Yeah. And it and hey, you know, if you dig it, you dig it. For me, it doesn't have that same powerful oomph of oh boy. Like this is something luxurious about this. Um and you have the trams too. You have the little gas-operated trams that would take you up to the front gate and welcome to Disneyland.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

And over here, you'll actually be dropped off in front of the happiest place on earth.

Kelly 36:51

You know, and you're like, Yeah, okay. That's fine. And it's you know, it's it's interesting to me how much the monorail factors into our feelings about Disneyland as a whole. Yeah. I I can't imagine the park without it. It just seems so fundamental to me.

Pete 37:09

And it's interesting, it was such a feature that at the Disneyland Hotel they actually put in a lounge. Yeah. The monorail lounge. Yes. That was actually themed all around just the monorail. That's how much it meant to that hotel. Yeah. And how much it meant to the ethos of it. Of course, my sixth sense of humor kicks in, and I kind of think, well, if it's a mon everything it needs to be single file. Everything, you know, everybody's sitting next to each other, and it's but all joking aside, you know, it really is integral to that to that hotel. And it's interesting that it's almost the bridge between the park and the hotel itself.

Kelly 37:48

And the monorail is going to factor in later in this story when we start we run into the person that's actually going to be the villain of our story today, a young man named Michael Eisner. Now, I I Now don't don't don't turn us off.

Pete 38:06

I I'm I'm not against Michael Eisner. Again, complicated because he's got some good stuff, he really does. Absolutely. And then after a while, he kind of wears out his welcome.

Kelly 38:17

No one no one had supported imagineering as strongly as he did when he came in. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But he does something a little bit brutal towards the end of this story, but we'll get there.

Pete 38:32

Um Okay, so we had all these in innovations. What were some other now the the Disneyland experience of the Disneyland Hotel or the Hotel Disneyland? The Hotel Disneyland. Do you want to explain that? Yeah, so okay, so I believe it's in the early 60s, and I'm sure some expert is going to pop in on our comment section and give me the actual year. 1962. 1962. They begin the construction of the first tower. The Sierra Tower. The Sierra Tower, which features a fabulous glass box elevator that gives you a fabulous view of the park and boasts the view of the fireworks. Right. My problem is the way that it's designed is that the way that it faces on the main road, the elevator breaks up the facade of the hotel. Right. It cuts straight into it. This awkward, you know, like three-fifths into the three-fifths.

Kelly 39:25

So it's three rooms on the left side and five rooms on the right. I was just guessing. No, but you got it. You you totally nailed it. That's awesome.

Pete 39:34

And so it says Hotel Disneyland instead, because they could be a little bit more.

Kelly 39:37

Hotel with a lowercase H2, which is really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

It's so weird.

Pete 39:41

But it's uh so when I grew up, I was like, we're gonna stay at the Hotel Disneyland. Because I always thought it would be like the Hotel Shepanis, the Hotel Disneyland. I thought it was like them being pretentious. Yeah, I thought it was being pretentious or something like that.

Kelly 39:52

No, they just they just got it wrong. And um and and they fix it later. They they build uh a thing called the Tower Annex, which is basically an extension. It's it's really another tower that they kind of link it up. But and when they do that, they're able to flip the sign around and it's okay. And you have to keep in mind that it's not just the tower. Right now, the hotel is pretty much the three towers. Yeah. Um, but it wasn't at the time. There were a lot of lower buildings sort of spread across the landscape there. It was quite a complex. It was.

Pete 40:26

Well, you look at aerial shots of the hotel, and you see you see the tower, and then you have these weird kind of the the smaller buildings, and uh they're kind of weird S-shaped little villas, you know, kind of thing. And that's one of the things I remember um is is just the layout of the place and how big the layout of the resort actually is. You think yeah, oh, it's a hotel, it's just uh big deal. No, actually, you can get blisters walking around this when you're a kid because it was actually really, really big, including the gigantic swimming pool, the lagoon that they that they installed, yeah, uh, and all the other attractions that they built to keep kids entertained, including one of the first video game arcades.

Kelly 41:09

That's right. Yeah. I love the names of that arcade. So it's it's like kind of below water level, like you have to walk down below.

Pete 41:18

Yeah, the water would splash up against the windows of this thing.

Kelly 41:21

And and I just what was it? It was the um uh the video adventure. Yep, and then it was the video arcade, and then it was the Atari Adventure.

Pete 41:32

That's the one I remember. The Atari Adventure, where I finally got to see the Tron stand-up arcade game for the first time. And of course, this is people mover time of you have entered the realm of Tron. Um different episode for the future. But uh yeah, they they really were trying to I mean that pursuit of making the Disneyland Hotel a location in itself, a resort in itself, not an integrated part of the park. And I think this is where I want to put a pause on our diving into the history here. Okay because uh I want to at least share what I have a problem with as it is now. I mean, we have already we already gave kudos to all the people that work there. You guys are marvelous. Yeah. Um but the thing that gets me is um when I leave the park, um I do reach a certain level of overwhelm.

Kelly 42:30

Yeah.

Pete 42:31

Uh even when I was a kid, I mean, I this is probably my ADHD kicking in, but uh I just reach a point where I go, I've had enough of the fireworks, I've had enough of ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I've had enough, I've had enough of the crowds, and I don't really want to see Disneyland anymore. It's like cleansing the palate. Yeah. Like when you're you're testing perfume, you you smell coffee grounds, or you you eat apricots when you're sampling wine, or whatever that is that you do to cleanse your palate, you need that. And even though they had Mickey Mouse stuff all over the park, all over the Disneyland Hotel, and even though they have their own little entertainments, it was not so saturated. Where the minute these days, when the minute you're in the hotel, it's it's Disney stuff everywhere. Bronze Mickeys and Magineering. Now, don't get me wrong, I love all the reproductions of the Imagineering art, because like, oh boy, look at that. Yeah, totally. But but it is a constant barrage of Disney. Even the music is when you wish up. And it's like, just stop for a minute, just stop. Right. And I think that's what made it such a delightful oasis where it was like, yeah, it's here, it's part of the park, but it's not all Disney all the time. And I think that's where the hotel itself has gotten lost. Now, some of the Florida hotels have carried through that. Yeah. Um, I think it's uh not the Del Coronado. Um there's a whole South American themed hotel that I stayed at when I went to Florida. I cannot think of the name of it. It's right now. Yeah. But a marvelous place, and of course, it was so marvelous I forgot the name.

Kelly 44:05

But anyway. I I stayed at the Port Orlands French Quarter when I was there. And it's it there's not much.

Pete 44:12

Yeah, there's some Mickey here. And yeah, they've got you know gift shops with all the last-minute purchasing stuff. But it's not this barrage the way that the Disneyland Hotel is now.

Kelly 44:20

Well, and and this, you know, it it leads into uh another one of the innovations that they brought in, which was the Dancing Waters. Um I think you know, my this tell me if this is your experience. My experience is that anyone that went to the Disneyland Hotel in the 70s or 80s, if you ask them about it, they will talk about two things. They will talk about the Dancing Waters and they will talk about the little remote control boats. Yes. That's that's ev everybody. And and that's what I wanted to talk about too. I love those things.

Pete 44:53

They're fantastic, they're some of my favorite memories.

Kelly 44:55

And the Dancing Waters, the music was not necessarily Disney music.

Pete 44:59

No, they used a lot of classical music. They even did uh Somewhere Over the Rainbow as part of the music.

Kelly 45:05

Yeah.

Pete 45:06

Um so okay, here's my first fastball at you. Alright, I'm ready. Okay, History Fastball from Professor Overstreet. Yep. Um when okay, when was the first exposition of hydraulic pumped waters, time to music, shown to the public and who invented it?

Kelly 45:33

I do not know. I'm going to guess it was the late 1800s.

Pete 45:38

Okay, that's actually better than I thought you would do. Okay. Okay, so that's that's actually way better than I thought you'd do. Because a lot of people, um, including our our our uh our friend over at uh Yesterland will quoted as originally being a German show from 1948. It's actually much older than that. Yeah. Okay, so uh open your papers, kids, and we're gonna travel back in time here.

Kelly 46:04

I think that the German thing specifically was that they took this specific show. Absolutely. Like these actual pieces came from this one German guy.

Pete 46:17

100%, absolutely. Yeah. Um our inventor does not come from Germany. Uh-huh. Uh, the earliest known now, there have been many fountains in the past that going back to the 18th to the 16th, earlier. Yeah. All the way back to Roman times. You know, hydraulic pumped water fountains is nothing new at this point. It's centuries, centuries, millennia old.

Kelly 46:38

Yeah.

Pete 46:39

But the timing of water to light and sound is what I'm talking about here. Yeah. The first person to do it is one of my favorite people in history. Okay. Okay. And I talk about him endlessly. And if any of my students are listening, you know exactly who I'm going to be talking about. I'm really excited. Yeah. So this fellow started off as a circus performer. Okay. Actually, he trained as a monk, and he didn't like the whole celibacy thing, so he got into engineering. Okay. In which he trained himself and he was fascinated with hydraulics. Uh-huh. He was six foot nine. Okay. He was incredibly strong. Okay, so just like us. Just like us. He was one of us tall guys, except I he was able to lift his in you know, uh, his entire entourage in the circus. He was, you know, on his shoulders. He was really, really he was known as the Padoin Samson. His name was Giovanni Baptiste Belzoni. Okay. Giovanni Belzoni is this guy makes Indiana Jones look like nothing. Because he was not a very successful circus performer. Huh. Okay. Because he wound up in Great Britain, where there were tons of strong men and women. Yeah. And and learned pigs and fireproof women, etc. Thank you, Ricky Jake. Yeah, I was like, wait a minute. Yeah. And uh so he and his wife and his co-worker uh tried something else. And what they tried was building a prototype for a new type of fountain that could be coordinated with a magic lantern. Okay. In which you could project images on the year are we talking about again water. This is Giovanni Belzoni. What what year were you? This is 1820s. Okay. This is Napoleonic era. Wow. Okay. And so he's timing it with, you know, um colored lights, you know, through colored glass and uh small siphoned uh flanges in order to make mist and small fanned bits of water. Okay. Totally hydraulic. And he would be like a big guy like him underneath these tiny little water organs, as he called it. And the water organ, which he later developed into a spook show as a phantasmagoria effect, which would later become the great great great grandfather of Disney's world of color at Disneyland of projecting images on the backs of huge spouts of water.

Kelly 49:13

Right. Ironically, the thing that shut the fantasy waters, dancing waters down.

Pete 49:17

Right. That's really wild. Yeah. So it comes full circle in a way. Right. Uh so anyway, Belzoni's life is is crazy, and we could devote a whole show to him, but I'm not gonna. But I will tell you that he moved to Egypt because one of the people who saw his water organ show was somebody who was so impressed by it. He says, you know, one of the Pashas over there wants to meet with you because he wants a fan, he wants this in his garden. So Belzoni packed his bag, sold everything he owned, took his wife and one of his uh assistants from the circus, went to Egypt, all right, built it with a contractor down there who did shoddy work. The thing exploded and killed two people. Oh no. And so he was destitute. Yeah. And he got hired by a man named Henry Salt from the British Museum to move the fabled head of Memnon, which is this giant seven-ton granite head of Ramses the Great. Wow. Away from the flooding Nile. And he's also the man who excavated Abu Simbel after like resting for three thousand years. He was the first person to set foot in modern times within the great temple of Abu Simbel on the shores of the Nile. Wow. He also discovered probably more tombs than anybody else in the Valley of the Kings. Right. He was responsible for transporting the Rosetta Stone. Like yeah, he just had a knack. He's a very controversial figure uh in in um in our time, and he is going to come up again. I I do want to devote some more time to him. Okay. I'm fascinated. But he also, in his own special way, invented the theme park. Oh, wait, do tell. Okay. You can't leave that one hanging out there. Yeah. I mean, he's not the only one, but this is the one where, like a themed attraction. Right. So there was a performance venue that was originally intended to be a music hall in Piccadilly in London. And because of the craze that had happened during, for those who are trying to put uh a time period, think of Bridgerton. This is the time in which, you know, all the dress. So when you're thinking of the what people are wearing at the time, just imagine all the actors and actresses from Bridgerton walking around with that type of, you know, Jane Austen kind of look. Right. Um, but in Piccadilly Circus, there was this place called the Egyptian theater. And it was this mastaba style facade with hieroglyphics and carvings of the gods. And when you arrived, you went into the lobby, you bought your ticket, and you would be met by somebody with a lantern.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

Follow me, Saeeb, I will show you around.

Pete 51:56

And you would, you know, walk around, wrong country, but you know I mean so look, it's it's Great Britain in the 1820s. Yeah. The colonialism and racism is rampant. I'm literally going off of what I've read. Okay, so I'm just telling you. So as they're as you leave the lobby, you would the entire interior of the place was built up as an Egyptian tomb. The tomb of Seti the First, which also Belzoni is the first archaeologist, and as far as we know, the only archaeologist to have ever actually encountered a real, honest to God booby trap. Really? He almost fell into a pit that was meant to either kill or sequester somebody like an oubliette when he was entering the tomb of Seti I. Wow. And that's where he found the fabled alabaster sarcophagus. And there's no mummy in it, it's just this beautiful solid piece of alabaster. When you put a torch in it, it lit up like a lantern. Wow. It currently resides in Scotland in a private collection. Uh, but anyway, you would go and see all these artifacts he brought back. They would have snake charmers with real cobras performing. You would have little glass cases with scorpions, and you'd have an ibis, have a monkey, a couple parrots, very exoticism at its extreme. Everybody came, including royalty, showed up at this. And at the end, you would then be led into the theater. Uh-huh. And he would do a mummy unwrapping where you really got to see a real mummy being unwrapped, and you got to meet Belzoni himself, and he would introduce himself. And so they built this whole themed attraction around we're going to transport you to an ancient tomb and you're going to meet a real mummy. So you get to know what it's like to be me. Right. And that was he only did that for like five or six years, and then he died. Uh going 1830s. Yeah, 1830s. Yeah. Literally died, I kid you not, going to Timbuktu. Uh-huh. And he died of cholera or something like that. Uh, he died of some sort of disease. But uh, very interesting fellow. And we're gonna talk more about him another time. Yeah. Here's a hint it's gonna have something to do with the haunted mansion. Um roads lead to the haunted mansion. All roads lead to the mansion at some point. But anyway, so that's that is the guy who gave us the water organ. And so if you really want to look at origin stories for Dancing Waters, yeah, even though the Dancing Waters was opened in 1970, uh, and then it became Fantasy Waters in 1970 to 1979, which is when we knew it. Right, yeah. And then it became Water Wonderland. Uh, it finally closed in 2007. Yeah. So it had a hell of a life.

Kelly 54:37

It did, yeah. And and I know when it became Fantasy Waters, I think that was when they um they started putting um like fiber optic stuff behind it. Yeah. Yeah.

Pete 54:47

They used to have characters that were just Illuminated characters, kind of like our our um, you can buy things like this at Home Depot now for your Christmas decorations. Right. It used to be super fancy. Yeah, back then it was like, hey, it's a big deal. But I remember going to that thing, and I think part of the charm for me was we've had a long day at Disneyland or we've had a long trip all the way down to get here.

Kelly 55:08

Yeah.

Pete 55:08

We'll check in the hotel, we'll get some dinner, let's walk around, get our yayas out. And then all of a sudden, hey, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the dancing waters is about to begin. And you gather around. And I I remember seeing kids walking around with blankets from the hotel room and they're all wrapped up. Yeah. And you'd have a, you know, they'd have a Coke or something like that from the vending machine, and they'd watch the show, and it was like, okay, kids, it's time to go to bed. And it was kind of this nut, it was almost like the hotel's lullaby for me. Right. There was something calming about it. Yeah. It was very sweet and very charming and and and delightful about it. And then when you woke up, you were wanting some taste of Disneyland. And so most of us would go to breakfast and we walk out, and as soon as we're done with breakfast, we're all jacked up on our French toast, shaped like Mickey Mouse, and all of our strawberries. Yeah. Even though we had our bacon and eggs like mom and dad told us to have. We would go out and then we would see the lagoon. And you'd see people running around paddle boats. They had paddle boats on the lagoon. Right. That kind of stuff. And then there was this little alcove where you would kind of walk down these stairs and they had these ships wheels, steering wheels, that you plunked in 50 cents, and you got to pilot a remote-controlled tugboat. Right.

Kelly 56:26

And and so the interesting thing about these boats is one of the uh we talked about earlier the Rather corporation owned a lot of different things. Yeah. Um one of the things that they owned was the Queen Mary. Uh that was actually one of the few things that stayed profitable for them. I did not know that. That's amazing. Things got really tough. And so that is why the little tugboat attraction was called the Queen's Berth, because those little boats circled around a reproduction of the Queen Mary.

Pete 57:01

Wow. Yeah, so I mean, let's talk about okay. We're gonna do history one more time. All right. So the remote control boats, for those who don't know, you you you basically paid for like, I think it was like three minutes worth of time. Yeah, I think that's right. And they were and you had to get used to them. So the first 50 cents is a waste of money. Right, yeah. You just blew it. Like left, right, I don't know where to go. Um, and then basically it would just turn the motor on and then you just steered this thing. Right. And you could go reverse if you bumped into something and forward.

Kelly 57:26

Yeah. Okay. Real stuff. And you learned very quickly, don't pick the boat that's surrounded by six other boats when you start.

Pete 57:34

Because you're gonna spend 50 cents just to get it out of the boat. Yeah, that's and sometimes that was the only one that worked. Right. Um, in the later years. In the later years. Okay. Who, Kelly, who invented the remote control boat? No idea. Okay. I'll give you a hint. It was not Thomas Edison. Okay. Was it Nikola Tesla? Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_01 58:00

Hey!

Pete 58:01

In 1898, at the electrical exposition in Madison, Madison Square Gardens, Nikola Tesla presented his most recent invention, the Tel Automaton. Oh, okay. So it's a device that was a radio remote controlled boat. It was roughly three feet in length with blinking antenna light, and it was propelled by a small motor and a rudder. Huh. Backwards, forwards, at a single speed, and steerable. And it was remote control 1898. That was Nikola Tesla.

Kelly 58:32

So what what was the what was the mechanism? They they have radio waves?

Pete 58:37

Yeah, so this is this is basically, yes, he was he's utilizing basically binary code in radio wave format because you've got Marconi, yeah, you know, and all those guys, and and of course, all of the you know, DeForest and all these other guys working with radio telemetry and so forth. Yeah. But it was Nikola Tesla who said, Well, what if I make this frequency yes and no? What if I turn yes and no into left or right? Yeah. And backwards and forwards. It's it's simple binary. Backwards, forwards, left, right, right. And then in the middle is stop, yeah, or straight. Um so that's that was his that was his whole premise. And it was I've seen pictures of it. It's a very crude little black meh boat. It wasn't like a replica of anything. It was just it it floated, it was black, it had this big antenna shutting out the top that received it, and the light on top blinked to show that the battery was still on. God only knows what kind of battery Nicola put in that thing. Right. Um, and I certainly wouldn't want to put my feet in the water anywhere near that thing that he was operating it. But do you have an impression of when you first used those boats? Yeah, and it's roughly around the early 80s. Uh, by all sources that I found, um it's a company called Fola Productions. Okay. Fola Productions, uh, their involvement with Disneyland Hotel began in 1984. Oh, all right. Well, there you go. Jack Rather was still alive, and his company still owned the hotel. And their first remote-controlled tugboat attraction, anywhere, the Queen's birth, featured 22 remote-controlled tugboats, islands with interactive events, and a scale model of the Rather-operated and later Disney operated Queen Mary as its centerpiece. Right. And then, roughly about the same time that uh the Indiana Jones Adventure, uh, the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, and the refurbishment of Adventureland took place, they uh re-established it as the Safari Adventure. Right. And this was after Disney had taken over those. Yes, so it's very different.

Kelly 1:00:36

Um it looked really neat.

Pete 1:00:38

I'm never I never got to do the it had a gorilla crossing of a bridge, it had a section of a temple that breathed fire. Which is cool. Which is cool. Like all the kids were always trying to ram into it to make sure that like the boat would catch on fire and stuff. I know I certainly tried that a couple times. Uh and it looked great. And I always desperately, but I I mean, even back then, I desperately wanted a remote-controlled jungle cruise boat.

Kelly 1:01:14

This month at Boardwalk Times, we're writing about the new multi-launch coaster at Shanghai Disneyland, how Paris's Walt Disney Studios park is being rebranded as Disney Adventure World, and there's new episodes of our Multiverse of Marvel, and this is the Waycast Pods. Come check it all out at BoardwalkTimes.net. You know, there's so much about the hotel that does exactly the thing that you were describing earlier, which which is it gives you the decompression time. Yes. It gives you the step away while you don't feel like you're missing out, because there's things there. Yeah. I mean, there was a zillion restaurants there, and there's there's these activities, and the marina itself is beautiful. And all all the lagoons and rockworks around the Benita Tower were beautiful. Yeah. And you had the the giant horseshoe falls that people going into the Benita Tower kind of walked along the upper lip of, and that was gorgeous. And the dancing waters, and it really felt like an attraction in itself. Yeah. And I wonder if anyone feels that way about the Disneyland Hotel now.

Pete 1:02:37

Yeah, that's uh and that kind of brings us back to the villain of story.

Kelly 1:02:43

So let's let's talk a little bit about what happened. Okay. Um actually let's reassert our hero. Yes, Bonita Granville, rather. Yes. And then assert our villain. So after Jack Rather died, you know, he'd been running the hotel for a long time. Uh it was one of the things that was consistently profitable for him. A lot of his other industries were not, and it started to fall off. The oil wildcatting was kind of over for him. The entertainment properties were sporadic at best. He'd driven a rector sets into the ground. And towards the end of his run, he had built a new convention center in the hotel. Now, this is not the Anaheim Convention Center, the city built, because that's huge.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

Yes.

Kelly 1:03:42

This was something else. But he sunk a lot of money into it, and the debt was really dragging on him as he needed to keep expanding.

unknown 1:03:52

Yeah.

Kelly 1:03:53

Now, along the way, he had had discussions with the Disney company about them buying the hotel. He was interested. But the the the initial talks that they had fell apart because the Disney stock price had taken a real tanking and they had wanted to pay partially in stock, and uh it were the stock wasn't as valuable anymore, so they had to renegotiate. That kind of fell apart. They tried to do it again a few years later, that fell apart. Then Jack Rather passes away.

Pete 1:04:23

Oh, and and just as a real quick little insert here, also what's happening around the perimeter of the park are all the Johnny come lately's, which really irked Walt of all of the other themed hotels, the Peter Pan, the Cinderella, the all of them saying, Yeah, it's a Disney hotel kinda. Yeah, and by this point, they're glutted. They're everywhere. And there's no way that Walt can afford the land to expand any further because they're surrounded by this moat of tourist hotels.

Kelly 1:04:54

Yeah, and you know what's really interesting? Uh I thought this was a really sweet touch. Um, after all those hotels came in and and basically ate up Anaheim, and Anaheim just grew exponentially. Yeah. One of the very few places you could still find orange trees was the Disneyland Hotel. You're right. Yeah. Right. They actually kept them. Which was, I thought, really sweet. It is, yeah. And so they eventually, you know, Rather died. Bonita Rather takes over. Yeah. And she basically rolls up her sleeves and says, All right, we got to get out of this mess. Um they're they're sinking in debt. A lot of their other properties are losing money. And their son took over for a while, didn't he? He worked with his mom and then I think took over after she passed away.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

I see.

Kelly 1:05:43

And so Benita starts selling off hunks of Rathercore. And so she sells off Muzac. Uh she sells they also owned um teleprompters. That company. She sells that off. Okay. She sells off Lassie and the Lone Ranger and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Wow. And eventually they get to a point where the only thing they own is the Disneyland Hotel and the Queen Mary. That's it. But their fortunes are starting to turn around. She's unloaded enough debt that she's actually able to start funding the reconstruction. They they the refreshing of the Benita Towers and new building. So she is starting to turn it around. They actually turn a profit for the first time in many years. Wow. So Benita Rather, smart cookie. Yeah. And at this point, Michael Eisner has come into the company after uh they almost got the company almost got split apart in a hostile takeover. Right. And he decides that he wants the Disneyland Hotel. Yeah. So remember how Jack Rather told Clayton Moore he could not perform as his alter ego? Like he couldn't take on the identity that he made famous with the Lone Ranger. Right. Well, Michael Eisner starts threatens to take away something that is part of the identity of the Disneyland Hotel. Michael Eisner tells the Rather Company, tells Benita Rather, that the lease on the monorail is up. Oh. And that he is going to, and some of this is intimated, some of it said very plainly, but he is going to raise the price so that it is beyond the ability for the Disneyland Hotel to pay. Oh man. And yet, Benita Rather continues to fight on. She's like, I'm not taking the steal. I'm not taking the steal. Um, they're coming up onto this point where the lease is about to run out. Yeah. And a New Zealand company steps in. And this New Zealand company buys out like 26% of the Rather stock. So they now own a hunk of it.

Pete 1:08:06

And what why am I suddenly imagining? You know, you have my sword. And my bow. And my axe. You know.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:19

Sorry, go ahead.

Kelly 1:08:20

No, it's fine. And so what Eisner does is so he's he's threatened this company that you know Walt owed so much to. Yeah. They haven't buckled. He joins up with the New Zealand company and says, between the two of us, let's buy out a controlling interest in this stock. Wow. So they do. Um the the two companies then tacitly own Rathercorp, and then Disney buys out the New Zealand company. Oh. And they they own the Disneyland Hotel and the Queen Mary. Now, I mean it's the raising of the price of the monorail is a villainous thing to do. Yeah. Whether or not it really worked out for Benita rather and her son, eh, hard to say. Right. But um it did get kind of forcibly taken away from them. Yeah.

Pete 1:09:19

That you know, it's it is uh it is the kind of aggressive entrepreneurship that Eisner was actually famous for.

Kelly 1:09:28

Yeah.

Pete 1:09:29

And it did actually help the company pull out of a very bad time for itself. Yeah. So you you can't fault him entirely. It's just when it comes to us kind of revering this place that has been built by the Rathers family. Um, for for us, for this particular story, right? It is actually kind of a destructive act. Yeah. That does, I mean, and yes, there were some things that were done to the hotel that were in those early times under Michael Eisner's reign. Yeah. The things got interesting. Uh, like the marina was re-themed to kind of a Captain Hook look. Uh that was the Neverland Pool, which opened in the summer of 99.

Kelly 1:10:14

Right.

Pete 1:10:14

Uh the head of that project was uh Timir Galen, uh the senior VP and manager of Disney Imagineering.

Kelly 1:10:21

Yeah.

Pete 1:10:21

Uh and he worked with uh Anaheim on the Convention Center expansion in 2000, actually. Oh, which was in place during the creation of Downtown Disney.

Kelly 1:10:31

Yeah.

Pete 1:10:31

Um he has since gone on to other great, great things. Um but uh Galen is very much like Eisner. Yeah. Very and like this is and it's weird, it's this dichotomy of big business thinking and yet trusting the creatives. Because this is also the time when Toontown is being built, and yeah, when uh the fantasyland revitalization is going on. And uh frankly, Eisner and and Tony, if you're listening, you know, please contradict me. But it seems like Tony Baxter's thinking kind of melded quite well with Eisner's thinking of how we can expand and how we can move forward enough where we got a lot of great innovations at the park itself, and some things that were glimmers of hope at the hotel. Yeah. And then somewhere around 2000, right around 2010, yeah, things completely changed. Yeah. And that is the year when I think they were still kind of holding on to some of the rather ethos, even though it had already kind of gone over to the Eisner, very much Disney. Like there were still little vestiges of what once was. Yeah, little things here and there, but it was just the slow deterioration of it.

Kelly 1:11:50

Right. Like the like the Neverland pool is is is sort of lovely, but it was built on the absolute destruction of the marina. Agreed. Yeah, and so and so it's like, okay, this is still nice. We have the uh the replacement for the um the Queen's Berth remote control ships with the cool jungle cruise remote control ships, which came in in that. So there's there's still elements of it. Uh at w at what point did the the uh Dancing Waters go?

Pete 1:12:23

Dancing Waters uh finally closed in 2007. So that was one of the first casualties of the old times. I mean the boats were gone uh in 2010. Yeah. As was uh Hooks Point and Wine Cellar. Yeah, that was gone. Uh this is the one thing, and this is gonna be a whole other episode. Yeah, but I will say that there is one thing only right now for me personally at the Disneyland Hotel where I go, yeah, baby, it's the Tongoroa Terrace. Okay and Peter Sam's. Yeah. Like, there you go. That boom, that that for right there really encapsulates the good old days of the Disneyland Hotel.

Kelly 1:13:04

Yeah, because you've got that you've got that Polynesian thing that both Disneyland is a park and the Disneyland Hotel just loved. Yeah. Like they dipped into it every chance they possibly could.

Pete 1:13:14

Oh, yeah, and mid mid-century abound. And um, and it's interesting that you know Walt had a love for that type of a thing. Uh uh strange note, so as of recording this, yeah, uh this is April 8th of 2024. Tomorrow's my birthday. Uh happy birthday, Pete. Thank you. Um but this last weekend, uh-huh, we mentioned him during our first episode. Bill Burns, who's a cosplayer from Morgan Hill, goes to the park dressed as Uncle Walt. Right. So he went for Dapper Day this last weekend. I saw pictures of him. And he looked great. And I guess he was staying at the Howard Johnson hotel. And and the guy at the front desk says, Wait a second, are are you going to Dapper Day? Like real nervous. Are you going to Dapper Day? Yes. Uh uh, are you the guy who dresses up as Walt Disney at the park? Yeah. We're gonna upgrade you. And they put him in the House of the Future suite.

Kelly 1:14:13

Oh, I've been in that suite. It's I haven't stayed there because I do not have that kind of money. Right. But I've been in there for an event and it's wonderful.

Pete 1:14:21

And they gave it to him. That's amazing. And there's tons of pictures of him right now floating around on social media of him as Walt working on quote, working on paperwork at the table, and it's like this look back in time. And that's on that same trip, Bill also got a tour of the firehouse. Oh, wow. And what I'd love to do is I need to find somebody who looks like Jack Rather. And just have him hanging out the. You know how many people would know? We would, yeah, I would, yeah. This would be this would be entertaining for the 12 people who are listening and us, you know. But that I mean, that's the kind of stuff that that brings you back. And that's what I love is that type of the fact that Howard Johnson's hangs on to that type of aesthetic, but the Disneyland Hotel just has to inundate you with the glittering stone floors and all the it's like even the rooms are just I mean, the suite that they gave us was nice when I stayed there. Yeah, but the whole headboard is this giant fiber optic light show over the bed. It's like, oh, I can't.

Kelly 1:15:30

It's too much. I just first off, let me say that that Howard Johnson's is lovely. Yes. Um I I uh went to an event there, uh, got to s stay not stay in, but uh go with some people and tour the suite of the future. Um and it's nice, it's really neat. I guess it's just a passion project from the guy that owns that particular hojo. Um great. Uh Heather, the the communications head for Howard Johnson's is a lovely woman. Uh hello Heather. Hello, Heather. Um I'll see you when I'm there in September. Uh but I agree with you, and and let me I want to I want to tack on to that point because it's a point that I've been wanting to make. Yeah. So I you know, I uh we were kind of going down this list of all the advanced stuff things, the futuristic stuff things. Let me let me hit the the last bits of them. The Sierra Tower itself was the nation's tallest post-tension lift slab building that was almost never done until that point. Wow. External glass elevator that went to the top of the park. You mentioned it earlier, like very, very rare. Wow. Uh at the time. It's all over the place now. A thing called the Concord Interwrite System was an internal hotel system where they could send text messages to each other. This was in the 60s. Wow. The uh the discover the scientific marvels of soundproof airwalls, missile age communications, music, television, and radio in every room. That was an ad. The uh in 1969, two cosmonauts and one astronaut stayed at the same time at the Disneyland Hotel. Uh they some of the one of the first computerized check-in systems for a hotel. Microwaves was was a rare thing that they put in in 1970. Wow. Uh color TVs in every room, as you mentioned. Yeah. Uh Muzac in every room, the arcade, the dancing waters, the first internal hotel television network. Yes. The convention center had a the first of its kind air filtration system, and a closed circuit TV studio that could broadcast to the center or to hotel rooms from the convention center. Wow. First use of satellite to relay live programming to be cable cast at the other end. The speaker of the house uh in Washington cable cast to a convention at the hotel. Uh I know, right? 1978, a thing called ODP, online distributed processing for hotels, the first use in California. Uh the Bonita Tower was the first hotel to utilize solar water heating. Right? 1978. The fiber optics in the water show. The I can't believe we haven't talked about this, the giant art multi-structure laser installation, still green by Rockney Krebs. Do you remember? Do you know about this?

Pete 1:18:32

Yes, I do remember this. Yeah.

Kelly 1:18:34

Crazy multi-lay laser thing that shot off of all the buildings and there were mirrors that reflected it.

Pete 1:18:40

That's crazy.

Kelly 1:18:41

Yeah. Uh closed circuit uh system expanded to allow the cable cast of the convention center activities to other Hanoheim hotels, all done through telephone lines? Wow. I mean, this stuff is nuts. They were at the cutting edge. They were they were doing so much. And I throw this out there as you were talking about the House of the Future suite, because do you know what the the three towers are now named? You know, they've changed them. They changed. Why do they named now? So now they are named the Sierra Tower is now called the Adventure Tower. The marina is called the Fantasy Tower, the Bonita is called the Frontier Tower. What land's missing? Tomorrow. Right. What so this is a complex that has built itself on looking to the future. Yeah. And not anymore.

Pete 1:19:45

That's bizarre. Yeah, I was just actually I looked up the uh the crazy ex you know uh the uh very expensive every fan wants to stay there, but probably can't afford it suites, the five suites, right? Adventureland, the pirates of the Caribbean, the Mickey Mouse Penthouse, the Big Thunder Suite, and the Fairy Tale suite.

Kelly 1:20:02

Yeah.

Pete 1:20:03

How come there isn't a suite of the future?

Kelly 1:20:05

How come there isn't a suite of the future? Why does the Howard Johnsons have a suite of the future? Right. And the Disneyland Hotel that was built to be modern. It was built to be forward-thinking, it was built to be the hotel of tomorrow.

Pete 1:20:22

Yeah.

Kelly 1:20:22

They're they're abandoning it.

Pete 1:20:24

That's yeah, that's a real, that's a real interesting thought. That's really so. I think speaking of tomorrow, I think, unless you have more that you'd like to bring. No, no, no. I think we've actually reached the point in our broadcast where we're gonna do what this whole show is all about. We're gonna do what we might make it special, and we're going to find a way how to plus up the Disneyland Hotel. Oh, this is tough, and I'm gonna make you do it first this time because I had to do it first last time. Oh gosh. Okay. Well, um, two things. Um the one thing that I keep latching on to, I mean, we we've talked about this ad nauseum and uh on this broadcast, uh, but I do want to actually stress that the thing that is missing that I would love to see uh have them bring back is that sense of emotional and input reset. Um more so now than ever. Um because hey, look, Disneyland Corporation, please keep the keep the souvenir stands, keep Mickey's kitchen, keep, you know, all that's fine. Goofy's kitchen, keep it all. Yeah, okay, please, that's fine. Uh however, we need we need something to just give us a chill out moment at the Disneyland Hotel. And I I'm not suggesting you bring back Dancing Waters, but I would love to see uh them actually bring back the Safari Adventure Boats because that's a perfect tie-in to Tongoroa Terrace. Yeah. Um, so that's my first. The second one is actually, oddly enough, exactly where we ended, uh-huh, which is an acknowledgement of Tomorrowland. If Howard Johnson's can do it, then we need something there that acknowledges that mid-century charm that the original hotel had, rather than just saying, forget the past, forget, you know, forget it. It's like, what do you mean forget the past? That's all you have are suites dedicated to the past. Yes. You have you know 18th century pirates, you've got Victorian colonialism and adventureland. Right. You've got fairy tale madness, and you've got Big Thunder. For goodness sakes, you can have a mid-century modern suite and make it sexy and elegant.

Kelly 1:22:40

So this is this is exactly my plus up as well. So we're we're gonna meet on this. Oh wow.

Pete 1:22:44

Um we're like Siskel and Ebert on with two thumbs up on this one.

Kelly 1:22:48

Yeah, except they they never agreed. No, they never agreed. But yeah, this I I think that it is reasonable at this point. Let me say this a different way. Um optimism is useful. Yes. And it is worthwhile to consider that the history of the Disneyland Hotel is optim is about optimism about the future. Yes, 100%. And I think we're gonna run into this as we talk about a lot of things as the podcast goes on. But putting in something that is optimistic about the future, even if it is a retro optimism. Yes. So we it leans back into that mid-century modern thing, which is hip again now.

Pete 1:23:39

Yes, it is, and 100%. And and going back to the past, Americans especially have a long history of looking to the past in order to look to the future. Yeah. Uh we we went through that with a uh obsession about the 18th century during the uh bicentennial. Yes. Uh we went through that with a love for the recent, actually more recent activities of of kind of looking wistfully at the twenties, kind of the Gatsby era. Yeah. We're kind of upset because that is now a century ago. Right. Um, and we're almost you know, reaching a point where we're about to hit the sixties again. But I don't think we're gonna be hitting the sixties as a lot of people think of the flower children and that sort of stuff. I think we're gonna actually hit a retro uh push of mid-century modern 1958 to 1962 kind of approach, uh, which is gonna be very, very fascinating.

Kelly 1:24:32

Yeah. So I I 100% agree. I think that and I'm I'm not saying that you have to to redesign the entire hotel and in like pastels and and and stuff like that, though it might be cool. And I'm not saying that you need to convert a bunch of the restaurants so they're serving ham and aspic. Like we it's not necessarily. I love ham and aspic. No, I'm just gonna but Aspic's nasty. But but I do think there's something to so you know, I I like I was saying earlier, I was in the contemporary hotel in Florida and I went to see the Mary Blair mural. Now, you don't get much more mid-century modern than Mary Blair. Yeah. And I'm looking at this thing, and it's huge, and it was moving. It's there's an optimism to it, there is a childlike simplicity to it, in spite of the fact that I know it's intensely complicated to have made. Um more of that, please.

Pete 1:25:33

I think that's something that we're gonna as we look back, as we as we continue to make these shows, and whenever we have a moment and we look back on our work, I think we're gonna run into this as a common theme between you and I with a lot of our plus-ups. I mean, we can have our big m massive fantasies, but I think you and I are certainly of an era of Disneyland fans who uh and theme park fans in general, not just Disney, but all the theme parks, yeah. That um optimism is part of the deal. Yes. Optimism is totally part of the deal. Right. And I think that is something that is uh starting to I think we're you're getting so caught up in the technology and the innovations, and don't get me wrong, they're spectacular. Of course. But if you miss out on the human element of optimism, yeah, that kind of misses out on the whole dang point of what Wall was trying to do.

Kelly 1:26:31

I 100% agree. And if we want Disneyland as an entity, as a resort, to have an identity that's recognizable and distinct from any of the other theme park resorts, that's it.

Pete 1:26:49

I agree. Yeah. Yep. Well, this has been one hell of a ride for for something that we thought was going to be innocuous and boring. I was nervous about this. I I I was sweating bullets. Yeah. Like trying to get to trying to get to our studio here to record this. I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do this one, but I actually think this was very, very fascinating. Uh quite a journey for us. And uh the next time we get together, we'll talk about something else. That's right. So until then, my name is Peter Overstreet. And I'm Kelly McGubbin. And you have been listening to the Lowdown on the Plus Up. I gotta write this time. You did.

Kelly 1:27:34

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. 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.