Cold Open And Disneyland Love

SPEAKER_07 0:16

I don't think it's what you want to do.

SPEAKER_10 1:33

I'm starting on next year. I made it. I made it in time for the summer season. Now I'm starting on the next year's plans.

SPEAKER_07 1:44

Oh, I'm sorry, then I just wanted to say give it a plug to Disneyland. I think it's the most wonderful place for kids and adults I've ever visited.

Kelly 2:05

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.

Pete 2:43

Hey Pete. Yeah.

Kelly 2:45

What are we talking about today?

Pete 2:46

Today, we're gonna travel to Disneyland. We're gonna travel to Disneyland. Yay, and we're gonna we're gonna do something that I think a lot more people are being more and more aware of, especially now that management has been changing quite rapidly over there at Disneyland. And there are a lot of attractions that are being taken out of the various parks that are a lot of fan favorites to make room for new and big expansions. And we could go on and on and on about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing and misquote Walt endlessly about how everyone does. More and more these days, it is harder and harder to find this. Yeah. But what we're gonna do in this shorty short is we're going to talk about what's left of Walt. What is actually left of Walt at Disneyland? Yeah. And before any of you siccos out there start saying, Go check the manor horn, that's where his head is. That's a myth. It doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. There's just a basketball court up there.

Kelly 3:46

Yeah. If you did try and freeze someone at that point, probably still, the liquid turns to ice, the ice forms shards, you would just be a shredded mass of flesh.

Pete 3:58

That's very It's the happiest place on earth, Kelly. Your flesh will be turned to shreds. Hooray. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it would explain a lot of like why the dark water system at Disneyland is so complicated as a water cooling element for them. Oh, yeah. See? Conspiracy. Okay, well, this is going down. Yeah, this is exactly Geothermal cryogenics. This is the exact direction.

Kelly 4:26

You've got to make that t-shirt. Geothermal cryogenics. Geothermal cryogenics. Yeah, the dark water system fueling a cryogenic chamber. I love that.

Pete 4:35

Yeah. Oh man, we have to make t-shirts, at least of the dark water system of Disneyland. Yeah. Just a map. Okay. So yeah, we're anyway, back to the reality here.

Kelly 4:46

We decided we just wanted to. And and I know there's a lot of stuff that's there that was there on opening day. I think we want to just talk a little bit about the the kind of spirit of the guy. Sure. Yeah.

Pete 4:58

What what what still feels like Walt? I mean, I'm sure he hawked a couple of loogies while they were pouring concrete on Main Street. I'm sure there is some Walt DNA somewhere there. Trapped in number. And then some enterprising other theme park guy is going to extract his DNA from the spittle and make clones of Walt Disney and put them behind electrified fences and then they get loose and attack everybody.

Kelly 5:23

Man, he's in the forest. It comes comes full circle.

Pete 5:26

Welcome to Jurassic Walt.

Kelly 5:29

You know what the true moral of Jurassic Park is. What's that? You should always pay your IT staff.

Walt In The Park Every Day

Pete 5:34

Yes, indeed. Yes. So anyway, Walt. Let's talk about Walt. Walt Disney obviously had his hand in everything during the initial phase of Disneyland.

Kelly 5:45

Yeah, he really did. He was just kind of everywhere, except for the possible exception of Tomorrowland. Yeah. Which, as we discussed in our live show, was not originally supposed to open with the park, and then at the last minute, they Walt decided that it would. So they there was a lot of s spit and glue and tape and putting stuff together there. Um, even though it looked pretty good. It was it was nice for a last-minute job. Yeah. Yeah. But outside of that, I think Walt had his hand everywhere.

Pete 6:16

For eleven years. Yes. Straight on, from the opening day to about the time he died on December 15th, 1966. He was he was omnipresent. So little little family lore. Mentioned this before in previous shows. A lot of my family resided in Anaheim. And my cousin, one of my cousins, was actually one of the first kids. When you see the Art Link Letter special, he's he's one of the first kids to run across run across the bridge into fantasy land.

SPEAKER_06 6:46

Yeah.

Pete 6:46

He was not one of the first kids to enter the park, but he was one of those kids on TV that you see running across the park. Yeah. So he was there for the dress rehearsals. Yeah. With Annette Funichello looking very, very scared of Cubby. That's a joke. I don't know if that's true or not.

Kelly 6:58

But but uh I have I have a I have Cubby's signature in a book somewhere. Do you really? Yeah, I bought this thing called the Mickey Mouse Club scrapbook. I got it used at like a half-price books or something. And I opened it up and it just signed Cubby.

Pete 7:11

And I was like, wow. That's awesome. You know whose signature I really, really want for the Mickey Mouse Club? Who? Roy.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

The Big Moose. The Big Mousketeer. Roy. Yeah, Cubby. Let's draw Donald Duck.

Kelly 7:28

So yeah, yeah. Opening day, cousin running across the drawbridge. One of the only three three times that that drawbridge has been lowered?

Pete 7:36

Yep. One, two. I think they did that during the Ten Sennial, too, didn't they?

Kelly 7:40

Did they?

Pete 7:40

With the dancing slices of cake or something like that.

Kelly 7:44

Yeah, that's really funny when you watch that.

Pete 7:45

It's actually really kind of charming but disturbing at the same time.

Kelly 7:49

Yeah. But oh no, I think I think it came down twice. Only twice. It was opening day and when new fantasy land opened.

Pete 7:57

Trevor Burrus, So the drawbridge only has gone down twice.

Kelly 8:00

Aaron Ross Powell Right. And I'm not sure that they can bring it back up again. There's some question as to whether now that they could lift it without just basically destroying the the structure around it. So they pr it probably will never go up and down again.

Pete 8:15

That's okay. That's fine. I don't think we really need that to happen anyway. Or or they're just gonna do something, they'll just have Olaf doing it. I don't know. He's doing everything else in the park now. We'll talk about that in another episode. But anyway, yeah, for but but for eleven years. And the year before it opened. And the and the year or so before that, when he bought the land and he was overseeing all the construction. Yeah, Walt was there. Like that's where you could find Walt Disney, was around his park. And I remember my cousin telling me during subsequent visits, he would see Walt hanging out with people in the park. He would spend time getting to know his audience, watching people, going, Oh, we can't have that. Rolly, we gotta change this thing, or oh, you know, we gotta mark, you gotta design this type of thing for this ride and do that. And he was so hands-on, not just in the creation of it, but in the running of it, and also of the selling of it. Yeah. And and he was an attraction in himself. They make a joke in the movie Saving Mr. Banks, where Tom Hanks plays Walt Disney and people surround him, and he just passes out business cards with his autograph already on it, so he doesn't have to waste time signing them. He's like, no, here you go, here you go. That don't worry, they're hand signed, but I've just I pre-did it, so you don't have to I don't have to waste time because everybody asked me for this.

Kelly 9:31

There's there is an entire industry uh built around figuring out which Walt Disney signatures are actually Walt Disney signatures because he was not the only one who did it. No, like he had a lot of people that could do his signature and and would. Oh yeah, I do it. Yeah I'm doing it right now.

Pete 9:50

I signed to baseball. It was weird. It was yeah, I gave it to Joe DiMaggio. He's like, was that from Walt? I said, sure, ask Marilyn. He said, what?

Kelly 10:01

Because remember. Then I signed one Arthur Miller and gave it to him and laughed.

Pete 10:08

Because remember, the seven-year itch did come out the same summer the Disneyland opened. Oh, yeah. Just saying. That scene would have been very different if Marilyn was walking down Main Street. I'm just Oh, look, here comes the trolley. Isn't it delicious? Wow. This is this is a dark episode already.

Kelly 10:29

I thought it was gonna be heartwarming.

Pete 10:31

Well, we'll get to the heartwarming part in a minute. We have to sink to our absolute lowest in order to actually make the high really big at this one, I guess. So, but Walt lived for time for stints. He would live in the park. Yeah. And he was gonna build a bigger apartment, which is above Pirates of the Caribbean. Right. Which for a time was the Disneyland Gallery. Yeah, I loved when it was there. Oh, that was wonderful.

Kelly 10:54

And now it's like a mega super suite for extra special visitors like Well, the the one thing I will say about that, I'm not crazy about what they did with it, but the one thing I will say about it is that it's not something you can pay to do. They will just literally go out into the crowd and go, Would you like to stay in the suite some some night? And you just can. But it's just a random thing. They they just pick people to do that. That's really cool. So that's really nice.

Pete 11:22

That is really cool. Yeah. That's really cool. The the need for Walt in the park is still felt today. Yeah. And a little shout out to a friend of the of the show and a friend of ours, Bill Burns, who is a cosplayer. And for those who do not know his name, Bill dresses up as Walt. He resembles him greatly. Yeah. And the first time he did it, he wears the gray suit, he wears the very distinct tie pin. Yeah. He had an Imagineer friend of his make a replica of the Imagineering badge number one. Yeah. That's gold. And he cannot wear it on the outside. He has to put it on the inside of his jacket if he's in the park. But if you take a picture with him, he'll open up the coat and he'll close it again. Yeah. It's he's got this unspoken, like, okay, from the parks because he made such a big splash when he showed up for the first time, and there was a cast member dressed as Mickey. Yeah. And Mickey like lost their minds and it got caught on video, and Mickey like almost it makes you cry, like giving Walt a hug like an old friend was there. Yeah. And it got so many millions of views. And now there's actually a fandom built around Bill making trips to Disneyland. Yeah. Which he's been backing off because he doesn't want to anger the mouse. Oh, he just loves making people happy. He shows up as Jay Jonah Jameson a lot. That's my he's no offense to Bill's Walt. Yeah. I love his J. Jonah Jameson because he'll go to conventions and he'll go up to little kids dressed as Spider-Man and go, You're a fraud! You're a menace to society, Spider-Man, and he'll just totally go after him. And like these little kids are like, Yeah, I got yelled at by Jay Jonah Jameson. He's so good. It's so good. But Bill, the thing with Bill, and why I mention him is because of his appearances at the park, he doesn't get paid by the park. No, he doesn't, you know, he is not associated with Disney in any way. Although, to be honest, he does such a good job. I wish they would give him some sort of nod. Even if they just had him do one special show at D23 where he comes out and just waves at everybody, and like everybody goes, It's Walt for that split second, because this is the Walt Disney that everybody knew as Uncle Walt, the gray suit, going to the park, showing you around on ABC. TV show, yeah. And there's so much love there. And Walt is sorely missed, especially by all of us older Disneyland guests, from the boomers to the Xers to the Millennials, who really got it. Yeah. Uh and there are some younger Disney adults out there too who do kind of sort of get it.

SPEAKER_06 13:56

Yeah.

Pete 13:57

But mostly just out of the notion, not actually with like the pop- I mean, my father saw Walt three times at the park. Wow. On three separate occasions. Yeah. One time he was in line with him on the jungle cruise. Yeah. And another time he's just walking down Main Street, another time he's outside smoking and hacking up a lung. Yeah. And I only wish I was joking. No, no. Because we all know about Walt's unfortunate nicotine habit. Yeah. But that sort of presence is necessary in a park like Disneyland because it bears his name, but because he puts so much of himself into it.

Kelly 14:30

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and you know, there's there's an interesting phenomenon with Walt. Like it is hard for me to believe that I never shared a planet with the man. Like he had passed away three years before I was born. Like everybody else, I sat in front of the TV on Sunday nights and saw him. Like over and over and over again.

Pete 14:51

For us it was reruns, but still it it was so you wanted to know him.

Main Street And Reassuring Design

Kelly 14:56

Yeah, and and and as a kid, you don't you're not aware that reruns, and you're not aware that like this guy's not there anymore. And so we all, there's like generations that have this experience of we were friends with this guy, and and and he was kind to us and he made cool things. We all just kind of believe like this guy was there and he was kind of looking out for us. And and so when we go to his park today, and and obviously there's only one park that Walt Disney set foot in, and that was the one in Anaheim. Yeah, we go to his park today, we we want to feel a little bit of that. Um I don't know younger, younger kids like like our kids, they they have no sense of this. There's no real expectation of oh, this this was tied to this one guy. Right. But so that maybe that's gonna fade over time. But for us, that's what it is about. And so as as we like look through that park and kind of see like what's got the essence of Walt? And it's so much easier to go through and say what doesn't I don't I don't mean bad, but like um there's n there's no show in the golden horseshoe. No. There's no show at all. So that that's gone.

Pete 16:16

You know, and oh and by the way, if you for those who are listening, because there is nothing there except a hot dog stand, for those who don't know that about the golden horseshoe, go back to our archive of episodes and check out the golden horseshoe episode. Nobody listens to it, and it's amazing. Yes. It's an amaz it was one of our favorite episodes and nobody's listening to it.

Kelly 16:38

It was Walt's buttons favorite thing in the park. It was the thing he did every time. He went and saw that show. But right next to that show is a good piece of Walt, which is the Mark Twain. And and and we will we will really keep diving into the Mark Twain as the years go by because we love it so yeah. The Mark Twain is maybe the thing left in the park that I most associate with Walt. I'm yeah, I'm I'm I'm just saying that on the fly as we go. Um button let's see if we disprove it as we have this conversation.

Pete 17:11

Well, it doesn't mean you be disproved it is it's gonna be different things for different people.

Kelly 17:14

Sure. I will tell you also, the Mark Twain circles the single thing in Disneyland that Walt designed on his own, which was Tom Sawyer Island. Oh nice. He he uh I I believe it was Harper Gough, maybe. Probably asked him to design it and it never was what he wanted, and finally Walt threw out the drawings and did it himself. That is the single thing in the park that that Walt designed entirely on his own. It's gotta feel like Missouri. Yeah. Well, and this is an interesting thing. So I was at the Walt Disney Family Museum uh about a month ago, just because I go there sometimes to clear my head. And like you do. Yeah. They're having a Disneyland exhibition down in the lower galley, and it's uh gallery, and it's very nice. They had a bunch of concept drawings. We've often heard about the HarperGoff concept drawings of Main Street. Sure. And and there's this push and pull, right? So the original legend was that Main Street represented Marshall, Missouri, that that Walt grew up in. But then later it became like, well, actually, it maybe represented the small towns that Harper Gough grew up in. And then, well, maybe it actually just was kind of one of the movie sets that Harper Goff was familiar with because he was a movie designer.

Pete 18:38

Well, yeah, I'm fresh off of 20,000 leagues. What do you want me to do here?

Kelly 18:42

But I saw so they had some of Goff's designs, and those drawings don't look like Main Street. They don't. They don't look like what they built. No, they look like they might have been plunked out of something Wicked This Way Comes. They look kind of weirdly spooky. Yes, they do. And they're neat. I like them a lot. Oh, yeah. But it says to me that Walt's vision really held sway there. Yes. It really is more of what he saw growing up, probably not only in Marceline, but outside of St. Louis and stuff like that.

Pete 19:16

Well, yeah. And that's and that's that brings me to the th one of the things that I associate with Walt so much with it, which is Main Street. Yeah. It it is it is a time capsule in the same way that Norman Rockwell's paintings are time capsules. They are an idealized fiction of what the good old days were. Yeah. Of the magic shop, uh The Wizard of Bras, all of the all of the all of the windows, the Disney Legend windows with all the names on in the windows, and you of all the little cul-de-sacks and alleyways, you know, where you can hear the guy taking a shower in the hotel, or you can hear the guy in the dentist chair with the the drill and the whole thing. Yeah. Those are things that most people they don't bother to look at anymore or hear. Right. But it is still there because there are people who do miss it if it goes away. Yeah. And go, hey, what happened to the dude up in the shower? Why'd you take that out? Yeah, why can't I listen in why can't I listen on the party line on the phone anymore?

Kelly 20:14

Oh, I miss that. Yeah. That was in that old general store. You could you could buy a pickle out of a barrel and and listen on the party line on the phone. Yep. And now that's a Starbucks. It's a Starbucks. Oh, now disappointing.

Pete 20:27

Yeah. And again, this is this is how the the the dangers of modernization in a park like this. Yeah. We had just done an episode about the Enchanted Forest. That's right. So if you haven't had a chance to hear that one yet, you definitely give that a listen. It's one of our shorty shorts. Yeah. And we talk in that episode about the hands-on crafting of a family-run organization and how there's so much charm to that. And I think that's why Main Street has such staying power. Yeah. It hasn't changed in layout. No, it hasn't. It hasn't really changed much in architecture. Yeah. They'll they'll refurbish, they they put those those. I love how they do the construction walls there. They just put up these huge banners that are pictures of the building. Yeah. So it doesn't interrupt the visual cue. Yeah, it's nice. It's kind of nice. I think that's really clever how they do that. Um, but at the end of Main Street in the main town square and main street, yeah. One of the things that uh I always associate with Walt is the firehouse. Yes. Now, not just because of the fact that Walt had his apartment up there famously with the cranberry glass and all that kind of stuff all over there. Yeah. But I actually associate the fire engine that's right below the main living room with Walt. Yeah. I have this kind of weird thing that I do every time I go to Disneyland. Sometimes I'm going to clear my head as a creative and as an illustrator and as a teacher. Yeah. I sometimes feel a little lost. And I'm not saying I pray to Walt like he's a god. I just kind of have like a little conversation with him of going, what am I supposed to do? Yeah. And it's kind of a zen, it's more of a zen focusing thing than prayer. And I sit on the fire engine up in the in the rider's chair and I just kind of listen for a minute.

SPEAKER_06 22:05

Yeah.

Pete 22:06

But I've had many experiences that have s that are good in my life that have actually sprung out of a visit not long after a visit to the firehouse.

SPEAKER_06 22:13

Yeah.

Pete 22:13

But because of Walt's proximity to that, like that became like the central hub.

SPEAKER_06 22:17

Yeah.

Pete 22:18

Of of where Walt was. Yeah. To the point where he would get mad at the jungle cruise because it's too l the elephants are too loud in the middle of the night, stuff like that. Like, okay, that's great. You know, live by the sword, die by the sword, Walt. You're the one who put him there. But he's right across the street from Lincoln. Right. One of his favorite things. Great moments of Mr. Disney now. But the original version was Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, another great episode that we did. Actually, our very first episode that we did, that was such a part of his childhood that that was like there's little pieces of him all over Main Street.

Kelly 22:50

Help me with the name, it's escaping me right now. The Great Imagineer, always wore the cravat, was around for a long time. John Hench. John Hench, yes. Mr. Cravat. I was like, is it the guy from Scooby-Doo? No.

Pete 23:02

No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, John Hench. John Hinch, who could never look into the camera when he was being interviewed. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. He was always a very nervous, kind of shy guy.

Kelly 23:10

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And he's he's some something of the philosopher of the early imagineers. He is. He's the guy who's really taken it and codified what they did into a philosophy. But one of the things he talks about is the architecture of reassurance. Yes. And how Disneyland is designed to consistently make you feel reassured.

Pete 23:30

Trevor Burrus, Jr. I don't know if they've maintained that so well these days, but yes, in the early days I agree to that.

Kelly 23:37

Trevor Burrus, Yeah. I'm not so sure they have either. But his main example that he usually gives is Main Street. Yes. Because Main Street has so you you when you're building architecture like that, you can't have it completely calming because you become bored, and that on its own will start to make us anxious. Sure. So it's got to have some visual interest. But the visual interest can never overwhelm you. It's gotta kind of keep calming you visually. It's gotta lead you places but gently. And Main Street just does it. I agree. Yeah. I agree.

Pete 24:13

It's a it's a nice centering thing.

Kelly 24:28

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.

Fantasyland Time Capsules That Survive

Pete 24:54

Some of the other elements of Walt, let's move on to another land here. Fantasyland. Yes. Well it's been very much redesigned. Yes. Yeah. The original Fantasyland was a lot more of almost a pop-up book. Yeah. It wasn't it wasn't like the European village uh the Tony Baxter redesigned. Yeah. It was a lot more like a storybook or a circus tent kind of arrangement. Yeah. But that was the first time I ever saw Mickey Mouse cartoons. I saw Through the Mirror over at the playhouse that was in there. Because you had you had the the movie theater on Main Street that showed all the silence, playing crazy, steamboat Willie, etc. Yeah. That's a joy. I I do that every single time. Yeah. And then I up until the redesign of Fantasyland, you could go see the color Mickey Mouse over in Fantasyland. Yeah. And they would show the Sorcerer's Apprentice and Through the Mirror and like one other one. I forget which one it was. Yeah. And it was a lot of fun. But some of the stuff, like the one the one thing that really sticks to my mind that has survived after all this time is Storybook Land. Yeah. Yeah. His love of Disneyland, that that the the miniatures, his love of miniature stuff.

Kelly 26:09

Right. And that and and Storybook Land sort of ties back into what he was trying to do before the whole project kind of grew.

SPEAKER_06 26:16

Yeah.

Kelly 26:16

Which he was trying to do miniature shows. He was he's trying to find ways that people could come see like little miniature dioramas with little moving things in them. And that's what Storybook Land ended up being. When when it first opened, there wasn't really much there. Yeah. But budgetary.

Pete 26:35

But it kept it kept growing really rapidly. Yeah. And it's still there. Again, he had a lot of say into what would go in there. Yeah. And a lot of it is reminiscent. You could see it in like videos of him playing around the Carrollwood railroad. You could see the same type of landscaping, the same type of gravel work and the same type of raised structures.

SPEAKER_06 26:53

Yeah.

Pete 26:54

Miniature berms and that kind of stuff. Yeah. But instead of on a train, you're on a boat. Oh, and it's and and there's a lot more ducks. Yeah. But it's but it's still charming. It's really, really charming. And that's I I had a magical I had a magical experience on Storybook Land one time. Yeah. In which my friend proposed to his fiancee on Storybook Land at night during the fireworks. Wow. Yeah. And they stopped the boat because they weren't necessarily supposed to be running the ride. It was a special thing that you made arrangements to do with the night manager on that ride. Yeah. And you could kind of I don't know if they do it anymore, but you used to be able to get away with doing this. So the fireworks are literally right overhead. Foom, foom, foam. And it's like, will you marry me? And it was like so sweet and so special. It was so great. She said no, right? No, they're still, yeah. They're still married, actually. Dragger between her teeth jump out of the boat. That's enough. I thought this was pirates. I was asleep for the past ten minutes. I'm asked there.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Ye be too late to look at miniature building, ATE. And there'd be plundering miniature makers at every cove.

Kelly 28:17

What's the matter with you two? You be too tall to get in these tiny boats.

Pete 28:21

Could you imagine if Storybook Land had a drop like in Pirates? It would certainly make it a lot more exciting. Like the drop should actually happen in Monstro the Whale. Oh wow. Yeah. That would be that would be great. And then that's it. That's your one little and it's only like four feet, just a little whosh. Yeah, little splash. And then you cruise along, scaring the hell out of the ducks. It's great. So anyway, but storybook land, that's that's one of the things that I see all the time.

Kelly 28:46

Yeah, and and and barely changed. It has changed very, very little and is very much what what it was intended to be. I think partially because just where it's built, there's not much they can do. So and if you want to change much about Storybook Land, you have to change the Casey Jr. train and they're not going to do that. So I love it. Like a little time capsule.

Pete 29:08

It is. Yeah. Those two rides, especially. They're so intermingled. Another thing is small world. It's small world. Yep. All the way back to the world's fair that wasn't a world's fair. Yes. And our entrance into Tomorrowland. Yeah.

Kelly 29:21

And have you heard, by the way, that Florida's getting a Walt Animatronic too? And it's going in Carousel of Progress.

Pete 29:28

Oh. Actually, it makes a lot of sense to me. That makes more sense than in the great moments with Mr. Lincoln. Despite our prediction that we made of saying they're going to put an animatronic waltz, just watch. And then they announced it. So yes, you heard it here on the low down of the plus up. We predicted it. Stick with us for your cutting edge news. We will. But anyway, but yeah, that makes more sense in Carousel of Progress.

Kelly 29:49

Yeah, I actually think it's kind of a good idea. They should actually make him smoke, though.

unknown 29:53

Yeah.

Pete 29:54

Like have and have like the two finger points, but when he when he puts his hand out, you can actually see the cigarette tucked behind it. Sorry, that's uh a little dark, yeah. You should have seen the animatronic Pete wanted us to.

Kelly 30:12

This is why I'm not the CEO at Disney. You know what they really should do is just put the Vault animatronic in place of Uncle Orville in the bathtub.

Pete 30:23

Right. That'd be great. He's reading trade, he's reading variety. He's taking he's someone's taking dictation for another letter to P. L. Travers.

Kelly 30:33

I believe, I believe, isn't Uncle Orville the only time Mel Blank ever worked for Disney? Yes.

Pete 30:39

Yeah. That's the only time. Yeah. Don't know why. I think he was just enamored with working with Warner Brothers so much.

Kelly 30:44

Aaron Powell Well, I think that uh there was something else that he did that they ended up making the character silent. Oh, I think he was supposed to be Gideon in Pinocchio. Yes. They made Gideon silent instead. They made him a Harpo character. Right. So the only thing you hear is like coughs and stuff, which is still Mel Blank. Yeah. Anyway, we digress.

Pete 31:04

We digress. Yeah. Storybook land. But yeah, the storybook land. What else? What else, Kelly?

Kelly 31:08

What are what other attractions are in the park that you're talking about or it would be easy to say things like the Jungle Cruise, but I actually think that the Jungle Cruise is is at this point more of a Mark Davis ride than it is a Walt Disney ride. I agree. It's just it's become something else. I love it.

Pirates Mansion And The Tiki Room

Pete 31:27

Yeah, but Brogie's animals aren't there anymore. It's it's far more of Mark's sensibilities. Yeah, it's it's it's and it has been changed so many times since indie. Yeah. That yeah, absolutely.

Kelly 31:38

But what I will say is we kind of head around that side of the park. Potentially the the great culmination of everything that Walt was trying to do with that park is is pirates. And yes, he did not see it open, but he got very, very close and he knew exactly what it was gonna be.

Pete 31:57

Aaron Powell As evidenced in the Ten Sennial videos of the Wonderful World of Disney showing Julie Reed and the models, and he's gonna have a pirate here, pirate, as he would say, a pirate. He's carrying loot. He's trying to get away from it. Well, he can't make it. Otherwise, the whole show would be out of place. He's got to stay there and be in peril the entire time. I'm embarrassed to say how many times I've watched that episode. It's one of my favorite episodes. I love it. It's right up there with Man in Space with Werner von Braun looking very nervous in front of the camera. That's right. Walt Disney has offered me this opportunity to talk about the rockets. Why he talks like Ludwig van Drake, I don't know. But it makes sense to me. Yeah, Ludwig.

Kelly 32:46

But yeah, like I think that uh pirates in in in a way You know, yes, I I I know that he had input into Haunted Mansion, but that changed a lot. Oh, yeah. I think Pirates was kind of like this is it. We've we've crescendoed with with the beginnings of theme parks right here.

Pete 33:04

I agree. And and there is something about the Haunted Mansion, though, that I would I do want to make a note of that very, very walt. Yeah. A lot of even Disney attractions, but universal attractions, they try to, especially for the haunted house genre, and me being kind of a self-proclaimed expert on the subject.

Kelly 33:21

I think you're more than self-proclaimed.

Pete 33:23

Well, yeah. I'm still working on that book. Is uh the exterior of the haunted mansion. Yeah. The push for the Imagineers was to make it creepy and old. But Walt put his foot down and says, I want it pristine, clean. Yeah, because he didn't want broken down, dirty buildings in his park. Right. He didn't want it. So that that's very much a Walt thing. Yeah. But when you look at later attractions, like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Forbidden Eye, Phantom Manor in Disneyland, Paris, uh, even Mystic Manor over in Shanghai, they all have a Hong Kong? Hong Kong, yeah. Hong Kong. You're right, you're right. I'm sorry. Hong Kong. They all have this kind of grungy, weathered look. Tower of terror. They all have this dilapidated look. Yet the Haunted Mansion is beautiful, it's always well maintained, but when you get inside, that's where the cobwebs are. Yeah.

Kelly 34:15

And in Florida too, it looks different, but it it's also a beautiful building. Yeah. Yeah.

Pete 34:19

And uh but it's but the one in Disneyland, especially, it's like you're you walk into this antebellum manor, it's so beautiful and clean, and that's a waltism right there. Yeah. Like that's that's totally a walt. It's true. Like looking at it from the outside, it's very much a a walt thing. Yeah. And then the big one, I I would say biggest is Walt Disney's enchanted tiki room.

Kelly 34:41

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Like in in in some ways, I I kind of said like pirates is the culmination, but it's really maybe pirates and the tiki room. Yeah. Both like they they took what they were doing about as far as they could go. And yes, you can keep adding actuators and you can keep making solenoids smaller and and stuff like that, and you can involve computers and make things look more so. But but the brunt of like animatronics, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, those two things.

Pete 35:12

Absolutely. The tiki room is is so walt.

Kelly 35:15

Yeah. And his sensibilities. Yeah, and it's and it also barely changed at all. Yeah. A little bit has been cut out, but and there's there's all these little things that say Walt, but they're disappearing more and more.

Pete 35:28

It's he's become an endangered species within his own park.

unknown 35:32

Yeah.

Kelly 35:32

That's kind of sad. You can find the petrified tree. Sure. The thing that he he bought to give as a present to Lily. Can you imagine like he's coming home like, hey honey, I got you a gift. It's a petrified tree. Like, ah, Jesus.

Pete 35:47

I could see him, I could see him making a joke like, well, I went over to the jewelers yesterday and I I found the uh the oldest rock, the oldest rock that I could find for you. And it's a it's a really big, you know, you wanted a big stone for your ring. I got you the biggest, oldest rock I could find. This big chunky thing. Yeah. But she's like, put it on the shores of America. Yeah. Every time, yeah. Look, look, Lily, there's your rock. You know, every time they go by and they mark the man. Yeah. There's Louis Armstrong. I see trees of green.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

And I see Lily's rock. It's right over there. Because Waltza, bad guy. I think to myself. Waltza really cheap guy.

Kelly 36:41

You could have you could have used the word doc. It was right there. I could have, but I know you went somewhere. I went really filthy. But there's there's stuff like that still around. There's there's bits that that really speak to like this is just a weird thing Walt wanted.

Pete 36:58

The tobacco shop Indian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotta have one. Yep. Oh, like that was his attitude. Because we did have they did have a tobacconist at Disneyland for a while. Pop guns. Yeah. The whole the whole point of having shooting galleries, another episode we've done.

SPEAKER_06 37:11

Yeah.

Pete 37:11

And but also pop guns for the kids. Davy Crockett. Yeah. Frontierland. This this is I think this episode is actually kind of an important reminder for anyone who's a listener who's a devotee of Disneyland. Yeah. And Paul, when you're listening, because I know you're listening to this one. I would love to hear you. This is my challenge for your podcast, sir. I'd love for you to do a walkthrough where you try to tell us things that you think are left over from of Walt in the park. Oh, yeah. From your perspective. Paul Berry, La Challenge. Yes, indeed. So that's not that's not a mean challenge. I would really love to hear what you would do on your show of taking us around an audio tour of what is left of Walt at the park. Yeah. So there you go.

The Railroad Listener Challenge And Farewell

Kelly 37:57

Yeah. Um so so I've got I've got kind of one more big thing. And there's other things. Oh sure. We're just kind of speaking from the heart on this one. Yeah. Um the one big thing, and then and then maybe let's just make a a sort of wish what we what we hope for the new CEO of the Walt Disney company that's about to start. Sure. But the the one big thing, of course, is the train. Yes. That's the big one. Yeah, that may that may be the most Walt thing of all. That may be the reason he built the park. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I believe two trains are still running right now that circle Disneyland. And that's that's something that he wanted all along. He had built trains prior to Disneyland. So in many ways, the the the instigation for this park came from a whole bunch of different moments in Walt's life. Yeah. But certainly one of him was going to the railway fair in Chicago with Ward Kimball. Oh, yeah. And and realizing just how much of an an iron pusher he was.

Pete 38:59

Trains are addictive. Some people really don't get it. They're like, why are people into trains? But you either get trains or you don't get it. Yeah. And that's very much that's very true. And yeah, we would not have this without Ward Kimball taking him to that.

Kelly 39:13

It leads into all the other modes of transportation. We've talked about some of these before, but like all the way from the Surrey and and the horse and the horse and carriage and the monorail. To the monorail. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And and though in in many ways, like that is that is Walt. Like Walt is is motion. Walt is things moving.

Pete 39:36

Along with my challenge to Paul, I put a request out to our listeners, no matter what platform you're listening on, whether it be Spotify, YouTube, or whatever, take a take a moment and leave a comment, please, and tell us something that you think is an element of Walt that's still in the park that you love. We'd love to hear from you about that.

Kelly 39:55

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then just before we go, I just want to say to Mr. Josh DeMaro, the new CEO of the Walt Disney Company, starting uh in the next month or so. Good luck, sir. I I appreciate it. I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate that it's you're already starting to show a real attention to the detail work of the parks. He came up through the parks. That was that was his job. Really starting to recognize what people like and what moves them. Keep doing that. That's that's what you need to do, and and it'll make us all happy.

Pete 40:31

And if you need a place to put the storyteller's uh bronze statue of Walt and Mickey from Disney's California Adventure, I have a fabulous art studio in Vallejo, California that has a big space right in the back for it.

Kelly 40:44

So and you can come by and visit anytime all ahead if you would.

Pete 40:49

Nah, it's okay. Just look at it. Don't touch it. All right. Well, that's the end of this shorty short. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Peter Overstreet. And I'm Kelly McGubbin. And you've been listening to Lowdown The Plus Up.

Kelly 41:16

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.

SPEAKER_09 42:28

We step into the future and find fantastic atomic-powered machines working for us. The world is unified and peaceful. Outer space is the new frontier. We wait for a time among the strange mechanical wonders of tomorrow and then blast off on a rocket to the moon.

SPEAKER_07 42:54

Today after tomorrow.