Original Alice in Wonderland Ride

[Okee68]

1) I haven’t seen that awesome “Peter Pan’s Scary Wild Ride” montage in ages til now—What fun! How neat to see the Motorcycle Cop in action again (side note: the actual siren was much louder and didn’t play until your car had turned away onto the dock scene, creating a PERFECT illusion that he was chasing after you!)
As for the train light... I can’t be certain, but I’m going to say it’s real simply because of the shakey camera which seems to match what would happen with the bumpy railroad ties effect (but that’s not the ride’s train sound effect). Love the movie’s use of Seagull cries for the Snow White vultures!

2) The photo reminds me I left out an important detail about the tree-lined road: When you burst out of the dynamite warehouse, you immediately encountered the 2nd Whistle Cop standing ahead of you, and you swerved left onto the tree road. That’s about where that photo’s taken, though there was at least one zig zag through scared trees on either side before reaching tbe train signal gate. I’m guessing it’s just the angle the shot’s taken from makes the room look more compressed than it is/was.

3) Oh, yes, that big mirror was definitely there, and very effective! The glowing black light painted headlights of your car were clearly visible in the mirror. Great, simple scare! I think this was the zig zag Country Road sequence:

- Whistle Cop in pitch dark corner
- Right U turn onto road
- Huge Mirror with car horn
- Left U turn
-Ratty’s House (flat painting, no WDW Ratty-in-Doorway element)
- Right U Turn
- Painted Country Scenery
- Left U-Turn
- Ratty right in front of you at start of village street! Shocked expression (like Moley), he swerved aside to the left (like Moley) as if you just struck him (like Moley). Ratty was a small, flat cutout, but (super micro trivia!) his mustache was on a 2nd plane, held in place by a little wooden block, which was all unintentionally revealed as he turned sideways. I remember that because it just looked weird.
- Right turn into One-Way Alley heading toward Motorcycle Cop.

The current MTWR still uses the mirror gag in a different spot on the country road, but it’s not nearly as prominent or startling.

It's a huge pleasure to read your replies, my fellow! Very helpful outline of the countryside sequence following Toad Hall; I had actually always assumed that the mirror was in the location you specified, and I can only assume that it was there in the '55 original as well. And I must say, it's almost surreal to actually see somebody give any semblance of acknowledgement (let alone actual descriptions!) to a lot of these old gags, especially Ratty, who I don't think I had ever seen a single reference to, anywhere. I had never really taken notice to how small that prop actually was until you mentioned it, also. Neat detail about the black-light headlamp covers on the ride vehicles as well; I was always confused as to why those were put there.

I know I keep bringing up The "E" Ticket here, but one of the smaller details made light of in the Toad article is how several of the more portable gags would often be moved around prior to the 1983 update, particularly the cops. The ride description actually specifies that "depending on the era" there was a police officer blowing his whistle and raising his club in front of the 3D roadway in the attached image, where the huge mirror in the current ride is. I wonder if that could have been the same cop you remember immediately after Toad Hall, just in its original 1961 location.

 

[Homemade Imagineering]

Here is a really cool devil cutout from the original attraction before these were replaced by the fiberglass figures! This one surfaced in an auction a little while back!

 

[Okee68]

Oh yeah, here's that "attached image" that I didn't actually attach. Once again, The "E" Ticket seemed to imply that an animated cop stood in front of this set-up at one point.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

Wooster Shire

Not So Shire

Hey, that's funny!

 

[Okee68]

1) I haven’t seen that awesome “Peter Pan’s Scary Wild Ride” montage in ages til now—What fun! How neat to see the Motorcycle Cop in action again (side note: the actual siren was much louder and didn’t play until your car had turned away onto the dock scene, creating a PERFECT illusion that he was chasing after you!)
As for the train light... I can’t be certain, but I’m going to say it’s real simply because of the shakey camera which seems to match what would happen with the bumpy railroad ties effect (but that’s not the ride’s train sound effect). Love the movie’s use of Seagull cries for the Snow White vultures!

2) The photo reminds me I left out an important detail about the tree-lined road: When you burst out of the dynamite warehouse, you immediately encountered the 2nd Whistle Cop standing ahead of you, and you swerved left onto the tree road. That’s about where that photo’s taken, though there was at least one zig zag through scared trees on either side before reaching tbe train signal gate. I’m guessing it’s just the angle the shot’s taken from makes the room look more compressed than it is/was.

3) Oh, yes, that big mirror was definitely there, and very effective! The glowing black light painted headlights of your car were clearly visible in the mirror. Great, simple scare! I think this was the zig zag Country Road sequence:

- Whistle Cop in pitch dark corner
- Right U turn onto road
- Huge Mirror with car horn
- Left U turn
-Ratty’s House (flat painting, no WDW Ratty-in-Doorway element)
- Right U Turn
- Painted Country Scenery
- Left U-Turn
- Ratty right in front of you at start of village street! Shocked expression (like Moley), he swerved aside to the left (like Moley) as if you just struck him (like Moley). Ratty was a small, flat cutout, but (super micro trivia!) his mustache was on a 2nd plane, held in place by a little wooden block, which was all unintentionally revealed as he turned sideways. I remember that because it just looked weird.
- Right turn into One-Way Alley heading toward Motorcycle Cop.

The current MTWR still uses the mirror gag in a different spot on the country road, but it’s not nearly as prominent or startling.

One more question I can think of off the top of my head: When you mentioned how riders turned onto a road after swerving past the first cop and toward the mirror, was the "road" more or less the same deal as what you see at the current 1983 "mirror with jumping cop" gag? As in, was the road basically just a forced-perspective "hump" of painted dirt on the wall below the mirror itself, with maybe some trees and fences off to the sides?

 

[1HAPPYGHOSTHOST]

Lots of valuable stuff right here! Thanks a lot for replying! I had personally always wondered if there were any anthropomorphic trees in that wooded section as there were in the queue mural, and I'm kind of surprised I've never seen a single account of them before. I think it's especially interesting that they seem to have shortened the Hell scene for whatever reason, bringing it down to a length possibly even shorter than the WDW Hell scene from the way you describe it. If you don't mind, I have a few more questions as well:

1. You might have seen the Fantasyland dark ride montage from the 1962 film Forty Pounds of Trouble (which begins in this video at 4:28 - ) featuring very brief glimpses of Snow White and Mr. Toad. Can you tell me whether or not the train headlight is the actual one from the ride? I've always had trouble determining if it is, as the camera bounces up and down, and that strikes me as something that would have been incredibly difficult to pull off while actually riding through the attraction.

2. Can you tell me where exactly the attached photo was taken? The "E" Ticket cutaway illustration places a similar set-up with a cop under a "KEEP OUT" sign immediately after the warehouse, which has me believe that this view is what your car would have been darted toward upon exiting that scene. It appears as though I'm looking at four different walls or "layers" at the same time; one to the left edge of the still featuring a barely-visible gnarled tree (I've always presumed a batch of gnarled, dead trees to be on the left as soon as the warehouse was exited), the main layer featuring the cop and mounted sign, a layer featuring a wooden fence, and a layer in the very back featuring the signal box with its weird, patterned windows and yellow railroad crossing sign. I think the breakaway crossing gate is visible even beyond all that, although I could be completely wrong about everything here.

3. The "E" Ticket claims that there was a large mirror in the darkness at some undisclosed point within the attraction that would reflect the headlights of the vehicles. Do you have any recollections of this, or was this something that had been removed before you ever rode through? It appears to me that the cars' apparent headlamp functionality may have been nullified in 1961, when opaque, orange caps were placed over them. No idea if that's actually true, though.

I like how they can look down main street from the tomorrowland monorail station lol

 

[Okee68]

Here's a hackjob colorization of Mr. Toad's 1955 "Jaws of Hell" I did yesterday. I'll try to make this my last Toad post here, because this thread got derailed pretty badly.

 

[Okee68]

Something I noticed in Alice is that the track appears to begin its ascent to the second floor in the area once occupied by the Oversized Room, although I've always seen it that the ascent, at least in the original ride, began at the start of the Garden of Live Flowers, immediately after the keyhole was passed through. Furthermore, the 3D model by Don Carson features a perfectly-level Oversized Room. So was the the elevation of the track actually tampered with for the 1984 overhaul, or did the ascent always begin in the Oversized Room space? Or, has the Oversized Room space been level all along, and I'm just completely misinterpreting things?

 

[Imhaiki1996]

Does The E Ticket have any information history about the original Snow White and Dumbo attractions?

 

[Okee68]

Does The E Ticket have any information history about the original Snow White and Dumbo attractions?

Issue 13 goes over the original Snow White ride, although I don't think it's available online. All of the interior photographs from the issue can be found here, however: http://www.kennetti.fi/swscary_2.html

 

[Okee68]

Here's something vaguely interesting that I noticed recently: At the very beginning of the 1971 audio recording, you can prematurely make out Alice's narration for the Upside-Down Room before her narration for the rabbit hole is triggered. What I discovered several days ago is that the same unintended effect is actually continued in the current ride, where before entering the rabbit hole you can clearly make out Alice yelling, "Mister Rabbit! Wait! Please!" from beyond the talking doorknob. The speaker unit for this voice clip is probably right around the spot once occupied by the speaker unit in the original ride which would have provided the Upside-Down Room narration, so it makes for a weird little technical parallel between both main versions of the attraction.

 

[BasiltheBatLord]

Here's something vaguely interesting that I noticed recently: At the very beginning of the 1971 audio recording, you can prematurely make out Alice's narration for the Upside-Down Room before her narration for the rabbit hole is triggered. What I discovered several days ago is that the same unintended effect is actually continued in the current ride, where before entering the rabbit hole you can clearly make out Alice yelling, "Mister Rabbit! Wait! Please!" from beyond the talking doorknob. The speaker unit for this voice clip is probably right around the spot once occupied by the speaker unit in the original ride which would have provided the Upside-Down Room narration, so it makes for a weird little technical parallel between both main versions of the attraction.

I read somewhere that you can also apparently hear audio from Toad through the wall in the Alice show building if you listen hard at the right places. Not sure how accurate that is.

 

[NateD1226]

I read somewhere that you can also apparently hear audio from Toad through the wall in the Alice show building if you listen hard at the right places. Not sure how accurate that is.

It’s true, but you can only hear it when the ride is broken down.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

I think it's unbelievable they run a water fountain in there. How have they not turned that off? It's so dark in there I never even noticed running water for years due to my night blindness.

 

[BasiltheBatLord]

I think it's unbelievable they run a water fountain in there. How have they not turned that off? It's so dark in there I never even noticed running water for years due to my night blindness.

It's pretty off and on. Toad is the only Fantasyland dark ride with running water in it, fun trivia to trip people up on.

 

[Homemade Imagineering]

I read somewhere that you can also apparently hear audio from Toad through the wall in the Alice show building if you listen hard at the right places. Not sure how accurate that is.

It's the same deal with Pinocchio and Snow White, since they also share the same show building on the other side of Alice, Toad and Pan. You can actually hear the carnival soundtrack from pleasure island if you break down near the Evil Queen's cauldron covered in spider webs.

 

[Okee68]

Here's a video of a Mr. Toad breakdown where you can hear a very muffled "All in the Golden Afternoon" from the harbor scene, as Alice's flower garden is directly adjacent to the far end of the Toad building:

 

[mickEblu]

Here's a video of a Mr. Toad breakdown where you can hear a very muffled "All in the Golden Afternoon" from the harbor scene, as Alice's flower garden is directly adjacent to the far end of the Toad building:

I love Disneyland for stuff like this. Not that this Alice/ Toad example necessary applies but I Love how layered it is and how it feels lived in. So much charm came out of necessity and limited space.

 

[Okee68]

It’s true, but you can only hear it when the ride is broken down.

Your comment about the Alice audio only being audible when Toad is broken down spurred me to find out whether or not there's a single Mr. Toad POV in which you can actually hear the Cheshire Cat from the town square scene, and lo and behold, in the first POV I checked you can hear him very faintly at 1:57 - Furthermore, my brain is so polluted and scarred with Mr. Toad ride-throughs that I actually recognize those same muffled frequencies from the town square scene in other POVs of the attraction as well, meaning that there are apparently plenty of other Toad uploads in which you can barely make out the voice of the Cheshire Cat coming from the second floor of the show building. For years I've wondered what exactly that sound was, and I guess I finally have an answer.

 

[Okee68]

Seeing as there haven't been any posts in this thread in over a month, I thought I would bring something up about Alice which has had me confused ever since I discovered the live audio recording back in August. In the Mad Tea Party scene, there was a continuous loop of the Unbirthday Song ripped straight from the film, which consisted of both the instrumental section and the vocal section, the latter of which comes in near the end of the scene in the live recording. So, does this imply that it was entirely possible for the March Hare and Mad Hatter to repeatedly yell "Move down!" at the same time they're singing the Unbirthday Song? I can't really see why this wouldn't have been the case unless the two halves of the song were somehow separate reels which were sensor-activated instead continuously looping (so that the scene would have sounded exactly as it does in the recording for every single rider), which would barely make any sense.

Also, this is totally unrelated, but what's the deal with those weird little shaky shrieks from the Dormouse heard in the recording? There's one before his, "Move down, move down," line and another one before he says, "Very very rude indeed." It's possible that they're just part of the music given how muffled everything is, but to me they sound exactly like his voice.