Rich T
Well-Known Member
The very last thing I expected was to see Wendell rise up out of the stage mangling a romantic ballad to Teddi Beara. I loved it. 
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The Miscellaneous Thought Thread
- Thread starter mickEblu
- Start date
Disneyland/DCA
Active Member
Hwat?! The Christmas Special is miles ahead the best of the jamborees. I hope they do a Christmas Special 2 sooner than 2037The very last thing I expected was to see Wendell rise up out of the stage mangling a romantic ballad to Teddi Beara. I loved it.
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Disneyland/DCA
Active Member
If your theory about the Calimagineers were true wouldn't Henry be singing with Teddi, not Wendell?
Also Shaker should have a new interspecies girlfriend to serenade.
Also also Rufus should just be snores and grunts, no words.
Also also also the shouldn't have brought back the racoon. It should be a different small North American animal, like a groundhog or something, to continue the line introduced with the skunk in vacation.
Also also also also the mounted heads should be wearing things themed to the current show.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Back in the 20th century, Disneyland was managed and operated by people who were not only showmen, but who were also very good hosts for their guests. I'm of the opinion that sense of both showmanship and hospitality is slipping away fast, if it's not already gone, amongst today's current crop of Park Operations senior management and TDA executives.
Case in point: Disneyland used to be filled with lots of benches and shady rest areas. They were always themed to the land and environment they were in, but it was always easy to find an empty bench and shady spot to sit and rest and regroup for your next adventure.
Can you even imagine TDA going to this much trouble and expense to provide themed seating and shade structures today?!?
Case in point: Disneyland used to be filled with lots of benches and shady rest areas. They were always themed to the land and environment they were in, but it was always easy to find an empty bench and shady spot to sit and rest and regroup for your next adventure.
Can you even imagine TDA going to this much trouble and expense to provide themed seating and shade structures today?!?
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Epcot81Fan
Well-Known Member
Uh, hello!Back in the 20th century, Disneyland was managed and operated by people who were not only showmen, but were very good hosts for their guests. I'm of the opinion that sense of both showmanship and hospitality is slipping away fast, if it's not already gone, amongst today's current crop of Park Operations senior management and TDA executives.
Case in point: Disneyland used to be filled with lots of benches and shady rest areas. They were always themed to the land and environment they were in, but it was always easy to find an empty bench and shady spot to sit and rest and regroup for your next adventure.
Can you even imagine TDA going to this much trouble and hassle to provide themed seating and shade structures today?!?
Have you already forgotten?!
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Here's another fun one that shows the innate showmanship and hospitality Disneyland's daily operation used to have.
This amateur photo is taken in 1965 by a tourist in a Skyway bucket over Tomorrowland. There is a planter surrounded by benches, all covered with Mod shade structures. Up in the conning tower across from the Submarine Voyage a live quartet dressed up as Navy Officers is playing for the small crowd below. The result is yet another obscure corner of the park designed and operated for the enjoyment and satisfaction of the paying guests. It produces no direct revenue, it cost some money to build and to staff daily, and yet it happened.
TDA in 2024 could never pull this off, nor would they even know why they should pull this off.
This amateur photo is taken in 1965 by a tourist in a Skyway bucket over Tomorrowland. There is a planter surrounded by benches, all covered with Mod shade structures. Up in the conning tower across from the Submarine Voyage a live quartet dressed up as Navy Officers is playing for the small crowd below. The result is yet another obscure corner of the park designed and operated for the enjoyment and satisfaction of the paying guests. It produces no direct revenue, it cost some money to build and to staff daily, and yet it happened.
TDA in 2024 could never pull this off, nor would they even know why they should pull this off.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
In Frontierland in the 1960's through the 1990's, the wooden sidewalk had benches placed in the nooks of the buildings themselves. But they also had a rugged wood trellis with vines placed along the main walkways, with benches placed under the vegetation. Here we see a Nun and her traveling companion enjoying a rest under the trellises of Frontierland.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
No kidding. People here have given me a hard time for saying that in cooler months I wear a sport coat to Disneyland, so I could go to dinner at Carthay Circle or Catal and feel comfortably dressed. But if you mention the BMI and way people dress today, that makes people mad for calling out the obvious.
I Googled up the quartet playing in the Submarine Voyage conning tower, and it turns out they were fairly well known in SoCal back in the 1960's. They were called The Yachtsmen, and they mostly played the popular folk songs of that era. Here's a recording of them at a local SoCal nightclub a year or two before they were photographed from the Skyway. They are introduced as "currently appearing at Disneyland", and that's a photo of them in the Tomorrowland conning tower in their Naval Officer getups...
Also notice, this was still when excited audiences said "Yaaay!" instead of the 21st century "Woooo!"
Phroobar
Well-Known Member
That's true. These people smoked, drank, ate red meat, and survived a world war but somehow look healthier then most people crowded into the park today. They are probably less stinky too.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Hey, I (used to) smoke (socially), I drink (after 6pm), I eat red meat (daily), and I survived Disco (barely).
And I look darn good, if you ask me.
It's not hard, it just takes an extra 5 or 10 minutes each day.Plus a good barber, a Target run once or twice a month, and a good dry cleaner's.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
This new Hospitality = Shady Benches hobby I came up with this afternoon is fun! 
Another way Disneyland used to create shady rest areas was to place benches and low walls around trees and planters. Here's a few examples that you don't find any longer...
That banyan tree planter above in New Orleans Square is still there in 2024, near Tiana's Palace, but now it has had its benches stripped off and its height raised and covered in bricks. And just so you don't even think of setting a purse or a tired child or so much as rest your elbow on that tall planter, they capped the raised planter with wrought iron fencing trim.
I think we call that "Aggressive Design".
Another way Disneyland used to create shady rest areas was to place benches and low walls around trees and planters. Here's a few examples that you don't find any longer...
That banyan tree planter above in New Orleans Square is still there in 2024, near Tiana's Palace, but now it has had its benches stripped off and its height raised and covered in bricks. And just so you don't even think of setting a purse or a tired child or so much as rest your elbow on that tall planter, they capped the raised planter with wrought iron fencing trim.
I think we call that "Aggressive Design".
Some of those scooter drivers are aggressive and/ or going way too fast. Under no circumstances should you be going 10mph on one of those in a crowded park
Epcot81Fan
Well-Known Member
And the parks were not designed to have basically VW bugs mowing through the theme park crowds.
The entitlement and hostility of these people is amazing to me.
SuddenStorm
Well-Known Member
Back in the 20th century, Disneyland was managed and operated by people who were not only showmen, but who were also very good hosts for their guests. I'm of the opinion that sense of both showmanship and hospitality is slipping away fast, if it's not already gone, amongst today's current crop of Park Operations senior management and TDA executives.
Case in point: Disneyland used to be filled with lots of benches and shady rest areas. They were always themed to the land and environment they were in, but it was always easy to find an empty bench and shady spot to sit and rest and regroup for your next adventure.
Can you even imagine TDA going to this much trouble and hassle to provide themed seating and shade structures today?!?
This is one of the other negative impacts Star Wars Land has had on the park. Project Stardust, which really just meant planter and bench and curb removal, took Disneyland one step further from being an actual park.
Of course, this is the same TDA that thought it'd be okay to make the Mickey Floral and the Storybookland floral astroturf.
It really makes you wonder how Critter Country/Magnolia Park/Mansion will look once all the walls are down. Much of what they're gutting dates back to the '60s.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Yes. There's a great example of that in front of the Haunted Mansion now.
From 1962 until 2019, it had a planter with a low brick wall that was purposely made as bench seating beneath the Magnolia trees. With a non-pointy wrought iron fence made as a backrest and friendly fence, quite unlike the Aggressively Designed wrought iron trim on the planter from the earlier post of mine...
Here's the start of that brick-bench area just to the right of The Haunted Mansion entrance. This is taken just after its opening in 1969 or 1970, which you can tell because of the purple micro-mini skirt worn by the young lady.
And here's that bench-wall in 2017, when Disneyland was routinely far busier than it was when The Haunted Mansion opened, making this seating a hot commodity.
But now, that planter and its bench-wall was torn out, and the pavement was pushed all the way to the original 1962 higher wall with wrought iron railings on it.
That this space is currently being used as a temporary, and very slapdash looking, Standby queue for App-based arrivals doesn't help things. But once the full queue is open, this area will just be a wide cement walkway against a brick wall.
No sitting! Keep moving! Walkway only! You need to use the App more! Mobile Order! Lightning Lane! Use the App!
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SuddenStorm
Well-Known Member
I was there often about when they finished removing the planter. People started just sitting on the ground there in front of brick wall. Disney soon added benches along there (though I think those were removed during covid). So there wasn't any space savings- just the removal of a beautiful piece of '60s imagineering.
Of course it doesn't help in this case that the new electronic Lightning lane system where you have to scan every ticket barcode for entry creates a choke point at the entry, causing this overflow. And that adding fastpass/lightning lane to this attraction also cut down on functional queue space.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Somewhere in TDA, there's spreadsheets and graphs in a PowerPoint presentation that says all of these changes are good.
But then when you actually go walk through the park, or God forbid, pay hundreds of dollars to allow your family to be in the park for a hot summer day day, your realize these changes are actually idiotic.
These are changes made by executives and senior managers who are not good hosts, and are not true showmen.
I think they have done a decent job of walking the line between functionality and aesthetics but there are definitely plenty of examples of them being over zealous and doing things that are unnecessary such as the all the astro turf and hacking up Magnolia Park. Even a few of the planter removals in NOS during the last round of Stardust last year(?) was a bit much. Im looking at you Lamp Post in a square brick base in the middle of a path. Some of the curb removal was necessary if they were going to keep on packing them in like sardines for Fireworks/ parades. Im just glad they didn't get rid of the curbs on Main Street. Overall, it seems like up until about 2020 they were able to walk that fine line relatively well. In the last 3 years it definitely feels like those park altering decisions are not being considered with the same level of care. The question is where does it end? Id like to think after this last round on the west side of the park that'll be it for Disneyland proper for a good while minus Tomorrowland. I think after this the West side of Disneyland proper probably won't be touched in any major way for 20-30 years. In terms of reconfiguring planters, pathways etc. At most I can see is a potential replacement of Pooh and path from CC to DL Forward. Maybe a revamp of Tiki Room.
Landscaping in general has seen better days - aside from just the astroturf. There's a planter at the DLRR station that's been nothing but a tree surrounded by dirt and wood chips for a very long time. I think that's unacceptable for Main Street. Main Street, Fantasyland and NOS are prime time planter zones. You cant just be doing dirt and wood chips.
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TP2000
Well-Known Member
I went back to Google just now to see what else I could find about The Yachtsmen, the folk group that performed in the Tomorrowland conning tower in that pic. It seems they were at Disneyland for several years from the early to mid 1960's.
I found this interesting little 5 minute YouTube video of their work, with the first half focusing on their Disneyland days. There's some neat photos of the boys performing in the park, in Tomorrowland or on a Keel Boat or Tom Sawyer Island. There's also some Disneyland ephemera they received, like a thank you letter from the park management at the end of the Summer of '62, and their legal contract to work for the summer of '63. The latter part of the video goes into the late 60's, when the got some gigs in Europe, and the boys hair got longer and their girlfriend's skirts got shorter, but the first few minutes are mostly about their 1961-66 Disneyland gigs. Fun!
Here's a screen shot from their YouTube video of the thank you letter from a Disneyland manager.
I wonder, does Disneyland still have gorgeous and classy letterhead like this? Do their current managers even know how to compose official business correspondence? Do they still write thank you notes to their contractors?
I found this interesting little 5 minute YouTube video of their work, with the first half focusing on their Disneyland days. There's some neat photos of the boys performing in the park, in Tomorrowland or on a Keel Boat or Tom Sawyer Island. There's also some Disneyland ephemera they received, like a thank you letter from the park management at the end of the Summer of '62, and their legal contract to work for the summer of '63. The latter part of the video goes into the late 60's, when the got some gigs in Europe, and the boys hair got longer and their girlfriend's skirts got shorter, but the first few minutes are mostly about their 1961-66 Disneyland gigs. Fun!
Here's a screen shot from their YouTube video of the thank you letter from a Disneyland manager.
I wonder, does Disneyland still have gorgeous and classy letterhead like this? Do their current managers even know how to compose official business correspondence? Do they still write thank you notes to their contractors?
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Okay, this just gets better, at least for fans of the hilarious Christopher Guest movies of the late 1990's and 2000's.
According to an NPR interview of Harry Shearer, The Yachtsmen at Disneyland were the inspiration for his fictional group called The Folksmen that starred in his hysterical sendup of folk music from 20 years ago, A Mighty Wind.
I still have the DVD for that movie, and me and my sister and her kids used to love watching it! Surely I can't be the only fan here of those Christopher Guest movies; Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind, etc.? Who knew there was a Disneyland connection there?!? So funny how it all works out, isn't it?
According to an NPR interview of Harry Shearer, The Yachtsmen at Disneyland were the inspiration for his fictional group called The Folksmen that starred in his hysterical sendup of folk music from 20 years ago, A Mighty Wind.
I still have the DVD for that movie, and me and my sister and her kids used to love watching it! Surely I can't be the only fan here of those Christopher Guest movies; Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind, etc.? Who knew there was a Disneyland connection there?!? So funny how it all works out, isn't it?