Thursday, June 08, 2006

The Living Desert


I posted this photo because it is interesting to compare it to the one at davelandblog. The angle is almost identical! It is amazing how lush and green the desert looks in daveland's image, there must have been a rainy spell. At first I thought that the coyote in daveland's photo was gone, but he just jumped to another rock. And the antelope (antelopes?) have rearranged themselves. Does anyone know if the Mine Train operated after dark? Or was it another Frontierland attraction that "closed at dusk"? The Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland is near the top of the list of extinct attractions that I miss the most, it seems likely that we'll never see anything like it again.

4 comments:

Daveland said...

Glad you got this image back up there! I'd say from your version of this photo, somebody at Disney forgot to pay the water bill. Looks more like a real desert though.

Chris Merritt said...

It was more sparse and "desert like" when it opened in 1960. They moved (and still do) things around a lot at the park... Nature's Wonderland closed at dusk, unlike the Jungle Cruise - which has always been equipped with lights for night time voyages. Neat photo!

Chris Merritt said...

Tommytsunami - are you sure Naute's Wonderland ran at night? I have documentation somewhere that led me to believe otherwise... But hey, I've been wrong before!

Major Pepperidge said...

Hey Tangaroa, I asked a friend of mine who is a knowledgeable Disneyland fan (and he worked at the park in the 60's), he says that Nature's Wonderland DID run at night. Maybe they did something similar to the Jungle Cruise, and had the train "engineer" shine a powerful spotlight towards stuff?