Burning Settler's Cabin
There's nothing like the spectacle of a good old fashioned frontier slaughter for sheer entertainment! It's definitely an example of the "hard facts" that Walt mentioned in his opening day speech. Here we see an early photo of this tableau...the settler is slumped over on his side, obviously he was trying to get away. He never had a prayer, the unlucky cuss.
Here we are six or seven years later. I always liked riding the Mark Twain at twilight (pre-Fantasmic)..the cabin really blazed as it got dark. Note the considerable growth of the trees and shrubs. I think I've read that, at one point, the fire effects were simulated in the same way they are in Pirates of the Caribbean. Does anybody know if that's true?
How's this for a almost-unnoticeable detail? The star that topped the Matterhorn during the Christmas season is just visible above the trees.
5 comments:
I have never heard they did the fire effect like the Pirates effect. I don't think it would work in the open as it requires dark and lighting on the screen. I always thought it was natural gas burning the concrete log cabin.
I agree with you Matterhorn...I'm not 100% sure where I read it. Maybe "The Nickel Tour"? After work I'll take a look.
Sorry, folks. The Ol' Log Cabin was definitely burning-with-mylar during the 70's energy crunch. The fire was entirely contained within the house, where the orange lights could be focused directly onto the fan-blown mylar.
Even then they had to add copious water-based steam/smoke to the exterior to make it look like anything untoward was happening.
Amazing! To save fuel, they use electric fans, lights, and a heating unit of some kind to create steam. Now THAT'S conservation at its best.
Yup, the fire effect was really lacking in the 70s. It looked exactly like what it was - mylar with an orange light on it. And to address Dave's point... The general take on this attempt at 'saving fuel' was that it was pretty much a response to being politically correct - because 'gas' was the issue, not 'energy' per se (but I don't believe they ever bothered making steam).
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