Soylent Green Time! August 1969
"Say honey, whaddaya say we go over and check out the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' ride that all the kids are talking about?". Holy Toledo! Just look at that crowd! Maybe it's just the line for the bathroom.
This is pretty incredible, it really shows just what a phenomenon "Pirates" was for the first few years. I'm not sure I'd want to get in that queue! If there was a sign at the end that said, "Wait from this point: XX minutes", how many minutes do you think it would say?
Things calm down considerably if we pan a bit to the right, towards Aunt Jemima's Kitchen Let's eat there! 
17 comments:
That railing along the Rivers of America still didn't go all the way around yet in 1969? Does anyone know when they changed it so the entire river bank had the wall and railing around it?
Casa de Fritos that's a long line!
I'm with the Maj, we're a-settin' this one out at Aunt Jemima's!
My guess on the length of line... the last person pictured here made the door in time to see the Jack Sparrow additions.
Opening day + 2 or 3 days I stood in line for 4 1/2 hours at Star Tours; but that looks crazy. Nice shoots.
I'm meeting the rest of you at Aunt Jemima's; seems like the place to be about now.
Pirates is a pretty high capacity attraction, and there can't be more than a few hundred people in that shot. Allowing for Guests I can't see, I'll say 45 minutes!
I was there in '69. I can't remember how long it took to get on the ride. But I know that it was good long time. Great pics Major.
August 16, 1969 set a record for park attendance that stood for years and years. That was the Saturday at the end of the Haunted Mansion's opening week. I've seen other pictures. NOS was wall-to-wall people. Maybe this was taken on that very day? After all, lots of people means lots of cameras and lots of pictures, so there's a statistical likelihood at work.
There were many days where the Pirates line stacked up to the point of making things nearly impassable. But the wait as I recall could run over an hour if it went back further than the JC. We'd try to hit 2400 per hour but realistically, around 2250 was pretty darn good. It would be a game, front load vs. rear load. Counts were taken hourly per the turnstile (SOP). Our theme song "Cramalot"! Miss those days of the early mid 70s.
I do remember standing in line for quite a while but what I remember even MORE...eating breadfast at Aunt Jemima's every time we went to the Park.
"Allowing for Guests I can't see..."
Alas, that's most of them. The original line configuration for Pirates had a huge, hidden cul-de-sac that ran down a blind alley between the Pirates facade and the Robinson Rockwork.
The blind alley is gone now, but I remember in the early 70's waiting in one of those monstrous lines. Just as you think you were going to get in the door, the line took a sudden turn, and you realized that there was hundreds of extra feet tucked away out of sight.
And imagine the look of shock of the guests when we'd open the doors to that alley! If I was lucky I'd run crowd control while my wife-to-be was in the Mint Julip stand along side the entrance of Pirates. I'd sneak a few of those for free to cool me off.
@KG & Anonymous: Boy, do I remember that cul-de-sac. Once we were almost "there" when we saw that queue stretching out of sight. What a ride, tho, we never missed the Pirates!
JG
HaHA, my word verification for this post is "grieve". Which i sometimes do when reading the blog, but its a good kind of grieve. Thank you Major for helping me relive my childhood. I had forgotten how important Disneyland was to me until seeing your work.
That's quite a crowd for 1969! Too bad the photographer didn't snap one in the direction of the Haunted Mansion. Bet you'd see the reason why!
Boy, a lot of great comments today. Thanks everyone! I should have mentioned that this same lot does include two photos (dark and murky) of the exterior of the Haunted Mansion, and it clearly was not open yet. So while the date stamp on these slides was "August 1969", they must have been taken just a bit before that.
In spite of their so-so quality, I will post the Mansion pictures; in one of them you can see some pieces of fencing on the ground and a few buckets, as if they were just finishing up for the opening.
What a mad house - looks just like it did at Christmas this year! A crowd like this makes me break out in a cold sweat...
In spite of their so-so quality, I will post the Mansion pictures
Do.
You have a request Maj! :)
This was the month and year my family went (August 4), but I didn't spot us in the picture. My eyeballs ache now. I know we rode on POTC but I don't remember the line being all that long.
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