Frontierland, September 1966
I like today's first photo, taken aboard the Mark Twain and looking over the heads of a group of ladies at the rail as they watch the settler's cabin burn. Fire! Fire! If you look carefully you can just see the settler's partially-obscured corpse. Life on the frontier was hard, and could be dangerous - not that you'd know it from today's Frontierland. Now the cabin is neat and tidy, with long-johns hanging from the wash line and a horse tethered outside.
The Columbia might not be sailing this day, but you could still go aboard her and go "below decks" to see how a sailor lived in the 19th century.
11 comments:
I miss the burning effect and the drama, but I'm glad Mike Fink's living there, now.
I'd expect the "King of the River" would have a little nice digs. But real estate being scarce in this part of Anaheim I'll bet Mike gave the settler a proper burial and moved right in. And at least you can hear Mike tootin his own horn with the Mike Fink song.
'Hard facts', Ladies; 'Hard facts'! On the Frontier of this Land, sometimes death and destruction were daily aspects that had to be dealt with.
Please tell me the exhibit of a sailor's life included tiny animatronic weevils in the ship's biscuit!
Rich T, I guess having Mike Fink in the cabin is better than no cabin at all...
Alonzo, somehow I wouldn't imagine Mike Fink's cabin as being neat as a pin. But that's just me!
Thufer, you said it! Supposedly at some point the fire effect that you see in "Pirates of the Caribbean" was used on the cabin, I wish I could find a photo of that.
Melissa, I am reading a Patrick O'Brian/Jack Aubrey book ("The Ionian Mission"), and your comment made me think of that wonderful series!
Nice shot of The Columbia in Fowler's Harbor.
While realistic, it seems odd that Disneyland did this. If I was a child and saw, I would be pretty traumatized.
I didnt know that you could go on the Columbia when it was not "riding" passengers. Can you still do this today?
Orange Co Native
I use to see the burning cabin all the time when I was a kid back in the 1960's. No trauma. Less PC back then. Some things have been watered down at Disneyland since Walt died in 1966. The pirates in POTC chasing the women for example, the burning cabin, shooting at the hippos on JC, the corpulent pirate holding the shoe and stocking looking for the young woman who keeps peeping out from inside the barrel, selling of realistic looking musket rifles in Frontierland etc....
Sometimes things get lost with changes.
K. Martinez, it seems like the Columbia is almost ALWAYS in Fowler's Harbor!
David, I have to say that I saw that scene a lot when I was a kid, and there was no trauma. Maybe because I liked monster movies? Perhaps an impressionable child would be frightened by it, though.
Nancy, I have never gone "below decks" even when I've sailed on the Columbia, so I don't know if you still can when it is in Fowler's Harbor.
OC Native, I think that even as a kid I knew that the body of the settler wasn't a real dead guy. Still, I remember my niece guessing what was "real" and what wasn't, and sometimes she was wrong!
It appears that the Columbia obediently stays behind a single strand of rope, much like throngs of guests awaiting the Main Street Rope Drop every morning.
Post a Comment