Sacred Elephant Bathing Pool, July 1963
In 1962, Disneyland's Jungle Cruise underwent a seven million dollar refurbishment - pretty impressive considering that the whole park had cost somewhere in the neighborhood of seventeen million dollars back in '55. One of the main additions was the sacred elephant pool. You know it, you love it!
Based on a scene like this, elephants lead pretty good lives. Eat and eat, and then go frolic in the cool waters of the Ganges (or some other Indian river). As a kid I always loved the baby elephants and was jealous of their ability to squirt water from their long noses. Near the center of the photo is one pachyderm who seems to be crawling up the bank, or sunning himself, or something. I never could figure out exactly what he was doing.
I suspect that the Jungle Cruise water is not the cleanest in the world (maybe I'm wrong), but the elephants are having so much fun that I want to dive in and join them. Especially if I get to sit beneath the waterfall.
EXTRA! EXTRA!
Chuck (you all know Chuck, right?) produced this stitched-together version of both of today's photos. I did one too, but his turned out better! My excuse is that I have Olympic fever. Anyway, many thanks to Chuck for taking the time to do this great panorama view!
9 comments:
Mmm. Shower-clean and baby fresh elephants as for as the eye can see (and that ain't too far). Good design and storytelling endures.
@ Patrick-
I was thinking more "Zestfully-Clean" myself.
I think you could get a good panoramic shot from combining those pics, since the baby elephant on the far left of the first pic is the same baby elephant on the far right of the second pic! Or not! ;-)
The Jungle Cruise elephants may be one of the most iconic images of Disneyland I can think of. I know they're one of the first things I think of.
Patrick Devlin, I’ve been around some not-so-fresh babies, maybe we need them to be “elephant fresh”.
Nanook, I’m more of an Irish Spring man, myself.
TokyoMagic!, I actually tried to make a stitched version, but GDB friend Chuck also did one, and his turned out better. Hopefully I can post it here later today.
Melissa, on more than one occasion, I’ve seen photos of the waterfall elephant as part of a collection of “playful animals” - people think it’s the real deal!
@ Major-
"Manly - yes, but I use it too-!"
I'd feel safer in the Jungle Cruise water than most of the water venues at the Rio Olympics these days.
That's a pretty darn good job of photo merging, Chuck!
Thanks, although the Photoshoppe software helps a lot. :-) This one was a challenge, though, due to the significant difference in camera placement between shots, and I had to do a bit of manual manipulation and experimentation before I could hand it over to the automatic processes to finish it off. I am pleased with the final results as well; I don't think I've ever seen a panorama of the sacred Elephant Bathing Pool before.
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