Alice in Wonderland, 1965
It's "vintage photo print" time here on GDB! These are in color, as you can see. Our photographer was very enamored of the Alice in Wonderland attraction, taking seven pictures of his family while they were aboard their snooty caterpillar vehicle. But I'm only giving you three today, because I am a mean person.
First up is this shot, mom and her three kids have just boarded the ride (helped by Alice herself!). I love the color and design that we see here - my favorite hue for the caterpillars is turquoise, but I like them all. We see one cast member ducking into the little mushroom for important reasons (?).
They've moved three feet, time to snap another picture! I'm interested in the bits of track, the main track (which appears to have been rerouted at some point) and the little spur to the left where they could (presumably) add that rose pink caterpillar if necessary. What do you think the purpose of those little bits of "partial track" to the left of the main track were for? Notice the attraction poster atop the mushroom.
Mouse ears and a souvenir cavalry hat (I think) help to keep out Russian radio waves that control our thoughts. The youngest child is on her own. Enjoy the ride, kids!
27 comments:
Didn't that extra little piece of track swing around, so that the spare cars could be taken off of the spur track and put onto the main line? I forgot about those two little "bumps" in the path, leading to the rabbit hole. What was the purpose of those bumps? Only the right rear wheel would have gone over them. There must have been a reason. Mike Cozart???
I think those sisters are wearing matching dresses, even though they obviously aren't twins.
They should have forced the male cast members working the ride, to at least wear the Alice wig.
Major, I think the markings on the ground, which make it look as though the track had been rerouted, are actually just marks from the tires on the vehicles.
Major-
You've answered your own rhetorical question regarding that 'spur track. LOOKIE HERE where you can see a bevy of caterpillars just rarin' to join the rest of the troop. (Thank you Daveland).
I'm a little concerned about the size of Mom's hairdo. I'm afraid all that 'mass' could slow down the caterpillar to a real crawl-!
Thanks, Major.
TM! I highly doubt that ‘Mike Cozart’ was the reason they added those two little bumps.
These are fun photos of a classic attraction I love. Thanks, Major.
Sue, ha, ha! I actually thought I might get that response, when I typed that. But I expected it from Chuck! You beat Chuck! And now let's see the response to that comment! :-)
TM! Chuck’s apparently sleeping in, today.
Nanook, I like your caterpillar crawl comment. :o)
Sue, I expected you to say something like, "I do, but Chuck likes it."
I do, but Chuck likes it.
TM! Shouldn’t we let Chuck speak for himself? Though goodness only knows when he’s going to get up and join us.
Sue, I suppose you are right. We should let Chuck tell us whether or not he likes it when you "beat him" and whether or not Mike Cozart is responsible for the bumps in the pathway of the vehicles!
TM! I doubt Chuck will know if Mike Cozart is responsible for the bumps in the pathway.
First one: There's a guy with a movie camera above the snooty pink caterpillar. What would be in his shot, besides his family, that is? The tuna boat?
Alice is wearing a sweater; it must be a little cool today.
The little kids in the snooty yellow caterpillar were saying "Faster! Faster!", so the CM poking his head into the mushroom is adjusting the speed of the ride from 'normal' to 'light speed'. The kids were back where they started from before they even knew they left!
Second one: Movie camera guy is still there but the CM is no longer in the mushroom, yet the kids are still in their snooty caterpillar after going through the ride at light speed. What gives?! I bet it's one of those spacetime things where everything went back in time because of the incredibly fast speed and relative positions of (somethingsomethingsomething). Having gone back in time, one of the kids got distracted by a butterfly fluttering by and, this time, did not say "Faster! Faster!", so the CM did not set the ride to 'light speed' and everything proceeded as normal.
The End.
Oh, I just noticed the cavalry hat on the kid in the snooty yellow caterpillar. (Edit: Major mentions it in the next pic.) I also just noticed the ride operator on the right edge of the pic. It would be HIM that would adjust the speed of the ride! So forget everything I said earlier.
There's also a Tour Guide keeping her flock in submission with her riding crop.
Third one: This one is almost Postcard worthy. Showing kids having fun in the Happiest Place
On Earth.
Nanook, hmmm, maybe the friction from Mom's big hair kept the caterpillar from going all the way to 'light speed' and (somethingsomethingsomething).
Reading the above banter between Sue and TM, I see I'm not the only one drinking 'silly juice' tonight.
Thanks for more Alice, Major.
- Japanese iris Bouquet
Looks like TM!, Sue, and JB saved me a lot of typing this morning. I may actually get to work on time.
I think those bump strips are there to suggest the White Rabbit hopping towards the rabbit hole. Interesting that that detail is not included in the virtual recreation of the 1958 version of Alice, although I can see how it could easily be missed since its demise predates the proliferation of the home video camcorder.
Movie Camera Guy is probably shooting ride vehicles as they come out of the final turn off of the twisty leaves in front of the attraction. Either that or he is obsessed with the back wall of Mr. Toad. I know I am.
Major, if there are four withheld pictures of this ride to go, can you at least save us the suspense: any interior shots?
Chuck, that virtual recreation on YouTube is remarkable; like revisiting a nightmare with pleasure. And if you are obsessed with the back wall of Toad, I am with wondering just how they managed to shoehorn some of Alice into the Toad building.
The little speed bumps were at the end of the ride , to release the safety bars, so here at the beginning they probably set them in place, not far from dispatch.
Stefano is right, the bumps engage an idler wheel that moves the safety bars down at the beginning and up at the end. The arc shaped piece of track is a siding that swings to its left to allow stored vehicles onto the main track. The odd looking bits to our left in the photo are probably the manual switches for the siding, just like full-size trains. And the mysterious black marks are tire tracks.
Part of the Alice ride is on the second floor above Mr. Toad, more of that 3D imagineering thinking we all admire.
I see the cute ticket booth that starred in a recent post, which seems odd since I thought the mushroom was a ticket booth? What is the Mush Room anyway?
Grumpy blonde lady in the queue is probably worried that the blinding speed of the vehicles will disarrange her meticulous hairdo.
I prefer an orange or pink caterpillar but any color will do in a pinch.
Note that Alice is in character dress, but the male CM is in the IBM uniform.
Thanks Major!
JG
Forgot to point out, in photo 3 you can just make the ribbed deformity shapes of the concrete reinforcing bars used to form the giant leaves and their veins. The distinctive ribbing serves to develop the bond of the steel to the concrete paste so the reinforcement does not slip or spin under load.
I remember noticing this as a kid, a bit of reality intruding into the fantasy imagery. This use of a readily available material seemed to me like a kindly uncle carving a kids toy out of lumber scraps. See what you can do with a little imagination?
Modern reworks of the ride now use smooth tubing, and a bit of the old charm is gone. Everything is now so bespoke, still fun, but different.
And the bump/idler combo was reworked in a slightly different configuration in the PeopleMover cars to raise and lower the vehicle roof on the load platform.
JG
TokyoMagic!, it does look like that piece of track moves, I’d love to see how it works. The kind of little details that we rarely glimpse! I honestly can’t think of a purpose for those “bumps”, unless they somehow aid in getting a caterpillar vehicle from the spur track onto the main track. Funny, I must have “twin blindness”, I almost never notice when people are wearing the same outfits! Male CMs in Alice wigs sounds FAR OUT.
TokyoMagic!, yeah, I think you’re right.
Nanook, look at all those caterpillars! I’ve never seen one at auction, though somebody must own one. I think in 1965 my mom had “big hair” too, that must have just been the style.
Lou and Sue, let’s blame Mike for everything!
TokyoMagic! and Lou and Sue, I never know how to comment on readers’ comments to each other. It’s like I’m eavesdropping! Waiting until nearly 10:00 AM (my time), I see that Chuck has chimed in for himself. Sue, since you were commenting at nearly midnight, you can’t blame Chuck for “sleeping in”! Not everybody is a night owl like you are! :-)
JB, I believe that the man with the movie camera would have been facing away from the tuna boat, possibly looking toward the Carrousel, or maybe Merlin’s Magic Shop. I wonder how fast those vehicles could go? Was there a speed control? Or were they only able to crawl along at 3 mph (or whatever)? Looking at the man heading into the mushroom, it does look like photo #1 should go after photo #2, but the position of the caterpillars seems to contradict that. Who knows. As for the space-time continuum, I always get very confused regarding time travel. See the discussion in “Avengers: Endgame”! Time travel is fun in movies, but it sometimes feels like a cheat, too.
Chuck, that’s an interesting idea… I like the concept of a ride vehicle “hopping”! I’ve watched that virtual recreation of the original Alice ride, I wish somebody would make virtual recreations of all of those old dark rides! Somebody was once working on “Mr. Toad” (the WDW version, I believe), but I think real life took over and he didn’t have time to complete the project. You might be right about Movie Camera Guy, in fact that makes a lot of sense.
Stefano, sadly, there are no interior shots. Believe me, I wish there were! It appears that Dad (presumably) just stood in the queue and shot frame after frame as his family passed in their caterpillar vehicle. Why didn’t he go on the ride?? Wow, those little bumps release the safety bars, thanks for solving that mystery!
JG, having the track itself release the safety bars is pretty ingenious. I wonder who thought of that? Somebody at Arrow Development? I figured that all of those odd bits (and they really are pretty odd) must have something to do with moving the track. I’d love to see the process in action. The 2-story aspect of the Alice ride is another ingenious concept, I’m surprised that it didn’t seem to catch on with other dark rides, unless it was for something extra fancy like the Haunted Mansion. The mushroom did start out as a ticket booth, but I don’t really know what purpose it served after that. It’s too small to be a break room. I love all of the caterpillars, but for some reason the turquoise color just speaks to me.
JG, I couldn’t remember if those giant leaves were translucent or not. Maybe they are today, and in the old days they were just made of concrete? Or maybe it was the large green leaves that towered above everything, I think I recall photos of them with the light shining through. You paid a lot more attention to details (like those leaves) then I ever did. I must have been a particularly dense child.
@ JG-
"Part of the Alice ride is on the second floor above Mr. Toad, more of that 3D imagineering thinking we all admire". I could be wrong [it'll be the first time-!], but the 'Alice' show building is separate from 'Toad' or 'Peter Pan'. Mike can certainly tell us.
Major-
"The 2-story aspect of the Alice ride is another ingenious concept, I’m surprised that it didn’t seem to catch on with other dark rides" It means [most-likely] an electric motor with enough power to not only haul-around a full vehicle, but also capable of enough torque to re-start a fully-loaded vehicle when stopped mid-ride on its maximum incline. The Alice caterpillars had a 1-HP motor, with 38 to 1 gearing, producing a mere four feet per second speed - slower than the other three [original] Fantasyland dark rides. Or as Bob Gurr put it to "The 'E' Ticket": "The minimum performance in any ride is a cold start on an incline if the ride shuts down and has to restart"
Major-
"Or were they only able to crawl along at 3 mph (or whatever)?" WOW, you're pretty close. It's 2.7 MPH. Are you some sort of engineering genius-? Golly...
Major, your memory of the leaves being translucent coincides with my memory also. At least some of them had fiberglass infill as the "leaf" part (not the ribs), which was sort of translucent.
I don't know if I was unusually observant, but I recognized the patterns and textures of those materials since we had similar fiberglass and rebar items around the ranch. Don't sell yourself short, everyone has gifts, I can't do photoshop and I've tried.
I'm inclined to credit Bob Gurr with the "self-adjusting thing" concept since I'm pretty sure he designed the People Mover, but I don't know if he had anything to do with Alice.
That VR version took me back -- I remember the White Rabbit blowing a horn and the dandelion popping up in the garden.
As a kid I wondered why the outside of the Alice ride was so different from Mr. Toad, Snow White and Peter Pan, with their matched facades. The latter three, I eventually learned, took their basic form from the existing Ghost Train carnival rides, where you had what amounted to a storefront loading area. The innovation was on the inside, where the show was fantasy and comedy instead of just scares.
Alice mixed it up with all that themed outdoor track, which played like a second ride.
New Fantasyland largely did away with the Ghost Train feel. Most successfully with Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, where everything is placed inside Toad Hall. And you get to see cars crashing through the fireplace before you board yourself.
Footnote: The Fantasyland Theatre's facade matched the three original dark rides. When it became Pinocchio's Daring Journey, it had an elaborate themed facade to match the upgraded classics.
@ Anon-
Bob Gurr did very-much have a hand with 'Alice'. He could easily be behind the "self-adjusting thing".
As for those 'translucent leaves' LOOK HERE. (Thank you Daveland, again).
Ok?? What am I being blamed for?? Well it’s probably justified....
That is called a “kick switch” allowing the spur of back up Catapillers access to the main line but is unpowered. The two bumps to my understanding lock the safety bar in the down positions. A similar set of bumps on the opposite side at the end would release the lock automatically. A similar mechanical arrangement did the same thing for the PeopleMover cars . All can be manually released from the outside away from guests by a castmember.
It is interesting that you can see the Caterpillar contact rail once had a different alignment . I remember hearing a story at one time that the Alice Caterpillars had problems with disconnecting from the electric because of a turn or a elevation change or something to that effect . Maybe that is why the track was re-routed.
Nanook, thank you for that very interesting information! I guess that the power of the electric motor makes sense in determining how a vehicle can move, but couldn’t they just get more powerful motors if necessary? Also so interesting to know that Bob Gurr and the other Imagineers considered the necessity of starting the ride “cold” in case of a breakdown.
Nanook, I can also tell how much change is in a person’s pocket just from their footprints!
Anon (KS?), I thought that it was possible that the translucent leaves might have come a bit later, but I have no idea of course. Maybe I need to revisit my issue of “The E-Ticket” magazine, all about the Alice ride. Thanks for the compliment, even now I continue to learn more and more about Photoshop. I’m happy to credit Bob Gurr with the idea of the self-adjusting *whatever*, he’s a pretty smart guy.
DBenson, I have read comments on various message boards from people who think that the Alice ride should be removed, which is so nuts I can’t even comprehend it. I think it’s brilliant, and if it ever went away, it would be a real tragedy. It’s hard to be too confident, since The Magic Kingdom has lost a couple of their original dark rides (which I ALSO think is a tragedy). I agree that the mixing of “indoor” and “outdoor” is amazing, and of course you also got the extra treat of the elevated view of that corner of Fantasyland as you wound your way down the leafy track. I have lots of photos of the old Fantasyland Theater, and you’re right, it matched the “medieval fair” theme of the other buildings.
Nanook, I hope I don’t have to pay a royalty to Daveland!
Mike Cozart, thank you for the information, it’s all the kind of minutiae that we all love. The other commenters who posited that those two bumps were there for the safety bar seem to have been correct! And I think it was JG who suggested that a similar mechanism was used on the Peoplemover. We have a smart bunch here! I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you say that the contact rail once had a different alignment. It seems to be a simple, single rail… how was it changed?
Major-
...but couldn’t they just get more powerful motors if necessary?" Yes, but - there's a limit to how much current can reliably be drawn through the track contact rails (bus bars). I have to assume the size of the contact rail means it's only handling single-phase power. And with the motors rated at 48-volts and 1-HP, that's around 15-amps/caterpillar. Just how many "electrical blocks" are sensible, and how many caterpillars are likely to share a block at the same time-? That current adds up fast; and so will the size of the contact rail. And pretty soon you're dealing with all sorts of issues from overheating and contact rail distortion, etc. Whether planned or not, that 1-HP size might've been a nice 'sweet spot', allowing just enough speed and torque, when geared-down, to prove so reliable lo these many years.
Looking at the photos again, I don’t think we are seeing evidence of an old track alignment. If we were, we would be seeing patched or open holes in the concrete where the tie-down bolts securing the track to the “roadbed” would have been. I think that dark line that runs from the main track rail to the outside tire mark to our right is actually just tire marks from caterpillars being switch from the storage siding onto the main.
Nanook, probably 20 years ago I stumbled on a photo of the Alice control panel online somewhere, and it showed the electrical control blocks along the track. While I was familiar with that sort of electrical isolation from building model railroads, I must confess that it had never occurred to me before then that that sort of thing would also be done for larger applications. For some inexplicable reason, my film degree didn’t prepare me for electrical engineering problems of that magnitude.
Hello Major, I forgot to sign my anonymous post about the translucent leaves, Bob Gurr and the bump switches.
If you have an E ticket magazine about Alice, could you post it? I think it’s a brilliant dark ride, with inside and out, two stories and 3D etc. love to learn more.
JG
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