Frontierland Checkers
Here are more scans from the seemingly-bottomless cornucopia of scans from the Mysterious Benefactor! Most of today's scans feature guests on Tom Sawyer Island, where they played checkers on a board near the Old Mill/Fantasmic stage.
This first pic is the only one that doesn't involve checkers, but you see folks gathered near the shore for family photos. The raucous sound of checkers probably disturbed their good time.
I know people like to play checkers, I just don't know why they'd want to do so at Disneyland! You can play checkers any day. Maybe there's something about the unique setting?
The girl with the stripes is secretly the checkers champion of the world, having recently defeated Svetlana Ivanova in Helsinki six months earlier. It was televised on ABC's "Wide World of Sports", and she was interviewed afterwards by Jim McKay. "How does it feel being called America's Sweetheart?". "I just want that sweet, sweet money, Jim!".
"Don't you boys want to explore the caves, or climb Castle Rock?". "Leave us alone, old man!". "Yeah, this is OUR world now, grandpa!". My, what delightful kids. Right after this picture was taken, each boy lit up a Cigarillo and laughed. LAUGHED!
OK, OK, these people aren't playing checkers either. But you can tell that they are thinking about checkers, so it counts.
If these two are on a date, there will be sore feelings from whoever loses this game. Not great for the relationship. The guy tried to flip the board when he realized that he didn't have a prayer, but realized that it was stuck down with Krazy Glue (the strongest glue in the Universe). This is more embarrassing than when his pants fell down during recess.
I suppose that if you have a checkerboard available, it is inevitable that somebody will sit down to play.
THANK YOU, Mysterious Benefactor!
14 comments:
Major-
"I know people like to play checkers, I just don't know why they'd want to do so at Disneyland!"
Clearly you don't understand the relationship between checkers, Tom Sawyer Island and the Coriolis Effect. (Just look at all the folks on the Columbia hugging the railing-!) The best checker games take place on Tom Sawyer Island-!
Thanks to the M B-!
I wear earplugs when I play checkers.
1) OMyGod! Someone strapped a woman to the bow of the Columbia! Like Mad Max strapped to the front of a berserker's desert mobile. Her attire would indicate she must be a CM. In the family that's getting their picture taken, the teenage brother is too cool to smile.
2) I can only imagine that people that take time to play checkers in Disneyland are 'regulars' who go to the Park every month or so. I tried to read what's written on the back of Dad's t-shirt, but nope.
3) There is an extraterrestrial surveillance bot hovering amidst the trees in the background. Its glowing red eye means it is recording the scene.
4) Yep. These four hooligans definitely look like Cigarillo smokers to me. Sociopaths for sure!
5) The lady on the left has eaten something disagreeable; maybe one of the trout from the River. Considering that there hasn't been any fishing on Tom Sawyer Island for years, the fish probably wasn't in the best of condition.
6) The Canoers paddling by are thinking, "Man, we coulda been playing checkers instead of being stuck in this canoe lookin' at nature and stuff!"
7) Now I'm wondering where the checkers are kept when nobody's playing.
Thanks to our Mysterious B. And thanks, Major, for your witty commentary.
Put a Checker Board out and they will come!
Poor Grandpa, kids can be so cruel...
Thank You MAJOR!
Major, you obviously have never experienced the thrill of paying $220 just to be able to play checkers in Disneyland. You should try it sometime. Another incredible experience is paying $220 to stand in line for 3 hours, for the opportunity to meet Ana and Elsa. I highly recommend it!
We’ve all got a checkered past…..
Judging by the desecration of the southern end of TSI, these may be the most recent photos we’ve seen from the MB. They still could be 33 years old. Don’t think about that too much. I recently had to (gently) correct Mrs. Chuck when she said she couldn’t believe 1995 was 20 years ago already.
I’ve actually played checkers at Disneyland, but it was in the Market House with my sons. Needed to get off our feet and out of the sun for a minute while Mrs. Chuck did some minor shopping. The ambience made them checker games I will never forget.
Note Mom is taking a picture of the family in the first image with a disposable camera, the logical endpoint of Kodak consumer camera development. That family is visible in the background of the third photo, the second one of the blonde sisters playing draughts.
If the girl in the “dating couple” photo gets any more comfortable, she’ll be lying down. My hat is off to her for managing to get that comfortable on a couple of crates. It’s also off because I rarely wear hats at breakfast.
The guy with the beard in the last photo looks like he definitely needs to take a load off his feet. Interesting that he’s in tennis shoes, yet early visitors to DL are often seen in dress shoes and heels. Disneyland’s pioneers were made of sturdier stock. Note the discarded gate handout behind the checkerboard. Magical trash indeed.
Thank you, Major. Happy Monday, everyone!
Playing checkers at Disneyland is inexplicable, except in the Market House, which is a great story, Chuck. Maybe all these folks are waiting for their mobile orders to be prepared.
I used a disposable camera once or twice, the pictures produced were also disposable. We bought one for kids on Catalina to take skin diving, the photos were blurry, but recognizable enough to remember where they were taken, but that’s it.
Thanks for these pics of happy people, Major. Say thank you to the MB too, if you see him.
JG
Nanook, I always forget about the Coriolis Effect!
JB, at least you don’t wear earRINGS when you play checkers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You might be right, maybe if you go to Disneyland three times a week, a game of checkers will seem novel and fun. I don’t even want to play checkers at home. I would avoid those teens, they might make me cry. Eating something disagreeable at Disneyland is always a risk. I’ve heard stories! I’ll bet there is a fancy, high-tech checkers locker that requires voiceprint identification.
Anonymous, I guess I can ALMOST understand playing checkers when you only had to pay $35 to get in. But now that it can be over $200 for a park hopper, there is no time for such nonsense!!
TokyoMagic!, I can’t decide which would be worse, playing checkers, or Monopoly? Wait, it’s Monopoly! I can’t stand that game.
Budblade, D’OH
Chuck, I have no dates on most of the MB’s scans, but I am sure they went into at least the late 1980s. Possibly into the 1990s? I still think of bands that I saw live in 1985… “That wasn’t that long ago!”. How long does it take to play a solid game of checkers? 10 minutes? Half an hour? Hey, if that’s what people want to do, then they should do it, but I don’t get it! Disposable cameras, how many were sold so that everyone at a wedding had to take pictures? Thousands, for sure! Ha, the “lying down” girl really does look comfy. She should bring a pillow next time. Are you telling me that you don’t even wear a beret at breakfast?? Anyone who wears dress shoes to Disneyland is probably a Russian spy.
JG, I agree, at least the Market House has a kind of old-timey ambiance. Or at least it did, back when it had a potbellied stove. Does it have a stove now that it’s a Starbucks? Disposable cameras weren’t great, though I was surprised when I used one that took panoramic photos, they came out much clearer and sharper than most disposables produced.
I suppose they can keep an eye on people to keep them from taking the checkers at the Market House, but I would expect checkers sets in a open area like TSI would just wind up on eBay (genuine Disneyland checkers!)
I've used a few disposable cameras back when they were a thing. A few had reasonably good optics, and others had the worst you could use and still make pictures.. Of course, they mostly showed up at weddings and other places where nobody was thinking about composing a good picture anyway.
Checkers in the park? Nothing compared to kids playing the same video games they had in their neighborhood arcade and paying for the privilege. Or standing in line for Starbucks coffee. Now get off my lawn, punks!
All you need for an amusement park these days is a STARBUCKS COFFEE, a British Telephone Booth , a checker board …. And a place for the dulled brain-activity guests to sit and scroll on TIK-TOK ….
Dean Finder, sadly you are right, people will take anything that isn’t nailed down. Disneyland checkers, what a treasure (joking)! I don’t miss the days of disposable cameras - the convenience and quality of digital photos from my phone is hard to beat.
DBenson, ha, I have to admit that I wondered about the people who would go to the Starcade and play “Asteroids” or “Centipede”. You’re in Disneyland, dude! BUT… I need to chill out and let people have their fun.
Mike Cozart, I’ve definitely stood near people while in line who look at their phones nonstop. I can’t remember if it was Tik-Tok, but they weren’t speaking to their companions. Seems kind of weird.
While I agree that it doesn’t make a lot of sense with today’s gate prices, but back in the mid-‘90s when we were APHs, Mrs Chuck and I would budget $10 and an hour every couple of visits for the Starcade. It was still two floors then and had a good selection of games that just cost a quarter, including some multiplayer ones that we could enjoy together. Of course, we also spent a half hour on our first day at WDW on our honeymoon trying almost every machine in the still-vibrant penny arcade before ever riding a ride, so maybe we aren’t the best example of normality.
Thinking further back, when I would go to King’s Island with friends back in junior high, we’d usually spend an hour and change (a big pocketful of it) in the big arcade. They always had the newest games and lots of them, and that was a big draw for folks for whom the closest “arcades” - the ones within biking distance - were the five or six machines at the neighborhood pizza place. Plus our parents gave us spending money for the park, and while we ate well we spent the rest playing games…which is why I don’t have a single souvenir from that place. I remember when Dragon’s Lair came out, it was such a novel concept that the one example the had had an extra monitor on top so the crowd could watch. There was always a line for it in the summer of ‘83.
I played Dragon’s Lair a couple times, back in the '80s. (There was a dedicated video and pinball arcade in our town then.) I got killed within a few seconds. But I did enjoy seeing Don Bluth's animation.
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