Friday, March 14, 2008

Autopia, July 1961

Who knew that driving around a miniature highway in a tiny car would be so popular? Well, Walt Disney, for one. There have been several Autopias at Disneyland over the years, some coexisting to meet the demand of folks who probably drove at least an hour on a real freeway to get to the park. Let's face it, American's are just plain car crazy!


As you can see, both of these photos were taken in the glorious days before the dreaded center rail was installed. It's kind of strange that there were two photos so nearly alike, but obviously taken at different times (since the cars behind us differ). Maybe they rode it twice in a row. The overpasses and criss-crossing Monorail track remind me of "the stack", a monster of an interchange in which four freeways branch off from each other, stacked four levels high.

4 comments:

outsidetheberm said...

What's not to like about the Autopia? Great shots!

And Major, we'll be posting a neat supplement to your March 10th Knott's post today - you'll get a better idea where those little kids were fishing in your 'Old Mill Stream' photo. Enjoy!

Matterhorn1959 said...

I think the car in the top image was having difficulties (or the kid was a very bad driver) as it appears there is an Autopia cast member riding the car.

Major Pepperidge said...

Outsidetheberm, I can't wait to see your "old mill stream" post!

And Matterhorn, you are right... I can remember driving an Autopia car (maybe more than once) that had a tendency to stall. I caused a 20 car pileup! So a cast member sat on the back of my car just like that first photo. How can you have fun with some stranger sitting right behind you! So I "shook him off" and he was run over by thousands of tiny cars. It was tragic.

Anonymous said...

I can smell the gas fumes. It appears to be at the end of the ride. If there weren't cars behind me, I would just stop and enjoy the scenery. Others did that too and D'land got wise about this. If you lingered too long, a CM would come out of the bushes and hop on using the outside accellerator pedal to move you to the unload/load area. Still those were good days. My objective was to be able to drive the car without hitting the curb. That was a big deal when you were 9 years old. The rail took a lot of the challenge out of it.