Friday, February 25, 2011

Random Friday

Here are a few leftuggies, orphan photos that need a home and a little love.

Let's start things off with a bonk by feasting our tired, withered eyes upon this picture of Tomorrowland '67. " *Gasp*... eyes.... unwithering... soul filling with hope... will to live... REVIVED!" (Please read that sentence in your best Shatner voice). Golly Mabel, the combination of the Rocket Jets and the Peoplemover is outasight. As you can see, the Peoplemover lacks the safety bars that prevented riders from falling out (?!?). In the background, a few folks are walking up the ramp of the Carousel of Progress building.


This photo is curiously devoid of sunshine, rendering Frontierland in silvery-gray tones, like an old hand-tinted daguerreotype. The picture was taken from the Swiss Family Treehouse. The Kodak Instamatic (or whatever) focused on the branches and strange red leaves of the Martian tree that the Swiss Family chose as their summer home.


I think that the Teacup ride would be better if the cups were filled with pipin' hot tea. It would be like a spinning hot tub. The key to becoming a millionaire is thinking of something that the public didn't know it wanted, and I think I've just done that. You're welcome, Walt Disney Company.

15 comments:

  1. Caspian1:57 AM

    Thanks for my daily laugh. I love me some leftuggies.

    LD

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  2. well, ive got adoption dibbies on that first photo.....AMAZING!!!!!

    two of the best things about the New Tomorrowland which they had the nerve to toss out are orphans no longer...they are mine! ;-)


    the other two are awesome as well..hope to visit them at their new homes someday


    as always, the best leftovers are served by the Major. thanks!!

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  3. "The Kodak Instamatic (or whatever) focused on..."

    LOL, you continue to crack me up.

    Love that first photo TOTALLY. Actually, the second one is pretty cool in an artsy kind of way.

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  4. Always fun to see an 'excited and moving' tomorrow(land).

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  5. Wow, a trio of fun filled fotos!

    Treehouse photo is awesome, they probably didn't intended for it to come out that way - but I like it!

    Great "random" post!

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  6. Wow, I like that first one for many reasons...one of them being that it shows the Goodyear logo-shaped shadow box alongside the speedramp. You can just barely see another one on the other side of the ramps, but there were actually three of these on each side of the ramps. I don't believe they were there on opening day, but yet I've never see a pic showing just one. Perhaps they were in the process of installing them? I'm kind of obsessed with those shadow boxes for some reason. I wish we could see the animated scene in that one that's facing us!

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  7. Thanks guys (and gals!) for the nice comments, as always.

    TM, I did not know that those lozenge shaped boxes contained animated scenes. Do you have any idea what kind of scenes were portrayed? This sounds like something Kevin Kidney might know about.

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  8. As Minister of Truth and Beauty, I do hereby warrant these pictures "double plus good."

    Major: The shadow boxes were designed by T. Hee (as I recall) and had limited mechanical movement advertising the virtues of Goodyear products. The style was similar to parallel material at the end of Monsanto Adventure thru Inner Space.

    There are a few pictures of them on the web, let me see if I can find them.

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  9. Sorry Major, I looked for about half an hour and didn't find much. I know images of the art boxes are out there. Maybe Mike Cozart will stop by and supply a few.

    For the only example I could find, look at:

    TOMORROWLOUNGE 67: November 2009:

    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__1HAWpldDag/SwPPOgH61II/AAAAAAAAAGs/Za2kRDlMKnU/s1600/goodyear+co.+peoplemover+book-final.jpg

    Daveland has a thread on the subject here:

    http://davelandblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/we-miss-you-peoplemover.html

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  10. Major, Katella provided some good links (thanks, Katella!) I do confuse the actual scenes in these boxes with the ones that were at the ATIS exit. I just remember an airplane with landing gear that came down and also one with flowers that grew, but I think those were for Monsanto products. For some reason, I was fascinated with all of these displays as a kid. They almost looked like animated paper cut-outs.

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  11. Katella and TokyoMagic!, thanks for the info about those boxes. I am surprised that I don't remember them, since I loved that sort of thing when I was a kid. They had a large model railroad at the Museum of Science and Industry (the lighting would slowly change from day to night and back), and I could have stood there and watched it forever if my mom hadn't pulled me away.

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  12. Major, your leftovers are better than the front-line stuff on some other blogs. Must be the commentary.

    My tomorrowland will never grow old or obsolete, the only problem is that I can't walk into the picture and disappear.

    I have some pics just like that from the tree house, before Tarzan of wretched memory, may his face be dirt.

    And I want oolong tea in my cup, stirred counterclockwise, please. No Earl Grey for me.

    I had forgotten the little picture dioramas in ATIS until your great post of the queue last year. I don't remember these little boxes. I guess we just ran past them up the escalator, i never remembered a line for the Peoplemover. that was a very efficient loading system.

    Sorry to always be late to the discussion, but that's my new schedule.

    Best to all out there.

    JG

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  13. Anonymous10:47 PM

    Fantastic photos! People are actually walking down the ramp after viewing the Progress City model in the background of the first photo.

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  14. JG: Regarding the ATIS front cue art boxes: Depending on your age, you might have just missed them because of your height. In order to give them a real "Sci Fi" feeling, they were basically peep-hole dioramas with big thick lenses in front that made viewing from anything other than an adult's height difficult.

    Regarding missing the Peoplemovier art boxes, they were removed after Goodyear canceled their sponsorship. You may just have missed seeing them as a kid because they weren't particularly dynamic.

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  15. I remember one of the boxes had a race car with spinning Goodyear tires and a driver with a big smile. The car sort of moved up and down over the road it was on.

    I also loved the slowly rotating Goodyear signs that had the same shape.

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