Thursday, December 15, 2011

Calico Mine Train Postcards, Part Five

Here is the final group of postcards celebrating Knott's Berry Farm's legendary Calico Mine Train ride! (Click on these links to see part one, part two, part three, and part four).

All three cards feature what many consider the highlight of the ride, in which the sturdy little mine trains are lifted to the highest level inside the building and into the cavern (or "stalactite room"), where guests hear heavenly organ music while viewing hundreds of colorful stalactites and stalagmites (glowing under ultraviolet light). The trains actually come to a stop so that you can really take it all in!


Disneyland's Rainbow Caverns is long gone, but we still have the Knott's version!


Things looked a bit run-down the last time I saw this; the large fluorescent black light tubes were plainly visible (with no real attempt to hide or disguise them). You could see them leaning vertically against some stalagmites! I can't believe that it was always that way, but can't say for certain. Even so, it managed to still be wonderful.


I hope you have enjoyed this look at the Calico Mine Train - in postcards!
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3 comments:

  1. TokyoMagic!8:28 AM

    Major, I was going to say that I hope the Mine Ride is protected from any of Cedar Fair's stupid decisions, but then I remembered that the original ticket booth for this attraction was just demolished less than two months ago. It is visible in the very first postcard you posted in part one of your series. Think how long that structure remained standing.....even for all those years that it wasn't functioning as a ticket booth, it was still standing and now it's gone! It's as bad as Disneyland destroying it's Stouffer's mural in the Plaza Pavilion!

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  2. Major Pepperidge8:43 AM

    Arg, Cedar Fair, what the hell. It's not like they can put an attraction where that ticket booth was. At this point, any remnants of the old Knott's (in this case going back to 1960) are getting scarcer and scarcer, and the pointless destruction of anything is real shame. The thing is, you know that 99.9% of people would never notice, but it's sort of the principle of the thing.

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  3. Anonymous9:24 AM

    Thanks for these Major, the Mine Train was a big deal to me as a kid.

    Turning the shooting gallery into Panda Express was like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa tho.

    JG

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