I'm wrapping up my little group of moody slides from February 1964 with these last two... one nice, one kind of a snore. Such is life.
Look out, that pirate ship is headed right for us! Haul in the main mizzle! Batten down the hamsters! I want to rebuild this feature, only I'll have it mounted on a powerful hydraulic gimbal that will tilt and pitch so that the diners inside feel as if they are really on the high seas, heading 'round the Cape. There's nothing about that idea that isn't great!
The mermaid figurehead is still one of my all-time favorite vintage Disneyland things.
Nearby, fainthearted guests sit out the intense thrills of the Casey Jr. Circus Train. "That train is pretty high up, what if it derails?". "I've heard of train robberies, and I don't want that to happen to me". "I think it can't". "Clowns are scary, and clowns are found at circuses, ergo a clown might be on the circus train. I'm staying put".
Yes, Major - I work with someone who is very much frightened of clowns, I, on the other hand, am merely jealous of their footwear.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Major.
That second photo is literally a snapshot of so many lives...how many of us are content to stay on the bench and watch life roll by?? Get up!!! Quit clutching your lunch and hop aboard - life's a Circus!!!
ReplyDeleteOr we'll just wait here until the kids get off the little train and we can head over to the Jungle Ride - watch out for the hippos in the trees.
This Disney place can change lives.
Fearless in Fresno
The tuna boat cannons are poised to protect any and all diners...yay!
ReplyDeleteHaul in the main mizzle! Batten down the hamsters!
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a hilarious Pirates of the Caribbean fanfiction I read once, where each chapter was a parody of a different type of really bad PotC fan fiction. Chapter Three was all about making up nautical terms. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, especially since the author eerily predicted a character that turned up in the sequels long before they happened.
If the ship was still around, they’d have retrofitted the figurehead to a redhead with a purple clamshell bra because THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER MERMAIDS BEFORE ME. (IIRC, I’m doing some work with the local Shakespeare company on a production of The Tempest. Even though my sister knows The Tempest back and forth, every time I mention Ariel she gets confused and thinks I’ve abruptly changed the topic to The Little Mermaid.)
I don't think I'll ever get over the cleverness of the little waves breaking around the stern of the ship. Such a small thing, but what other park would have bothered? That was the Disney Difference™, and it's probaby subconscious for a lot of guests.
The tuna boat cannons are poised to protect any and all diners...yay!
They call 'em "cannons" mostly because they're cannons, but also because they shoot cans of tuna.
"The word 'BOOK' has 'BOO' in it. That's pretty scary, too."
Ha ha, Major..."I think it can't"!!!
ReplyDeleteAny idea what happened to the mermaid figurehead? Or am I missing an obvious post here or on a related blog that I'm just too lazy to research right now?
ReplyDeleteNanook, I must suffer from the clown thing just a little; when I went to Cirque du Soleil, I kept hoping that the pre-show clowns didn't come anywhere near me!
ReplyDeleteFearless in Fresno, maybe those people are afraid of benches, and we are witnessing the very moment they managed to conquer that fear!
Nancy, NOBODY steals my tuna sammich. Hence the canons.
Melissa, I really do wonder if the mermaid would have been Disney-ized? They can't seem to NOT have a film tie-in nowadays - which seems like an odd complaint for Disneyland, and yet it saddens me when they turn a non-movie attractions (like POC) into a tie-in. As for Shakespeare, other than the two or three plays (and a few sonnets) that I had to read in high school, I am woefully ignorant - I know only the very basic story of "The Tempest". I'm pretty sure it involves off-road mini bikes.
TokyoMagic!, I wondered if anybody would notice that one!
Chuck, I hope hope hope that the mermaid was salvaged. She wasn't crushed by bulldozers, since she was removed back in the 70's after Chicken of the Sea stopped sponsoring the tuna boat. Maybe some old-time Imagineer has her in his living room.
Disney's early attempts at subliminal manipulation were shockingly unsubtle.
ReplyDeleteFor today's purposes, all you need to know about The Tempest is that one of its main characters is named Ariel, who has been one of the most beloved and well-known characters of the English-speaking stage for 403 years, until that clown-haired, mollusk-wearing trollop came along in 1989 and RUINED IT FOR EVERYBODY!
ReplyDeleteJUMPING JEHOSAPHAT, CLEMENTS AND MUSKER, HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN DIDN'T EVEN GIVE HER A NAME; YOU COULD HAVE CHOSEN LITERALLY ANYTHING AND YOU HAD TO RUIN "ARIEL" FOR EVERYBODY? WHY NOT CO-OPT "JULIET" AND "BIANCA" WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, YOU MONEYGRUBBING HACKS?
Wow, that felt good. Who wants cocoa?
This page is so edumacational! I even got some Shakespeare learnin' in today!
ReplyDeleteSo... when's Disney going to make a 3D cartoon of The Tempest?