I've been parcelling out photos from a batch from October 1963 for about as long as humanly possible, but today I'm sharing the last two. That's why I'm wearing a black armband.
Here's a lovely shot of Rainbow Ridge, and as is often the case, there is NO LINE for the Mine Train ride. It just boggles my mind, but I don't think I've ever seen a picture of this queue with 50 people waiting to board. Sure, it was a "people eater", but still. I would hop aboard the next train and be so thrilled. You can come too, but you have to promise not to snap your gum.
And finally (for this batch), our fourth-grade teacher (I've made up a whole story for her!) to the right is gazing toward the entrance to Adventureland, perhaps with a bit of apprehension. After all, there's crocodiles and snakes and other creepy-crawlies in there. Who needs it! I hope she was brave and went on the Jungle Cruise and that she laughed and decided that crocodiles are OK after all.
Major-
ReplyDeleteNo lines. That means there's plenty of room for all of US-! And almost completely out of view on the left, is a Nature's Wonderland attraction poster. I also spy a tour guide sitting about mid-train. That just about makes it all perfect.
Our "fourth grade teacher" looks like so many ladies of that era, right on down to her purse.
Thanks, Major.
I hope our fourth grade teacher bought a rubber-tipped spear and a shrunken head in Adventureland to display in her classroom. My first grade teacher had a stuffed piranha on her desk, part of what made Mrs. Matthews so awesome.
ReplyDeleteFarewell, good lady. I hope you enjoyed your visit as much as we have.
The 4th grade teacher's name is Mrs. Beale. She is looking over at Johnnie Winn to the far left of the shot. She had Johnnie in class, and she is 90% sure he is about to drop some litter. It's about to get real, folks....
ReplyDeleteI would love to have an "atmospheric" tripod video from this location of maybe ten minutes or so, with nothing but Nature's Wonderland trains coming and leaving the station. It's really all so peaceful, especially compared to the noise the "wildest ride in the wilderness" makes now. Thanks for the great series!
ReplyDeleteAndrew: I reality this area of Frontierland was not quiet at all. Besides mining locomotives pulling in and out of Rainbow Ridge , there was the SFX coming from the town : a blacksmith hammering , brawls, fights and singing coming from the saloon. There was a church bell ringing , a loud snoring guests in the hotel; this recording was later used as Rufus the snoring bear at the entry to Bear Country and later Splash Mt. And of course there was the famous and difficult to listen to, the miner getting a tooth pulled from the dentist office. There was also the sound from the Mark Twain , and the pings and pangs from the pre-electronic Shooting Gallery! 1963 would predate the use of overall Frontierland background music , but there would have been live music.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting note regarding the Rainbow Ridge Snoring Hotel guest / Rufus the snoring Bear recording ....... it was recorded for a snoring dwarf in Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs and Steve the time was one of the oldest Disney recordings in use at the park.
No bad pics Rainbow Ridge.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Mike for providing a soundtrack for my daydream. As Nanook would say, let's just step into that picture.
I'm pretty sure our 4th grade teacher is keeping the shrunken head for herself. I'm sure she played the female heavy in an old Boris Karloff movie.
My favorite was my 5th grade teacher at Ft. Lowell Elementary.
He encouraged kids to use their imaginations, learn and build stuff. Stuck with me all my life. He had all manner of exotic and cool stuff from many lands in his desk.
PS The purple bag?
Thanks Major.
It's gonna be a great day. Rainbow Ridge, the Mine Train, school teacher. Now that I think about it, our teacher looks a little like Mrs. Fortner from Colfax Ave Elementary. Nanook, I see the tour guide now, I totally missed her. Thanks to Major for a real treat today.
ReplyDeleteNanook, please save me a seat! I would love to step back in time and ride that train, again. I have a few faint memories from Nature's Wonderland and would love to refresh them.
ReplyDeleteMike, your mention of the 'snoring' jogged my memory of long ago...maybe you or someone else can help me to remember more clearly. I seem to remember being on a boat ride (in DL or WDW) and floating past a cabin and hearing some snoring. Could it be the cabin you float past on DL's POTC, near the Blue Bayou restaurant? I may have my memories jumbled up, in this case...but just thought I'd ask.
Sue
Mrs. Beale strongly resembles both my son's second grade teacher, and my third grade teacher. I hope she had a good day at the Park. Major, thank you for sharing her trip with us.
ReplyDeleteWonderful photo of the Mine Train. Sure do miss this ride.
@Mike Cozart, thanks for the info about Rufus. That is one of my favorite sound effects, never failed to laugh at Rainbow Ridge or the entry to Bear Country. It sounds like the "Wilhelm Scream" of Disneyland, along with Goofy's "Woo-hoo-hoo!!!" that plays every time a caterpillar goes into the upper door of Alice in Wonderland.
That sound haunted me during the wait for the bobsleds. For some reason, I usually rode the Fantasyland side of that ride. Now that the queue has been moved to only the Tomorrowland side, I don't hear Goofy anymore. "They ruin everything". Also the revised bobsleds are much less fun. Since the Matterhorn is over 60 now, like me, a less-sprightly ride is probably to be expected.
JG
And no one mentioned that only a single stroller is parked in front of the queue. What an unusual sight compared to today. It was one of my favorite attractions to operate. KS
ReplyDeleteKS, you must have many wonderful memories of those days!! When did you work at Disneyland and what rides/attractions did you operate, if you don't mind me asking.
ReplyDeleteSue
Sue, I know Disneyland's Splash Mountain had (and maybe still has) had a cave entrance along the outdoor part of the flume after the first lift hill with a sign or mailbox lettered "Rufus" that had that snoring sound effect coming out of it. Could that be what you are remembering?
ReplyDeleteI also want to say that there was a similar sound played as you passed the river pirates den on WDW's Rivers of America, but I might be conflating that with another memory. Or did the passed out moonshiner by the cabin snore? Which Disney Park was that? Or was that Cedar Point? My memory is playing tricks on me. Stupid brain!
Arg, Blogger says my reply is too long - so as usual I am cutting up into two parts.
ReplyDeleteNanook, I wish I could read that sign that is just to the right of the Nature’s Wonderland poster, I don’t remember noticing it in photos before. Oh well, yet another mystery to be solved someday. I can’t help thinking that the woman could be from the midwest, though it could just be that she reminds me of various relatives who live there! Good eye on the tour guide.
Chuck, yes, especially a shrunken head, the perfect accoutrement to any classroom. “This is what will happen to YOU if you misbehave!”. Cool that your teacher kept a piranha on her desk, and kind of odd too. In a good way. What child didn’t hear stories about water buffalo being turned into gleaming skeletons in minutes? I still remember a National Geographic article that showed Indian children with small brown scars where piranhas had bitten them while they swam.
stu29573, I wonder if these ladies who taught us so long ago had any idea that we would remember them 50+ years later? “Johnnie Winn” reminds me of our class bully, “Johnnie Poe”, he was a foot taller than anybody else.
Andrew, I agree with you! Sadly, that was decades before something like that would even occur to anybody. I’d love it though.
Mike Cozart, I have the sound effects that were played in Rainbow Ridge, I always wondered how loud they were - I thought maybe they could really only clearly be heard from the queue or when a person was actually on a train. I think that it still could have seemed peaceful on a day with low crowds, even with the sounds you mentioned. The tooth-pulling sound is pretty gruesome! I always found the whistle of the Mark Twain to be particularly wonderful! There was tinny piano coming from the Saloon, and I think there was the clang of a hammer from the Blacksmith’s. You said that 1963 would predate the use of overall background music - do you happen to know when they introduced loops for each “land”? And WOW, I didn’t know that the snoring went all the way back to 1937!
DrGoat, in general I think of my grade-school teachers as being to prim (uptight?) to want or have a shrunken head, even a rubber one from Disneyland. But I did have a teacher who was a diver, and one of the things she did was recover the bodies of drowning victims from nearby lakes - I always thought, “How in the world did she wind up doing THAT?”. My favorite teacher was Mrs. Cole in 2nd grade, but she left partway through the school year because she was going to have a baby. The one who replaced her was a meanie! Sounds like you had a very good teacher in 5th grade, a good teacher is a wonderful thing.
ReplyDeleteJonathan, to be honest, that woman reminds me of one of my sister’s grade school teachers - I can’t remember her name now. I think my younger brother had her too, they both loved her.
Lou and Sue, it’s hard to believe that the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland has now been gone for 43 years! Because my family had moved to the east coast, I probably last rode it when I was around 11. No wonder my memories of it are so foggy! I’ll be curious to hear the answer to your question about the snoring. There was a little cabin on the Rivers of America that people passed, with a man on the porch, very similar to the one in the Blue Bayou in Disneyland - but I have no idea if snoring issued from the cabin.
JG, see? That lady just looks like a teacher! They must have all received a booklet on how to dress, how to do their hair, and what glasses they should wear. Kind of like Disneyland’s guidelines for cast members. Ever since I’ve learned about the “Wilhelm Scream”, I have heard it scores of times. It kind of takes me out of the movie, but maybe that’s just me. And yes, the “Goofy Yell” can really get in your head if you happen to be waiting in a line anywhere near the “Alice” exit. I had no idea that they removed that sound effect!
KS, good point!
Lou and Sue, we definitely know that KS worked on the Mine Trains, but I’m sure he worked on others as well.
Chuck, do you remember, pre-Splash Mountain, when you could hear the snoring bear as you walked through Bear Country? I think it was coming from a cave high in the rocks, but… memories are indistinct. The moonshiner in WDW must be the figure I was thinking of (see my comment to Sue) - but I’ve never been there, so I don’t know about the snoring.
Major, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the Goofy scream was taken away. I actually can't recall if it is there or not, even though I last rode AIW only a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteI meant that the re-routing of the Matterhorn queue to the Tomorrowland side meant that we couldn't hear the scream from the line, not that the scream had been discontinued.
@Sue, I don't recall any cabins with snoring noises. The cabin in the Blue Bayou has a banjo playing slowly. I remember a typewriter sound effect in the newspaper office in Rainbow Ridge, but that was recently as part of Big Thunder. I can't recall if that was in the old town or not.
JG
Major, I just read your last bit of comment. Here is what I recall.
ReplyDeletePre-Splash Mountain Bear Country entrance did away with the tunnel entrance that led to the old Indian Village, and opened the walkway to the River on the north side.
The hillside remained on the south side, and there was a cave up high, above the walkway sight line, where Rufus' snore emerged from the cave.
The old Indian Trading post, a log building with a sod roof backed up against the hill on the west side, and it was re-themed into a Bear Country gift shop.
When Splash Mountain was added and Bears gave way to Critter Country, the entry was reconfigured again, the tall hill was cut down somewhat and Rufus moved up into that attraction. The sod-roof Trading Post is still there, visible in the street view of Google map. It is now called the Briar Patch. It looks like some of it might date back to the original Indian Village.
JG
Major, I remember that snoring bear just as JG describes it, I remember my dad laughing out loud when the first time we walked into Bear Country in 1975.
ReplyDeleteAnd I know what you mean about the "Wilhelm Scream" - that sound effect always jumps out at me. Same with "Castle Thunder from the 1931 Frankenstein. Ben Burtt managed to work both of them into the original Star Wars. And of course "Castle Thunder" is a key component of the Haunted Mansion soundtrack, particularly as the Ghost Host shows us his way out of a room with no windows and no doors.
JG, I just looked up the Indian Trading Post in The Disneyland Encyclopedia, and I was surprised to learn that it wasn't built until 1962. Still older than me, but later in Disneyland history than I had thought. I had assumed it went back to when they opened the "new" Indian Village in 1956.
@Chuck, "Castle Thunder" is new to me, Thank You!
ReplyDeleteThe Wilhelm Scream is in all the Indy movies also.
My Dad and yours had the same reaction to Rufus.
Thanks for the dates on the ITP, I always liked that little building because of the sod roof. I wonder if any of the old building survives in today's edition?
JG
Major-
ReplyDeleteI think I may have mentioned this before on these pages, but in the second grade, our teacher had a live monkey in a cage. Please don't ask me any details, including its species, if it went home with her at night [I presume so], what it was fed, etc.; but I think that tops any shrunken heads, rubber snakes, or even the piranha - which is pretty special. And even stranger - this was in a grammar school that was part of the Los Angeles Unified School District-! Yes, these were most-assuredly different times. And they do ruin everything.
MAJOR: I’ve heard the Rainbow Ridge recordings - however the only ones I can remember hearing in person was the Dentist office ( I remember guests waiting on the platform laughing about that one) and the Saloon Brawl.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up we had a neighbor who worked for a radio station and had given me some great quality recordings made at Disneyland he had made with a high end tape recorder . The recordings were 1982 and the Frontierland Shooting Gallery can be heard from the hub all the way past the Golden Horseshoe. It’s loud! In fact that reminds me of waiting in line with our reservation for the Golden Horseshoe in the early 80’s when relatives from North Carolina came to visit and someone making a comment about the annoying shooting gallery noise.
SUE: the only Disneyland Snoring SFX I’m aware of is the single recording used at the Rainbow Ridge Hotel / Rufus Bear Country Entrance. As mentioned after Splash Mountain displaced Rufus’ cave , the recording was relocated into Splash Mt. with a sign reading “ don’t disturb! Rufus” after Disneyland guests got over the Bear Country to Critter Country change , the Rufus sign was replaced with a Hibernating Brer Bear sign and I believe is still there.
Walt Disney World’s Fort Sam Clemons on Tom Sawyer Island featured several animatronic scenes including a stable with animals , a blacksmith and a sleeping prisoner ( who snores)
The River Pirate Den along the river featured drunk keelboat rougues singing “ Little Brown Jug”
MAJOR: Disneyland has used background music for attractions since the beginning , but whole area background music really started with Walt Disney World . Disneyland’s first full area background music was in 1972 : Frontierland entry Stocade, Main Street USA , and Bear Country. All created by Jack Wagner.
Lou and Sue... I worked there in several capacities between 1969 and 1978. I like to think of them as some of the Park's golden years as it still was operating under the Disney heritage and CMs moved up the ranks into management. It was run like a family business. The Disney CEO and Chairman of the Board would attend the employee anniversary events. I worked foods for a couple years at Hills Bros. with Oscar Martinez and then transferred into operations Adventure/Frontierland. Worked most of the attractions. Also did a stint over at the Autopia and Main Street Cinema which was a real snoozer. Later started the ROP program with the Disney University before heading out into the world with a 'real' job as we called it then. Have treasured memories and great friends from there to this day. KS
ReplyDeleteThank you, everyone, for all of the 'snoring' info, and all the other sound effect background info. I always learn a lot from all of you. The 'castle thunder' is new to me, too. (That Frankenstein movie was/is one of my and my dad's favorite movies of all time. As a little kid, I'd sit by him and watch it when it came on TV. I wasn't scared, because dad was right there.)
ReplyDeleteMajor, I, too, would've been about 11 or 12 when I last rode that Mine Train. Many, many moons ago.
DrGoat, I saw that purple (sort of lavender) bag, too. I don't recognize it, either.
KS, you were definitely at Disneyland during the BEST years! I'm thrilled to think that I probably saw you and am hoping you show up in some of my dad's pictures! Wouldn't that be cool?!
One of my grade school teachers had to keep an eye on David Grubb, especially during the weeks that our 6th grade class was building a giant sugar-cube castle with surrounding sugar-cube walls. The teacher would allow a couple kids at a time, to work on gluing it together. It was quite large and sat on a piece of plywood, on the floor, in the corner of our classroom. David would sit and eat lots and lots of the sugar cubes.
JG, it’s all good, I just would have been surprised if they removed Goofy’s scream! As usual, my memories of where exactly I could hear that noise over and over is faulty - I thought it might be from the Teacups.
ReplyDeleteJG, OK, it sounds like the cave high up is just like I recalled. Thanks! I remember the Indian Trading Post, and even have a photo of it on GDB, see it as part of THIS POST from 2007 (wow, that’s a long time ago).
Chuck, YES! I totally know what you mean with “Castle Thunder”! I didn’t know it appeared (was heard?) in the original Star Wars though. There are definitely other sound effects that are very familiar - some from the “Chilling Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted Mansion” LP. I learned from a podcast (though I forget which one) that one of the screaming sounds was from the 1946 David Lean film, “Great Expectations”.
JG, Quentin Tarantino is partial to the Wilhelm Scream too, as is Peter Jackson.
Nanook, I NEED DETAILS about that monkey! ;-) Keeping a smart animal like a monkey in a little cage seems cruel to me, but as a kid I would have loved it. I’d think that it would be a distraction to the students! That is definitely one of the odder things I’ve ever heard about a teacher.
Mike Cozart, I love that you had a neighbor who gave you copies of those recordings from Disneyland. Those are the kinds of things that can really affect a child, and might have been a factor in your love of the park (just a guess). I’ve mentioned this before, but in the 2nd grade we had a hippie music teacher who played guitar while we sang folk songs. One day he came in and talked about the Haunted Mansion for some reason. Looking back, he might not have even been 25 years old, but of course he was a “grown up” and seemed MUCH older to us. He told us about how they did a lot of the effects, and I remember being fascinated. I wonder if he’s still alive, and if so, if he’s still a Disneyland fan. I’m amazed that you said you could hear the Rainbow Ridge effects all the way over to the Golden Horseshoe - that definitely is loud. And I knew that the rides had music, I just wasn’t sure when they began piping music loops throughout the lands - such as the various Main Street loops that you can find online. These days we’re so used to the constant background noise, it might be odd to walk down Main Street without it. As always, thank you for the great trivia!
KS, it’s fascinating to read the David Koenig book, “The 55ers”, so many people started out in humble positions, and worked their way up to management, just as you said. If one wanted to, they could work hard and actually have a career. My how things have change. What’s the “ROP Program”? Thanks for the glimpse into your time with Disney!
Lou and Sue, anybody who loves the original 1931 Frankenstein is OK by me! It’s still such a wonderful movie, as many of those early Universal horror movies are. Apologies to DrGoat, and here’s some info for you - the purple bag is a larger version of one you can see xHERE. I’d love to have a large example! I really do envy the people who worked at the park in the “good years” (or “good decades”), before things went to hell. Ha ha, we had to build things out of sugar cubes too, I built a bad model of the Mission in Carmel.
Lou and Sue....I keep looking for myself but so far no luck. On the other hand I have seen several of my co-workers in pictures on this, as well as a time or two elsewhere. From that I have located most and forwarded a copy of the picture to them.
ReplyDeleteMajor...It's the North Orange County Regional Occupation Program. I understand the program was moved to Knott's a while back. Years ago I had the personnel head of Knott's, when it was family owned, on board but we just couldn't run two programs simultaneously.