Fantasyland Views, June 1969
I have a series of slide photos from June, 1969 - they're nice pictures, though marred a bit by some gray skies. Still, some fun can be had!
I'm guessing that our photographer was standing on the poop deck (heh heh) of the Chicken of the Sea Pirate Ship (Chicken of the Sea would end their sponsorship in August of '69). Fantasyland is awhirl with activity and movement, with more stripes than you can shake a stick at. Try it, I dare you! Overhead, Skyway gondolas are surprisingly close, while below the Mad Tea Party and the Carrousel dominate the middle area, and Peter Pan's Flight and Mr. Toad are in the background.
Oh, Chicken of the Sea mermaid, we love you, but you'll be swimming away in a matter of weeks. At least Skully aka "Skull Rock" will still be with us for another 13 years.
13 comments:
Major-
We can spy the Admin building peeking-thru above the roof line/parapet of the Fantasyland show buildings. Seeing Skull Rock will never grow old-!
Thanks, Major.
I bet if you scrubbed these slides with Comet cleanser and chlorine bleach it would take this dinginess away instantly! Brighten 'em up real good!
In the first pic, we can see a Sweeper guy, front and center. I see two stripy trashcans. I'm sure there are more somewhere back there in the murk. Two purple Skyway gondolas; what are the odds?
Skully really should see a specialist about that postnasal drip problem he has. The Mermaid is granting Scully a wish with her wand. I would wish for a never-ending supply of Kleenexes if I were him.
Nice photos, even with the gray skies, Major.
No wonder the Mermaid left. A girl can only take so much of a guy staring at her and drooling.
This photo could very well have been taken in my early days of employment: and I had to check the date to see when it actually was. I keep on forgetting that the square buckets were updated in '67 which seems so very long ago, but the buckets hold up stylistically in today's world. But they are gone now because they couldn't/wouldn't figure it out. Perhaps a more Walt Disney World version will appear as a transportation device when these "other parks" open up...whenever that actually comes. Bussing people from place to place sounds tedious and annoying. The photo of the mermaid seems to accentuate her various attributes...not sure why they couldn't keep a mermaid of some sort, doesn't every ship need a figurehead? Skully is always awesome no matter what...indeed a shame to lose this piece of art. So well done, and landscaped perfectly. As I age I appreciate the original Fantasyland more and more....it certainly had more color and visual movement than it does after the '83 redo. The little village is charming, but tent city had it's own vibe. Thanks Major.
Major, you’re right. I went out and got a stick, and I tried shaking it at these pictures, and I couldn’t do it. Stick refused to shake. It was very strange, like dowsing (which I have done also), the stick was not in my control. You have proved the adage.
I see beyond the Admin building, the homely familiar swoop of the Power Lines. This 1969 date gives a boundary for that fancy fence around the tea cups, earlier than I thought.
The Mermaid is conferring her blessing on the unfurled sails.
Fantasyland as it should be, and as it should have remained. Sigh.
Thanks Major!
JG
And power lines! I forget, who has the fascination with power lines? I miss the mermaid, too.
zach
Oh, Power Lines get double billing. Someone's gonna be happy.
Nanook, when I saw your comment about the admin building, I thought you’d gone plum loco! But there it is, in all its glory!
JB, I prefer Bon Ami, because French instantly makes anything classy. I’m going to leave the trashcan spotting to the experts who have had years of training. This task is not for babies! Is it possible that Skully LIKES postnasal drip?? You never know with giant skulls.
Chuck, she could have hit him with her thingamabob!
Bu, it’s true, once the Skyway got the new gondolas, and those arches were added around the Mad Tea Party, Fantasyland did not change much until the big change in 1983. I think that real nerds (raise your hands) might be able to tell by the patterns and colors on the “medieval tent” facades, but otherwise you’d be hard-pressed to tell the date just by looking. I agree with you about the busses at WDW - the dream of zooming everywhere by Monorail died when it got too expensive. So… busses. Yuck. I mean, they work, but you can’t argue that there is anything glamorous about them. Hopefully they at least come every five minutes or so, that way there’s not a lot of waiting. I’ve always thought that they could have kept the mermaid… they did on the stern bas-relief. Just make her a little more generic. You know, like common mermaids! I miss the old Fantasyland, even while acknowledging that the new one is impressive in every way.
JG, I warned you about the stick shaking! But I guess the only way to learn is to try it yourself. Would you believe that my mom used to try dowsing? She also toyed around with pyramid power, psychics, grapho-analysis, and Shirley MacLaine’s past lives fad. I’m sure I’m forgetting some things. I don’t hate the Fantasyland upgrade, though I do “strongly regret” the loss of the Pirate Ship and Skully.
zach, I think it might be K. Martinez who likes the power lines? I could be wrong.
zach, hopefully Ken is grinning today!
Ken is the power line aficionado in our merry band (although many of us confess to more than a passing interest in overhead infrastructure).
And I think it was Andrew who was able to pin the pattern changes of Fantasyland’s Tent City to 1976, part of an effort to more closely homogenize the look of the two Magic Kingdoms (budget cuts prevented the addition of a Dent and a Stain to Cinderella Castle in Florida).
Chuck, I’d forgotten that somebody had nailed down the date that the patterns and colors changed on the Fantasyland “tents” - but ’76 sounds about right, considering that there was only another six or seven years before everything was completely changed. Maybe there’s a HIDDEN dent and stain? Way better than hidden Mickeys!
Major, "You never know with giant skulls." This brings up an interesting question: Who/what did Skully look like before he became a bare skull? And how did he lose his head?!
Major, dowsing can be vaguely terrifying, it's completely out of your control, at least for me. I haven't tried it for years, maybe the power has left me.
JB, I think Skully (and his companion Mulder), may have been immigrants from Catalina.
https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-giants-of-catalina-island-prehistoric-mysteries-on-californias-channel-islands
Mulder didn't survive the journey and was fossilized on the island.
JG
^ OK, but 8ft. skeletons are one thing. 80ft. skeletons are another!
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