It was 1958 when Walt went on a trip to Switzerland in order to help get started on the new live action film, Third Man on the Mountain. Before leaving, he stopped by one of his imagineers, Vic Greene. “Vic,” he said, poking his head into the office door. “I want you to get brainstorming on some new attractions to put in Tomorrowland. Something big. We’ll talk more about it when I get back from Switzerland.” When Walt arrived, he and director Ken Annakin took a train to the little town of Zermatt which has an amazing view of the Matterhorn. Walt was entranced. He rushed into a gift shop and purchased a postcard with a picture of the Matterhorn on it and on the back scrawled a simple message: “Vic, build this! Walt.” The day the postcard arrived in Vic’s office, he started designing. Walt moved on to Germany and became interested in the bullet-shaped trains that rode around there. In turn he had another idea for a train much like them - a monorail. Finally, though, Walt had one more ride that he was brainstorming. Following the success of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” Walt wanted to take people on a Submarine Voyage. With this three attractions in mind, Walt returned home and hit his first speed bump - his own brother Roy. Roy didn’t want any new rides until the Disney company was out of the debt that Disneyland put them in in the first place. Walt tried to convince him but Roy was immovable. In a couple of years they could think about it, but not now. After the end of the argument, Roy left to Europe to try and gain some foreign investors. Meanwhile Walt called together his imagineers. His opening statement was right to the point, “We’re going to build the Matterhorn, the Monorail, and the Submarines.”
The imagineers were already well aware of Roy’s opposition to the projects. “What will Roy say?” one of the imagineers at the table asked. “Don’t worry about Roy,” Walt said. “We’re going to build ‘em. Roy can figure out how to pay for ‘em when he gets back.” Walt might have had to go behind Roy’s back, but thank heavens he did because those three rides were sensational when they opened. Sometimes Walt was the only person to see the bigger picture. The story of the famous Snow White and the seven dwarfs statues is known by all Disney fans. The Disney Company commissioned them from Italian artist Leonida Parma who mistakenly read the height measurement wrong for Snow White. She was supposed to be 53" tall, but was carved out of marble the same height as the 33" tall dwarfs. In an effort to remedy this, Walt assigned the task to Disney Legend John Hench. The waterfall gets narrower towards the top, giving the illusion of distance. The studio hands sculpted small animals to place around the dwarfs, making sure the critters around Snow White matched her scale, furthering the illusion that she is taller in comparison to the others. At the base of the waterfall, John Hench installed a fountain of dancing fish, which squirt water from their mouths. The fish and the rest of the grotto’s water features come to life when Snow White sings “I’m Wishing” from the well. Snow White’s Grotto was dedicated at Disneyland on April 9th, 1961. In the past, coins collected from the well were sent to Variety Clubs International which
was an organization made up of the heads of show business, they would divide the money up and use it for their charity work. Nowadays, any coins tossed in the well, are donated to the Make a Wish foundation, there’s a little inscription on the well that reads: “Your wishes will help children everywhere”. In 1983 Disneyland decided to move the opening day classic attraction Dumbo the Fying Elephant when they created new Fantasyland. Dumbo was placed in an area where Skull Rock had previously stood. This move demonstrated that Disney was open to the idea that the park could constantly change and evolve to suit guest needs.
without this mindset the area would have remained a stagnant area in the park. The move allowed for better crowd flow, for new attractions to be added and for existing ones to be updated. Ensuring that Fantasyland remained a popular destination for visitors of generations. This building will be closing June 5th and reopening June 9th. This building houses three rides, two shops and one restroom. That's six different amenities for guests inside of this one building. Curious as to why, during the busiest season, Disney would close three iconic attractions - Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride? You can see those shingles are all starting to pop up but what else could it be? With all the recent fire concerns could it be just to remove a lot of debris on the rooftop that's gathered over the years. The gutter has all of those items that have been collected in the gutter. Let's examine the overall shape of this amazing building. I understand this area right here takes us up above the area where Mr. Toad is. I don't know if you're above Mr. Toad the entire time but why else would they take you up on the second floor other than to conserve space? There's the Peter Pan tree where you can see the initials of Peter Pan and Wendy Darling. You can hear the Peter Pan Loop through this door. This turret over here is where the Peter Pan style roof and the Bavarian Village begins. This corner pocket and how it all comes together is no accident. The parallel alignment that you see is imaginary. It's a jigsaw puzzle of little pockets. Every so often it bends and folds and pops out and extrudes and goes back in just making one big building look as if it actually is a European style Village. This building spans from across the Matterhorn, and wraps around the east side of the castle. The architecture is stunning. Walt created the look of several different facades for each attraction, in order to give the illusion of multiple structures. To see MORE of this beautiful building AND the three attractions, watch the video slideshow! In the window of Trolley Treats confectionery store on Buena Vista Street, is a model of Rock Candy Mountain. It was Imagineer and Disney Legend Claude Coats who worked on concept art for the mountain back in 1957, and while the project was never built, the idea will live on in the whimsical model that guests can enjoy in the front window of the candy shop. The first ever oddity of Disneyland Disney as you know has a rich 65 year history and in that history so many amazing things have come and gone but today we'll look at the weird and the bizarre. If you've ever been over into Disney's California Adventure (DCA) and walked down Buena Vista Street, you may have come across trolley treats - the candy shop on the right across from Starbucks. You may have stopped and looked in the window and wondered to yourself, what am I looking at? Where did this come from? This window has a mountain full of candy in it. There is a backstory because we know everything at Disneyland has a backstory and is all connected. Nothing's by random. We're going to look at what was originally going to be the first ever expansion of Disneyland: Rock Candy Mountain. Imagine going into Fantasyland through Sleeping Beauty's castle working your way around King Arthur's carousel, only in the background not seeing Casey Jr or the Storybook Land Canal boats but seeing a giant mountain made out of candy. Rock Candy Mountain would be a mountain made full of candy, chocolate, gum drops, marshmallows and a candy waterfall! Imagine waterfalls of chocolate pouring over the side of a mountain. How could you resist? When Casey Junior Circus train and the Storybook Land canal boats opened they didn't have any sort of real landscaping, this was going to be the first ever expansion of the park. The miniature buildings hadn't been put in yet. Only concept art exists by famous Disney Imagineer Claude Coates. There's lots of little details. From the Casey Jr platform imagine walking up onto the path on the edge of a mountain just to ride Casey Jr. The sign has been made out of lollipops and a canopy. To the right we see a friendly water tower that's going to fill our steam engine back up with water. There's an orange waterfall and a pink waterfall. Casey Jr would load, from this awesome platform adorned with lollipops, we would go through a tunnel and begin our journey around Rock Candy mountain. Walt's original idea was the mountain itself to be built out of crystal rock candy so it would look transparent and later decided that would be next to impossible to clean. To the left is a candy cane bridge and probably the incline that would take us up Rock Candy mountain and slowly work our way back down the the circular tracks. Imagine getting into your Storybook Land canal boat and slowly drifting into a tunnel working your way to Emerald City because the story line was, as you enter Rock Candy mountain you're going to work your way to Oz where Dorothy is enjoying her birthday party. Imagine the different vignettes you would have floated past to work your way to this birthday party celebration. Let's drift through as we make our way to Dorothy's birthday celebration. L Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was first published in 1900 which meant that Walt Disney would have been among the first generation of kids to grow up with the story. When the rights to the novels were up for sale, Walt purchased them all which meant he suddenly had the ability to create any project he wanted, utilizing the characters from the world of Oz. Except he couldn't do anything with the origin story so Walt began development on a project which was set to star almost all of The Mouseketeers. It was going to be about Dorothy having to return to Oz to somehow help the Cowardly Lion who was under a spell and he become evil and a corrupt ruler.
As Walt was looking at expanding the park, he was already thinking three steps ahead. Disneyland was built in 1955. Sleeping Beauty hadn't been released yet but Cinderella had. It would have been expected for him to build Cinderella's castle in the heart of his new park. Walt being a profound promoter knew that putting Sleeping Beauty's castle in the park would help promote the film. He was spending a lot of money and time on so He wanted to use Disneyland to promote a future projects. He wanted to use the interior of Rock Candy mountain to promote the Rainbow Road to Oz, a movie that he wanted to work on to continue telling the story of the Wizard of Oz. Now there's very very little concept art, from this their plan was to extend the tracks and the ride paths for both the Casey Junior Circus train as well as the Storybook Land Canal attraction and both the train and the canal boats would go in and around the mountain. Guests would get to see different scenes and characters from The Wizard of Oz with the through line being that all of the characters were preparing for a birthday party for Dorothy. The grand finale of the ride was actually attending Dorothy's surprise party. Walt's hoped to adapt The Wizard of Oz into a feature-length film reportedly after Snow White. However trying to get Snow White to happen was too slow to secure the rights to The Wizard of Oz, which meant that MGM got the rights to The Wizard of Oz and made the movie. For better or worse the project was canceled and didn't go any further than a couple of production numbers aired as previews for the Disney TV show. Now all of the time, money, resources and actors that were going to be into the Wizard of Oz project ended up being in Disney's Babes in Toyland. Below you'll find rare images of the concept. |
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