The Happiest Place On Earth Turns 60

Happy Diamond Anniversary Disneyland!

It's early evening on July 17th, 2015. Vicky and I have just arrived at Disneyland. There's a celebratory atmosphere as we approach the turnstiles, our tickets in hand. We're both just vibrating with excitement, and I can't help but imagine how Walt Disney must have felt on opening day exactly 60 years ago. I'm sure he was excited with the hope that the embodiment of his dream would be a success. We're excited because we know that it was. Once admitted we walk towards one of the entrance tunnels that pass beneath the railroad tracks. Looking up, I see the brass plaque that states: "Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy". Vicky and I walk through the tunnel -- such an easy thing -- and yet the plaque speaks the truth, and the magic happens again this time...like every time. Suddenly, we are now somewhere entirely different than where we started. A different place, a better place, and arguably a different time as well. We have emerged into Disneyland, specifically turn of the century Main Street USA (I guess that's two turns of the century ago now). This feeling just never gets old, and it might even be getting better as our love of this Park grows and deepens with every passing year.

Walt really gambled it all on this untested new concept. Sure, there were other amusement parks, but there had never been anything quite like this. His park had a magic core. It was born in the mind of a film maker, and that made it subtly yet importantly different from any other amusement enterprise of the day. The tunnel that admits guests to the Park is a three dimensional transition or "fade" between two scenes of a living film that guests are a part of. It's difficult to say how much of this genius was consciously created, and how much was the result of the ingrained but subconscious film-maker's thought processes that formed the mental groundwork for Walt's WED Enterprises team. But either way, it shows up time and time again throughout Disneyland, and it's a critical component of why this all works so well. I was always afraid that if I started to really learn about the history of the Park, if I peeked behind the curtain of its creation, that the magic would all come crumbling down around me. Like Toto exposing the Wizard of OZ. But Walt's wizardry is made of sturdier stuff, and the more I learned, the better it all got. There is a layer of genius beneath every surface, and further study reveals yet another layer beneath that. The magic of Sorcerer Yensid runs deep.

Engine No.4 - The Ernest S. Marsh

Vicky and I wander into Town Square and are rewarded with a pleasant anti-shock to the senses. This place is tranquil, simple to understand, and clearly a place where your real life can't get at you. We feel an immediate sense of relief, and happiness settles over us like a blanket warm from the dryer. We've arrived a little late, and so we've had to plan our own festivities to celebrate the 60th birthday of the only Disney Park that Walt ever actually set foot in. We've decided to do honor to the Park by enjoying an "opening day" attraction. It just feels right to do something tonight that the very first visitors to the Park also did back on that hot summer day in '55. There are still plenty of opening day attractions left, though none have remained completely unchanged over the years. For our purposes we've selected the Disneyland Railroad as that most quintessentially "Walt" of them all. We climb the steps to the Main Street Station, and wait for the next steam engine to arrive. It turns out to be the "Ernest S. Marsh" or the No.4 engine. It wasn't really yet in service on opening day, but that in no way sullies the experience of taking the "Grand Circle Tour" via live steam around Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom. The conductor yells, "All aboaaarrrd!" and we take our seats for some old time magic, Walt style.

Main Street USA

It's been said that Walt Disney built Disneyland because he wanted one. I've been enjoying its wonders for 48 years now (since 1967) and the Park is woven into the fabric of my life. I feel very lucky, since Walt himself had only 11 years with his finest achievement. John Hench, one of the greats of Walt's early team, spoke often of the "architecture of reassurance" that the Park's design elements are meant to convey. Main Street USA is a fine example. While the persistent legend held that it was inspired by Walt's "hometown" main street of Marceline, Missouri (Walt was actually born In Chicago) it isn't really inspired by any main street anywhere. In fact it is actually a clever distillation of design elements that call to mind an idealized Victorian era street as we imagine it might have been. While the buildings themselves are constructed in diminishing scale, they are not all 5/8 scale as yet another persistent legend claimed. (This can be traced back to Art Linkletter's inaccurate statement during the opening day television broadcast that the entire Park was built at 5/8 scale. It's true that some things were, but only a few). The first floors of the Main Street buildings are all built approximately full scale, with second floors at 3/4 to 5/8, and third floors at approximately 1/2. This is a use of the film makers technique of “forced-perspective” which makes the buildings look taller than they actually are. But the undersized buildings do something else too. They produce in adult visitors an unconscious sense of having returned to a well known childhood locale. We have all felt this while re-visiting a childhood home when we notice that everything seems so much smaller than it did to us as children. We are of course simply bigger. This sensation then becomes tied to the feeling of having been to Disneyland before as children, whether we really had been there as children or not. The visitor is thus affected from the moment they enter the Park by all of these skillfully applied layers of nuance: the fade-like tunnel transition from “out there” to “in here”; the profound sense of time having slowed, or perhaps even reversed; the perfectly idealized environment of a simpler past life with horse drawn trolleys and gas streetlamps; the subconscious effect of the altered scale of the buildings which produces a child-like sense of wonder, safety, and of having come home. This is the architecture of reassurance of which John Hench speaks, and it is the true genius of the mind of Walt Disney.

Rancho del Zocalo

Sadly, tonight is not the night for an unhurried stroll down a quaint and calming Main Street USA to savor its design magic. It's Disneyland's 60th birthday, and the Park is packed beyond belief. Brilliant new nighttime entertainment offerings of parades and fireworks have drawn a multitude to the sidewalks and rendered them nearly impassable. No worries though...Vicky and I are veterans, and the Park can't really throw anything at us that we can't handle. Sticking to the axiom that Disneyland should be sipped and not guzzled, we remain on the train after our Grand Circle Tour, and let the chuff and hiss of the steam engine pull us away from the mob and around the tracks for just one more stop to the New Orleans Square station before we disembark. Our pace tonight will be an easy one as we continue our opening day quest and wander over to the Rancho del Zocalo for some much needed sustenance. Frontierland has ever had a part of Old Mexico in its DNA, and while the names have changed, the experience of a Mexican meal in Disney's Old West has only gotten better. This dining venue is simply stunning at night, and it's always a struggle to keep our hands off the cameras while we eat. It's delicious Tostada salads for us tonight, and we choose a table next to a stone wall that was almost certainly there those 21,915 days ago (give or take a few) when Walt was trying to figure out which of the 29 cameras were on him for the then unprecedented and trouble plagued ABC television special. Our night is going a little more smoothly than that as we relax after our meal. We're heading for big fun next...Elvis is here!

Nighttime magic at Disneyland didn't start right away. It took a suggestion from Tommy Walker to get the ball rolling for the nightly summertime Fantasy In The Sky fireworks display. It's hard to imagine a Disneyland without colorful fireworks exploding directly over the Castle (or seeming to – since most are really launched from far behind the castle and outside of the Park proper for safety) but the institution did not even begin until 1958. (As an aside, it's also impossible to imagine any major sporting event without the impetus of the 6 musical note anthem: “Da da da DUT da DUH – followed by “CHARGE!” - Yet indeed it was Tommy Walker himself that wrote this in 1946 for the University of Southern California Trojans). The reason for the fireworks was not entirely entertainment related though, and was actually part of a shrewd plan to keep Park guests there much later so that they would need to eat dinner in the Park. This is the kind of business that all enterprises should endeavor to engage in, because the payoff for the guest so vastly outweighs any revenues generated by the effort to increase the evening receipts at the Park restaurants. While the evening meal for the family and whatever it cost would be quickly forgotten by the Disneyland guests of the late '50s, the immeasurable wonder of seeing fireworks erupt over the fairy-tale towers of Sleeping Beauty Castle would be engraved in their minds as a treasured memory for life. In the end, all we own are our experiences, and this one has become a cultural touchstone that defies the affixing of a price.

We ignore the fireworks tonight (since they're not an “opening day” thing anyway) and take the less traveled “Big Thunder Trail” to avoid the crowds on our way around to Tomorrowland. We pause on the bridge overlooking the lake that was once part of the “Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland.” Some real nature has moved in, and we see good sized turtles, bright orange Koi fish, and crawdads so big they look like lobsters. Carrying on to the land of the future, we stake out our place in front of the stage at the Tomorrowland Terrace to await the arrival of Elvis and his rock-a-billy band. “Elvis” in this case is the gifted impersonator Scot Bruce. We've seen him before, and he's so good that it's difficult after the show to shake the feeling that you were actually ten feet away from Elvis Presley himself. Now I have to apply a healthy dose of opening day double-think. While the details of the setting might be all wrong, the vibe is all right. This Tomorrowland venue and its immediate surroundings didn't come to be until 1967, but that was the year of my first visit, so that's cool. And while Elvis didn't really play Disneyland on opening day, he could have, so I let the odd mix of nostalgia wash over me as the stage rises up smoothly from below ground. Scot takes the microphone, calling on the Spirit of Walt and drawing our attention to the wonders of what might be the greatest monument ever built to a man. The people gathered near the stage aren't run of the mill Disneyland fans. They're pretty much all “foamers” like us, and there's hardly a dry eye in the house...he's got us all by the heart now. Then Scot launches into his “Tribute To The King Of Rock-N-Roll” and it feels like the birthday party has just really started. During his show is when it happens. I'm holding Vicky, and Elvis/Scot is singing “Can't Help Falling In Love” (Yeah I know – released in '61 – shhhh...don't spoil it!) I can never predict it, and it always arrives without warning like a happy sledgehammer...a moment of pure joy. They are rare, and brief, but you'll know one when you get one. A moment of pure joy is one so perfect, so happy, that you could freeze it and live in it forever and ever, but you can't freeze it, and then it's gone. They make life worth living, and I cherish every one I get. Thanks Vicky...Thanks Scot...Thanks Walt.

"Elvis"

If Disneyland itself has a heart beating in its chest, then surely it's located in Fantasyland. The iconic Castle is the “wienie” (Walt's term for a visual enticement, drawn from an animal trainer's use of a hot dog as an incentive) that beckons all that enter Disneyland toward the home of some of the Park's most beloved and long lived attractions. Here Peter Pan and Wendy fly forever over the streets of London, Snow White is saved by the Dwarfs time and again, and Mr. Toad drives wildly to his humorously macabre end in Hell. Here we see the closest links between Walt's animation heritage, and the genesis of the Park. Though all these attractions were there on opening day, they have seen changes over the decades. None however have lost the simple magic that delighted those first guests 60 years ago. Peter Pan especially maintains his position as the patriarch of the “dark ride” family, as new Park guests still gasp even today at the giddy sense of flight aboard a pirate ship sailing the night skies. What wasn't there on opening day was the fairy-tale architectural perfection of the village buildings that surround the King Arthur Carrousel today. Money ran out, and concessions were made, leaving the original Fantasyland structures to make their debut wearing flat and uninspired Medieval “tournament tent” facades. It wasn't until 1983 that Disney Imagineers bit the bullet and leveled the whole area, so that it could be reborn as it was “meant” to be. (What would Walt want? I'm sure this question still lurks in the minds of every Imagineer today, and even Tony Baxter was said to have asked himself; “What have we done?” when he surveyed the demolition of the original Fantasyland. Not to worry Tony...you did the right thing). The continuing popularity of these attractions is owed to the clever avoidance of any effort to simply retell the story of a beloved animated film. Instead, each attraction succeeds in evoking a specific feeling in the guest. With Peter Pan, it's the wonder of flight, with Snow White it's fear, and with Mr. Toad it's wild abandon. While the attraction designers never quite pulled off their original intention of placing the guests themselves in the role of Peter, or Snow, or Toad, it didn't matter in the end. The feelings they intended us to have are still there today. The guests of Disneyland are not passive observers, but are a living part of the show, on levels within levels.

Fantasyland

And so it is with a kind of unconscious drifting, nudged by forces both unseen and unfelt, that Vicky and I find ourselves crossing the drawbridge and entering Fastasyland via the one-true-way of passing through the Castle itself. I don't need to waste a moment of thought on it; I know in my heart that this is the only place to be right now as midnight of the Park's 60th birthday approaches. We'd hoped to catch a flight with Peter and Wendy, but the recent refurbishment has driven typically long lines for this attraction to lengths I've never seen before, and I was here on July 4th during the 50th. Every cloud has a silver lining though, and since Peter is getting all the love tonight, it's looking like Snow White is a “walk-on.” We enter the beautiful building and I'm filled with a sense of confidence that Walt is smiling somewhere. The feeling of anticipation has never dulled for me, and it's still here tonight as we board our ore cart and glide through the scenes. The Dwarf's mine remains a favorite, and I wonder jokingly if this is where they got all the diamonds for the 60th. Leaving Snow White, Pinocchio is next with no wait to speak of there either. While he's a relative newcomer, it's still a pretty good attraction, and I never tire of the fireworks or seeing the Blue Fairy vanish. The happy ending is a nice touch too, since it's really the only dark ride that has a proper one. As we say goodnight to Figaro and Cleo, there's a decision to be made. We could make it into the Mr. Toad line before 12:00, but that would mean it's the last ride of the night, and I hate to finish such a magical evening with a trip to Hell. I know what to do. If Fantasyland is the heart of the Park, then the King Arthur Carrousel is the warm, glowing, heart of Fantasyland. The Carrousel is still loading, and there's nobody in the queue at all. We hurry over, hoping to make it on since it might be our last chance. The cast member closes the gate in front of us, and I feel hope slip away. He says, "I'll get you on the next one; it's the last ride of the night...will that be OK?” OK?? It will be PERFECT! I let him know that Vicky is angling for Jingles, and he gives me the “nod” of understanding. When our turn to load comes, he opens the gate for us and Vicky walks quickly to the left where she knows Jingles will be waiting for her. She climbs into the gleaming saddle of Walt's favorite horse, and I take my place on my own galloping steed beside her. The music starts, the horses surge forward, and I think fondly of my Grandfather and his lifelong love of carrousels. Our horses glide smoothly up and down, side by side as the glimmering nighttime village of Fantasyland whirls around us. 60 years...the last ride of the night...spinning on the heart of the heart of Walt's labor of love..what could be better...?

Jingles

Visiting Disneyland is a skill. I don't think I'm being overconfident when I say that Vicky and I are pretty good at it these days. Like any skill, it took a great deal of practice and a bunch of mistakes to get it “right.” (Right for us that is). It started with childhood visits during which my parents called the shots, but they gave me a groundwork of familiarity to build on. When Vicky and I first started coming on our own, the visits were brief by necessity, and so we attacked the Park with military precision and planning. Armed with detailed touring plans, and an alarm clock set for 5:00 AM, we'd be right at the front of the “rope drop” mob ready to bolt (by which I mean to walk calmly and safely) to the latest hot attraction. Then, following our touring plans, we'd beetle from place to place so as to maximize the number of attractions we could experience before the crowds drove us out. Wasting time on things like eating and bathroom breaks was highly frowned upon. What mattered was the “list” and crossing things off of it. We'd take an afternoon break, and then start our touring plan again as the heat and overtired kids drove the mobs back out in the late afternoon. Oh, we'd get it ALL done in three days, and the good stuff more than once, but the pace was grueling even back then, and we were just kids ourselves. I had it all wrong. The word I had missed out on was “Park” (I've been spelling it with a capital “P” all along for a reason). Disneyland is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a more concentrated patch of “beautiful” anywhere. It is also one of the most photographed locations on Earth, and for good reason. Even at today's sky-high ticket prices, you would have your money's worth if you experienced not a single attraction, but instead simply spent the day there enjoying the lush and detailed surroundings. This is what I was missing. Every square inch is soaked in the beauty of achievement. Whether it's the living legacy of Bill Evans' gardens and landscaping, or the architectural genius that lets me move from the Old West of the late 1800's to the Jungles of Africa or Asia with only twenty steps, it's an honor to just BE there. We won't go for less than two weeks anymore, and it's this luxury of a casual pace, mixed with experience, and a growing knowledge of the Park's history, that makes each perfect minute melt into the next with no sense of pressure or obligation. Now there is only happiness, in what is truthfully, the Happiest Place On Earth.

Fantasy Faire

It's after midnight now as we cross the drawbridge again, and that means it's time for a “photo-safari.” Nighttime at Disneyland has a special beauty, and thanks to the advances in cameras of late, we can finally do it justice. Vicky and I head out to the hub, and as usual we're overwhelmed by the options. The Castle is resplendent in its diamond birthday suit, but there's still a throng of people out front taking pictures of it with their phones...sigh. We decide to go over and work the now vacant Fantasy-Faire. It's not long before the ubiquitous but patient security guys make their appearance. They're used to this last minute effort to capture the park sans guests and we chat amiably with them while we compose and shoot. Now, working our way out, we hunt for more subjects. This last hour is a magic time for the camera buffs. All but the sturdiest have fled, leaving only islands of color and light for us to try to freeze for later enjoyment. Soon every entrance to every land is occupied by security, and all that's left to us is Main Street. The parade and fireworks mobs are long gone. The stores are still doing a booming trade though, as the demand for 60th souvenirs seems bottomless. The gingerbread roof-lines are all sparkling with the golden glow of popcorn lights, and there's an older couple still sitting close together on the bench of “Rolly's” porch, savoring a moment of solace at the end of the day. We stop in at the Cinema, and catch a black-and-white Mickey cartoon for old time's sake. The Cinema too is an opening day attraction, and it feels like a nice way to cap the evening. It's nearly 1:00 AM now, and our way is steadily toward the tunnels. We drift toward the one on our right. That way we pass a little closer to Walt's apartment, the lamp in the window lit to let everyone know that he's “there” tonight, as tradition dictates. With a twinge of pain that I don't think will ever stop, we find ourselves passing again through that transition, but this time from “in there” to “out here.” In there is better. I console myself with the thought that it's only the first day. I turn to Vicky and ask with enthusiasm, “Hey, do you know what we're doin' tomorrow?” Vicky lowers her brow and restrains a knowing smirk as she replies; “What?” and I explode with the answer she already knows is coming; “We're going to DISNEYLAND!”

Goodnight Disneyland!

Fox and Vicky