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PAGE CONTENTS: A Few Tidbits
Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs Mary Poppins
1955 - Disneyland
Opens
Club 33
A Few Tidbits
Animation artists love inside jokes. In the Disney film Beauty
and the Beast (1991), the road signs that Belle's father encounters in the forest show the names of two California cities:
one points to Anaheim, while the other points down a dark, sinister-looking path to Valencia. In truth, Anaheim is the site
of Disneyland, while the rival Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement theme park is in the city of Valencia. In 1940, Walt Disney's Fantasia was the first film in history to use stereophonic
sound. Ever the perfectionist, Disney personally paid for equipping the New York and Los Angeles Cathay theaters with stereo
speakers for his pet film's world premiere. Unfortunately, the film bombed at the box office.
In March 2000,
the Disney company reversed its 43-year ban on mustaches for its theme-park employees. A memo sent to the 12,000 Disneyland
and Walt Disney World employees said guests would be comfortable with “neatly trimmed mustaches.” Founding father
Walt Disney sported his own mustache, but that didn't stop him in 1957 from banning facial hair. He did this to distance
his crew from stereotypical county-fair “carnies.” The grooming code at the theme parks still bans beards, goatees,
piercings, and unnatural hair colors.
In the scrolling final credits of Disney's Fantasia, the sorcerer's name
is listed as "Yensid" – Disney spelt backwards.
Every plant in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim,
California, is edible. Plants in this section of the amusement park include bananas, strawberries, tomatoes, and more. Guest
are more than welcome to pick their fill.
For the Disney film Aladdin (1992), Robin Williams agreed to work for "scale,"
the Screen Actors Guild minimum of $485 per day, plus a painting by Pablo Picasso.
H.R. Haldeman and Ron Ziegler, who helped plan
the Watergate burglary for President Nixon, both worked at Disneyland when they were younger.
Box-office champ
Toy Story (1995) is said to be filled with subtle inside jokes. One is in the name of the evil boy who lives next door to
Andy and the toys. Sid Phillips, the wicked boy, was reportedly inspired by a former Pixar employee of the same last name
who was known to disassemble toys and use the parts to build bizarre creations.
Cowboy singer Rex Allen narrated more than 80
Walt Disney films.
Discovering two photographs of nude women among the film's more than 110,000
frames, Disney Studios recalled 3.4 million copies of the kiddie home video release of The Rescuers (1977), featuring the
voices of Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor.
Disney World in Florida was opened to the public in 1971. The amusement park was
the largest in the world, set within 28,000 acres. It required a $400-million investment, and did not do well during the first
year it was opened. Only 10,000 people visited Disney World during that initial year. With time, however, the attendance numbers
rose to more than 10,000 people an hour.
Disney World in Orlando, Florida, covers 30,500 acres (46 square miles), making
it twice the size of the island of Manhattan, New York.
Disney's Mulan was the first feature
length production created by Walt Disney Feature Animation, Florida, located at Disney/MGM Studios at Walt Disney World.
Mulan did not do well in China. Many Chinese, especially the elderly, complained that the title character
looked too Western.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
No one can say just when Walt Disney began thinking about undertaking
his biggest project to date, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but by the summer of 1934, his ideas were beginning to take
concrete form. An exploratory outline that he distributed to his animation staff, dated August 9, 1934, included the following
discussion of the dwarfs' names: "The names which follow each suggest a type of character and the names will immediately identify
the character in the minds of the audience." Some of the names that were considered, then discarded, included Scrappy, Doleful,
Crabby, Wistful, Dumpy, Soulful, Tearful, Snappy, Helpful, Gaspy, Gloomy, Busy, Dirty, Awful, Dizzy, Shifty, and Biggy-Wiggy.
In 1938, Walt Disney received a special honor for his film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Disney was given an Oscar and
seven miniature statuettes to commend his film.
In the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the dwarfs are indistinct,
interchangeable characters. For Disney's version, more than 50 names and personalities were thought up -- including Tubby,
Burpy, and Biggy-Wiggy -- before the final Seven Dwarf names were chosen.
MARY POPPINS
Mary Poppins is a series of children's books written
by P. L. Travers and illustrated by Mary Shepard.
Van Dyke's attempt at a British accent was nonetheless
widely ridiculed and is still frequently parodied. It is still often cited as one of the worst attempts at a British accent
by an American actor.
In 2006 this film ranked #6 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals.
Magic Performed
* Blows other potential nannies arriving at the Banks
home away in a gust of wind.
* Flies to the Banks home with an umbrella.
* Pulls out the Banks children's
ripped advertisment from her pocket.
* Sits on the Banks staircase railing and slides upwards.
* Pulls out
a hatstand, potted plant and lamp from her carpetbag.
* Cleans up the children's nursery by clicking her fingers.
* Duets with her reflection.
* Leads Bert, Jane Banks and Michael Banks to jump into a street painting.
*
Leads Bert, Jane Banks and Michael Banks on a walk above the London rooftops.
* Flies away from the Banks home with
her umbrella.
Songs Performed
* A Spoonful of Sugar
* Jolly Holiday
* Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
* Stay Awake
* I Love to Laugh
* Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)
* Chim Chim Cher-ee
1955 - Disneyland Opens
by Jennifer Rosenberg, About.com guide.
When they were little, Walt Disneywould take his two young
daughters, Diane and Sharon, to play at the carousel at Griffith Park in Los Angeles every Sunday. While his daughters enjoyed
their repeated rides, Disney sat on park benches with the other parents who had nothing to do but watch. It was on these Sunday
excursions that Walt Disney began to dream of an activity park that had things for both children and parents to do.
At
first, Disney envisioned an 8-acre park which would be located near his Burbank studios and be called, "Mickey Mouse
Park." However, as Disney began to plan themed areas, he quickly realized that 8-acres would be way too small for his
vision.
Although World War II and other projects put Disney's theme park on the back burner for many years, Disney continued
to dream about his future park. In 1953, Walt Disney was finally ready to start on what would become known as Disneyland.
The first part of the project was to find a location. Disney hired the Stanford Research Institute to find an appropriate
location that consisted of at least 100-acres, was located near Los Angeles, and could be reached by a freeway. The company
found for Disney a 160-acre orange orchard in Anaheim, California.
Next came finding funding. While Walt Disney put up
much of his own money to make his dream a reality, he didn't have enough personal money to complete the project. Disney
then contacted financiers to help. But however much Walt Disney was enthralled with the theme park idea, the financiers he
approached were not. Many of the financiers could not envision the monetary rewards of a place of dreams. To gain financial
support for his project, Disney turned to the new medium of television. Disney made a plan with ABC: ABC would help finance
the park if Disney would produce a television show on their channel. The program Walt created was called "Disneyland"
and showed previews of the different themed areas in the new, upcoming park.
On July 21, 1954, construction on the park began. It was a momentous undertaking to build Main Street, Adventureland,
Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland in only one year. The total cost of building Disneyland would be $17 million.
On July 17, 1955, 6,000 by-invitation-only guests were invited for a special preview of Disneyland before it opened
to the public the following day. Unfortunately, 22,000 extra people arrived with counterfeit tickets.
Besides the huge numbers of extra people on this first day, many other things went
wrong. Included in the problems were a heat wave that made the temperature unusually and unbearably hot, a plumber's strike
meant only a few of the water fountains were functional, women's shoes sunk into still soft asphalt which had been laid
the night before, and a gas leak caused several of the themed areas to be closed temporarily.
Despite these initial
setbacks, Disneyland opened to the public on July 18, 1955, with an entrance fee of $1. Over the decades, Disneyland has added
attractions and opened the imaginations of millions of children.
What was true when Walt Disney stated it during the
opening ceremonies in 1995 still stands true today: "To all who come to this happy place - welcome. Disneyland is your
land. Here age relives fond memories of the past and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland
is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America... with the hope that it will be a source
of joy and inspiration to all the world. Thank you."
©2010
About.com, a part of The New York Times. All rights reserved.
Club 33
Contrary to popular belief, Disneyland
has a full liquor license which is used when the place closes down to the general public to accommodate private parties. But
there is one place in Disneyland that is always open to sell booze: Club 33. Club 33 is a private club located in the heart
of the New Orleans Square section of Disneyland. Officially maintained as a secret feature of the theme park, the entrance
of the club is located next to the Blue Bayou Restaurant at “33 Royal Street” with the entrance recognizable by
an ornate address plate with the number 33 engraved on it. Fees for joining range from 10 – 30 thousand US dollars and
membership comes with a car park. If you want to join the club, you have to go to the end of the fourteen year waiting list.
Copyright ©2010, Listverse. All rights reserved.
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