As we get ready for Disneyland’s 50th anniversary (and all the promises that Disney’s current management team will invariably make about all the great new shows & attractions that the corporation will build at the Anaheim theme park over the next 50 years), I think it’s important to remember that — as often as not — most of these “Coming Attractions” never come to pass.
Case in point: Disneyland’s 30th anniversary celebration. Back in July of 1985, I was one of those lucky reporters who actually got to cover that 30 hour long party. And while I was out back at the press tent loading up on caffiene, I’d regularly get press kits foisted on me by Disneyland’s crack PR staff.
Well, I recently came across one of those old DL press kits while I was downstairs cleaning up the basement. And inside of that press kit was a transcript for Disneyland’s 30th anniversary video press kit. You know, the text that accompanies a pre-recorded story that Disneyland’s PR department has put together? With the hope that some TV station might then want to use this video press kit as the jumping-off point for their own report about the Anaheim theme park’s anniversary celebration.
Sadly, the tape that once accompanied this transcript disappeared ages ago. So I really don’t have any visuals to go with this story. But — even so — I think this transcript will give you a unique snapshot of what was going on within the Walt Disney Company during the summer of 1985. What sort of direction Disneyland seemed to be headed in ‘way back then.
Here. Rather than having me continue to explain what’s on this transcript, why don’t I let you read it for yourself:
NARRATOR: When Disneyland opened 30 years ago, Walt Disney promised it would always be in what he called “a state of becoming.” True to his word, he invested the park’s attraction with the most futuristic ideas imaginable.
FILM CLIP
NARRATOR: Disneyland’s tomorrows are now the responsibility of Disney’s new chairman, Michael Eisner.
MICHAEL EISNER: Disneyland is like a movie theater, because 50% of the people that come to Disneyland live within let’s say a 500 mile radius. You must, like a movie theater, put in a new movie periodically so peopel will want to come back. So we have plans for the next 30 years and I think we’ll make the park, you know, that much more contemporary.
NARRATOR: Some of those plans belong to Disney designer, Tony Baxter.
TONY BAXTER: We have the New Orleans Square and Bear Country area and there’s a lot of property out behind that and we’re thinking about unifying that so we have maybe a “Dixieland,” and strengthening that with maybe – we have a great property both in music and characters called “Song of the South,” we might find ourselves back in the swamps of Dixieland, plummeting down into the old Briarpatch or the Laughing Place to the music of “Zippity-Doo-Da” and those characters. Discovery Bay is a kind of a once-only place in time, it’s a Victorian place that occured at the turn of the century. It’s the kind of place that Jules Verne or H.G. Welles might have inhabited, there’s like I said, a flight on an aerial suspended monorail system that looks like a dirigible and a time machine. So that’s one of our key excitements for the future.
NARRATOR: Tomorrowland, 1955, was a primitive echo of the high tech attractions being planned today.
*** NUNIS: One of the attractions we’re going to be putting in for 1986 is taking the principle of a simulator, that pilots train in, and adapting a show to it, and it’s going to be extremely exciting. You know, Walt Disney was a great visionary. He always thought past his lifetime and probably the great stretch of our company is just that.
MICHAEL EISNER:Well most of the major movie directors today are in their twenties to late forties. All of whom grew up as kids on “The Wonderful World of Disney” and “The Wonderful World of Color” and “Disneyland,” and they are very interested in what happens to Disneyland. And we’ve had conversations with everybody from George Lucas to Steven Spielberg and other young directors who want to help us with Disneyland. So I think you can see what will happen in the next ten years is a big input from those kinds of people.
NARRATOR; Disney’s kind of people, the creative kind, shoudl insure that Disneyland’s next 30 years are as magical as the past.
Okay. Now there are a couple of Disneyland projects mentioned here that never made it off the drawing board. Dixieland for one, and Discovery Bay for another.
Now Dixieland … The idea here was that the Imagineers were going to reconfigure Bear Country so that now this part of the Anaheim theme park would celebrate the world that Mark Twain wrote about in his best selling books. Toward that end, the Imagineers wanted to move the docking area for the rafts over to Tom Sawyer’s Island up to where Bear Country’s Indian War Canoe dock was located. So that the rafts could then help re-enforce the new backstory that WED was trying to tell with Disneyland’s newly renamed Dixeland area.
Another part of this puzzle involved creating a clone of the Mark Twain AA figure that the Imagineers had created for the “American Adventure” pavilion at EPCOT Center. Then installing that Audio Animatronic in one of the “Country Bear Playhouse” ‘s two theaters, where this AA figure (with the help of acclaimed Sam Clemens impersonator Hal Holbrook) would present a severely condensed version of Holbrrok’s one man show, “Mark Twain Tonight!”
Unfortunately, guest surveys showed that too many Disneyland visitors associated the name “Dixie” with the more negative aspects of the Civil War. IN particular, slavery. Which was why Disney executives lost all enthusiasm for renaming Bear Country “Dixieland.”
Mind you, for the very same reason (I.E. That film’s unfortunate association with slavery & the Civil War), Mouse House officials also initially shied away from the idea of building an entire attraction around Walt Disney Productions’ 1946 release. Which was why (for a brief time, anyway) the Imagineers’ plans for “Splash Mountain” were spiked in favor of another flume-based attraction, “The Moonshine Express.”
“And what — pray tell — was the ‘Moonshine Express’ supposed to be like?,” you asked. Well — in this proposed version of a flume ride for Disneyland — there are the good bears that live in Bear Country (I.E. The bruins who live in town and perform at the Country Bear Playhouse) and the bad bears. You know, those bruins who live ‘way out in the woods and brew moonshine.
Well, the local sheriff (Who — if I’m remembering correctly — was supposed to be a brother of Henry’s? You know, the MC of the “Country Bear Jamboree”?) is asking for our help. Which is why we all eventually wound up in hollowed out logs, floating through the swamps out behind Bear Country, trying to find us some moonshiners.
Now the really intriguing part of this attraction is that — just like on “Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin” — all the guests who would ride on the “Moonshine Express” were supposed to be packing heat. As in a long rifle. Which we were supposed to use on any of the stills that we’d spy along our journey.
Of course, where this would get interesting is — about halfway through the attraction — the bears who were brewing this moonshine would begin to realize that we were shooting up their stills. Which is why they’d begin shooting back at us. Now imagine the fun of being inside a Disneyland shooting gallery where the Audio Animatronic targets can actually shoot back.
That sounds like a fun idea, doesn’t it? Sadly, the whole “shooting back at the guests” thing gave Disney execs pause. They worried that the Disney Company might be sending the wrong message to Disneyland’s younger visitors (I.E. Shooting at stuff is fun). Which was why “Moonshine Express” eventually got tabled in favor of another controversial concept. A flume ride based on the characters & settings featured in “Song of the South.”
Which obviously still upset a lot of folks within the Walt Disney Company. But even so, the conventional wisdom was: “Okay, the whole Uncle Remus thing may be too controversial for some Disneyland visitors. But at least we’re not putting long rifles into kids’ hands and telling them ‘ Have fun shooting up all those stills.’ “
As for Discovery Bay … I’m actually working an epic length version of the story of that proposed Disneyland addition. Which all the people who contributed to JHM’s fundraiser back in March have been waiting for oh-so-patiently for the past six months now. (You gotta hang in there just a little while longer, guys. I’ve almost got the debut issue of the JHM newsletter buttoned up.)
As for all that talk by *** Nunis (Who was then the head of Disney Attractions) of Disneyland getting a simulator-based attraction … I find it kind of interested that *** never mentions the “Star Wars” franchise by name. But then here’s Michael Eisner — just a few moments later — talking about the Mouse House’s new close ties to George Lucas & Steve Spielberg. So the info’s all there, if you’re willing to dig for it.
Speaking of Eisner: You know what I really find intriguing about this transcript? Here’s Michael Eisner — less than 9 months on the job as Walt Disney Productions’ new CEO — talking about all the plans that he has for the Anaheim theme park for ” … the next ten years” and “… the next 30 years.”
Me? I can’t help but notice Eisner’s “Disneyland is like a movie theater” analogy and then think about all the movie-based attractions that Uncle Mike has had built at the Anaheim theme park over the past 19 years. I guess that once you’re a studio head, you always think like you’re a studio head. You’re always looking for additional ways to plug your upcoming releases.
Anywho … I thought you folks might enjoy taking a peek at what Disneyland was once supposed to be like (circa 1985). Your thoughts?