Can you picture a Kermit-green version of the Matterhorn? Or — for that matter — Miss Piggy standing in for that winkin’ Cleopatra that you see as you float through “it’s a small world” ? Or Animal filling in for one of those ne’er do-well cads who chases the wenches in “Pirates of the Caribbean” but never quite catches them?
If Jack Lindquist (i.e. the first president of Disneyland Park) had had his way, this is what Guests would have encountered in 1991 when the Muppets were supposed to have filled in as the hosts of The Happiest Place on Earth while Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto were supposed to have gone on a year-long vacation.
Miss Piggy rides in the pumpkin coach as she fills in for Cinderella during the 1990 CBS
television special which celebrated Disneyland’s 35th anniversary.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved
How close did this come to actually happening? Well, the way that I’ve always heard this story, the Imagineers were inside of the Main Street Opera House on a
Friday afternoon in late December 1990, taking measurements for the
“Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” change-out (which was to have gotten
underway during the first week of January 1991, right after Disneyland
had wrapped up its annual Christmas celebration. So that the Opera could then become the home of the West Coast version of “Jim Henson’s MuppetVision 3D“) when a frantic call came in from
1401 Flower Street …
To learn about what happened next: go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-hill/disney-muppets-henson_b_1141087.html