Why (For) did Walt Disney actually have Disneyland’s Submarine Voyage built ?

Jim Hill

17 years ago

Julie L. writes in to say:

All of the other Disney sites have been running stories this week about Disneyland‘s “Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage“. So what’s your take on this classic Tomorrowland attraction coming back to life after being shut down for almost nine years now ?

Dear Julie —

To be honest, what I find interesting about Disneyland’s old Submarine Voyage attraction isn’t that it’s returning with a “Finding Nemo” -themed overlay. Or even that this Tomorrowland classic is returning to service at all.

No, what I find fascinating about the Submarine Voyage is that it may be the very first theme park attraction to ever have been built out of spite.

Don’t believe me ? Then check out this article that legendary Hollywood gossip Hedda Hopper wrote for the Los Angeles Times back in February of 1965, which featured this attention-getting headline:

Rumored Sell-Out Denied by Disney

Another rumor bit the dust when I called Walt Disney to check the story that he was selling out everything — studio and Disneyland — to CBS. “Absolutely untrue,” said he. “With the business ‘Mary Poppins‘ is doing, Disney might make an offer to buy CBS. Years ago, I tried to sell them on coming in with me at Disneyland. They weren’t interested. They put their money in Pacific Ocean Park instead, and lost their shirts.”

Vintage postcard courtesy of Google Images

Walt sounds pretty angry in that quote, don’t you think ? Well, there’s good reason for that. You see, in September of 1953, Roy Disney flew out to NYC to meet with the various heads of the television networks. Roy was looking to trade a Disney-produced weekly TV series for the funds that Walt desperately needed to get started on construction of Disneyland.

As the story goes, Roy’s first stop was the corporate headquarters of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Which only made sense given that CBS was then known as the “Tiffany Network” because it was perpetually No. 1 in the ratings. More importantly, because execs who worked at this network always made sure that they only presented top-quality programs that featured the very biggest stars.

Anyway … It would have been quite the feather in Roy’s cap if he had been able to cut a deal with CBS. Have Disney’s very first weekly TV series debut on the nation’s No. 1 network. But the way I hear it, CBS officials rejected Roy’s proposal. Supposedly because Walt refused to shoot a pilot. But also because the “Tiffany Network” didn’t want to be associated with something that sounded as low-class as that “Coney Island” clone that the Disneys wanted to build in an Anaheim orange grove.

Vintage postcard courtesy of Google Images

Of course, hindsight is always 20 / 20. And once Disneyland opened in July of 1955 and proved to be a huge financial success, CBS immediately wanted in on the theme park business. So after spending a year or so scoping out possible construction sites (As well as persuading executives from the Los Angeles Turf Club — I.E. The operators of the Santa Anita Race Track — to come in on the project as their financial partner), “Tiffany Network” officials officially unveiled the project in January of 1957.

According to an article that appeared in the January 30th edition of the New York Times :

The Columbia Broadcasting System is going into the amusement park business, following in the footsteps of American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres and Walt Disney.

Vintage postcard courtesy of Google Images

C.B.S. and the Los Angeles Turf Club, it was announced today, will develop the Ocean Park Pier area in Los Angeles and Santa Monica into a thirty-acre family amusement park. The project, featuring an Oceanarium and a South Seas island among other attractions, will be operated as a year-round enterprise. It is expected to be ready for business early in the summer of 1958.

The joint announcement by Frank Stanton, president of C.B.S., and Charles H. Strub, executive vice president of the Turf Club, said the Santa Monica City Council had voted to grant a twenty-five year lease on the tidelands property.

Now did you notice the most important part of the above article? That CBS was going to take a previously existing amusement pier and radically retheme it? So that this new entity (Which would eventually become known as Pacific Ocean Park) would be as good as Disneyland? If not better?

Vintage postcard courtesy of Google Images

So Ocean Park Pier closes in March of 1957. And CBS hires top people in the then-still-new field of theme park design to come create new rides, shows and attractions for this nearly 60-year-old structure. While press accounts from this period talk about how the “Tiffany Network” was planning on spending some $30,000,000 on their Southern California amusement park project … Truth be told, the total amount that CBS & the Los Angeles Turf Club were willing to invest in the initial overhaul of this Santa Monica landmark was just $10,000,000.

Anywho … Pacific Ocean Park opens with great hoopla on July 28, 1958. With over 20,000 guests turning up for the festivities. Which — of course — featured appearances by dozens of celebrities who were then appearing in various CBS television shows. And over the next week or so, POP (As Pacific Ocean Park eventually came to be known) actually proves to be a bigger draw than Disneyland. With hundreds more tourists pushing their way through the turnstiles in Santa Monica then there were out in Anaheim.

This — of course — does not go unnoticed by Walt Disney, who is just livid about this whole development. First of all because CBS had initially rejected the idea of Disneyland as being something that was far too carny for the “Tiffany Network” to be associated with. And then because the theme park designers that this top-rated television network had hired had so blatantly ripped off many of the rides, shows and attractions that Walt’s designers had created for his park.

Vintage postcard courtesy of Google Images

By that I mean : Disneyland had a “Rocket to the Moon” attraction. Pacific Ocean Park had a “Flight to Mars” ride. Disneyland had an Autopia. Pacific Ocean Park had a “Union 76 Ocean Highway.” Disneyland had a Skyway. Pacific Ocean Park had an Ocean Skyway. The list goes on and on …

But perhaps the rip-off that galled Walt the most was that Pacific Ocean Park had taken Disneyland’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Seas” walk-through and then used it as the inspiration for their own submarine-themed walk-through attraction. Only — in this case — it was the modern version of the Nautilus that POP guests got to tour. The USS Nautilus, to be precise. The world’s first nuclear-powered vessel. The first submarine to ever travel underneath the pack ice and reach the North Pole.

As Todd James Pierce (I.E. The author of a forthcoming book that documents the history of Disneyland’s earliest competitors) explains it, this was a crucial moment for the ol’ Mousetro :

Throughout his life, Walt was not so much an innovator as he was a person driven to produce technologically superior products. The early Alice comedies are a technologically superior version of the Koko (Out of the Inkwell) cartoons. “Steamboat Willie” is a technically superior interplay of sound and image compared to other earlier cartoons who experimented (rather unsuccessfully) with sound. “Steamboat Willie” is usually trotted out at the first “sound” cartoon. But as you know, more accurately, it is the first cartoon to very successfully synchronize music and movement.

Guidebook scan courtesy of Todd James Pierce

From where I stand, I see this same impulse at play (with Disney’s response to POP’s submarine attraction) … POP had a walk-through version of the USS Nautilus. So therefore Walt (– in order to “one up” his competition — had to then create) an actual working version of the Nautilus that took people beneath the polar ice cap.

I know, I know. Some of you may find it very hard to believe that kindly old Uncle Walt actually worked this way. That he could be fiercely competitive. But consider this : The memo that outlined Disneyland’s submarine project — listing which WED employees would tackle what aspects of this new Tomorrowland attraction construction — was dated July 23, 1958. Just five days before Pacific Ocean Park officially opened to the public.

And Walt ? He certainly wasn’t shy when it came to talking with the press in late 1958 & early 1959. During this period (When Pacific Ocean Park was viewed as being a pretty significant threat to Disneyland’s financial future), Disney regularly gave interviews where he talked about how his theme park was …

… pushing rapidly toward completion of a $5,500,000 development program, which will bring the total investment (in the Anaheim theme park) to some $29,000,000 and increase to forty-eight the roster of attractions. These numbered twenty-two when the park opened in 1955.

The big new additions are a scaled-down replica of the Matterhorn, the great peak in Switzerland; a mile-long monorail, and a submarine voyage, all executed with Walt Disney’s ever-surprising Barnum-like flair.

In the underwater feature, visitors will be transported on eight forty-passenger submarines through a man-made seas involving 9,000,000 gallons of water. It will be populated by hundreds of specimens of simulated marine fauna and other features, including a 2,300 pound sea serpent.

Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Walt also made sure that the actual construction of Disneyland’s subs got as much press as possible. Check out this January 1, 1959 article from the Los Angeles Times:

Disneyland Orders Eight Submarines for Sight-Seeing

A West Coast shipyard with considerable experience in turning out ocean-going merchant ships and men-of-war had received an order to build a fleet of eight submarines.

The undersea craft, however, will never fire torpedoes in anger or stalk an enemy convoy. Instead they will be underwater passenger carriers on submarine sight-seeing tours at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA.

The order received by the Los Angeles division of the Todd Shipyards Corporation calls for the construction of eight fifty-two-foot submarines complete with conning towers and diving planes. They will be powered by Diesel-electric machinery.

Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Each of the craft will provide air-conditioned quarters for forty passengers, who will view underwater scenes through heavy-glass port lights. The submarines will operate in a lagoon being built in an expansion of Disneyland. The new section will be known as Tomorrowland.

The submarine flotilla is to be completed by May 1. Previously the shipyard built for Disneyland the steel hull for the stern-wheeler Mark Twain and the hull and skeleton framework of the square-rigged vessel Columbia, both of which are in operation at the park.

Then — of course — the actual opening of this new Tomorrowland attraction was one of the high points of “Kodak presents Disneyland ’59,” a 90-minute-long ABC television special that aggressively hyped all of the rides that had just been added to the Anaheim theme park. Which (hopefully) would then prove to the world that Walt wasn’t a man who’d just lie down and let his competition roll right over him.

Of course, the irony of this whole situation was — by the Summer of 1959 — Pacific Ocean Park was already in serious financial trouble. This rethemed amusement pier never even came close to making the amount of money that CBS executives had originally hoped it would. Which is why — in November of that same year — rather than continue to ” … lose their shirt,” the “Tiffany Network” sold its oceanside theme park at a loss.

POP then changed hands a number of times before it finally closed for good in October of 1967. The now-abandoned theme park then became a popular hang-out for the local surfing community.

Anyhow … Long story short : That’s why (I guess) that I look at Disneyland’s subs a bit differently than most folks do. I see these vehicles for the interesting place that they occupy in theme park history. Back when Walt Disney was in an amusement park equivalent of an arms race. And he was determined that the “Happiest Place on Earth” had to top POP.

Vintage postcard courtesy of Google Images

Your thoughts ?