Mickey's Mouseorail (& Other Vintage Tomorrowland Ride Vehicles)

In 1987, the Mark III Monorails at Disneyland were retired and replaced with the Mark V Monorails (the Mark IV was designed for use at Walt Disney World).  After retirement, the Mark III "Monorail Red" train was chopped up and converted into "Mickey's Mouseorail."



The Mouseorail was a street-legal vehicle that toured the country in 1990 to promote Disneyland's 35th anniversary.  Prior to embarking on it's promotional tour, it appeared in a pre-parade show for the 101st Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year's Day, and then again at Disneyland in the premiere performance of the Party Gras Parade on January 11th, 1990.



If you would like to see footage of Mickey's Mouseorail making it's debut in the 1990 Tournament of Roses Parade, you can watch it below. The Mouseorail appears at the 5:40 mark, but the video includes the full Disney pre-show, as well as the entire Rose Parade.



Back in the late nineties, I used to drive to and from work using West Street (now Disneyland Drive). This was back when Disney was buying up property for their "resort" expansion. There used to be a small campground/RV park located on the east side of West Street, that backed up against the Disney property. After Disney purchased this property, they put up a gate across the driveway and used this property for storage. One of the items that was stored back there for a while was the Mouseorail. Since it could be seen just sitting there on the other side of the fence, I decided to pull over one day back in March of 1997, and take some pics of it through the opening in the gate.



Note the steering wheel that was installed in the nosecone of the monorail. There is also a pirate ship parade float that can be seen in the distance. I'm not sure which parade that would have been from. In the foreground, we can see a couple boxed-up trees. I wonder where those trees were from and where they ended up?



When it came time to design a new Tomorrowland, the original plan for the former Mission to Mars space was to have it be a restaurant where guests could eat their food while sitting in an old Skyway gondola, a PeopleMover car, or the actual Mouseorail car. One of the old Mission to Mars space capsules (there were two theaters!) was going to be left intact and guests were also going to be able to eat their food in that theater while watching the original "Rocket To The Moon" footage play on the floor and ceiling. Well, as we all know, plans can and do change very easily over at Disney (Helloooo, Westcot and Port Disney!) These plans got scrapped and what we ended up with was Redd Rockett's Pizza Port where guests can eat their food while sitting next to the Monorail, PeopleMover, or Skyway......attraction posters. Waaa waaaa!

It was then decided to just use the old attraction vehicles as decor in both Tomorrowland's Premiere Shop and in the queue of the new Rocket Rods attraction. At this time, the Mouseorail/Monorail Red was chopped up again and a portion of it went into the Rocket Rods queue along with a couple Rocket Jet vehicles, a couple PeopleMover cars, and a car from Space Mountain. (To see pics of the old Tomorrowland attraction vehicles that were used in the Premiere Shop, click here for my previous post from 2009: Vintage Tomorrowland Ride Vehicles.)

For the Rocket Rods queue, the vehicles were painted blue and tape was applied to them to give them a "blueprint" appearance.



You can see in the photo above and below that a mirror was used at the end of both the Monorail and the PeopleMover cars to give the illusion that they are longer and that they are coming out of a tunnel.

I love the way that the PeopleMover cars were just placed on top of the carpet without a base or anything. At least a fake beam-way was recreated for the Monorail. And how about the irony of that statement above the PeopleMover cars? It reads, "In the world of creativity, there's no end to the possibilities." Oh, I think there WAS an end to the possibilities and they reached it with Tomorrowland '98!



This next photo shows a couple of the old Rocket Jet vehicles. On the wall in the background, there are blueprints for the Tomorrowland Moonliner Rocket, as well as one for the Flying Saucer attraction.



Well unfortunately, there was not a happy ending for "Monorail Red." At some point after the closure of the Rocket Rods, that last remaining section of the Mark III Monorail was scrapped and another piece of Disneyland history was lost forever. :-(

(And as a side note, the front section of one of the 1971 Walt Disney World Mark IV monorails was saved after it was retired and is now in the hands of a private collector. To see a brief video tour of it's interior and exterior, click below:)



To see footage of the rescued WDW Mark IV Monorail being reunited with it's designer, Bob Gurr (at Walt's Barn), click below:

Return Of The Omnibus Ride To Destruction!

In my last post, we saw some video footage of the New Tomorrowland construction that was shot from the upper deck of the Disneyland Omnibus. Today I have some photos that were taken from the very same vantage point. This first one was taken of course, from The Plaza. You can see just a bit of the Omnibus parked over to the far left behind the tree.

I should mention that these first three pics were taken in May of 1997, prior to the video that we saw in the last post. Notice the large amoeboid bowl planters are still in place in front of the shiny silver Tomorrowland entrance panels. I wonder what they did with those planters? They were much nicer to look at than the perpetually dead-looking Persimmons trees that are there today.

These next two pics were taken in June of 1997, after the video footage was shot. The amoeboid planters are now gone and you can see that a "pit" is starting to be dug where that piece of....uh, well.....oh, let's just call it revolving space garbage....ended up going. I say, bring back the Palm trees and colorful flowers that graced the Tomorrowland entrance for 30 years!

Omnibus Ride To Destruction! - Part 1

I recently uncovered quite a bit of Disneyland home video footage that I shot back in the nineties and I've decided to start posting some of it. My first Disneyland video posting was of the live Macaws in front of The Swiss Family Treehouse in a post from last month.

First up for today, we have video that was shot in June of 1997 while riding the Omnibus up Main Street towards The Plaza. As it passes Tomorrowland, we get a pretty good view of the demolition that was taking place in preparation for the New Tomorrowland of 1998....or as I like to call it, "Brown Tomorrowland." Note the two Omnibuses passing one another. Do they even run two Omnibuses at the same time anymore? Too bad E.J. Peaker and the Osmonds weren't riding along with us and singing "Down On The Corner"!





This second video begins with the Tomorrowland construction and ends with a ride down Main Street towards Town Square. Note the large Olive trees in The Plaza that have since been removed and also the teepees set up in front of the entrance to Frontierland.....I had forgotten all about those!

Halloween at Disneyland - 1996 (or "Farewell to Tomorrowland")

Well, it's Halloween Time again at the Disneyland Resort! Last year I did a Vintage Disneyland Trip Report from 1995, the very first year that the park decorated for Halloween. Today, I have a few pics from the following year, but not really enough pics to warrant a full blown vintage trip report. So, how about a mini trip report to Disneyland in the Fall of 1996?

Once again, the Maleficent balloon that was originally used to promote Fantasmic in 1992 was resurrected in the fabulous Disneyland Parking Lot. The banner for "Mickey's Halloween Treat" is actually covering the original Fantasmic promo. Artist, blogger, and former DL employee Kevin Kidney coordinated the construction of this mega-Maleficent!

I wonder what happened to this inflatable? Is she being used somewhere to sell cars? (I know... Disney wouldn't allow that!)

This particular year, the floral portrait of Mickey had been reworked and given a "face mask". And look, the Kalamazoo Handcar is parked out in front of the train!

The flowers at the entrance to Tomorrowland were also changed to more of a Fall-ish color palette. (In today's Tomorrowland, the flowers have been replaced with brown concrete rocks.) Yay, the Rocket Jets are exactly where they should be in this picture! Notice the construction wall off in the distance. Work had already begun on converting the wonderful 1967 Carousel Theater building into.....well, nothing.


If we pan just a little to the left, we see that there was a special Hunchback of Notre Dame display set up just for Halloween. The Disney animated film had been released earlier that year. (For the previous Halloween, a Goofy topiary stood in one of the Tomorrowland planters.)

Note the crane on top of the Matterhorn in the photo below. In the nineties, the Matterhorn was undergoing a major renovation that took place every Winter over the course of several years. Actually....is it still shutting down every Winter for major refurbishment?

Hey, there's Phoebus signing an autograph for a fan!

He must have been heading for a break, since it looks like he's signing "on the run."

Coming Soon: A Very Brown Tomorrowland. This sign was located underneath the PeopleMover track at the entrance to Tomorrowland. It turned out to be a very cruel joke, however. The sign should have read "Tomorrowland - Lack of Imagination and Beyond! - The Future Ends Spring 1998" I know, not too clever but hey I'm a little bitter.....YOU DESTROYED MY FAVORITE LAND, DISNEY!!! Okay, I feel better and I'm over it....for right now, anyway.


That's it for the 1996 Halloween pics. The park's Halloween decor was not yet at the level that it is today. It would still be a couple more years before the Haunted Mansion would get it's first holiday overlay and another thirteen years until Space Mountain's "Ghost Galaxy."