America Sings Opening & Cast Member Tragedy - 1974

This advertisement (below) for the opening of America Sings is one of the oldest Disneyland newspaper clippings I have. I cut it out of the L.A. Times when I was very young and have saved it all of these years.

America Sings opened on June 29th, 1974. On July 8th, just nine days after the opening, a cast member was crushed to death by the rotating walls inside the attraction. I heard about the incident from kids at school, but I hadn't actually read anything in the paper or seen anything on the news relating to it. I decided to write to Disney News Magazine to ask if the story was true. I received this response back from them. The letter is dated, July 25, 1974, and postmarked the following day.

If you are interested in reading more about this tragic incident, you can click below for a 2010 post from the blog, "Vintage Disneyland Tickets": Vintage Disneyland Tickets - Remembering Deborah

Eighth Grade Disneyland Trip - 1978

Hey kids, it's time for another Vintage Disneyland Trip Report! Thirty three years ago today, my eighth grade class went to Disneyland for "Grad Party '78". This was different than the "Grad Nite" events. This event took place all day long up until park closing. Here is my ticket from that day.

I saved a copy of the parental consent form that was typed up and handed out to all eighth graders. That's right, typed as in on a typewriter and then Xeroxed.....or would it have been mimeographed? Well anyway, I'm pretty sure it wasn't copied on a ditto machine!

Tickets AND transportation only $8.00!!! Lunch can be bought at the park for $1.50!!!

I also saved my school receipt for the ticket. This really was an important trip for most eighth graders. It was something that many of us looked forward to all year because we would get to spend the day in the park without direct supervision. There were adults that accompanied us on the bus trip, but once inside the park, we never saw them again until it was time to go home.

I took my Kodak 126 Instamatic Camera on this trip and out of a roll of 12 exposures, I only took 6 pictures that day...I'm not sure why I didn't shoot the entire roll at the park. The rest of the shots on the roll were taken during my eighth grade graduation ceremony. Sorry, but those shots WON'T be seen here!

I mentioned in an earlier post that after Space Mountain opened, it was always the first attraction we headed for. In the shot below, it would have been only one year old and already part of the glow-in-the-dark decals on car number 5 had been peeled off! It was probably done by some eighth grader that was "not mature enough to meet the trip's conduct requirements" and "brought discredit to their entire class"! The flash cube really wasn't powerful enough to reach as far as I was hoping it would. I'm posting the original pic and a scan of the negative. It's weird how the cast member outfits came out looking red in the new scan when they were actually a horrible orange color.





We've met some of my childhood friends in my past Vintage Disneyland Trip Reports. Today we'll be meeting....well, let's just call her Carrie B. We had known each other since Kindergarten, but we had become even closer friends in Junior High. We had planned to go on this trip together since the beginning of the eighth grade school year. I actually located her about 10 years ago through Classmates and we exchanged emails for a while. Since she doesn't appear to be on Facebook, maybe I should go through my old email addresses and ask her permission to post her picture here. For now we'll just have to settle for Jane of "Dick and Jane" fame (that's actually BEFORE my time....I tried to find a decent picture of Janet from the "Janet and Mark" books, but didn't have any luck.)



I don't remember what it was that she bought that day, but it must have been a lot since she purchased the heavy duty Disneyland shopping bag with handles. I have one of those bags and I will eventually get around to posting it.



This next photo is probably a good place to tell my "New Matterhorn" story. Once again, the year was 1978, so most DL fans probably know that this was the year the "New Matterhorn" was unveiled. At this time, the 19 year-old attraction became more "enclosed" and special effects were added such as "glistening crystal ice caverns" and "howling winter storms". The bobsleds were also redesigned and were now tandem instead of single. And of course the Abominable Snowman himself began making an appearance within the attraction.

I had already been to the park twice since the beginning of the year and had seen the construction taking place on the mountain. I had saved the special color Disneyland advertisement from the newspaper and I had seen the "New Matterhorn" commercial playing repeatedly on TV. The new attraction was even featured on the front of the Grad Party ticket. It had opened almost 2 whole weeks earlier (May 27th) and I was soooooo ready to ride it. Then a friend's father who worked at the park told me just days before the class trip, that the Matterhorn had shut down because they were having technical trouble with it and they didn't know when it would be up and running again. AW NUTS!

Okay, so at least we knew before our trip that it was going to be closed, but then at some point during the day while riding on the PeopleMover, we noticed one of the brand new bobsled trains traveling down and around the mountain with people in it and we got very excited. We got off of the PeopleMover and immediately ran over to the Matterhorn, only to have a cast member tell us that they were just testing the ride and that it would not be opening to the public that day. Yep, at second glance we noticed that everyone riding in the bobsleds was wearing "office attire" and Disneyland name badges. DOUBLE NUTS!

Well, time goes by very slowly when your that age, so it seemed like forever before I was finally able to experience the new attraction, but the reality was that I got to see it within a month or two when my friend's father got us into the park. That will have to be a story for another post....but that friend's father worked on the construction of Big Thunder, so I have construction shots and backstage shots that I will be posting in the future!

This photo was taken while riding the PeopleMover and shows the "test subject" cast members going for a ride on the New Matterhorn.



One last New Matterhorn detail.....while riding the Skyway, we happened to notice that the Abominable Snowman was visible while passing through the Matterhorn. We passed by him too quickly though and I just had to get a picture, so we went on the Skyway again. Actually, we went on it two more times and I have a second photo almost identical to this one. Alas, my attempts to capture him on film were all in vain since I didn't know that the flash cube wouldn't reach that far. Of course I didn't realize it until I got the prints back from Photomat. TRIPLE NUTS!



Oh, and speaking of Big Thunder construction, this sign was hanging on the construction wall over in Frontierland so I had to take a picture of it. There was a more colorful version of this artwork that later replaced this earlier version. Note the geysers which did not end up in the attraction at Disneyland.



Other memories that I have from that day are, calling home from the "Chatterbox" speaker phones in the Bell exhibit in Tomorrowland and purchasing this souvenir book at The Character Shop across the way (now The Star Trader).



Here are a few scans from the inside of this 74 page hardcover book.





At the time this book was purchased, these Matterhorn pictures were already outdated. The piece of Matterhorn track seen below, was an outdoor portion that became enclosed after the remodel.




If you have read this far, I hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane....and thanks for going with me!

America Sings Weekend & Tomorrowland - 1981

Hey kids, it's time for another vintage newspaper ad from the Los Angeles Times! Thirty years ago this week, Disneyland was celebrating "America Sings Weekend."

One month earlier, Disneyland had "Small World Days". Now it was America Sings' turn in the spotlight and once again, park guests did not have to give up an "E" ticket in order to experience it (or was America Sings already a "D" ticket by 1981?) The ad reads, "Snap a souvenir photo with Sam the Eagle".....was there ever a walk-around character of Sam the Eagle? I miss America Sings. I would rather watch those characters perform in the Carousel Theater instead of just float past them briefly on Splash Mountain. Oh well, I guess that's PROGRESS!

One of the souvenirs being sold in the park at this time, were postcard books that included eight regular sized postcards attached to a mini version of the postcard. I guess the idea was that you could tear along the perforation, send the postcard to someone and still have the smaller version attached to the book to keep for yourself. There was a postcard book for each of the "lands" and there was also one with shots of the park's 25th Anniversary "Family Reunion Parade" from 1980. The Tomorrowland book featured two interior scenes from America Sings. Here is the entire postcard book.

The front cover was the only postcard that did not include the "mini version."

The back cover:

Wouldn't THIS monorail still look futuristic today?

By the 1980's, wasn't the Matterhorn considered strictly a Fantasyland attraction?


Too bad Space Mountain doesn't look like this anymore!

Geez, everything at Disneyland was better back then, wasn't it?


This group sang, "Hound Dog" and "See You Later, Alligator" in Act 4 of America Sings.

The Swamp Boys sang, "Polly Wolly Doodle" in Act 1.

I think it would be nice to see all of the buildings in Tomorrowland restored to their 1967 glory. I really don't have faith anymore that Disney could do anything that looks better. They wanted "retro" for the '98 Tomorrowland.....well, do retro again, but do THIS version of retro! It would also be nice to see the PeopleMover come back in some form and also some kind of rotating theater show in the former Carousel Theater building. I know, I know....IT AIN'T NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!

Happy America Sings Weekend, everyone!

A Great Big Beautiful....Stairway

Here's a vintage photo of the The Carousel of Progress in all of it's 1967 glory. Notice the blue and silver railings on the top floor, the ground floor and the exit ramp.


And here is a photo that I took of the building after it's America Sings makeover (this was actually taken after America Sings had closed). Again, notice the blue and silver railings.


Next, we have a photo of the building after it's 1998 Innoventions makeover. Notice the new brown and gold railings that were added. (Ugh!)

This shot shows the new railings and the stairway that's on the south side of the building (next to the Pizza Port Restaurant.)

Now this photo was taken just two days ago and shows the stairway on the north side of the building (next to the Hatmosphere Shop) which for some strange reason, has never been updated. This is the same blue and silver railing dating back to 1967!

Here's a shot that I took of that same stairway back in 1995.

And finally, we have two current close-up shots.

I don't know the reason why this stairway wasn't updated, but I do like the fact that it still exists. Now if only the rest of the building looked the way that it did back when Tomorrowland was a fabulous new "world on the move."

Br'er Owl and Br'er Weasel

I don't know if this owl actually has a name or not, but he can be seen inside Tokyo Disneyland's Splash Mt., talking to the guests that are waiting in line. I use the word "inside", because as I mentioned in yesterday's post, most of the queue for Splash Mt. is located indoors. I have a theory about this owl. I think that he....or at least his "head", could be the old sidekick of Eagle Sam's from America Sings at Disneyland. It looks like the right size and shape....I just don't have anything to back up this theory.



For my second photo, we have the weasels from Tokyo's Splash Mt. I had been told by someone that all of Tokyo's weasels were from the America Sings attraction in Anaheim because Anaheim's Splash Mt. doesn't have weasels, but after recently riding Splash Mountain in Anaheim and seeing that it does contain weasels, I am now thinking this probably isn't the case. Almost all of the America Sings characters were reused in Anaheim's Splash Mt. and then they were later recreated for Florida's and Tokyo's versions. If anyone knows of any of the original America Sings audio-animatronics that made it into Florida or Tokyo's Splash Mountains, I would love to hear from you! I still think that the owl in the queue at Tokyo Disneyland is Eagle Sam's sidekick, but that is just my own unconfirmed, unofficial, "probably wrong" theory!



Just for fun, I have scanned a "NOT A FASTPASS" ticket for Tokyo Disneyland's Splash Mt. just to show the artwork since it is different than Disneyland's or Walt Disney World's. Notice at the very bottom of the ticket, that Tokyo's Fastpass system will actually tell you what attraction you already hold a Fastpass for.