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Flagpole Base: A car had knocked over a street
light on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Where Emile Kuri, bought it
for $5.00 |
Main Street Lamps: The entire set was purchased
for the city of Baltimore at three cent a pound. |
Main Street Lamps: These gas lamps were individually
lit each night by a turn-of-the-century costumed lamplighter. |
Town Square Cannons: Built for the French army
by Hutchkiss, in Paris, in the 19th century. They were never fired in adversity. |
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Landscaping: Plants were brought in from over
40 different countries. |
Sleeping Beauty Castle: Those shining golden
spires on the Castle never have to be polished because they're actually
22-karat gold plating. |
Dumbo: The gear mechanisms on Dumbo are also
22-karat gold. |
Jungle Cruise: The original plans called for
real wild animals to stalk the jungles in sort of a "float-through-zoo." |
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Matterhorn Mountain: The earliest conceptions
of the bobsled run included icy caverns made of real ice. |
Matterhorn Mountain: It's no rumor that there
is a half-court basketball court up inside the mighty mountain. |
Rivers of America: In the early years of the
Park, the Rivers were stocked with catfish and on several occasions, Walt
could be seen fishing of the dock of Tom Sawyer Island. |
Star Tours: The C-3PO and R2-D2 Audio-Animatronics
figures in the lobby area are original units from the "Star Wars" films.
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Mr. Toad's Wild Ride: Was originally designed
as an indoor roller coaster. But Walt toned it down, feeling that the adults
would be too hesitant to venture onto such a wild ride. |
Pirates of the Caribbean: Many Disney Imagineers
were actually used as the face models for the buccaneers. |
Star Tours: The industrial pipes lining the
walls near the entrance are stenciled with the designers' initials and phone
extensions. |
Star Tours: In the Droidnostic area, the overhead
baskets are labeled with the initials and birth dates of people who worked
on the attraction. |
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Submarine Lagoon: the live "mermaids" that once
graced the waters had to be phased out of the show. The heavily chlorinated
water was excessively drying to their skin. |
Landscaping: The shade trees in Town Square
and much of the Jungle Cruise were saved from the fledgling Orange County
freeway system before the bulldozers could rip them up. Disney got the mature
trees before the freeways could, and replanted them in the safety of the
park. |
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride: There is a large sculpture
of the lord of the manor, up in the rafters above the first room of the
attraction has gone virtually undiscovered. This Mr. Toad bust is so obscure
that it was even overlooked during the attraction's official documentation. |
Star Tours: Listen for the public address page,
"Would the owner of a black landspeeder, vehicle I.D. THX-1138, return to
your craft? Your parked in a no-hover area." "THX-1138 was the name of George
Lucas' first feature film. |
| Excerpts
from a story in the Spring 1989 issue of the Disney News. |
